After Obama Victory, Test for the Black Clergy

Abstract: As he walked into his office in Brooklyn nearly every day this fall, the Rev. David K. Brawley noticed a photograph on his assistant’s desk. It showed Senator Barack Obama , head bowed, as a circle of black ministers gathered around him, touching their hands to his shoulders and uttering prayers. Without even knowing the precise circumstances of the picture — it had been taken in July during the quadrennial conference of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination — Mr. Brawley understood the broader context. The hands and the prayers offered to Mr. Obama were an act, in the lexicon of black Christianity, of impartation. What was being imparted at the most obvious level was a blessing on a black candidate’s pursuit of the presidency. Now, with Mr. Obama’s election, the image has taken on a double meaning. The presence in the White House of an African-American, and specifically one from the post-civil rights, multicultural era, will almost certainly impart influence and prominence on his contemporaries in the black ministry. “It’s ushered in a new generation of leadership,” said Mr. Brawley, 40, the incoming pastor of Saint Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn. “It symbolizes the Moses generation passing the baton to the Joshua generation. So the Obama presidency presents us with both an opportunity and a challenge.” The shift is more than simply chronological. The generational dividing line during the Democratic primaries found many of the established leaders of black Christianity — Calvin O. Butts III, Floyd H. Flake, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Suzan Johnson Cook — either supporting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton or staying conspicuously neutral. Mr. Obama’s director of religious affairs, meanwhile, was a 25-year-old Pentecostal minister, Joshua Dubois. By their life experiences alone, the younger echelon of black clergy sees America differently than the elders whom it learned from and indeed reveres. Mr. Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia last March made this exact point, as he tried to distinguish his moderate stance from the sharp, prophetic rhetoric of his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Mr. Obama explained some of Mr. Wright’s most controversial sermons as the expressions of a man deeply marked by the rampant segregation and racism of his formative years. Putting aside what a lightning rod Mr. Wright ultimately became — and how distorted the caricature of him as a militant crackpot is from the eloquent, erudite man himself — the broader point held. During the years when Mr. Obama and his peers in the black ministry came of age, the black middle class grew markedly, elite colleges actively recruited black students, businesses hired with the goal of diversity, and the rigid definition of race began to erode with the long-overdue acknowledgment of mixed racial heritage, even as a formal category in the census. “This new generation of black ministers has grown up in a less overtly hostile white environment,” said Prof. James Cone of Union Theological Seminary in New York, who has been the leading scholar of black theology since the late 1960s. “It will open them up for more dialogue with white churches,” he said, “and it will open up white churches for more dialogue with them. You will have a generation of black ministers who want to embrace the reconciliation embodied by Obama. They haven’t been hurt so badly by racial segregation that they can’t reach out with a little more openness and a little less fear than I might have.” Jonathan Walton, a professor of religion at the University of California at Riverside, is in his 30s, and has both studied and enacted the changing focus of black Christianity for the post-civil rights generation. “What happens when the language of the civil rights movement becomes tyrannical?” Professor Walton said in a telephone interview. “The language of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks was in a segregated world. We’re now almost two generations removed from segregation. Does that language speak to the mortgage crisis, poor public schools, the prison-industrial complex? And in all those areas, many of the faces our people encounter on a daily basis look like us. When we’re talking about race now, we have to talk about it in a very complicated way.” Sharing the same cities with a burgeoning Hispanic population, black churches may not be as purely black in the future, suggested Lawrence H. Mamiya, a professor of religion and African studies at Vassar College and co-author of the seminal book “The Black Church in the African-American Experience.” The black clergy, he added, may be less of a dominantly male preserve, with seminaries ordaining an increasing number of black women. For a relatively young pastor like the Rev. Anthony Bennett at Mt. Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport, Conn., the balancing act will be between venerating the heritage and adapting to the future. “There’s a growing tension for those of us who’ve been mentored by the Moses generation but are part of the Joshua generation,” Mr. Bennett, 42, said in a telephone interview. “The challenge for us is to get out in front of everything that’s changing — high tech, the desire for personal experience in worship, social networking — and still stay connected to the social-justice struggle.” Some of the old ways, of course, have staying power, and maybe efficacy. On Election Day, a collection of black ministers close to the Obama campaign held a round-the-clock “prayer chain” by telephone. Mr. Obama’s religious inner circle includes older figures, like Dr. Michael A. Battle, 57, the president of Interdenominational Theological Seminary in Atlanta, and the Rev. Otis Moss Jr., 73, of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland. Still, for Mr. Brawley and his peers, the sense of impartation is profound and a bit humbling. “The onus is now on the black church to use the iconic example of President Obama to challenge our own ranks,” he put it. “We have a president who looks like us. The question is, how much do we look like him?”

Rev. David K. Brawley
Obama Barack
Presidential Election of 2008
Blacks
Christians and Christianity
Brooklyn (NYC)


Syria Outlines Plans for Conquest of Aleppo, Backed by Russian Power

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian government and its powerful Russian allies laid out a road map on Thursday for subduing the rebel-held districts of the city of Aleppo by opening corridors for civilians to flee and offering amnesty to insurgents who lay down their arms. But residents and rebel fighters remained deeply skeptical of those offers, while aid groups warned of a tightening siege that could increase the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people. Control of Aleppo, Syria’s most populous city before the civil war began five years ago, has been a main objective of the conflict’s combatants. The city has been divided since 2012, with government forces controlling the western half and rebels holding districts in the east. But Russia’s military intervention has provided an edge to the forces of President Bashar al-Assad, allowing them to cut off access to the city’s rebel-held areas, while also making life inside them worse through shelling and airstrikes against markets, bakeries and medical facilities — leaving entire neighborhoods in ruins. Four hospitals have been struck and scores of civilians killed in the last week, according to monitoring groups. Rebel forces also use these neighborhoods to stage attacks that have killed civilians in government-held territory. The fall of eastern Aleppo to government forces would be a major turning point in the war and would solidify Russia’s place as the most prominent foreign power involved in the conflict, which years of international diplomacy have failed to end. The new government plan was presented on Thursday in coordinated announcements from Moscow and Damascus, along with airdrops over Aleppo of small food packs and maps indicating the escape routes. The Russian defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, said three routes out of eastern Aleppo would be opened for civilians, who would be given food and medical care. A fourth route would be opened for armed insurgents, Mr. Shoigu said. Mr. Assad issued a three-month amnesty for insurgents who turn themselves in, lay down their arms and release any captives, according to the Syrian state news agency, SANA. The Syrian Army also sent text messages calling on rebels to surrender and expel foreign fighters from their midst. But many Syrians, Western diplomats and international aid groups doubted the sincerity of what Russia termed a “large-scale humanitarian operation,” contending that Russia had previously shown little concern for the plight of civilians in rebel-held areas and that the Syrian government had frequently employed brutal siege tactics against its foes. The United Nations, which has tried to broker talks between the warring sides and facilitate aid delivery, was not consulted about the plan and so was unsure whether it could be considered a “humanitarian” move, said Staffan de Mistura, the global body’s envoy for Syria. He said that Russian, and perhaps American, military officials were heading to Geneva to discuss the plan. Few residents of eastern Aleppo said they expected good treatment if they accepted the government’s offer. Farida, a doctor in an Aleppo hospital who gave only her first name for safety reasons, noted that all the passages would take civilians to government-controlled areas. She said she feared that surrendering to government forces could mean either death or imprisonment. She acknowledged, however, that some civilians want to leave. Aid groups have been warning of an impending siege, and with it a humanitarian crisis, after government forces cut the last road connecting Aleppo’s eastern districts to rebel-held areas to the north. Zaher Azzaher, an activist in Aleppo, said that residents had begun to feel the pinch; one of his neighbors had acquired two barrels of fuel and scores of people had lined up to get a share, he said. “People are fighting over two bags of eggplants,” he said. “I don’t know how these eggplants managed to find their way here.” He added that some residents hesitated to eat the food packs dropped from the air, out of fear that they might be poisoned. The announcement of the exit corridors left other residents debating whether to leave. “We have this discussion here every single minute: to leave or not to leave,” said Luay Barakat, a photographer in eastern Aleppo. He was trying to convince others to stay, he said, so that the government could not argue that all the civilians had fled and only rebels remained. “If you leave, the regime will have the excuse to bomb us more,” he said he told other residents. It remained unclear how the United States and other international powers would respond to the Syrian-Russian plan. The American government has called on Mr. Assad to step down and has provided limited military aid to some rebel groups. Its priority, however, is to weaken the jihadists of the Islamic State, who have no notable presence in Aleppo but control territory farther east. Amnesty International criticized the plan, saying that allowing civilians to leave Aleppo was not enough, that pro-government forces also needed to let aid in. “Providing safe routes for those civilians who wish to flee Aleppo city will not avert a humanitarian catastrophe,” the group said in a statement . “It is not a substitute for allowing impartial humanitarian relief for civilians who remain in opposition-held areas of the city or other besieged areas, many of whom will be skeptical about government promises.” The impending siege of Aleppo recalled the Syrian government’s seizure of rebel-held neighborhoods in the city of Homs in 2014, when its forces surrounded the area and bombarded it while calling on civilians to leave. It took more than two years to fully subjugate the city’s rebels, leaving entire districts in ruins. The rebel-held area in Aleppo is much larger, with many more fighters and civilians, so the siege there could take longer and exact a greater human toll. Also on Thursday, the leader of the Nusra Front, the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda, said the group was reforming itself under a new name and would have “no relationship with any outside party.” In a video message online , the leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said the move sought to keep Russia and the United States from bombing Syria’s rebels by removing what he called the “excuse” that they were linked to Al Qaeda. He renamed the group the Levant Conquest Front, but announced no changes in its ideology. James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, dismissed the name change as a “P.R. move.’’ Mr. Clapper, speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, said the group was trying to attract more moderate rebel elements and avoid airstrikes. Noah Bonsey, a Syria analyst with the International Crisis Group, said the name change would fail to convince Russia as well as the United States that the group had changed.

