Ron Paul Disowns Extremists’ Views but Doesn’t Disavow the Support

Abstract: The American Free Press , which markets books like “The Invention of the Jewish People” and “March of the Titans: A History of the White Race,” is urging its subscribers to help it send hundreds of copies of Ron Paul ’s collected speeches to voters in New Hampshire . The book, it promises, will “Help Dr. Ron Paul Win the G.O.P. Nomination in 2012!” Don Black, director of the white nationalist Web site Stormfront , said in an interview that several dozen of his members were volunteering for Mr. Paul’s presidential campaign, and a site forum titled “Why is Ron Paul such a favorite here?” has no fewer than 24 pages of comments. “I understand he wins many fans because his monetary policy would hurt Jews,” read one. Far-right groups like the Militia of Montana say they are rooting for Mr. Paul as a stalwart against government tyranny. Mr. Paul’s surprising surge in polls is creating excitement within a part of his political base that has been behind him for decades but overshadowed by his newer fans on college campuses and in some liberal precincts who are taken with his antiwar, anti-drug-laws messages. The white supremacists, survivalists and anti-Zionists who have rallied behind his candidacy have not exactly been warmly welcomed. “I wouldn’t be happy with that,” Mr. Paul said in an interview Friday when asked about getting help from volunteers with anti-Jewish or antiblack views. But he did not disavow their support. “If they want to endorse me, they’re endorsing what I do or say — it has nothing to do with endorsing what they say,” said Mr. Paul, who is now running strong in Iowa for the Republican nomination. The libertarian movement in American politics has long had two overlapping but distinct strains. One, backed to some degree by wealthy interests, is focused largely on economic freedom and dedicated to reducing taxes and regulation through smaller government. The other is more focused on personal liberty and constraints on government built into the Constitution, which at its extreme has helped fuel militant antigovernment sentiment. Mr. Paul has operated at the nexus of the two, often espousing positions at odds with most of the Republican Party but assembling a diverse and loyal following attracted by his adherence to libertarian principles. Mr. Paul’s calls for the end of the Federal Reserve system, a cessation of aid to Israel and all other nations and an overall diminishment of government power have natural appeal among far-right, niche political groups. Aides say that much of the support is unsolicited and that it is unfair to overlook the larger number of mainstream voters now backing him. But a look at the trajectory of Mr. Paul’s career shows that he and his closest political allies either wittingly or unwittingly courted disaffected white voters with extreme views as they sought to forge a movement from the nether region of American politics, where the far right and the far left sometimes converge. In May, Mr. Paul reiterated in an interview with Chris Matthews of MSNBC that he would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawing segregation. He said that he supported its intent, but that parts of it violated his longstanding belief that government should not dictate how property owners behave. He has been featured in videos of the John Birch Society , which campaigned against the Civil Rights Act, warning, for instance, that the United Nations threatens American sovereignty. In the mid-1990s, between his two stints as a Texas congressman, Mr. Paul produced a newsletter called The Ron Paul Survival Report, which only months before the Oklahoma City bombings encouraged militias to seek out and expel federal agents in their midst. That edition was titled “Why Militias Scare the Striped Pants Off Big Government.” An earlier edition of another newsletter he produced, The Ron Paul Political Report, concluded that the need for citizens to arm themselves was only natural, given carjackings by “urban youth who play whites like pianos.” The report, with no byline but written in the first person, said: “I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self-defense. For the animals are coming.” Mike Holmes, former editor of The American Libertarian, who has known Mr. Paul from libertarian circles since the 1970s, contended that the newsletters did not “rise to the level of hate speech.” He added: “It goes more to the level of social commentary. There was no use of any ‘N’-words. It amounted to the style of foul-mouthed punks trying to get inside the gang of paleoconservatives.” Those newsletters have drawn new scrutiny through Mr. Paul’s two recent presidential campaigns. The New Republic posted several of them online in 2008 and again recently, including a lament about “The Disappearing White Majority.” The conservative Weekly Standard ran an article highlighting the newsletters last week. Mr. Paul has long repudiated the newsletters, contending that they were written by the staff of his company, Ron Paul & Associates, while he was tending to his obstetrician’s practice and that he did not see some of them until 10 years later. “I disavow those positions,” he said in the interview. “They’re not my positions, and anybody who knows me, they’ve never heard a word of it.” But production of the newsletters was partly overseen by Lew Rockwell, a libertarian activist who has been a close political aide and adviser to Mr. Paul over the course of decades. At the same time that he was a director for Mr. Paul’s company, Mr. Rockwell called on libertarians to reach out to “cultural and moral traditionalists,” who “reject not only affirmative action, set-asides and quotas, but the 1964 Civil Rights Act and all subsequent laws that force property owners to act against their will.” Mr. Rockwell and Mr. Paul came to know each other as followers of the free-market Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek, who argued against socialism and centralized economic planning, a spokesman for Mr. Paul said. They joined with the libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard in the 1970s and 1980s during the early attempts to forge libertarianism into a national party. Mr. Rockwell was listed in business filings as a director of Ron Paul & Associates from its founding in 1984 through its dissolution in 2001, and was a paid Paul campaign consultant through at least 2002, according to federal campaign records. He was Mr. Paul’s chief of staff during the congressman’s first period in Congress, which began in the 1970s, and championed his successful bid in 1988 for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination. During that nominating battle, a flier produced by Mr. Paul’s opponents accused him of gay-baiting by reporting in one of his newsletters that the government was “lying” about the threat of AIDS and that the virus could be transmitted through “saliva, tears, sweat.” It said that some “AIDS carriers — perhaps out of a pathological hatred — continue to give blood.” Mr. Paul said Friday “that was never my view at all,” and again blamed his staff. Still, that same year he was quoted in The Houston Post as saying that schools should be free to bar children with AIDS and that the government should stop financing AIDS research and education. As the Libertarian standard bearer, Mr. Paul won less than 1 percent of the vote. After the election, as libertarians searched for ways to broaden the appeal of their ideology, Mr. Rockwell and Mr. Rothbard advocated a coalition of libertarians and so-called paleoconservatives, who unlike hawkish “neocons” were socially conservative, noninterventionist and opposed to what they viewed as state-enforced multiculturalism. In the Rothbard-Rockwell Report they started in 1990, Mr. Rothbard called for a “Right Wing Populism,” suggesting that the campaign for governor of Louisiana by David Duke, the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, was a model for “paleolibertarianism.” “It is fascinating that there was nothing in Duke’s current program or campaign that could not also be embraced by paleoconservatives or paleolibertarians,” he wrote. Arguing that too many libertarians were embracing a misplaced egalitarianism, Mr. Rockwell wrote in Liberty magazine: “There is nothing wrong with blacks preferring the ‘black thing.’ But paleolibertarians would say the same about whites preferring the ‘white thing’ or Asians the ‘Asian thing.’ ” Their thinking was hardly embraced by all libertarians. “It was just something that we found abhorrent, and so there was a huge divide,” said Edward H. Crane, the founder of the Cato Institute , a prominent libertarian research center. Mr. Crane, a longtime critic of Mr. Rockwell, called Mr. Paul’s close association with him “one of the more perplexing things I’ve ever come across in my 67 years.” He added: “I wish Ron would condemn these fringe things that float around because of Rockwell. I don’t believe he believes any of that stuff.” Mr. Paul said in the interview that he did not, but he declined to condemn Mr. Rockwell, saying he did not want to get in the middle of a fight. “I could understand that, but I could also understand the Rothbard group saying, Why don’t you quit talking to Cato ?” he said. Mr. Paul described Mr. Rockwell and Mr. Rothbard as political provocateurs. “They enjoyed antagonizing people, to tell you the truth, and trying to split people,” he said. “I thought, we’re so small, why shouldn’t we be talking to everybody and bringing people together?” Nonetheless, Mr. Paul’s newsletters veered into language that would most likely appeal to Mr. Duke’s followers, including the suggestion in 1994 that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He said he did not discuss the content of the newsletters with Mr. Rockwell because readers never complained. “I was pretty careless about what was going in my own newsletter — that was my biggest fault,” he said. Mr. Rockwell did not respond to interview requests. Carol Moore, a libertarian opponent of his at the time, said he and his allies had “all evolved” and moderated their views since. Still, the newsletters had a lasting appeal with the audience Mr. Rockwell and Mr. Rothbard talked about reaching. Mr. Black of Stormfront said the newsletters helped make him a Ron Paul supporter. “That was a big part of his constituency, the paleoconservatives who think there are race problems in this country,” Mr. Black said. “We understand that Paul is not a white nationalist, but most of our people support him because of his stand on issues,” Mr. Black said. “We think our race is being threatened through a form of genocide by assimilation, meaning the allowing in of third-world immigrants into the United States .” Mr. Black said Mr. Paul was attractive because of his “aggressive position on securing our borders,” his criticism of affirmative action and his goal of eliminating the Federal Reserve, which the Stormfront board considers to be essentially a private bank with no government oversight. “Also, our board recognizes that most of the leaders involved in the Fed and the international banking system are Jews.” Mr. Paul is not unaware of that strain among his supporters. Mr. Crane of the Cato Institute recalled comparing notes with Mr. Paul in the early 1980s about direct mail solicitations for money. When Mr. Crane said that mailing lists of people with the most extreme views seemed to draw the best response, Mr. Paul responded that he found the same thing with a list of subscribers to the Spotlight, a now-defunct publication founded by the holocaust denier Willis A. Carto. Mr. Paul said he did not recall that conversation, which was first reported in the libertarian publication Reason, and doubted that he would have known what lists were being used on his behalf. Yet he said he would not have a problem seeking support from such a list. “I’ll go to anybody who I think I can convert to change their viewpoints — so that would be to me incidental,” he said. “I’m always looking at converting people to look at liberty the way I do.”