Aleppo Syria
Syrian Army
Syria
Russia
Bashar al-Assad
Military
Abu Mohammed al- Jolani
Al Nusra Front
Levant Conquest Front


16-Year-Old Arrested After Fight at a Brooklyn McDonald’s

Abstract: A 16-year-old high school student was arrested on Thursday after being seen on video taking part in the beating of another girl at a McDonald’s in Brooklyn, the police said. The 16-year-old, Aniah Ferguson, was charged with robbery in the second degree and gang assault. Robert K. Boyce, the chief of detectives, said that the police were still investigating the matter and that there could be more arrests. On Wednesday, a cellphone video of the fight taken by a witness gained widespread attention , and drew equally widespread outrage, after it was posted on Facebook. The video begins with the brawl already in progress, and one girl is seen being pummeled by several others. The victim, who was identified by the police only as a 15-year-old, was taken to Kings County Hospital Center and later released. She suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries, according to the police. Both the victim and Ms. Ferguson attend Erasmus Hall High School, and the police said they had gone to a nearby McDonald’s on Flatbush Avenue after school with the intention of fighting. “We don’t know the origin of the fight right now,” Chief Boyce said. “We’ll try to figure it out as we go along.” What is clear on the video is that the 15-year-old was quickly overwhelmed and outnumbered. Even after she was knocked to the floor and motionless, several assailants continued to kick, punch and stomp on her. At one point a bystander says casually, “She’s dead,” and, “You murdered her.” Not until the end of the three-minute video does anyone step in to end the beating. For most of the fight, according to the video, a crowd watched the beating play out as if it were a sporting event. There are dozens of school children shown shouting and not an adult in sight as the fight went from after-school brawl to something potentially more ominous, according to what could be seen on the video. By the time the police arrived, the fight was over. The 15-year-old initially declined to cooperate with the authorities. In a statement, the New York City Education Department said it was looking into the altercation. “The actions in this video are abhorrent, and our primary concern right now is for the well-being of the student,” said Jason Fink, a department spokesman. Police Commissioner William J. Bratton, when asked about his reaction to the video, was unequivocal: “That type of behavior is not acceptable in any society, and certainly is not going to be acceptable here in New York.”

Assault
Erasmus Hall High School
Aniah Ferguson
Brooklyn
Gang
Young Savages


Alcoa Narrows Loss as Demand and Prices Rise

Abstract: Alcoa said on Monday that it narrowed its first-quarter loss as demand for some aluminum products picked up and prices improved. For the quarter that ended March 31, Alcoa reported a net loss of $201 million, or 20 cents a share. That compared with a net loss of $497 million, or 61 cents a share, a year earlier, when the company was struggling with the impact of the recession. Alcoa’s most recent results include $295 million, or 29 cents a share, in one-time charges related to the health care reform law and the closing of two smelters. Revenue rose nearly 20 percent, to $4.9 billion, from $4.1 billion. The company said it expected sales to improve with the growing popularity of fuel-efficient vehicles and sustainable products made with aluminum. “Our markets are gradually improving, and both policy trends and consumer sentiment bode well for aluminum demand,” said Klaus Kleinfeld, Alcoa’s chief executive. Alcoa’s average realized price per metric ton of aluminum in the first quarter was $2,331, up from $1,567 in the same period a year earlier. Alcoa, which is based in New York, reported its results after the close of market trading. In the after-hours session, its stock fell 7 cents, to $14.50 a share. Alcoa is the first company in the Dow Jones industrial average to issue earnings results this period. Its performance can reflect economic trends because of its broad customer base, which includes industries as diverse as aerospace, construction, electronics and beverage cans.


Fighting Truancy Among India’s Teachers, With a Pistol and a Stick

Abstract: DEORIA, India — The young man, having skipped school, was there to plead his case, but Manoj Mishra was having none of it. When the truant offered a letter from a relative of a government minister pleading for leniency, Mr. Mishra grabbed it and, with a frown, tore it in half and dropped it to the floor. Similar scenes played out repeatedly in Mr. Mishra’s fluorescent-lit office recently, as one truant after another appeared before him, trying to explain an absence from school. But these were not students who had been pulled in for truancy. They were teachers. Mr. Mishra, a district education officer in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, is fighting one of the biggest obstacles to improving the largest primary school system in the world: absent teachers. His tough punishments and refusal to back down, chronicled in the local newspapers, have turned him into a folk hero. As he walks along the dusty streets of the wheat-farming villages a couple of hours’ drive from Nepal, older people touch his feet in a sign of respect. Young women pull out their phones and take selfies by his side. When Mr. Mishra arrived in Deoria in 2014, 40 percent of the district’s teachers were absent on any given day from its 2,700 schools, he said in a recent interview. Nationwide, nearly 24 percent of rural Indian teachers were absent during random visits for a recent study led by Karthik Muralidharan at the University of California, San Diego . Teacher absences run as high as 46 percent in some states. MR. MISHRA says that teacher attendance has soared to above 90 percent, about the best that can be expected considering sickness and personal matters. Achieving that attendance record has not been easy. Teachers have threatened to shoot Mr. Mishra, roughed him up, turned his desk upside down and loudly denounced him in protests outside his office. Their allies, including ministers and legislators, have made phone calls and visits, demanding he ease up. Mr. Mishra, 42, has responded by packing a loaded pistol in his right front pocket, hiring private security guards and putting cameras in his office. “He’s the first anyone had met like him, a government officer so bold and unbending,” said Pratap Pathak, a reporter for Dainik Jagran, a Hindi daily. With the largest population in the world under the age of 35, India is trying to grow by leveraging what is often called the “demographic dividend.” To prepare more than 200 million primary school children for jobs in a modern work force, India passed legislation a decade ago that more than doubled education spending, increased teacher salaries and reduced class sizes. Image A classroom in Deoria this month. To prepare more than 200 million primary school children for jobs in a modern work force, India passed legislation a decade ago that more than doubled education spending, increased teacher salaries and reduced class sizes. Credit Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times But children’s already low performance has fallen. Pratham Education Foundation , a nonprofit that conducts an annual household survey, reported that in 2005 about 60 percent of fifth graders in rural India — where most people live — could read at a minimum second-grade level, but that in 2014 less than 50 percent could. Teacher truancy is among the more prominent causes of that failure, experts say. Teaching jobs pay well and are sometimes obtained through political connections. But those who get them often do not want to travel to the remote areas where many schools are. In areas with weak local governance, not showing up has become the norm, and people feel powerless to complain. That is where Mr. Mishra comes in. Wearing a shiny gray jacket, and with a halo of wavy black hair around a chubby-cheeked face, he hardly looks the tough guy. He grew up in a village about 100 miles away, attending a school similar to the ones he now oversees. Having graduated from this state’s prestigious Allahabad University, he joined the state Civil Service, landing a coveted education post in 2002. After jobs in the state education headquarters, he moved out into the field as the officer in charge of primary education in district after district. By August 2014, when he showed up in Deoria, he was already causing a stir. He had been reprimanded for beating up three teachers with a stick because he believed they had landed their jobs using fraudulent documents. That episode made the headlines in the nearby city of Gorakhpur. “Wherever he was, there was always a conversation around him,” said Mr. Pathak, the newspaper reporter. Just a few days into the Deoria job, Mr. Mishra began to get text messages from people complaining that teachers rarely attended school. By then, he was well aware that widespread teacher truancy could occur only if, he said, “my officers are hand in glove with the teachers,” warning them if anyone was coming to check attendance. Some weeks later, he called all the officers to a meeting, collected their cellphones and sent them out to schools they were not in charge of supervising to report on absences. The results shocked him. In one subdistrict, 73 of its 245 teachers were absent. Mr. Mishra said he soon discovered that some of the missing teachers lived nowhere near their schools. One lived in the New Delhi suburb of Noida, a two-hour flight from the Deoria area; another in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, more than a thousand miles away. Another had not been seen in school for six years. He says many of them worked other jobs and had bribed his officers into reporting them present. “That’s when I took the problem seriously and realized I needed to do something about it,” Mr. Mishra said. A principal, Manoj Singh, 40, was among those nabbed in the first raid. Soon after, Mr. Mishra demoted him to assistant teacher, cutting his monthly salary of $750 by one-third, and transferred him to a remote village a two hours’ drive from his home. MR. SINGH said he was sure he could persuade Mr. Mishra to forgive him because “everyone had missed school for years and no officers had ever come down hard on anyone.” He told Mr. Mishra that he was sick on the day of the attendance check, and even persuaded politicians and union leaders to intervene on his behalf. “Do whatever you want,” he said Mr. Mishra told him. “I have done what I have to.” In his frustration, Mr. Singh acknowledged, “I got aggressive. It’s possible I said some loose words.” In Mr. Mishra’s telling, the former principal threatened to shoot him. Mr. Singh said he does not recall making such a threat, but whatever he said, it was enough for Mr. Mishra to go to the police. Mr. Mishra said he received hundreds of calls and visits on behalf of virtually all of the suspended teachers. “There was mayhem,” said Sunil Singh, a reporter for another Hindi daily, Amar Ujala. Most people, Mr. Mishra included, believed that he would be transferred within a week, the usual punishment from the state executive for disobedient officers. But the tide turned in his favor. “Everyone except the teachers was happy with his work,” Mr. Pathak said. It did not hurt that the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party had swept to victory not long before with the promise of fighting corruption. One day, Ram Govind Choudhary, then the state basic education minister, called Mr. Mishra and said, “I support you — don’t worry,” both men recalled. “What he did is what all my district officers should do,” Mr. Choudhary said in an interview. Emboldened, Mr. Mishra began leading raids on the schools each month. He set up a toll-free number to report truant teachers, and painted it on every school wall. Locals watched gleefully on the days the schools were inspected, when streams of teachers could be seen sprinting across town trying to reach their classrooms before Mr. Mishra and his officers could get there. Mr. Mishra says making teachers go to school is only one small step forward. “Whether they teach or don’t teach, I can’t tell,” he said. “But now, at least, they come to school.”

K-12 Education
Manoj Mishra
Teachers
Absenteeism
Uttar Pradesh
Deoria
Corruption
India


Fed Shrugged as Subprime Crisis Spread

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Until the boom in subprime mortgages turned into a national nightmare this summer, the few people who tried to warn federal banking officials might as well have been talking to themselves. Edward M. Gramlich, a Federal Reserve governor who died in September, warned nearly seven years ago that a fast-growing new breed of lenders was luring many people into risky mortgages they could not afford. But when Mr. Gramlich privately urged Fed examiners to investigate mortgage lenders affiliated with national banks, he was rebuffed by Alan Greenspan , the Fed chairman. In 2001, a senior Treasury official, Sheila C. Bair, tried to persuade subprime lenders to adopt a code of “best practices” and to let outside monitors verify their compliance. None of the lenders would agree to the monitors, and many rejected the code itself. Even those who did adopt those practices, Ms. Bair recalled recently, soon let them slip. And leaders of a housing advocacy group in California, meeting with Mr. Greenspan in 2004, warned that deception was increasing and unscrupulous practices were spreading. John C. Gamboa and Robert L. Gnaizda of the Greenlining Institute implored Mr. Greenspan to use his bully pulpit and press for a voluntary code of conduct. “He never gave us a good reason, but he didn’t want to do it,” Mr. Gnaizda said last week. “He just wasn’t interested.” Today, as the mortgage crisis of 2007 worsens and threatens to tip the economy into a recession, many are asking: where was Washington? An examination of regulatory decisions shows that the Federal Reserve and other agencies waited until it was too late before trying to tame the industry’s excesses. Both the Fed and the Bush administration placed a higher priority on promoting “financial innovation” and what President Bush has called the “ownership society.” On top of that, many Fed officials counted on the housing boom to prop up the economy after the stock market collapsed in 2000. Mr. Greenspan, in an interview, vigorously defended his actions, saying the Fed was poorly equipped to investigate deceptive lending and that it was not to blame for the housing bubble and bust. On Tuesday, under a new chairman, the Federal Reserve will try to make up for lost ground by proposing new restrictions on subprime mortgages, invoking its authority under the 13-year-old Home Ownership Equity and Protection Act. Fed officials are expected to demand that lenders document a person’s income and ability to repay the loan, and they may well restrict practices that make it hard for borrowers to see hidden fees or refinance with cheaper mortgages. It is an action that people like Mr. Gramlich and Ms. Bair advocated for years with little success. But it will have little impact on many existing subprime lenders, because most have either gone out of business or stopped making subprime loans months ago. Before this year, officials here enthusiastically praised subprime lenders for helping millions of families buy homes for the first time. “I was aware that the loosening of mortgage credit terms for subprime borrowers increased financial risk,” Mr. Greenspan wrote in his recent memoir, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World.” “But I believed then, as now, that the benefits of broadened home ownership are worth the risk.” As housing prices soared in what became a speculative bubble, Fed officials took comfort that foreclosure rates on subprime mortgages remained relatively low. But neither the Fed nor any other regulatory agency in Washington examined what might happen if housing prices flattened out or declined. Had officials bothered to look, frightening clues of the coming crisis were available. The Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit group based in North Carolina, analyzed records from across the country and found that default rates on subprime loans soared to 20 percent in cities where home prices stopped rising or started to fall. “The Federal Reserve could have stopped this problem dead in its tracks,” said Martin Eakes, chief executive of the center. “If the Fed had done its job, we would not have had the abusive lending and we would not have a foreclosure crisis in virtually every community across America.” Mr. Greenspan, hailed as perhaps the best central banker in history when he left the Fed in early 2006, is now feeling defensive. In an extensive interview last week, he adamantly disputed the assertion that he could have prevented the mortgage bust. The housing bubble, he said, had far less to do with the Fed’s policy on interest rates than on a global surplus in savings that drove down interest rates and pushed up housing prices in countries around the world. As for his role as a regulator, Mr. Greenspan argued that the Fed was ill-suited to investigate deceptive lending practices. “I got the impression that there were a lot of very questionable practices going on,” he said. “The problem has always been, what basically does the law mean when it says deceptive and unfair practices? Deceptive and unfair practices may seem straightforward, except when you try to determine by what standard.” Mr. Greenspan also contended that the Federal Reserve’s accountants and bank examiners were ill-suited to the job of investigating fraud. “It becomes essentially an enforcement action, and the question is, who are the best enforcers?” he said. “A large enough share of these cases are fraud, and those are areas that I don’t think accountants are best able to handle.” Others are more critical. “Hindsight is always 20-20, but it’s clear the Fed should have acted earlier,” said Ms. Bair, who became chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 2006. “Financial innovation is great, but you have to have some basic rules. One of the most basic rules is that a borrower should have the ability to repay.” A Booming Industry Mr. Greenspan and other Fed officials repeatedly dismissed warnings about a speculative bubble in housing prices. In December 2004, the New York Fed issued a report bluntly declaring that “no bubble exists.” Mr. Greenspan predicted several times — incorrectly, it turned out — that housing declines would be local but almost certainly not nationwide. The Fed was hardly alone in not pressing to clean up the mortgage industry. When states like Georgia and North Carolina started to pass tougher laws against abusive lending practices, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency successfully prohibited them from investigating local subsidiaries of nationally chartered banks. Virtually every federal bank regulator was loathe to impose speed limits on a booming industry. But the regulators were also fragmented among an alphabet soup of agencies with splintered and confusing jurisdictions. Perhaps the biggest complication was that many mortgage lenders did not fall under any agency’s authority at all. Subprime loans carry high interest rates, sometimes as high as 12 percent, and were designed for people with weak credit records. Unlike traditional banks and thrifts, which traditionally financed their loans with deposits, most subprime lenders are financed by investors on Wall Street who buy packages of loans called mortgage-backed securities. Starting from a virtual standstill 10 years ago, subprime lenders became by far the fastest-growing segment of mortgage lending before they collapsed. They made $540 billion in mortgages by 2004 and $625 billion at their peak in 2006 — about one-quarter of all new mortgages. Mr. Gramlich, a Democratic appointee to the Federal Reserve who had spent much of his career studying problems of poverty, saw both great benefits and great perils in the new industry. As head of the Fed’s Committee on Consumer and Community Affairs from 1997 to 2005, he agreed that subprime lending had opened new doors to people with low incomes or poor credit histories. Home ownership, which had hovered around 64 percent for years, climbed to almost 70 percent by 2005. The biggest gains were among blacks and Hispanics, groups that had suffered discrimination for decades. What alarmed Mr. Gramlich was that many subprime loans were extremely complicated and loaded with hidden risks. Borrowers were being qualified for loans based on low initial teaser rates, rather than the much higher rates they would have to pay after a year or two. Many of the loans came with big fees that were hidden in the overall interest rate. And many had prepayment penalties that effectively blocked people from getting cheaper loans for two years or longer. “Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers?” Mr. Gramlich asked in a speech he prepared last August for the Fed’s symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo. “The question answers itself — the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.” Turning Away a Bigger Role In 2000, Mr. Gramlich privately urged the Fed chairman to send examiners into the mortgage-lending affiliates of nationally chartered banks. Many of them, like Bank of America’s affiliate, had already come under fire from state regulators and consumer groups. Fed examiners, Mr. Gramlich argued, could clean up those practices from the inside. Mr. Greenspan was against the idea. In an interview last week, he said he feared that Fed examiners would fail to spot deceptive practices and inadvertently give dubious lenders what amounted to a government seal of approval. “I remember telling him, ‘be careful,’ ” Mr. Greenspan said. If the Fed gave the appearance that it was overseeing thousands of local institutions, which he said it did not have the resources to do, “we’re going to end up with a situation that very well could be worse rather than better.” To be sure, some of the speculative excesses of the housing bubble and the subsequent bust were driven by broader forces. The Fed helped stoke the housing market by slashing short-term interest rates from 2000 to 2004. The rate cuts drastically reduced the effective cost of buying a house, which added more fuel to what was already a powerful housing boom. In addition, foreign investors were pouring trillions of dollars into American securities. Much of that money, often described as the “global savings glut,” flowed directly into mortgage-backed securities that were used to finance subprime mortgages. But by 2005, federal banking regulators were beginning to worry that mortgage lenders were running amok with exotic and often inscrutable new products. The agencies, however, were like a Rube Goldberg machine with parts moving in different directions. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency was in charge of nationally chartered banks and their subsidiaries. The Federal Reserve covered affiliates of nationally chartered banks. The Office of Thrift Supervision oversaw savings institutions. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insured deposits of both state-chartered and nationally chartered banks. Because each agency receives its funding from fees paid by the banks or thrifts they regulate, critics have long argued that they often treat the institutions they regulate as constituents to be protected. All of them are wary about stifling new financial services. Ms. Bair was an exception, especially for the deregulation-minded Bush administration. As a former assistant secretary of the Treasury in 2001 and 2002, she had worked with Mr. Gramlich to raise concerns about abusive lending practices. Indeed, she tried to hammer out an agreement with mortgage lenders and consumer groups over a tough set of “best practices” that would have covered subprime mortgages. But that effort largely stalled because of disagreement. Though some big lenders did endorse a broad code of conduct, she recalled, they soon began loosening standards as competition intensified. The drop in lending standards became unmistakable in 2004, as lenders approved a flood of shaky new products: “stated-income” loans, which do not require borrowers to document their incomes; “piggyback” loans, which allow people to buy a home without making a down payment; and “option ARMs,” which allowed people to make less than the minimum payment but added the unpaid amount to their total mortgage. Fed officials noticed the drop in standards as well. The Fed’s survey of bank lenders showed a steep plunge in standards that began in 2004 and continued until the housing boom fizzled in 2006. But the regulators found themselves hopelessly behind the fast-changing practices of lenders. In a bid to set new standards for exotic mortgages, the agencies waited until December 2005 to propose a “guidance” to banks and thrifts. They did not agree on the final standard until September 2006. Standards for Lenders But the real shock to consumer groups — and even to some of the regulators — was that the new underwriting standards did not apply to subprime loans. Instead, they applied to only a fairly narrow array of exotic mortgages like “option ARMs.” “The gaping hole was that it would only apply to nontraditional mortgages,” Ms. Bair said. But the exotic mortgages were already fading from the market, in part because of bad publicity. Subprime lending, by contrast, was still booming and represented a much bigger business. “We hadn’t really focused on that,” said John C. Dugan, Comptroller of the Currency, who had pushed hard for the new guidance. “From our own perspective of national banks, it was really a smaller part of our universe.” It was not until March 2007 that the group of regulators proposed yet another “guidance,” this one to address standards for subprime lending. But those standards were not finished until June 29. By that time, more than 30 subprime lenders had gone out of business and many more were headed that way. Several people familiar with the regulatory deliberations said the delays stemmed in part from intense resistance among some policy makers to challenging subprime lenders. “I had concerns, I really had concerns,” acknowledged Mr. Dugan, adding that he became convinced after listening to enough public comment on the issue. In the end, any concerns for the industry quickly became moot. Less than two months after the new standards were issued, the subprime industry was essentially dead. Ben S. Bernanke, who succeeded Mr. Greenspan as Fed chairman, is now scrambling to head off a recession. Last week, the Fed lowered its benchmark interest rate for the third time since August, and officials now worry that the subprime crisis has inflicted deep damage on credit markets that could in turn derail the entire economy.