Ron Paul
Libertarianism
2012 Presidential Election
Republicans
Fringe Groups
US Politics


Pentagon Files Offer Details on Detainee in Suicide

Abstract: The Guantánamo detainee who apparently committed suicide on Wednesday was a persistent hunger striker, at one point dropping his weight to 88.5 pounds, government documents indicate. Yesterday, the Pentagon identified the man as a 34-year-old former member of the Saudi armed forces, Abdul Rahman Ma’ath Thafir al-Amri, and suggested that officials had held him in one of stricter areas at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Camp 5, because of a need to control him. Fragmentary documents in the public Guantánamo files have a sketchy picture of the man whose death, after three suicides in June, has became a flashpoint in the debate over the detention policies. Military officials said yesterday that Mr. Amri had been a midlevel Qaeda operative with direct ties to higher-level members, including meeting Osama bin Laden, and had fought United States forces in the Tora Bora mountains. Beyond acknowledging that he had died of an “apparent suicide,” the officials did not give details of Mr. Amri’s death, saying an autopsy would be performed. The documents suggest that he was part of a chronic struggle between the military jailers at Guantánamo and an unknown number of detainees who have challenged that control with long-running hunger strikes. The hunger strikes and other resistance in the camps have brought periodic crackdowns by the military, especially over the last year, including the use of feeding chairs. Persistent hunger strikers are strapped in so they can be fed a nutrient formula through a plastic tube inserted in a nostril. In April, the military said 12 detainees were being force fed. Some detainees’ lawyers have said the total number of hunger strikers might be much higher. It is not know whether Mr. Amri was force fed. As his history began to emerge, it brought a predictable exchange between the government and critics. The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and the Center for Constitutional Rights were among the groups condemning the loss of life, blaming detention policies and calling for investigations. “The sad truth is we can guarantee there will be more deaths,” said Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, an international group that provides legal representation to 35 detainees, including several Saudis. Jose Ruiz, a spokesman for the United States Southern Command in Miami, which controls the joint task force at Guantánamo, said, “The men and women of Joint Task Force Guantánamo conduct their mission professionally and humanely.” The death seemed to challenge an image promoted by military officials that Guantánamo had entered a relatively calm period. Despite criticism from human rights groups and others of the steps that the military has taken to clamp down on security, the military leadership at Guantánamo has appeared confident that their approach had not increased the risk of prisoner suicides. “I think it’s simply better conditions of detention for the detainees, and less communication between the camps themselves, “ Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr. said last month, as he stepped down as commander at Guantánamo. In an interview with The New York Times on May 21, Admiral Harris said the number of hunger strikers, discipline cases and “self-harm gestures” was declining. Mr. Amri is not believed to have had a lawyer. So much about his time at Guantánamo is unknown. Some details are apparent from documents. Detainee weight charts released by the Pentagon this year because of a lawsuit show that when he arrived in February 2002, Mr. Amri weighed 150 pounds. A downward spiral in 2005 included a November weigh-in at 88 ½ pounds. Last February, another detainee, in a letter to his lawyer, listed Mr. Amri as a hunger striker in Camp 5. The public record of the accusations against Mr. Amri show contradictory and inconclusive elements like many of the detainees’ cases. An American officer who was appointed his personal representative said at a hearing that Mr. Amri was a jihadist. The officer added that Mr. Amri believed that the military was making a mistake in detaining him, an undated summary of the representative’s statement shows. Mr. Amri said Americans had trained him while he was in the Saudi army for nine years. As a result, he said, it made no sense that he would have gone to Afghanistan to kill Americans. “He could have done that while he was side by side with them in Saudi Arabia,” the officer said. He acknowledged that he had seen Mr. bin Laden, but said it was “from a distance,” the representative reported.

Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (Cuba)
Suicides and Suicide Attempts
Hunger Strikes


Missouri: 2 Levees Are Breached

Abstract: As the Missouri River continued to rise to record levels, two protective levees ruptured Monday, sending floodwaters pouring over fields and toward small communities in Missouri and Iowa. The breaches had been expected in both Hamburg, Iowa, and Big Lake, Mo. Despite the construction of secondary levees to hold back the water, evacuations were under way because of concerns that those hastily built barriers might also fail. The dam-controlled river, which has caused flooding from Montana to Missouri because of record rain and snow, is expected to remain at flood levels for the next two months.


With a Mill’s Dismantling, a Torrent of Memories

Abstract: Garfield ERNIE ROSOLEN pointed halfway up one of the few walls still standing at a factory that was quickly falling, looking past the exposed skeleton of steel I-beams, the ganglia of twisted rebar, the mounds of concrete rubble, his eye fixed instead on a small spot of red, as bright and emphatic as a lone geranium on a tenement windowsill. “That’s a fire hose station I had put up there, in case we had a fire along the roof, so we could fight the fire from the top,” said Mr. Rosolen, 73, whose job it once was to keep the Garden State Paper Company running, but whose job now includes the difficult assignment of watching the mill die. “Let me tell you, it’s not pleasant to look at,” he said as dust rose and excavators picked through the jagged piles at the paper mill where he worked for 32 years. “It’s very emotional. I spent a lifetime here.” The mill closed on Dec. 7, 2001, Pearl Harbor Day. One day it was humming along, turning bales of old newspapers into 15,000-pound rolls of recycled paper, paying just about the best union wages around: with overtime, $80,000 or more for some of the 250 workers. And then the next day, gone. Its distant corporate owner — the imploding Enron, which had just paid $72 million for it the previous year — was bankrupt. The plant was shuttered, like so many others along the Passaic River, but hopes for it lingered. It was only 40 years old, a pioneer in the recycled newsprint industry, the city’s largest employer and taxpayer. Surely somebody would see its value and reopen it. A Canadian company bought the mill in bankruptcy court for $6.1 million, but the gates stayed locked. For almost a year, in 2004 and 2005, Thomas J. Duch, the city manager, worked with a group that included some former contractors and employees trying to assemble $23 million to reopen the plant. “We thought it was going to start up again, that we were going to get the jobs again,” said Mr. Duch, a former assemblyman and mayor of Garfield whose father spent 33 years as a machine tender at Garden State, and who spent two college summers there himself, earning money for law school. “That was the last hope to get the factory reopened.” And then the developers came calling, lured by almost 14 acres with a river view. Garden State was not one of those stately, many-windowed brick mills that could easily be converted to housing or storage or some new industrial use. It was a vast, hulking machine built for one purpose, and when that purpose was over, so too was its value as a building. The city approved a plan for a 284-unit development: 184 town house units and two 50-unit condominium buildings restricted to residents over 55. Demolition started in January and is expected to continue at least through the summer. “Right here, this is where it started, and this is all gone now,” Mr. Rosolen said as he stood beside the deep pits where the truckloads of old newspaper were once unloaded. Mr. Rosolen’s life — where he was raised, where he worked, what he does now — has given him an unusually close view of the alarming speed at which the industrial economy in America moves now, shaped as it is by things that happen in distant places. “That’s where I grew up, right up there,” he said, pointing up a hill to a line of houses backing up to the mill. When he was a boy, though, this land was clear, as it soon will be again — a vacant lot where an adjacent factory, the shuttered Forstmann woolen mill, had once considered expanding. “This was our playground.” Some neighbors grazed goats here, and he and his friends wore a path down the hill, headed for the baseball diamond. The land stayed empty until Richard B. Scudder, the publisher of the old Newark Evening News, thought that all those old newspapers headed for landfills might find a more useful, and profitable, end. “Scudder’s Folly,” skeptics called it, but a new de-inking process he helped invent, using a blender in his home kitchen, made recycling feasible. The plant opened in 1961. Mr. Rosolen started as a purchasing agent at Garden State in 1967, and his respect for the original company remains so deep that he still refers to “Mr. Scudder.” He later became the purchasing manager, and then the facilities manager, retiring in 1999, the year before Enron took over. A volunteer firefighter for 50 years, and a former chief, he now works part-time as a fire inspector for the city. Before the demolition started, he helped point out to those who would be taking it apart what was buried where, and where the trouble spots might be. “It’s going to be a slow process, because this place was built really strong,” he said. “The concrete’s deep into the ground.” As a fire inspector he has to check in at the site periodically — to make sure the proper safety procedures are in place when the steel is being cut up, for instance — but when the demolition first started, when the finality of the plant’s demise was unmistakable, he sometimes took alternate routes on his rounds through the city, so he wouldn’t have to watch. “That was my office, the last one up there,” he said, pointing toward a section of the building that had been peeled open, its innards exposed. The office door was closed.