Mortgages
Housing
Credit
Banks and Banking
Foreclosures
Economic Conditions and Trends
United States Economy
Federal Reserve System
Greenspan Alan
Bush George W


Iraqis Fail to Agree on Provincial Elections

Abstract: BAGHDAD — Iraqi political leaders met Sunday to try to reach a deal that would allow provincial elections to proceed, but they again failed to agree, further dimming prospects that the elections would be held this year. The talks took place on a day of bombings across Baghdad, including an exploding truck that killed 12 civilians. Representatives from the various Iraqi political blocs gathered at the Baghdad residence of Massoud Barzani , the leader of the Kurdistan Regional Government, to try to work out a compromise on the election law. Despite a long afternoon of talks after a flurry of meetings on Saturday, a consensus was not reached by Sunday night. “The Tawafiq front is not happy or satisfied about these negotiations, because they did not reach an agreement,” said Salim al-Jabouri, a member of Tawafiq, the largest Sunni bloc in Parliament. The negotiations were to resume on Monday morning. Among those attending the meeting on Sunday were Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ; Ryan C. Crocker , the American ambassador; and a representative of the United Nations, which has been actively involved in trying to find a solution. President Bush called several Iraqi officials, including Mr. Maliki and Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of Parliament, urging them to come to an agreement, several lawmakers said. The pressure from the Americans irked some participants. “It’s interfering in an inappropriate way with the Iraqis,” said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish lawmaker. “I don’t know why they are so much in a hurry for this law. Anything done under pressure will not be workable.” Parliament was to begin a monthlong recess last week, but the session was extended because a budget had not been passed. Parliament was not in session on Sunday, as scheduled, because a quorum was not present. For weeks, lawmakers have been trying to reach an agreement on legislation that would govern provincial council elections in Iraq , but the effort has foundered on disagreements centering on the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk. The Kurds have been trying to maintain their demographic and political dominance of the city, situated in an oil-rich province in northern Iraq. The dispute, which pits the Kurds and their political allies against Turkmens and Sunni Arabs, has turned violent. Last week, a suicide bomber killed 17 Kurds who were protesting an earlier draft of the election law, setting off a riot in which 12 more people were killed and dozens were wounded. The draft was passed by Parliament two weeks ago, but the session was boycotted by Kurdish lawmakers, and the bill was later rejected by the Presidency Council. In the meetings this weekend, Kurdish representatives insisted that the election law include a clause reviving an expired section of the Iraqi Constitution that pertains to disputed territories. The section lays out steps for a referendum on whether Kirkuk should join the Kurdish regional government or remain under the administration of Baghdad. The deadline for such a referendum was the end of last year. In other developments on Sunday, at a little after 8 a.m., a small truck exploded on a busy commercial street in Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding 22, the Iraqi authorities said. The bomb went off in Adhamiya, a Sunni neighborhood once controlled by religious extremists, near a passport office and a building that housed private health clinics. Three other bombs exploded around the city, all apparently aimed at Iraqi security forces. Fifteen people were wounded in the attacks, three of them police officers, the authorities said. In Latifiya, a city south of Baghdad, a bomb aimed at an Iraqi Army patrol killed six people, including three soldiers. Iraqi security forces taking part in an operation in Diyala Province in the east found 15 unidentified bodies buried on a farm north of the town of Khan Bani Saad on Saturday, a local security official said. In addition, two American soldiers died and three soldiers were wounded Sunday in separate vehicle accidents, the American military said.

Iraq
Politics and Government
Bombs and Explosives
Barzani Massoud
Maliki Nuri Kamal al-
Crocker Ryan C


Working to Heal, in Israeli Town With a Deep Arab Wound

Abstract: KAFR QASSEM, Israel — When Reuven Rivlin , Israel’s recently elected president, visited this predominantly Arab town northeast of Tel Aviv on Sunday, there were no Israeli flags lining the streets. There were only black flags, marking the 58th anniversary of a painful chapter in Israel’s history, the Kafr Qassem massacre. The presidential visit was the first to be timed for the annual commemoration of the events of Oct. 29, 1956, when Israeli border police officers shot dead 49 men, women and children as they returned from work in the fields, unwittingly breaking a curfew. Mr. Rivlin’s appearance highlighted his emerging agenda: Healing Jewish-Arab relations, denouncing racism in Israeli society and urging tolerance, equality and coexistence. It also underscored the rawness of the wounds and the enduring complexity of the relationship between the Israeli state and its Arab minority, whose 1.7 million members make up just over 20 percent of Israel’s population. “We belong to two nations whose dreams and aspirations to a great extent contradict each other,” Mr. Rivlin told an audience of local notables, survivors of the massacre and Arab and Jewish schoolchildren from Kafr Qassem and the nearby, mainly Jewish town of Herzliya. “We are not doomed to live together, but we are destined to live together — or instead, to fight one another until the end of time.” He said the state of Israel was “the national home of the Jewish people, who returned to their land after two millennia of exile,” but he added that “Israel will always be the homeland of the Arab population,” describing Israel’s Arab citizens as “not a marginal group in Israeli society” but as “flesh of our flesh in this land.” Shimon Peres, Mr. Rivlin’s predecessor in the largely ceremonial role of president, visited Kafr Qassem during a Muslim holiday in December 2007 and expressed regret over the massacre. But Mr. Rivlin’s gesture, and his focus on Arab civil rights, seemed more counterintuitive. Mr. Peres was a dovish figure of the political left, but Mr. Rivlin came from the conservative Likud party, and he opposes the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, he has called for a single state under Jewish sovereignty, but with equal rights for all. Mr. Rivlin took office in July in the highly charged atmosphere of the most recent war in Gaza, just after the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank and the retaliatory killing of a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem. Israel’s ultranationalist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, called for a boycott of Arab businesses that took part in a protest strike in solidarity with Gaza. Arab citizens who posted comments on Facebook expressing sympathy with the Gazans or outrage over Israel’s actions were assailed in social media postings by Jewish extremists, who demanded that their Jewish employers fire them. Mr. Rivlin has spoken out against the increasingly ugly tone of public discourse in Israel. He raised eyebrows earlier this month when he used a speech to the Academy of Sciences and Humanities to criticize what he called an “epidemic” of violence and verbal abuse. “It is time to honestly admit that Israeli society is ill, and it is our duty to treat this disease,” he told the academy. In Kafr Qassem on Sunday, Mr. Rivlin spoke of “not uncommon manifestations of racism and arrogance on the part of Jews.” Israel “recognized the crime committed here, and rightly and justly has apologized for it,” Mr. Rivlin said of the 1956 massacre at the memorial ceremony. “I, too, am here today to say a terrible crime was done here. An illegal command, over which hangs a dark cloud, was given here.” Though his presence was welcomed, many people at the ceremony had come expecting to hear him go further. “The wound has not healed,” said Adel Badir, the mayor of Kafr Qassem. “In every corner of the village, people bow their heads. They remember and don’t forget. They are furious and they don’t forgive.” Mr. Badir said his people wanted the state of Israel to accept responsibility for the massacre — something the government has never done — and to recognize the victims as war dead. Instead, the families have received only the state compensation they would have gotten if the victims had died in workplace accidents. Ibrahim Sarsour, a resident of Kafr Qassem and a member of the Israeli Parliament, said that the Reuven Rivlin he had known over the years was “brave enough to think outside the Israeli box.” Still, he said, “We did not hear today the words we all wanted to hear.” Asked if he was satisfied with the president’s speech, a survivor of the massacre — Muhammad Abbas, 84, — said that “he did not apologize explicitly but we hope nevertheless things will change for the better.” Mr. Abbas recalled that he was at work in the fields on that day in 1956, as tensions surrounding the Suez Canal were flaring into war in the Sinai. Soldiers in two jeeps arrived in Kafr Qassem late in the afternoon and told the village leader that a curfew would be imposed at 5 p.m., he said, giving the villagers only 45 minutes’ notice. The border police officers were ordered to shoot to kill if anyone violated the curfew, but the villagers in the fields had no idea it had been imposed. As they began to return home, Mr. Abbas said, “I heard a lot of shooting.” He managed to get home safely by sneaking through orchards, but dozens of his neighbors could not. “They didn’t kill, they murdered,” he said of the officers. Eleven officers were put on trial on murder charges, and eight were convicted despite their defense that they were following orders. The court’s precedent-setting verdict said that soldiers and border police officers must refuse to follow a “patently illegal order” that carries a “black flag” of criminality. The convicted officers’ sentences were later reduced by presidential pardons and a special committee, and none served more than three and a half years in prison. Mr. Rivlin’s visit to Kafr Qassem on Sunday walked a careful line between recognizing the tragic events and accepting responsibility for them, a distinction that was discernible even in what he brought to lay at the marble monument to the 49 victims: not an official wreath, but a simple bunch of white flowers.