New Jersey
Factories and Industrial Plants
Condominiums


Vietnam: Norwegian Cargo Ship Sinks

Abstract: A Norwegian shipping company said Saturday that one if its cargo vessels had sunk off the coast of Vietnam and that only one of the 19 Filipino crew members was known to have survived. The shipping company, Gerbulk, said that the vessel was 155 nautical miles off Vietnam, headed to China from Malaysia, with a cargo of bauxite when it sent a distress signal that was picked up by the Japanese Coast Guard. A Vietnamese official said rescue operations were hampered Saturday by hazy weather and high waves.

Boat Accidents
Vietnam
Ships and Shipping
Cargo
Norway


Beyond the Oscar Spectacle, Hollywood Is Grumbling

Abstract: LOS ANGELES SWEATY hands will finally clutch their Oscars on Sunday night, putting an end to a Hollywood awards season that may go down as one of the most downbeat in memory. Movers and shakers in the film industry don’t like to grumble openly about the Oscars. After all, nobody wants to be caught talking down a ritual that has been very good, for a very long time, to a very large number of people in the glamour business. Still, the Hollywood table-talk this year has been much less about Oscar prospects and more about the process. And an overriding theme is this: The movie prize cycle had better become shorter, brighter and more popular in its bent — or some major players are pulling back. The conventional wisdom has it that “Slumdog Millionaire,” the big-hearted little film made in Mumbai and distributed in the United States by Fox Searchlight, locked up the best-picture award months ago. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , whose voting membership is about 5,800, is increasingly foreign- and indie-oriented. The fellow best-picture nominees are “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” from Paramount and Warner Brothers; “Frost/Nixon,” from Universal; “Milk,” from Focus Features; and “The Reader,” from the Weinstein Company. These films have supposedly been along for an expensive ride, competing for an odd Oscar in other categories while burning up millions of marketing and promotional dollars. But they are widely reckoned to have no real hope of winning the big prize, and most have not quite hit their targets at the box office. For executives, filmmakers and publicists, the real shock came with the exclusion of “The Dark Knight” from this year’s list of best-picture nominees. It wasn’t so much about admiration for the picture itself, though there was plenty of that. Insiders read the snub more as a rejection by the academy, once comfortably regarded as an adjunct of the industry that created it, of what the inner circle does best: Build complex, monumental films that move millions. To keep the mood here from curdling wouldn’t have taken much of a bow toward the audience. A best-picture nomination for “Wall-E,” from Walt Disney and its Pixar Animation unit, if not “The Dark Knight,” from Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures, might have done it. Even an acting nomination for Clint Eastwood, whose crusty appearance in “Gran Torino,” from Warner, turned out his biggest box office to date, would have helped. But the academy gave no points for popularity. And the company folks noticed. Some executives, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect their relationships with those who vote for prizes, have said in the last few weeks that they do not expect their studios to make any movie in the foreseeable future as a specific Oscar bet. If honors happen to come, as they came to “The Departed,” a Warner film that was a surprise best-picture winner in 2007, so be it. But few are looking to make the next “Frost/Nixon,” a smart, critically acclaimed film that got Ron Howard a nomination as best director this year. “Frost/Nixon” has taken in less than $20 million at the domestic box office, and may not make a profit when the cost of its long Oscar-season promotional campaign is added to its relatively modest $25 million budget. AS little as a year ago, the prestige that came with an Oscar contender could seem worth at least a small financial loss to studios that could always make up for it with their summer hits. In tougher times, not so. Already, 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures have become only occasional players in the Oscar game, allowing associated specialty units, Fox Searchlight and Sony Pictures Classics, to be contenders with relatively small films. If companies like Paramount, Universal and the now-smaller DreamWorks also step back, the academy — protective of an enterprise that brings it more than $70 million a year — will almost certainly start looking for adjustments to a system that still needs big stars and the big studios that pay them. The last significant structural change to the Oscars occurred in 2004, when they were moved up a month, to late February from late March. The shift was meant to lighten the expense and fatigue factor of a movie awards season that was then consuming nearly half the year. The next step could well be Oscars in January. That idea has been popping up in conversation here lately. One version suggests compressing the Oscars into the tail end of a two-week, festival-like Hollywood awards event that would include the Golden Globes and all the various guild awards, and take place in early to mid-January. Studios could fly in their talent just once, instead of three or four times. And companies could generate a whole new kind of excitement by throwing all their dollars into one concentrated burst of movie awards advertising. After the season just past, even the academy’s old hands may be willing to give a hearing to that idea. Surveying the crowd on Feb. 2 at the Oscar nominees luncheon — where 112 contenders showed up, down from 139 in 2007 — Marvin Levy, an academy governor and a longtime publicist to Steven Spielberg, clearly had an eye on the energy level. “I can’t believe we used to go all the way through March,” he said.


M.T.A. Planning to Spend Stimulus on Fulton St. Hub

Abstract: The Metropolitan Transportation Authority expects to spend $497 million in federal economic stimulus money to complete the stalled and over-budget Fulton Street Transit Center in Lower Manhattan, the agency’s executive director said on Thursday. The money would bring the project’s cost to as much as $1.4 billion, nearly double what was estimated when it was conceived in the wake of the terror attack of Sept. 11, 2001. The additional financing would allow the authority to move ahead with plans to erect an architecturally dramatic glass building atop the transit hub, said Elliot G. Sander, the authority’s executive director. However, it was not clear if the final design would include the project’s signature feature, a conelike skylight, known as an oculus, that would channel daylight into the lower areas of the station. Mr. Sander said the oculus could add about $40 million to the cost. “The pavilion has to be many things to many people,” Mr. Sander said, referring to the glass structure. “It has to be a building of vibrant design with as much new retail activity as possible.” He called it “a highly visible portal to a modern transportation complex.” Mr. Sander, who spoke at a State Assembly hearing in Lower Manhattan, said that he estimated the authority would receive $1.5 billion to $2 billion from the economic stimulus bill that is working its way through Congress. He said he planned to spend $497 million of that to complete the downtown transit hub. He did not say how the remainder would be spent. The Fulton Street project, which is a block from the World Trade Center site, was originally financed by the federal government with $750 million that was earmarked for the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan. The project was meant to simplify a tangle of subway stations, topping them off with an eye-catching building that would rival the iconic structures planned for the rebuilt trade center. But costs kept rising, and last January the authority said that while work would continue on the underground portions of the project, it could no longer afford to move ahead with the above-ground structure. The announcement was met with dismay downtown, where residents and businesses feared they would be stuck with an unsightly hole, a site where several buildings had been torn down to make way for the transit work. The hearing on Thursday, which included testimony on other aspects of downtown redevelopment, was called by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver , whose district includes the transit center site. Mr. Silver has been one of the Fulton Street project’s strongest supporters, and authority officials have felt growing pressure to find the financing to complete it. Authority officials will also need Mr. Silver’s support to push through a proposed financial bailout of the transit system. Mr. Silver said the only connection between the transit center project and the state bailout had to do with restoring the authority’s credibility. “No legislative body in the world institutes a revenue-raising program unless they know how the money’s getting spent,” Mr. Silver said, referring to the possibility of raising taxes to help finance the authority. “I would suggest that when you begin to take the projects that have been promised and were reneged on by the M.T.A. and you say, ‘O.K., here they are, we’re fulfilling our commitments,’ then you are telling people that you can believe us again.” He reiterated his support for the transit system bailout, which is aimed at reducing a proposed 23 percent increase in fare and toll revenues scheduled for this year and at halting deep service cuts. “The M.T.A. board’s doomsday plan is not something anybody wants to see in action,” he said. “We understand we have to come up with a reasonable plan that would change that result.” The exact amount of money that the authority will receive under the stimulus bill will not be known until a final version is passed by Congress and signed by President Obama. Mr. Sander said he did not see a problem with allocating such a large sum to a single project. “The project needs to be finished,” he said. “It does at this point appear to meet the criteria that Congress has put out, and from an economic stimulus standpoint, in terms of job creation, it certainly seems appropriate.”

Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Finances
Transit Systems
Obama Stimulus Plan
United States Economy
Economic Conditions and Trends
Silver Sheldon
Manhattan (NYC)
New York City


Sudan: Foreigners Evacuated in Border City

Abstract: Fighting continued on Tuesday between northern troops and soldiers aligned with the southern Sudanese in Kadugli, the capital of Southern Kordofan State, forcing about 400 foreigners to be evacuated, the United Nations said. At least six people were killed in the last two days, the United Nations said, adding that about 3,000 people had taken shelter at a nearby hospital on Monday night. Southern Kordofan is on the border between northern and southern Sudan , which is to declare its independence next month.


Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh, an Update From the Bo Schembechler Line

Abstract: ANN ARBOR, Mich. — While not quite as famous as Babe Ruth’s called shot or Joe Namath’s pledge to win the Super Bowl, the promise Jim Harbaugh, the University of Michigan football coach, made 30 years ago is remembered even more fondly around these parts. Harbaugh was the Wolverines’ quarterback in November 1986. With his team ranked No. 6 and about to face No. 7 Ohio State, its archrival, Harbaugh stared out from under his bowl of brown hair and declared to the news media: “We’re going to play in the Rose Bowl this year, I guarantee it. We’ll beat Ohio State, and we’ll be in Pasadena on Jan. 1.” As nearly every Michigan fan knows, Harbaugh followed through on his brash promise, leading the Wolverines to a 26-24 victory and a Rose Bowl berth. So at a tailgate party outside Michigan Stadium this month, one fan, Annette Wozniak, had little trouble recalling the moment she had become enamored with Harbaugh, who is now in his second year as Michigan’s head coach. “When he guaranteed the win,” Wozniak said. What won her over then, as now, she said, was Harbaugh’s “unending dedication to winning.” Image Players lifted Coach Bo Schembechler on their shoulders after Michigan’s 26-24 victory over Ohio State in November 1986. The win gave the Wolverines the Big Ten title and a trip to the Rose Bowl, just as Harbaugh, the team’s quarterback, had promised. Credit Mark Duncan/Associated Press What many may not know, though, is that Harbaugh’s guarantee at the time displeased Michigan’s legendary coach, Bo Schembechler — who, according to Lloyd Carr, then an assistant coach, did not like to give opposing teams extra motivation. “Bo was not happy,” said Carr, who later became a Michigan head coach. This week, Michigan plays the same opponent in a similarly emotional moment — and one with perhaps even higher stakes. The No. 3 Wolverines will face the No. 2 Buckeyes on Saturday afternoon in Columbus, Ohio, with the chance to go on to win the Big Ten championship, cementing a place in the season-ending College Football Playoff. Harbaugh has not assured victory this time around — “I made a guarantee a long time ago, and I’ve learned from that,” he said at his introductory news conference in 2014 — but in virtually every other respect, he is the same cocky gunslinger: aiming warning shots on Twitter at rivals; ruffling feathers with his nationwide satellite camps; elevating college football to show business. Harbaugh, who returned to Michigan after four years at Stanford and four more in the N.F.L. with the San Francisco 49ers, is undeniably Schembechler’s successor: the son of a longtime Schembechler assistant and the old coach’s former quarterback. Yet Harbaugh also represents a decided swerve from the gruff, Cold War-era personality of Schembechler, who revived Michigan after taking over in 1969 and reigned over his program with storied benevolence for 21 years. John Arbeznik, who played center for Schembechler, said Harbaugh was quite the contrast: “He takes his shirt off,” Arbeznik said, recalling a notorious moment from a summer camp. “He’s kind of goofy.” But he is, to his core, a Michigan man, and Michigan fans place almost as much stock in lineage as do royal houses. Like a foreign-born conqueror, Schembechler, who died in 2006 , was the Ohio-born protégé of the great Buckeyes coach Woody Hayes. Schembechler’s most successful successors — Gary Moeller, Carr and now Harbaugh — either coached under him or played for him. So did Michigan’s last three interim and permanent athletic directors. Image Schembechler, right, yelled at Harbaugh as the Wolverines fell to Arizona State, 22-15, in the Rose Bowl in January 1987. Credit Reed Saxon/Associated Press “You put someone like Jim Harbaugh,” said Glenn Schembechler III, Bo’s son, who is known as Shemy, “who absolutely comes from that legacy — not only from Michigan, but also my dad — with his success he’s had already, and what you’ve done is created a nuclear phenomenon that brings all those sources together.” This abstract connection is made concrete in something called the Har-Bug. Wozniak, 40, has an old Volkswagen Beetle that her family long ago painted in Michigan maize and blue, with Wolverines knickknacks and slogans adorning its bulbous body. Its name changes to honor each Michigan head coach: from the Bo-Mobile to the Mo-Mobile, to Lloyd’s Carr and the Hokes-Wagen, for Brady Hoke, a former Carr assistant who ascended to the top job in 2011. The meaning of the Har-Bug name is clear: Harbaugh is the latest model of a storied ideal. It is a point Harbaugh himself made at that first news conference, when he said, “I’m standing on a foundation that has been built for over 100 years by some great men.” Image Annette Wozniak showed off the “Har-Bug,” a Volkswagen Beetle sporting Michigan’s Maize and Blue. The car’s name changes to honor each Wolverines head football coach. Credit Sean Proctor for The New York Times Harbaugh has passed up few opportunities to pay homage to his old coach, whose widow attended his introductory news conference. His blue baseball cap does not have the contemporary block M that has become the Michigan standard but the skinny-M version that Schembechler preferred. Harbaugh brought back Jon Falk, a retired equipment manager whom Schembechler had hired. Harbaugh has made Schembechler’s most famous phrase a central part of his message: “Those who stay will be champions.” “People truly still consider him a disciple of Bo, even if he’s kind of a weird dude,” said Tom Sheppard, 29, a Michigander who has rooted for the Wolverines his whole life. Many fans and close observers attributed the differences between Schembechler and Harbaugh less to the men themselves and more to the times in which they operated. “There’s a new millennium,” said Rich Eisen, the NFL Network host, who reported on Schembechler’s final season for The Michigan Daily , a student newspaper. When he was an honorary captain for one home game, he said, he saw only two photographs in Michigan’s locker room: one of Schembechler, the patriarch of the current line; and one of Tom Brady, a Wolverine who has fulfilled every recruit’s dream of making it in the N.F.L. “It’s smart,” Eisen said. “There’s a new millennium, and you’ve got to reach the kids in a certain way in the 21st century. He gets it.” Image Harbaugh, who has been known to draw extra attention to himself when recruiting players, held the down marker during a game between El Cerrito High School and St. Mary’s College High School in Albany, Calif., in October. Credit Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group, via Associated Press Decades ago, great football coaches like Schembechler, Hayes and Alabama’s Bear Bryant were expected to be distant men of vague but great authority. Today, they are more likely to be (slightly) more vulnerable, detail-oriented workaholics like Harbaugh, Urban Meyer of Ohio State and Nick Saban of Alabama. “The difference between him and Jim,” Carr said, referring to Schembechler’s famed distaste for talking to reporters, “was, in those days, the media, in relation to what it is today, is night and day.” “The difference,” Arbeznik added of Harbaugh, “is he’s got Facebook and Twitter .” What could be the most consequential difference between Schembechler and Harbaugh has yet to be determined. Michigan was Schembechler’s final stop as a coach, and he stayed more than two decades. Harbaugh’s conspicuously peripatetic career — three seasons at the University of San Diego, four at Stanford, four in San Francisco and now two at Michigan — has bred fears that despite a $9 million salary, the highest in college football and comparable to N.F.L. pay, he will soon leave Ann Arbor again. Those who stay may be champions. But will champions stay? “People think he’ll stay around,” Sheppard said. “Or at least hope so.” He added, “If Harbaugh came in and traded one national championship for three years of service, I think people would take it.” Image Harbaugh walked to the field before Michigan’s game against Iowa this month in Iowa City. Credit Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press That could begin Saturday. If Michigan (10-1), an underdog, prevails, it will head to the Big Ten championship game in Indianapolis, where a win would almost certainly send it to next month’s playoff semifinals. But an Ohio State (10-1) victory would devastate Michigan’s chances, since it would most likely prevent either team from becoming Big Ten champion. With that in mind, it is worth recalling Schembechler’s eventual response to Harbaugh’s guarantee of 30 years ago. In the next day’s team meeting, according to Carr, a fuming Schembechler gathered his players around him and growled: “Harbaugh’s shot his mouth off. Guaranteed a win. “Now we’ve got to back him up.”

College football
Bo Schembechler
University of Michigan
Jim Harbaugh
Ohio State
Coaches


Fox Cuts a Struggling ‘Utopia’ to One Night a Week

Abstract: Count this as the first half-cancellation of the television season: Fox announced Wednesday that it would drop one of the two weekly episodes of its flopping reality series “Utopia,” sticking only with an hour on Friday. The Tuesday edition of “Utopia” will be axed starting next week. Eventually Fox will try another reality series, “Masterchef Junior,” about child cooks, on Tuesdays at 8. But that will not start until Nov. 4. In the interim, Fox will fill the hour with repeats of its animated shows, before it starts its World Series coverage on Oct. 21. “Utopia,” a social experiment show featuring a group of participants thrown together to try to “build a new society,” has been a ratings disaster from the start. The network plowed a huge amount of money into it — reports have put the expense as high as $50 million — but it has performed far worse in the ratings than the singing competition “The X-Factor,” which Fox canceled after last fall. The move is a shift in Fox’s original plan to cut “Utopia” down to once a week after the first six weeks of the season, leaving Tuesday as the one night. Making it Friday instead — a day when most shows are very low rated — amounts to sending the show into premature exile.


From Indie Record Stores, Holiday Gift Thoughts

Abstract: Last month, more than 60 independent record stores across Texas kicked off the holiday shopping season with a Black Friday edition of Record Store Day, an annual promotion that features special vinyl and CD releases made exclusively for mom-and-pop record stores. It is intended to bring shoppers back to independent record stores, which offer human interaction between customers and clerks that often results in the discovery of a new favorite album. Better still, what makes small record stores different is their emphasis on selling locally produced music. We asked representatives from three independent record stores in Texas to recommend recent releases from local artists. JOHN T. KUNZ, OWNER WATERLOO RECORDS, AUSTIN Hayes Carll, “KMAG YOYO (& other American stories)” (Lost Highway Records) Last year, the Americana Music Association named Mr. Carll, an Austin-based singer-songwriter, the new/emerging artist of the year. His second national release, titled after an unprintable military acronym, landed him on “The Tonight Show” and at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. “I love the sense of humor in his songs,” Mr. Kunz said. “And humor, especially the self-deprecating kind, is part of the singer-songwriter tradition in Texas. But he’s also very politically aware — from the title track’s take on war and national security to ‘Another Like You,’ a wry, John Prine-style duet between politically opposed lovers. The whole thing is really a huge leap forward for a guy I think we’re going to be listening to for a long time to come.” Sarah Jarosz, “Follow Me Down” (Sugar Hill Records) Ms. Jarosz, a 20-year-old Wimberley native, recorded her second set for Sugar Hill Records by flying to Nashville on weekends and holiday breaks from the New England Conservatory in Boston, where she is studying contemporary music improvisation. A who’s who of the acoustic music world — from Béla Fleck and Jerry Douglas to Shawn Colvin and the Punch Brothers — contributed to the album. “Her comfort zone keeps widening as she soaks up new influences,” Mr. Kunz said. “She’s got this angelic, plaintive voice that marries so well to her songwriting. And while she comes from a very traditional folk and bluegrass tradition and is so adept with those instruments, on this record she shows a great pop sensibility too. And then she’ll pull out a Radiohead cover.” ED SWIENCKI, BUYER FOREVER YOUNG RECORDS, GRAND PRAIRIE Kirk Franklin, “Hello Fear” (GospoCentric Records) In March, the Fort Worth native and Arlington resident’s 11th album debuted at the top of Billboard’s Gospel sales chart. Earlier this week, the set was nominated for two Grammy Awards : Best Gospel Album and Best Gospel Song. “Especially for a huge star, Kirk makes records remarkably free of ego,” Mr. Swiencki said. “It’s not about him, it’s about delivering the message. He comes at it from a very contemporary place, but he’s also respectful of the gospel tradition.” Carl Marshall, “Grown Folks Love to Dance!” (CDS Records) A journeyman soul singer and producer, Mr. Marshall cut his teeth in the New Orleans band Sam & the Soul Machine alongside Aaron Neville and Sam Henry. Building on the regional success of “Grown Folks Love to Dance,” Mr. Marshall quickly followed with his second release of 2011, “Songs People Love the Most Volume 2.” “I think people listen because he’s like talking to one of your friends,” Mr. Swiencki said. “It’s very straightforward and easy for people to connect to. It’s a very down-home kind of affair.” THOMAS ESCALANTE, OWNER SIG’S LAGOON, HOUSTON Los Skarnales, “Dále Shine!” (self-released) Although its name loosely translates to “brothers of ska,” this veteran Houston act has grown into a bilingual, horn-driven musical melting pot that rarely covers the same musical territory twice. On its first record in six years, the band integrates another influence into its repertory: New Orleans-style funk and rock. “They’re meshing everything from ska to rockabilly and from cumbia to mambo, but by now it’s really their own sound,” Mr. Escalante said. “And because they’re a band known primarily for the craziness of their live show, capturing that spirit in a studio can be tough. But I think this time they really nailed it. It’s a party record that stands on its own but also has a certain undeniable live energy to it.” Thunderado, “All Time Gone” (self-released) Led by Hunter Perrin, whose day job, until recently, was playing guitar in John Fogerty’s touring band, this Houston trio plays so economically that its second album features 11 songs in just 30 minutes. “They’re known primarily here in Houston, because Hunter’s gig with Fogerty made it tough to tour with Thunderado, but I feel like there’s something here capable of reaching a much wider audience,” Mr. Escalante said. “Like a lot of the bands that play at the club next door to our shop, the Continental Club, there’s a certain swampy Gulf Coast element to what they do, but there’s also bits of surf and rockabilly. When I put it on in the store, it’s an easy sell.”