Baby Boomers Ready to Sell Businesses to the Next Generation

Abstract: Dan Bizzarro and Bill Jordan were still in college when they went to work at the Bimac Corporation , a castings manufacturer in Dayton, Ohio. After graduation, they joined full time as manufacturing and engineering executives. And eventually they teamed with a third employee to buy the business. They had a good ride. The company, with 40 employees, has annual sales of about $5.5 million. But as the two men entered their 60s, after nearly three decades as owners, they began to wonder how long the arrangement could endure. Their partner, Roger Reedy, had been talking for several years about retiring and moving to Florida. After considering various options, including buying Mr. Reedy out, Mr. Bizzarro and Mr. Jordan decided their best choice would be to join with him in finding a new owner. “The three of us aren’t that far apart in age,” Mr. Jordan said. “At some point in time, Dan and I will be looking at slowing down ourselves.” It is a realization that many business owners their age are coming to. As the sting of the recession fades and the economy grows healthier, entrepreneurial baby boomers who spent the last few decades building businesses are starting to move on to the next phase of their careers: cashing out. And as the generational torch is passed, the profile of small businesses is changing, too, with a markedly higher share of minority groups and women among younger business owners — a trend that could shift patterns of wealth and economic prospects. The number of small businesses listed for sale nationwide is at a six-year high, according to data compiled by BizBuySell.com , an online marketplace. The tally of completed transactions is also rising, and the median sale price is up 12 percent compared with prices a year ago. Businesses are sold for a wide variety of reasons, and America’s improving economy is the largest factor in the recent rise, according to those in the industry. But bankers and brokers say there is a significant increase in sales from business owners in their 60s and 70s who are ready to turn their creations over to a new generation of owners. “We’re seeing the most sales activity we have in decades, and a high percentage are baby boomers,” said Ken Connell, the business banking sales director at Huntington Bank in Columbus, Ohio. “For many small-business owners, that’s their retirement. All of their wealth is in the business.” Lynn G. Ozer, the president of government-guaranteed lending at Susquehanna Bank in Lititz, Pa., said pent-up demand was contributing to this year’s surge. “Baby boomers who were going to sell got stopped in their tracks in 2008, 2009 and 2010,” she said. “Things froze for a few years, then got better. In 2012, 2013 and 2014, they put together great years. Now, their books look good and they’re ready.” Image Roberto Santos, center, bought Bimac from co-owners who included Dan Bizzarro, left, the vice president of manufacturing, and Bill Jordan, vice president of engineering. Credit Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times Chronology and demographics are also a factor. “The ’90s were a very good decade, so a lot of businesses got launched,” Mr. Connell said. “A lot of business owners were in their 40s. Now, it’s 20 years later and they’re at retirement age. A lot of this is just timing.” In the case of the Bimac owners, the decision to give up a business intersected with the ambitions of someone eager to take one on. Working with a broker, they placed an online listing that drew the attention of Roberto Santos, 46, a mechanical engineer from Ecuador. Mr. Santos spent most of his career in Latin America, working for a family business that was acquired four years ago by a Korean company. He transferred to the company’s office in Houston, but he grew concerned about his career prospects. “The industry was taking a hit,” he said. “I decided it was a good time to look for something of my own.” During his seven-month hunt, Mr. Santos gathered information on 10 potential acquisitions and visited two of the companies before finding Bimac. Four months ago, he bought the business and its assets, including its real estate, for $2.5 million. Mr. Santos is emblematic of the next generation of small-business owners, which is noticeably more varied in gender and ethnicity than the previous one. “The sellers tend to be Caucasian males,” said Bob House, the general manager of BizBuySell.com . “The buyers are younger and increasingly diverse.” A study on buyers that BizBuySell.com commissioned last year found some sharp demographic differences. More than 30 percent of those from age 30 to 49 describe themselves as black, Asian or Hispanic, compared with just 8 percent of those over 65. Women are also more heavily represented in the younger generation. Nine percent of the buyers over 65 in the study were women, compared with more than 20 percent of those under 49. That could bode well for wealth creation among groups that have traditionally lagged . Economic research has found that across demographic groups, entrepreneurship is associated with greater wealth and upward mobility. Mr. Santos’s financing for the deal is typical of how small-business sales often work. He put down 13 percent in cash, and Bimac’s previous owners financed another 12 percent through a seller’s note. Image Millard Patton works at Bimac Corporation, a precision casting company in Ohio. The business was recently sold to a mechanical engineer from Ecuador. Credit Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times The balance of the sale price came from a bank loan guaranteed by the Small Business Administration. Demand for S.B.A. loans is at a high , an increase that bankers say is @partly attributable to the increase in business sales. Mr. Bizzarro and Mr. Jordan, both 64, are still working for Bimac; Mr. Bizzarro is the vice president of manufacturing and Mr. Jordan is the vice president of engineering. They do not feel ready to leave their careers behind yet. “If we retired, I think both of us would just go out and find another job,” Mr. Bizzarro said. Mr. Santos says he is happy to have the previous owners stick around. He is planning to make some changes at Bimac — he would like to invest more in automation and expand the company’s export business — but he likes having their institutional knowledge to draw on. “I’m going to keep them as long as I can,” he said. “They are teaching me a lot of things about the business.” Business owners looking to sell should start making plans at least a year or two in advance, suggests Jeffrey E. Merry, the founder of the Business House , a business brokerage firm in Gainesville, Ga. “When you go to sell your house, the best thing you can do is paint it,” he said. “It’s kind of like that with a business.” Accounting records need to be clear and current, and the company’s day-to-day operations should run smoothly. Owners who are crucial to their business need to make plans for their replacement, which may involve additional hiring. “It costs money to do some of these things,” Mr. Merry said. “I warn owners, ‘Your personal income may suffer.’” Brokers say they expect the wave of baby boomer sales to crest over the next few years. Steven D. Zimmerman, the owner of Restaurant Realty in San Rafael, Calif., said that even those who were reluctant to sell were keeping an eye on the economic trends — and on their own physical limits. “Some of the baby boomers we deal with have no choice,” he said. “The business is just so demanding that they can’t do it anymore.” For those who decide to put their business on the market, the pool of potential buyers is the largest it has been in years, brokers say. Mr. Merry said the shoppers he works with tend to fall into two categories: companies making strategic acquisitions to fill out their business portfolios and individual buyers leaving corporate careers. “I have a lot of guys who are 40 to 50 years old and need to buy a job,” he said. “They’ve been downsized, or transferred out of the area, and they decide to be their own boss.” It is a choice that Mr. Santos, whose wife and three children left Houston this month to join him in Dayton, is enthusiastically enjoying. “Houston is having a hard time with the oil industry ,” he said. “A lot of my friends back there are looking around and asking me, ‘How did you do this?’”