Music
Shopping and Retail
Gifts
Holidays and Special Occasions
Texas


Uncertainty Clouds Future of Willets Point and Its Oil-Stained Streets

Abstract: From his office in a trailer in a salvage yard in Queens, Sam Sambucci — 6’ 1”, 300 pounds — appeals for grace in one of the most graceless corners of the city. If death must come for the community of grease-stained automobile repair businesses in Willets Point — and everyone knows that death will come sooner or later — then let it come with dignity, Mr. Sambucci implored. “We’re lowly junkmen, yes, but we’re lowly junkmen who pay their taxes,” he said one afternoon this week. “We’re not Target. We’re not Abercrombie or whatever. I understand that. Just give us an answer. “What’s going to happen down here?” Uncertainty and frustration hang heavy over Willets Point these days as the once-thriving ecosystem of body shops, salvage lots, tire warehouses and windshield-repair workshops in the lee of Citi Field has been eroded by evictions, property transfers and condemnations amid a city-backed plan to redevelop the area. The project — which would include construction of a mall, hotel, convention center and housing — suffered a setback in early June when a state court ruled that the city could not build the mall on parkland next to the baseball stadium. The plan was thrown into further question last week when the city declined to appeal the ruling. Image Sam Sambucci, who runs a Willets Point salvage yard, has worked in the area for 25 years. Credit Kirsten Luce for The New York Times The developers behind the project — Related Companies and Sterling Equities, which were chosen by the Bloomberg administration — filed an appeal on their own to the state’s highest court. The city’s withdrawal, however, could undermine the developers’ case and ultimately lead to the scope and terms of the project being renegotiated more in keeping with the priorities of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration. But in the rutted, unpaved streets of the auto-repair district east of Citi Field — a sector affectionately known to its denizens as the Iron Triangle — news of the city’s decision last week barely registered. Few people, it seemed, had heard about it; fewer still knew what it meant. And nobody much cared. In interviews this week, the consensus seemed to be that even if the current plan collapsed, another would prevail eventually. The end result for the community of repair shops and junkyards would be the same: gone. “Let me tell you something: They’re not going to leave the project like that,” Arturo Olaya, an upholstery specialist, said. As the president of a local business group, the Willets Point Defense Committee, he was more attuned than most to the recent legal developments. Mr. Olaya pointed out that the city had already spent $400 million to buy land and make other preparations for the development. “Let me tell you something,” he added, “the city is saying that because they’re probably doing a trick.” The 13-block zone has been a de facto auto repair district for decades, but it has also been a canvas for redevelopment fantasies for a succession of mayoral administrations. It also stands as an example of municipal neglect, as the unpaved, pitted and frequently flooded streets attest. Image From left: Cristian Tencela, Arturo Julcamoro and an auto-repair shop in the neighborhood. Credit Kirsten Luce for The New York Times The Bloomberg administration first approved the the neighborhood’s redevelopment in 2008. Four years later it struck a development deal with Related Companies and Sterling Equities. Since then, at least a third of the businesses by some estimates, mainly those in so-called Phase 1 of the redevelopment area, have closed as the city bought out landowners and offered tenants incentives to leave. Some businesses have moved elsewhere in the area; others have simply vanished, workers and business owners said. This month, a cluster of Phase 1 businesses, sitting on land now owned by the city, received 30-day notices to terminate tenancy. Among those businesses was Gringo’s Auto Parts Express, owned by Michael Nieto, the son of Colombian immigrants. He started working in Willets Point more than 20 years ago, he said, first hustling work on the street, then holding a series of jobs in different garages and workshops, before opening his own business on Willets Point Boulevard about nine years ago. Mr. Nieto said he hoped to be able to negotiate a more gradual exit and stretch out his tenancy; other businesses, he said, have negotiated similar deals. Image Michael Nieto, in window, the owner of Gringo's Auto Parts Express, said he was hoping to negotiate a gradual exit. Credit Kirsten Luce for The New York Times The thought of having to move elsewhere gave him pause. Having so many different auto repair businesses in one area guaranteed traffic, he said. Over time, cooperative relationships have developed between different niche businesses. A parts retailer could supply other shops and sell directly to clients. Once the upholstery guy finished repairing a customer’s torn seat, he could send the client across the road to his friend for a muffler replacement. The favor would be returned next time around. “If I moved somewhere by myself,” Mr. Nieto said, “I would die.” But over the past two years, with the closing of shops and the continual drumbeat of news stories announcing the end of Willets Point, business has plummeted. And amid all the uncertainty around the project, business owners and workers are stumped: They do not know how to plan for the end without knowing when the end will come. “I don’t know anything!” exclaimed Godofredo Yacsavilca, a Peruvian immigrant who owns Juanita Nacional Coffee Shop, one of a few places to eat in the area. “One year? Two years? Three years? I don’t know!” “It’s inevitable that we’re not going to be here,” Mr. Sambucci, who has been working in Willets Point for about 25 years, said. “But is that going to be in a year, five years, ten years?” While the city tries to figure out what it is going to do and when, he said, he had one suggestion for the mayor, something clear and finite: Pave the streets. “We’re here, we pay taxes, we’re licensed by the City of New York, we’re licensed by the state,” he said. “Give us a little respect. Give us some streets.”

Willets Point Queens
Commercial Real Estate
Relocation
Urban Planning
NYC


U.S. Blacklists 15 Russian Entities Linked to Ukraine and Crimea

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday blacklisted 15 Russian individuals and companies for their dealings in Crimea and Ukraine, creating an early test for the new administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump, who is widely expected to roll back the pressure campaign against Russia. The Treasury Department designated seven individuals and eight corporate entities involved in a range of projects, including the construction of a bridge connecting Russia to the Crimean peninsula. It also targeted businesspeople who are associates of President Vladimir V. Putin or are involved in activities that aid in Russia’s destabilization of Ukraine. “Today’s action is in response to Russia’s unlawful occupation of Crimea and continued aggression in Ukraine,” John E. Smith, the acting director of the Treasury’s office of foreign assets control, said in a statement . “These targeted sanctions,” he added, “aim to maintain pressure on Russia by sustaining the costs of its occupation of Crimea and disrupting the activities of those who support the violence and instability in Ukraine.” Administration officials said the measures were part of a regular updating of the sanctions, once every six months, to keep them in sync with an extension of sanctions announced on Monday by the European Union. But the timing had extra resonance, coming after the victory of Mr. Trump, who has called for a rapprochement with Russia and has named people to his cabinet who have called for the sanctions to be lifted, like Rex W. Tillerson, the president-elect’s choice for secretary of state. Some analysts predicted that the European Union would not renew its sanctions after the election, anticipating a reversal by the United States. Italy, Hungary and Slovakia were among those that argued the sanctions were not working and were damaging Europe economically. But Mr. Obama has worked closely with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to keep a united front against Russia. The administration’s move was a final show of solidarity with Europe by the president, who also telephoned Ms. Merkel on Monday evening to express condolences for the deadly truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin. There are reasons to question whether it will be the last time the United States tightens the economic vise on Moscow. Mr. Trump’s choice for national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, sat next to Mr. Putin at an anniversary dinner for RT, the state-backed broadcaster, last December. Mr. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corporation, is also close to Mr. Putin and has done business in Russia for years. Exxon Mobil has a number of projects that are permitted under American sanctions. But other projects have been halted by the sanctions, including a deal with the Russian state oil company to explore and pump in Siberia that could be worth tens of billions of dollars. Mr. Tillerson has been open about his view that the sanctions should be lifted. Among the entities targeted by the Treasury Department are two ships, Marshal Zhukov and Stalingrad, which have transported fuel to and from Crimea, as well as companies that maintain the railway and ports. Among the individuals designated by the department are Kirill Kovalchuk, Dmitri Lebedev and Dmitri Mansurov, executives at banks with close ties to the Russian leadership. The Treasury Department also designated Evgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with links to a company building a military base near the Russian border with Ukraine. Administration officials said these sanctions were not related to the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Obama said last Friday that the United States would respond to those cyberattacks with a mixture of public and covert measures before he left office, but he declined to give details.

Russia
Ukraine
Crimea
Embargoes Sanctions
Barack Obama
Donald Trump
US Foreign Policy


Police Raid Moscow Bank Owned by Lebedev, Putin Critic

Abstract: MOSCOW — Federal law enforcement agents on Friday conducted a search of a Moscow bank owned by Aleksandr Y. Lebedev , a billionaire tycoon who owns a popular newspaper that is highly critical of the Kremlin. Four officers were involved in the search of the National Reserve Bank, Mr. Lebedev, who is an outspoken government critic, said in an interview. The official reason was an investigation into possible fraud, but he said that there was probably some other “subtext.” Officials from the F.S.B., the agency that conducted the raid, made no comment on Friday. Though such searches happen frequently at Mr. Lebedev’s bank, news of Friday’s search spread quickly through independent news media and blogs, which have been keeping a keen look out for a possible tightening of screws ahead of a presidential election next month in which Vladimir V. Putin is likely to return to the presidency, Russia ’s highest office. This week, two independent media outlets complained of facing pressure from the authorities because of their criticism of Mr. Putin’s government. Mr. Lebedev raised eyebrows this week when he nominated Aleksei Navalny for the board of the Russian airline Aeroflot, in which he also has a stake. Mr. Navalny is an anticorruption crusader who is the undisputed leader of a recent protest movement against Mr. Putin. Mr. Lebedev, a former K.G.B. agent who also has charities and a potato farming operation, said that the authorities had been particularly interested in a single account he uses to finance the opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, as well as The Independent and The Evening Standard, two British newspapers that he owns. He also said that several hundred officials from the Central Bank had been conducting a series of checks at local branches of his bank across the country this week. But he dismissed speculation that the checks had anything to do with the impending election or Mr. Navalny, who he said sent him a text message on Tuesday asking whether the search was his fault. “I said, ‘No, it’s because of me,’ ” he said he texted back. “I’m probably the most transparent entrepreneur you’ll find in this country because I know I’m under permanent watch.”