Small business
Baby Boomers
Minorities
Women and Girls
Mergers and Acquisitions
Entrepreneurship
Bimac Corporation


Surprise New York Victory Invigorates Democrats

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Sal Pace, the Democratic leader of the State House in Colorado, was already preparing to run for Congress in a district captured by Republicans last year, but his party’s special election victory last week in a conservative district in upstate New York made the decision all the easier. “The New York race confirmed what I thought citizens would feel about Medicare ,” said Mr. Pace, who is expecting to soon begin a campaign to oust Representative Scott Tipton, a freshman Republican, in southwestern Colorado. “People are very hesitant to end Medicare as we know it.” In the aftermath of the New York victory, which hinged on a Republican plan to reshape the health care program for older Americans, members of both parties and independent analysts now predict a more competitive race next year for control of the House, with expanded opportunities for Democrats to reclaim seats they lost in the Republican wave of 2010. “No one believes that 2012 will be the same type of election for Republicans with the wind at our back,” said Tom Reynolds, a former New York congressman who ran the Republican Party ’s House campaign effort in 2004 and 2006. “Neither will it be ’08 or ’06 with the wind in our face. Republican office holders will have to go out and explain what the problem is and what they are trying to do to fix it.” Buoyed by the New York surprise and bolstered by the prospect of a larger and friendlier electorate in a year when President Obama will be running, House Democrats say they can argue credibly that they are poised to cut into the Republican majority, though they were careful not to predict a takeover, which would require a gain of 24 seats. “Democrats can win the House back in 2012,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “I’m not saying we will — yet.” As the case of Mr. Pace and other experienced contenders who are entering races in districts in Illinois, Washington, Wisconsin and elsewhere shows, the victory in New York can help prospective candidates make their run-or-not decision while opening the wallets of contributors uncertain about giving if there was no hope of party gain. “It is a sign of the pendulum swinging back the other way,” said Brad Schneider, an Illinois businessman who announced last Wednesday that he would be among the Democrats running in a Republican-held district in the suburbs north of Chicago. But Republicans remain confident that they can protect their hold on the House, suggesting that Democrats are exaggerating the meaning of the outcome in the New York race. “The hubris on their side is ever-expanding,” said Guy Harrison, executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee. And major questions still surround the 2012 House landscape, since new Congressional district lines have not been completed in most states, including such crucial battlegrounds as California, Florida, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. Republicans control the redistricting power in most of the states, giving them the potential to erect a firewall against substantial Democratic gains. “The redistricting process provides a degree of protection for House Republicans against any potential losses,” said Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for American Crossroads, the pro-Republican group that spent $690,000 in the unsuccessful effort to hold on to the House seat in New York’s 26th Congressional District. One exception is Illinois, where a new proposed map gives significant advantages to Democrats in efforts to knock off Republicans. But the victory in New York was galvanizing for Democrats, and for now at least has given them confidence that they can use Medicare to press their broader case that Republicans are going too far in their drive to cut spending and reduce the reach of government while continuing to provide tax breaks for the wealthy. Democrats intend to seize on that issue, which could help them recapture older voters, who rallied to Republicans in the last election. “Democrats have a message that they are going to use from now until Election Day,” said Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan Congressional analyst. “It is a weapon they didn’t have three or four months ago.” But Mr. Harrison, the Republican House strategist, and others say Republicans will counter the Democratic attack by offering the argument that without changes, Medicare will become insolvent. “We are going to talk about the fact that they bankrupt Medicare,” Mr. Harrison said. “In that framework, we have the facts on our side.” The Democratic argument against the Republican position on Medicare could also be undercut if the White House and Congressional Democrats and Republicans reach agreement on a deal to raise the national debt ceiling that includes substantial steps to rein in the growth of Medicare. Democrats say the Medicare plan is just one element of an emerging campaign message that will help them topple Republicans as they try to tie the Medicare overhaul to other elements of the conservative agenda being pursued by the House majority. “Medicare is part of a narrative that voters are beginning to understand and solidify in their own minds,” said Alixandria Lapp, who is running a new independent political action committee, House Majority PAC, aiding Democrats. “Republicans are putting together a budget and policies that ask only some Americans to sacrifice. It is fundamentally unfair.” A hint of where Democrats see their potential 2012 openings can be gleaned from the Republicans who were singled out in radio attack advertisements paid for by Ms. Lapp’s organization, which spent more than $300,000 in the New York race. After the House budget vote in April, the group went after 10 freshmen Republicans in potential swing districts, including Representatives Paul Gosar of Arizona, Allen B. West of Florida, Chip Cravaack of Minnesota, Ann Marie Buerkle of New York and Sean P. Duffy of Wisconsin. Depending on how redistricting goes, Democrats also see opportunities for gains in Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York and Texas as well as other states. Democrats say they do not intend to rely solely on the fight over Medicare to carry their candidates, with Mr. Israel noting that the victory in New York’s 26th district “will inform our strategy; it will not be our strategy.” “We are not going to get cocky out of New York 26,” he said. “It was a shot in the arm, but it does not define the 2012 election.”

House of Representatives
Elections
Medicare
Democratic Party
United States Politics and Government
Republican Party


Dominican Baseball Handlers Stir Issues of Exploiting Youths

Abstract: SANTO DOMINGO , Dominican Republic — The effort to build a better baseball player begins early here, with boys as young as 14 routinely receiving injections of over-the-counter vitamins and painkillers from handlers who stand to profit from their players’ prowess. The handlers, who are known in Spanish as buscones, are part agent, part trainer and part coach. They make no secret of the injections, which are given to the boys several times a week as they prepare for a chance to play Major League Baseball. The goal, the handlers said in interviews, is to strengthen players for tryouts that could yield signing bonuses of $10,000 to $3 million, of which handlers receive 10 percent to 50 percent. Major League Baseball officials said they believed the financial enticement, combined with a culture ingrained with the notion that shots can improve performance, helped explain why Dominicans test positive for banned substances at a far greater rate than players from anywhere else. Dominican-born players make up about 17 percent of major league and minor league rosters in the United States and Latin America, but about 38 percent of the players who tested positive for steroids and other banned substances since 2005. Since 2008, when Major League Baseball instituted drug penalties here, more than half of all suspensions have occurred in the Dominican Summer League , where many newly signed Dominicans begin their careers. When investigators for Major League Baseball asked why they tested positive, several players said their handlers had provided them with the substances, according to people in baseball who were briefed on the interviews. Some said they received the substances before they signed with major league teams, the people said. Baseball officials have provided Dominican law enforcement authorities with evidence that some handlers provide performance-enhancing drugs, the people said. A spokesman for baseball declined to identify the handlers but said in a statement that Commissioner Bud Selig had “devoted a massive amount of resources” to fighting age and identity fraud and drug use here. Sandy Alderson , a longtime baseball official, was appointed to make comprehensive recommendations to address the issues. The spokesman said that “given the scope of the problems, however, the cooperation of the Dominican Republic government will be necessary to achieve fundamental reform.” Handlers interviewed here in recent weeks said they gave players injections containing only vitamins and painkillers. They said their favored solutions contain vitamin B12, which they said increases the players’ appetites, energy and muscle strength, and anti-inflammatory painkillers. Some said they arranged for their players to receive injections at pharmacies and doctors’ offices. “I can’t afford to give them meat,” the handler Víctor Báez said, explaining why he injects his 30 players. Medical authorities in the United States said that regardless of the substances’ makeup, the practice of giving regular injections to teenagers raised medical and ethical concerns. “It borders on child abuse,” said Thomas H. Murray, a medical ethicist who has written about performance-enhancing drugs for more than 30 years , noting that B12 would have little to no effect on making a player stronger and that painkillers given to boys could have detrimental effects over time. “It’s saying that the road to success is paved with hypodermic needles .” Murray added: “Even if it’s only a painkiller that you are giving them, you don’t want to mask pain of a kid at 14 or 15 because the pain is telling the kid that they are pushing their bodies too far. It can have lasting damage to the joints to push too far, and you need to know when to stop.” Dr. Michael J. O’Brien, a sports medicine specialist at Children’s Hospital Boston and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, said anti-inflammatories were often injected for a short time for severe pain. “I am uncomfortable with the idea of a doctor not overseeing any type of injectable drug, particularly an anti-inflammatory,” O’Brien said. “Anti-inflammatory injections should be administered in the short term because they can lead to ulcers and kidney disease, especially if they are given in high doses or for a long period of time.” The buscone system has developed as this island has become a rich producer of major league talent over the past two decades. It has produced myriad problems for Major League Baseball. Some Dominican stars , like David Ortiz and Sammy Sosa , have tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. In the past year, several scouts for major league teams were fired for a kickback scheme in which they conspired with handlers to steal from players’ bonuses . The Washington Nationals gave a $1.4 million bonus to a player , then discovered that he and his handler had lied about his age; the player was actually four years older. Baseball has little authority to monitor how a player is handled before he is signed. Dominican law prohibits drug testing on any citizens until they are employed, so players cannot be tested for drugs until they sign with major league clubs. Beyond the health issues, baseball has economic incentives regarding players’ possible use of performance-enhancing drugs. A pitcher who can add 5 miles an hour to his fastball may add hundreds of thousands of dollars to his signing bonus. So, too, can a hitter who adds 10 feet to his line drive. But a player who has inflated his performance through drugs faces a stark choice after signing. He can continue to use the substances and risk testing positive — which results in a 50-game suspension for a first-time offense — or he can stop using the substances and risk losing the extra zip with his arm or his bat. Gaining the cooperation of the Dominican government has been difficult. Major league officials began lobbying top Dominican law enforcement officials for help in 2008. This summer, Dan Halem, a top baseball labor lawyer , and Alderson told the Dominican authorities that if the government did not address the problems, major league teams would probably begin to close facilities where they develop young players. That would drain millions of dollars from the island’s economy. The Dominican authorities agreed to appoint a special prosecutor to look into suspicious handlers, and the baseball officials agreed to provide the evidence they had uncovered. No charges are known to have been brought. During the 1990s and the first part of this decade, Major League Baseball was slow to react when performance-enhancing drugs became a major issue . When law enforcement officials tried to gain baseball’s cooperation, league officials said they either knew little about the problem or could not help. Now some handlers say they believe Major League Baseball is trying to hurt their credibility so teams can pay less for their players. Báez, who said he has never given his players performance-enhancing drugs, said Major League Baseball’s top investigator tried to question his players about whether he had given them steroids. “I called him back and said, ‘What do you want, a lawsuit?’ “ Báez said. “None of the 22 players I have had signed ever tested positive.” The handlers also blame baseball for wanting to sign younger players. Over the past three years, the handlers said, major league teams have become more interested in signing players at 15 ½, the minimum age under Dominican law. They said that has prompted them to start giving young players injections and to make their training more strenuous. The handlers said that they now seek 11- and 12-year-olds and try to project how good they will be when they are 15 ½, and that this has encouraged others to lie about their players’ ages. “It has forced guys that have a really good 19-year-old to present him as a 16-year-old; that’s if they don’t do the legal thing,” said Geovanny Blan Veras, who handles two pitchers. Félix Guillén, a young handler here, said he learned which substances were safe to inject in his players by taking a sports medicine class at the local university. He said he clears the injections with parents and goes to the players’ houses to administer the shots, which he said he gives to each player every three days. Guillén said he believed the sports medicine class set him apart from other handlers and gave parents more confidence that he knew what he was doing. “That’s the only way to explain how I’ve been able to go above programs that have been around seven to eight years,” he said. Ramón Mariano, a husky 21-year-old left-handed pitcher, said that he began receiving B12 injections when he was 15, from his handler and at local pharmacies. In 2008, he was expecting a promotion to an Arizona Diamondbacks minor league team in the United States but those plans fell apart after he tested positive. Mariano did not blame the injections, instead saying he believed it was a protein shake that his handler had told him to take. “Right now, I’ll stay home and practice to see if I can get a new contract,” he said recently, sitting in the living room with his parents, who used his signing bonus to build their home. “I have been offered to play for Mexico , but I would like to try to sign with another one of the organizations.”