Lebedev Aleksandr Y
Putin Vladimir V
Search and Seizure
Newspapers
Banking and Financial Institutions
Moscow (Russia)
Russia


Swiss Sue Google Over Street View Mapping Service

Abstract: Swiss officials said Friday that they had sued Google to try to require it to tighten privacy safeguards on its Street View online service. It is the latest of a series of European objections to the company’s handling of personal information. The Swiss data protection authority said it had filed a complaint with the Federal Administrative Court after Google balked at its demand for additional measures to make obscure the images of people who appear in Street View, particularly in areas around hospitals, schools and prisons. Street View provides ground-level panoramas of streets across the United States, Europe and other regions, searchable via Google’s mapping service. Google compiles the scenes with camera-equipped cars. Google already blurs the faces and license plates that appear in Street View. Users of the service can also request that certain images, like their homes, be removed or blurred. Google said it had met with the data protection commissioner, Hanspeter Thür, before the introduction of the Swiss version of Street View and received “the green light to launch the product” in August. After the authorities raised objections, Google said it had offered other protective measures, but said the commissioner rejected them as inadequate. “We are disappointed that Herr Thür has changed his position on Street View after launch, and that he has not considered our proposals for further improvements to the product,” Google said in a statement. “We will vigorously defend Street View in court and we’re committed to continue bringing the benefits of this product to Swiss users.” The authority said it had never explicitly endorsed Google’s safeguards. It also said the lawsuit followed complaints from more than 100 people. Switzerland is one of several European countries, including Britain, Germany and Greece, in which Street View has prompted privacy objections. In Germany, the company has agreed to remove even the raw images it stores, not just the published pictures, of people who object to their inclusion. In another privacy-related matter, Google and other search engines have reduced the period of time they store Web search data, under pressure from the European Commission. Under Swiss law, which is known for its tradition of discretion, individuals have considerable control over the use of their images, the privacy agency maintains.


Last Shutdown a Lesson Lost on Capitol Hill

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The ghosts of shutdowns past are lurking in the halls of the Capitol, influencing Congressional leaders as they look for a way out of the latest budget standoff and wonder who will take the fall. But there is one little problem: even those who lived through those government shutdowns have varied recollections, or none at all, about how and why they happened. “I’ll buy you a Coke Zero if you can tell me what the government shutdown was about in ’95,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who was among the raucous House freshmen then. “What was the issue? Nobody remembers!” Previous Congresses and administrations managed to find a way out of their own conflagrations. In fact, the last major shutdowns, in late 1995 and early 1996, paved the way for sweeping bipartisan compromises, including tax and budget changes that both Congressional Republicans and President Bill Clinton were pleased to call their own. The entire exercise solidified a pattern of high-pressure, low-skill budget showdowns for the next generation, but a sinewy economy made it all seem O.K. “It’s easy to look back and say it was all planned that way,” said Leon E. Panetta, Mr. Obama’s former defense secretary and Mr. Clinton’s chief of staff during the shutdowns. “But I have to tell you, it was a day-to-day crisis, and you never quite knew what the hell was going to happen.” Whether those stuck in some Congressional fiscal jam in 2033 will study 2013 for lessons on how a divided Washington finally pulled back from the brink with a last-minute compromise or engaged in a meltdown that harmed the economy and ended careers is yet to be determined. But in many ways, Washington of today feels a lot like 1995-96, when the government shut down twice over the course of a month. Image The budget fight between President Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich in the mid-1990s paved the way for bipartisan compromises. That is unlikely to be the case today. Credit William J. Clinton Presidential Library Then, as now, partisan rancor over federal spending burned hotly. Congressional Republicans complained bitterly about the Democratic president, jabbing at him for playing too much golf and opposing military action in a factionalized foreign land. Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, then on a lower rung of leadership, was tormented by House freshmen who were trying to use spending agreements to undo social policy, lamenting that “you can’t bring about this much change without a lot of listening and hand-holding.” Partisan divides over the role and scope of government are even deeper now, with the procedures of government thrown into such chaos that Republican senators took to the floor last week to offer something close to a comedy roast of one of their own, Ted Cruz of Texas. The lessons of the Clinton-era deadlock, which damaged the Republican Party while restoring a weakened president, may be elusive. Unlike this Congress, both chambers then were ruled by one party, which worked in concert, at least in the beginning, to undermine a president who, unlike Mr. Obama, was up for re-election. Mr. Clinton engaged in daily castigations of Congress while keeping alive negotiations with his adversaries, two things Mr. Obama eschews. Further, Mr. Clinton’s incipient opponent back then, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, was the majority leader with a centrist agenda that is hard to find among current Senate Republicans. “It’s mind boggling,” Mr. Dole said of the current budget impasse. “The difference between then and now is the Senate said enough is enough.” (Also, no senator performed a fake filibuster as Mr. Cruz did last week. They were old-fashioned that way.) An important structural difference exists as well: before the shutdowns of 1995-96, Congress had already passed numerous appropriations bills to finance main areas of government. Congress today has passed zero, the net result of an earmark ban (money to fix a bridge tends to be the best fixer for hurt feelings) and a divided opinion in the House and Senate over how much money the government is actually allowed to spend. “This would be as complete a government shutdown as you can get,” said Stan Collender, a veteran federal budget expert. Video A look at the costs, closings and other ramifications of a government shutdown. Credit Credit Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Stalemates between Congress and the White House over spending have existed since the government began, but they became more severe during the 1970s, leading to an increased number of stopgap spending agreements. From that ensued increasingly protracted fights over how to fix those spending gaps, and the spending bills became proxies for other policy battles. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan, sparring with Democrats over spending, military aid to Nicaragua and other issues, initiated a shutdown of various cabinet-level agencies for a short period. President George Bush had his own fight with Congress over discretionary spending, which led to a shutdown in 1990. In the 1996 fiscal year, which featured the two most infamous shutdowns in American history, the battle between Congress and Mr. Clinton centered principally around how to balance the budget, with a side fight over Medicare premiums that ultimately provoked the shutdown. Republicans wore lapel pins calling for a balanced budget. The current fight over a doomed Republican plan to deprive Mr. Obama’s health care law of money, Mr. Graham said, “is about taking a legislative proposal, the signature issue of the president, and asking him to walk away from it. I just don’t see that as being the best tactic.” In stark contrast to the current fight, the Republican game plan in the mid-1990s came from the top. The speaker at the time, Newt Gingrich, fresh off a popular campaign to take over the House, led the shutdown strategy, and his members largely rallied around it. Senate Republicans, while dubious about the politics, went along for the ride. Today, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, is plagued by both his minority status and a primary challenge from the right. He has done little to bridge the gap between Republicans willing to fight to the end and those who want to move on. But the latest crop of Republican senators often seems impervious to pressure from their leaders. It was Mr. Dole, with his presidential ambitions affirmed and his control of his conference secure, who pulled the plug on Mr. Gingrich and his revolutionaries. Mr. Dole said his biggest regret was not moving sooner. “I think we could have ended it a day or two earlier,” he said, “because Clinton was eating our lunch.”