Dominican Republic
Baseball
Steroid
Sports medicine
Pharmaceuticals
MLB
Dominican Summer League


New York Senate Caps School Tax Increases at 4%

Abstract: ALBANY — The Republican-led State Senate returned on Friday and approved one of the most controversial issues in the capital — a measure drafted by the Democratic governor that would place a mandatory limit on school property tax increases. It also passed a bill intended to force the state to start collecting taxes on cigarettes sold to non-Indians on Indian reservations, a move that could reap hundreds of millions of dollars but could also inflame relations with several tribes. The Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, a Long Island Republican who presided over his first special session since taking over as leader in June, brought the Senate back specifically to pass the property tax legislation, largely to make a statement before this fall’s elections. Still, bipartisan support is unlikely to move the bill, proposed by Gov. David A. Paterson, closer to becoming law. The proposal was immediately assailed by labor unions and is seen as unlikely to pass in the Democratic-led Assembly, though the sides will be negotiating on a range of topics before a special session that both houses of the Legislature will hold later this month. Mr. Skelos complained on Friday that New York City Democrats were turning their backs on homeowners in the suburbs and upstate by opposing the bill. “I just think they’re out of touch with reality,” he said, “because they don’t understand the crushing burden of real-property taxes on people who live on Long Island, the capital region or Buffalo,” where the bulk of property taxes pay for schools. Union leaders expressed anger and disappointment that the Senate passed the bill — and relief that Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, is likely to stop it in its tracks. “Thank God for Speaker Silver and the Assembly, because we know they will listen to our arguments,” said Denis M. Hughes, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. in New York. The governor’s proposal would limit school property tax increases to 4 percent a year, unless 55 percent of voters in a district approved higher spending. If the bill becomes law, its effects will not be felt until late next year, and even then it would not reduce property taxes, only restrain increases. The measure would not apply to New York City and several other big cities. But it could counteract the governor’s main goal, closing a $26.2 billion deficit projected over the next three years. A cap on increases at the local level could increase pressure on the state to increase aid to school districts. The Senate also passed a bill that would place a two-year moratorium on property reassessments, and limit the ability of the state to impose mandatory programs on school districts. Democrats had supported an alternative property tax package, which would have limited property tax bills based on a homeowner’s income. The problem of property taxes outside New York City was highlighted in a recent report issued by a special commission on the matter created by Gov. Eliot Spitzer. The report found that many of the areas with the highest property taxes in the nation were located in New York, particularly in the suburbs of New York City and on eastern Long Island. The commission was led by Thomas R. Suozzi, the county executive in Nassau, where the property tax burden is unusually high. While other states, like Massachusetts, have tax caps, teachers’ unions have rejected the idea of limiting school tax increases in New York. Unions lobbied Senate Republicans on the matter, and the Senate refused to take up the measure during the regular session, which ended in late June. “The Senate today chose political expediency and the illusion of property tax relief over a real, meaningful solution — a restructuring of our property tax system based on equity, income and ability to pay,” said Richard C. Iannuzzi, president of the New York State United Teachers. Property taxes are an issue seen as a particular concern of the new leader, Mr. Skelos, who is from Nassau County. The vote on the governor’s bill was 38 to 20 in the Senate, with seven Democrats, mostly from outside New York City, joining Republicans. “The fact that the governor drafted the bill left many Democrats in the uncomfortable position of criticizing legislation backed by their former leader — Mr. Paterson led the Senate Democrats until 2006. “We’re not going to be voting for political schemes today, we’re going to be standing up, speaking truth to power,” said Senator Kevin Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat. Asked by a reporter if the governor’s bill was a “political scheme,” he took pains to say he was criticizing Republicans for bringing the bill to a vote now, without Assembly support, and not taking a shot at the governor. “We don’t necessarily agree with him on this particular proposal, but we are certainly not questioning his intention on wanting to help people,” Mr. Parker said. The other notable legislation passed Friday would bar tobacco manufacturers from selling cigarettes without assurances that they will be taxed when they are sold to consumers. The legislation requires stamping agents — middlemen between manufacturers and retailers — to provide certifications that the cigarettes will be taxed when they are sold. The measure was previously passed by the Assembly, but it is not clear whether the governor will sign it. Such a tax could bring in hundreds of millions of dollars, but governors have held off collecting the taxes in the past because such moves have led to violent protests. “We will review the bill and seek input from interested parties when it is sent to the governor,” said Risa B. Heller, the governor’s communications director. When Governor Spitzer pondered collecting the taxes last year, Maurice A. John, the president of the Seneca Nation, told The Buffalo News, "we are not going to be tax collectors for New York State ." Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, who recently joined with Bill Gates on a worldwide anti-smoking effort, praised the Senate for passing the bill. “For too long, the New York State tax on tobacco products has applied to some but not all, with businesses on Indian reservations openly flouting a Supreme Court ruling and existing state law,” the mayor said in a statement. “The State Senate today joined the Assembly in shining a light on unmistakably unfair tax practices that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and keep tens of thousands of people smoking when they might otherwise quit.”

Law and Legislation
Taxation
Property Taxes
Legislatures and Parliaments
Albany (NY)
New York State


The Dream of Treasure Keeps Paraguayans Digging

Abstract: CAPIATÁ, Paraguay — Deep in the subtropical heart of South America, the hunt is on. Buried beneath red ocher earthen streets, or perhaps in the shade of mango trees in the fields beyond, opulent treasures are scattered for hundreds of miles — at least according to a fable that has suffused Paraguay ’s cultural subconscious for generations. The treasures are known as plata yvygüy (pronounced PLA-ta uh-vee-GWOOY) in Paraguay’s guttural national language . They are largely thought to have been hidden by the government and the panicked elite fleeing Asunción, the capital, just 13 miles to the northwest, as occupying forces advanced during the War of the Triple Alliance , fought against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay 150 years ago. But the passage of time has not dimmed hope of unearthing tons of bullion, troves of British pound coins and — most coveted of all — ornamental pineapples forged from gold. “Paraguay is full of plata yvygüy,” said Juan Alberto Díaz, 57, a full-time treasure hunter in a rural corner of this small city. Mr. Díaz’s neighbors manufacture bricks, and the heat rolls off the land, dotted with cows and guava shrubs, like an oven’s breath. “Everybody who knows it exists is after it.” In recent years, high-ranking military officers, mayors, a president’s brother , architects, physicians and laborers have all been consumed by the legend: planning expeditions, deciphering maps, sweeping sites with metal detectors and cutting up swaths of land. It is, in many ways, one of the greatest modern-day treasure hunts in the Americas. In different countries, the nature of these hunts has varied. In the United States, a search continues in the Rocky Mountains for a treasure chest hidden by an eccentric art dealer. In Peru , the plundering of ancient sites in recent decades has at times imperiled the country’s archaeological preservation. The job of preventing a similarly ugly scenario from occurring in Paraguay belongs to Ana Rosa Lluis O’Hara, the government’s director of cultural heritage. She has a 64-page file on Mr. Díaz and rejects authorization requests for digs from her basement office in the national library, citing a law that protects archaeological artifacts and sites. “It’s a threat to our cultural heritage,” Ms. Lluis O’Hara said. Arguments erupt here because the country’s civil code includes provisions that can give finders of hidden treasure the rights to ownership. Still, the provisions do not apply to items of historic value, including most wartime artifacts, according to legal advisers to the government. Seated by a hole 10 feet deep and partly covered with corrugated iron — remnants of a recent failed dig — Mr. Díaz, a former electronics dealer, recalled an audacious excavation he led in 2013 that piqued curiosity nationwide. In that attempt, Mr. Díaz and several other treasure hunters, authorized by the mayor of Capiatá at the time, Antonio Galeano, opened up a pit here with excavators where they thought they had detected 13 tons of gold bullion. Within two weeks they uncovered a hefty steel chest, Mr. Díaz said. But by then a federal prosecutor had halted the hunt, charging Mr. Díaz with endangering an important aquifer and ordering the pit to be filled. Another high-profile case, in 2006, featured a prominent group of officials, including a Supreme Court judge and a military general — tipped off by a dentist with a treasure map. Enrique Riera, who was then mayor of Asunción, gave them permission to search Parque Caballero, a downtown park, on the condition that some of the find would go to the city. But the hunt was interrupted when neighbors called a local radio station, exposing the group and alerting public prosecutors . More recently, in 2014, three men died digging for treasure in one of Asunción’s satellite towns. Most Paraguayans seem to believe the theory behind plata yvygüy, viewing it as feasible that in the midst of a savage war Asunción’s elite buried small fortunes, and state treasures were sent out of the city on train wagons and then hidden along tracks or in nearby hillsides. But wild myths now color the hunt. “There’s so much fantasy, fabrication and rumor,” said Jorge Rubiani, 71, an architect and former culture secretary for Asunción who has written about the treasures. “History’s been reduced to a moronic tale.” Some believe that treasures are defended by local goblins like Karai Pyhare, the jet black “Squire of the Night” assigned to protect nature. Others say families or even the government killed Paraguayan soldiers and buried them with the fortunes in the hope that their spirits would act as guardians. Mysterious fleeting fires are said to flicker in the night at sites where treasures were stowed. In their quests, many hunters hire local clairvoyants to find hidden fortunes. Others turn to experienced hands like Francisco Moreno, 68, a retired port worker captivated by plata yvygüy since his grandmother told him of treasure she discovered almost 80 years ago: a clay urn filled with Spanish coins. Paraguayans sensing there may be treasure in their backyards pay Mr. Moreno $175 a day to visit them in his 1994 Mitsubishi sport utility vehicle equipped with metal detectors, which he also sells to budding hunters. Demonstrating the detectors in the garden of his Asunción home lined with fig and palm trees, Mr. Moreno said he had unearthed coins here and there, though never a larger haul. Still, he persists. “A pessimist never triumphs,” Mr. Moreno said with a wide smile, flashing a golden tooth. There is even a dubious set of maps detailing the locations of treasures across this central part of Paraguay, said to have been sketched by Domingo Francisco Sánchez, vice president to Francisco Solano López during the War of the Triple Alliance. The mass treasure hunt absorbs this nation to such an extent that filmmakers and playwrights have dedicated works to it. “It’s in Paraguay’s DNA,” said Miguel Rodríguez, 37, the director of “ Empty Cans ,” a small-budget picture about rural treasure hunters released in 2014. “Who doesn’t want to win the lottery?” Theories about the origins of the treasures abound, with obscure explanations that involve Egyptian pharaohs and shifting tectonic plates. One popular theory is that during colonial times several Spanish galleons headed for the Atlantic Ocean with loads of precious metal from Bolivian mines sank in the River Paraguay. Others point to Jesuit colonizers in the 17th century. But the most common belief, endorsed by prominent local historians like Alfredo Boccia Romañach, is that heirlooms including jewelry, watches and porcelain were buried by affluent families during their getaway from Asunción in 1868, when Paraguay lost a decisive battle to Brazilian-led forces and the government ordered an evacuation of the city. Historians say it is also quite likely that government reserves of precious metal were hidden by the wartime president, Mr. López. The vast majority of these treasures, some of which were stuffed into wall cavities, were stolen when the enemy troops pillaged the city, Mr. Boccia Romañach said. “The Brazilians destroyed Asunción, torching homes to keep searching through the night,” said Mr. Rubiani, the architect. “They probably found most of the treasure.” But this has not deterred the hunters.

Paraguay Capiata Gold Asuncion Archaeology,Anthropology


Car Bomb Adds to Toll in Northwest Pakistan

Abstract: PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The third bomb in three days went off in a crowded intersection in a town in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing at least 34 civilians and offering a grim marker of the mounting violence around the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. The car bomb rocked a congested market in the town of Charsadda, a short distance from Peshawar, just as shopkeepers and vendors were about to close their businesses and large number of commuters were waiting at a nearby taxi stand. The blast damaged shops, vehicles and electricity cables, causing power failures in the area that hampered rescue work. About 100 people were wounded, some seriously. “The terrorists, after failing to dent the government’s resolve to stamp out terrorism, are now targeting the civilians hoping to arouse public anger against the government,” said a senior minister for North-West Frontier Province, Bashir Ahmad Bilour. “We will chase them and fight them till the very end,” he added. A district police officer, Riaz Khan, said explosives were planted in a car parked near the intersection. He said preliminary evidence pointed to a suicide attack. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The attack came one day after a suicide bomber in a rickshaw struck near a group of police officers, killing three people and wounding five others in Peshawar. On Sunday, a mayor who had opposed the Taliban was among 12 people killed in a suicide attack in a cattle market in the village of Mattani, which is also close to Peshawar. As the Pakistani Army presses an offensive against Taliban militants in the lawless border area with Afghanistan, suicide bombers have stepped up attacks on civilians and police officers in northwest Pakistan. In the most devastating recent attack, a car bomb gutted a crowded market in Peshawar in late October as the United States secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, arrived in Pakistan for a visit. The blast killed more than 100 people, many of them women and children.


New York City to Add Housing for Domestic Violence Victims

Abstract: New York City is planning to add more housing for homeless adults and children fleeing domestic violence, the latest effort by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration to deal with a homelessness problem that has persisted as housing costs in the city have continued to soar. The city wants to provide emergency housing for as many as 13,300 adults and children, up from the 8,880 served now by city-funded programs that provide shelter beds and transitional apartments for victims of domestic violence. Almost $15 million in emergency funding has been allocated, and the city is seeking bids from shelter and housing providers. Domestic violence has been a driver of homelessness, especially among women and children, and the city has had a gap in services for several years, Steven Banks, the commissioner of the city’s Human Resources Administration, said. From 2002 to 2009, the city added 628 beds for domestic violence victims and their children, according to data provided by the Human Resources Administration. Since 2009, the city has added no beds or units. The demand for services underscores the complexity of the homelessness problem, with various causes — including domestic violence, mental illnesses and unemployment — competing for political attention and limited funding. In recent months, the Human Resources Administration and the Department of Homeless Services have been working to expedite new efforts to address homelessness. The city has expanded rental-assistance programs, set up a $10 million initiative to shelter an additional 1,000 single adults and started an effort to encourage churches and other faith-based organizations to use unutilized space to create 500 beds for homeless people. But the scope of the problem appears to be outpacing the city’s efforts. As of the middle of last week, more than 57,000 adults and children were being housed in the city’s shelter system, down from nearly 60,000, though still high historically. Image Steven Banks, commissioner of Human Resources Administration, in May 2014. Credit Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times The de Blasio administration has clashed with the city’s comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, over the payment of contracts to nonprofits providing beds and units, though Mr. Stringer has signed off on about $57 million in emergency spending for the city’s recent efforts. For people trying to escape domestic violence, the city needs more specialized settings that offer not only immediate shelter but also counseling and other services that might not be included in a traditional shelter, city officials said. Under the mayor’s plan, the city would add 300 emergency shelter beds and 400 units of transitional family shelter, which over the course of a year could serve about 4,500 additional people. Shelter beds are limited to 180-day stays; transitional units have no limit. Mr. Banks said he met last week with nonprofits that were likely to bid on the new contracts to provide the space. “I’m confident that they will be able to identify sites,” he said. Sanctuary for Families, a nonprofit that already provides 200 shelter beds mostly for women and children, is considering participating in the request for proposals, Judy Harris Kluger, executive director of the organization, said. “We will have to see if it’s the right fit for our organization,” Ms. Kluger said. She said the needs of domestic violence victims differ from those of people losing their homes because of poverty. “It is the most dangerous time, in terms of further violence against the spouse or former partner,” she said. In an interview, a 50-year-old woman who is currently in a domestic violence shelter said she was grateful for her stay. “A lot of single women stay in abusive relationships because they’re afraid they can’t pay their rent. They feel they can’t make it,” said the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she is still fearful of her abusive ex-boyfriend. The woman said she called a number she found online about a year ago after a physical confrontation with the man. She said shelter workers helped her when she did not have transit fare to get to her job as a certified home health aide and guided her as she looked for permanent housing. “If I knew about the help at the domestic violence shelter, I would have left earlier,” she said. She said she was days away from moving into the first apartment she had ever rented on her own. The shelter helped her apply for a Section 8 housing voucher, she said. “I’m excited about it. Being alone can be healthy,” she said. “I can move on with my life. Maybe someone else can have this space.”

Domestic violence
Homelessness
Public Housing
NYC
Real Estate
Housing
Bill de Blasio