Legislation
US Politics
Federal Budget
US Economy
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
House of Representatives
Congress
Senate
Congress


Dangers of Giving In to Impulse for Revenge

Abstract: I found the machinations in the Netflix political series “House of Cards” to be immensely entertaining but a little over the top — until, that is, the traffic jam scandal in New Jersey. I was initially perplexed by what appears to have been a ham-handed effort by Gov. Chris Christie’s aides and his appointees at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to retaliate against Fort Lee’s mayor, Mark Sokolich, by tying up traffic at the George Washington Bridge, which connects Fort Lee to Manhattan. If retaliation is what it was, it would have worked only if the supposed offender knew he was being punished and why. And if the goal was also to set an example and persuade other local politicians to fall into line, they would have needed to know, too. That’s why criminal trials and sentencing proceedings in this country are public. But once the mayor and other New Jersey politicians realized what was really going on and went to the news media, the result was a scandal that eclipsed any effort at retaliation. Heads have rolled, Mr. Christie’s presumed presidential aspirations have been dealt a potentially fatal blow, and federal prosecutors are digging into the affair for possible crimes. So for the instigators of this scheme, whoever they turn out to be, this was a lose-lose proposition from the start, since there were only two possible outcomes: ■ A traffic jam that harmed a lot of innocent New Jersey residents (including, no doubt, many Christie voters) but otherwise accomplished nothing, or; ■ A major scandal, which is what Mr. Christie got. Ethics, morality and legality aside, why would anyone do this? It’s not as if the Christie scandal is an isolated example. Business lore is filled with instances of ill-advised efforts at retaliation against competitors, suppliers, customers and employees. The courts are currently clogged with cases claiming unlawful retaliation against corporate whistle-blowers and labor organizers. One case reached the Supreme Court this summer. Retaliation is hardly unusual in politics either. The Christie affair reminds me of the I. Lewis Libby scandal, when top White House officials, including Mr. Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s top aide, decided to punish Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador critical of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq, by outing his wife, Valerie Plame, as a covert C.I.A. agent. After the ensuing inept cover-up, Mr. Libby was sentenced to prison in 2007 (though his sentence was commuted by President George W. Bush) and the Bush administration suffered an incalculable loss of credibility. About the only punishment Mr. Wilson suffered was lucrative book and movie deals. And in the world of fiction, there is “House of Cards,” whose plot is set in motion when Representative Frank Underwood decides to retaliate after the president fails to keep his promise to make Mr. Underwood secretary of state. That, too, seems to be blowing up on the congressman (played by Kevin Spacey), although we’ll have to wait for Season 2, which begins next month, to be sure. But these examples of political and corporate retaliation may not be as simple as I assumed. There’s extensive research in economics, political science and philosophy into behavior that is motivated by “observable” as opposed to “verifiable” facts, which may help explain the Christie bridge affair and other dubious instances of retaliation. An “observable” fact is something that people may witness and believe to be true, but cannot prove. Many people seem to have concluded, for example, that Governor Christie instigated the bridge episode. He had the motive, and there is substantial evidence that he ran a tight ship and that his aides would not have freelanced on so delicate and risky a mission. But no one has proved that, and Mr. Christie has flatly denied it. So far it has not been verified. As Randal Picker, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School and co-author of “Game Theory and the Law,” explained to me this week, “If you are a politician with a desire to punish opponents and get away with it, you want to work in the world of observable but not verifiable actions. That would mean that your opponents would understand what you are doing, which is important if you actually want them to obey upfront so that you don’t have to punish them later, but also you want to use a punishment where a third party can’t be sure that you have acted for illegitimate reasons. That way you can get away with it and not pay a legal price for it.” The same could be said of business executives. In the Christie example, that might mean that a relatively small group of political insiders — the mayor of Fort Lee and other local officials — would figure out what was going on and fall into line with the governor’s agenda. But everyone else would be perplexed or indifferent. Mr. Christie seemed to embrace this idea when he initially mocked the suggestion that he might be involved, joking to reporters in December, “I actually was the guy working the cones out there.” He then added, “You really are not serious with that question?” The Libby case and fictional “House of Cards” scheme also depended on the targets figuring it out, but not anyone else, and especially not anyone in the news media. And the retaliation may have served no rational purpose, but may have nonetheless been emotionally satisfying to the perpetrators. Oliver Hart, an economics professor at Harvard and a leading scholar on the role of observable facts, said, “The Christie people were angry with the Fort Lee mayor and possibly wanted to hurt him, even if he never knew why. Basically, if you hurt me, I hurt you back because I am angry (and maybe want to get it out of my system), and this is so even if it has no effect on your future behavior or that of others. An example might be when a waiter spits in the soup of an obnoxious customer. In the behavioral economics literature, this is called negative reciprocity.” In the case that reached the Supreme Court this summer, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center withdrew a job offer to Naiel Nassar, a physician of Middle Eastern descent, after he complained that his supervisor discriminated against him because of his ethnicity. (Among other things, the lawsuit said, the supervisor observed, “Middle Easterners are lazy.”) The doctor claimed unlawful retaliation after he lodged a complaint, but the medical center insisted there were other legitimate reasons that he was not asked to stay. A jury sided with Dr. Nassar, but the Supreme Court reversed that decision, saying that the doctor had not proved that unlawful discrimination was the sole basis for his losing his job. In other words, an observable fact (discrimination on the basis of ethnicity) could not be verified. Of course, the outcome might have been different if the doctor was a household name and the case touched off more scrutiny from the news media. “The theory depends on an idea of separated communication: something that is understood by the insiders but not transparent to outsiders,” Professor Picker said. There is no way to know how many people get away with this kind of retaliation, but “it’s a risky game,” said Joseph Badaracco, professor of business ethics at Harvard Business School. “From a management viewpoint, the important thing would be to carefully assess the benefits and the risks. In this case, as we have seen, the risks to Christie’s reputation were significant. So were the possible payoffs really that great? Politicians and others sometimes play hardball, of course, and sometimes they have no choice, but they still have to be prudent about it.” Many forms of retaliation are lawful, even laudable, and can be a powerful motivator. (“Don’t get mad, get even.”) The impulse to retaliate for a perceived wrong seems deeply rooted in human nature. “The idea that people should be held responsible for their actions, and thus might sometimes have to be punished, apart from any good consequences of punishing them, has a pretty distinguished pedigree going back to Immanuel Kant,” said Judith Lichtenberg, a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University and author of an article called “ The Ethics of Retaliation .” “I would say that most people are committed to some version of this idea.” But it’s one thing to cancel meetings with someone who has crossed you, as the mayor of Jersey City now claims Governor Christie did, or to stop taking phone calls, or to snub someone at social events. It’s another to embark on something that may be illegal or unethical and expect to get away with it. The simple lesson from the Christie scandal may be this: When that impulse occurs, whether in politics, business, or daily life, don’t do it.

Chris Christie
Mark J Sokolich
Politics
Bridges,Tunnels
George Washington Bridge
New Jersey


Low-Key Furyk and Sizzling Scott Tame Oak Hill

Abstract: PITTSFORD, N.Y. — In a voice as expressive as an air conditioner’s hum, Jim Furyk said he felt really in control of his game and was pleased with his play Thursday at the P.G.A. Championship. Furyk posted a five-under-par 65 at Oak Hill Country Club on a course softened by a predawn thunderstorm and left defenseless by the disappearance of its bodyguard breezes. “Trust me,” Furyk, a 16-time tour winner, said with a deadpan expression, “I’ll be in a good mood the rest of today.” If he had not said so, it would have been hard to know. Furyk was so low-key in his news conference that he came across as someone in search not of his second major title but of his next drink of 5-hour Energy, a product he happens to endorse. Furyk, 43, stirred to life only when reminded of his lackluster finishes over the past 14 months, starting with the 2012 United States Open, where he was tied for the lead with three holes to play and stumbled to a tie for fourth. His woes continued at the Ryder Cup, where he lost a lead, and his final-day singles match, to Spain’s Sergio García, to help deliver the victory to Europe. Image Jim Furyk reacting to his second shot on the eighth hole. Credit Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency His shakiness on the greens, accentuated by two clutch putts that he missed down the stretch in his match against García, spilled into 2013. Furyk had two top-10 finishes in the first four months, but in the meat of the season he posted two missed cuts, at the United States and British Opens, with a tie for 44th at the AT&T National in between. “I’m on a nice little high, but you all are trying to bring me down,” he said. “No wonder you guys are on that side. You have bad thoughts too often.” His mock fury spent, Furyk impassively allowed that while it was disappointing to have failed on the game’s biggest stages, it was not dispiriting. “This sport beats you up,” he said. The proof is in Furyk’s results from 2003, which included victories in the United States Open and the Buick Open. It was a great run, to be sure, but he played in 27 events, which means that he lost 25 times. “You’ve got to take your lumps,” Furyk said. “You’re going to have your good moments and your bad ones. I’ve always been very good at looking at the situation and figuring out how I could have made it better.” Image Tiger Woods hitting his fourth shot from a bunker on the ninth. Credit Patrick Semansky/Associated Press It looked as if Adam Scott, who played with Justin Rose and Phil Mickelson in the afternoon, would better Furyk’s score when he made five consecutive birdies starting at the fourth hole. Scott, the reigning Masters champion, made the turn in a five-under 30. He cooled off after a 70-minute delay because of thunderstorms in the area, playing the back nine in even par to match Furyk’s 65. The top of the leader board is not necessarily the best place to be on Thursdays. Of the 32 PGA Tour events this year that have been contested over 72 holes, the first-round leaders went on to win in five. Furyk, whose best finish this year is a tie for third at the Texas Open in April, hit 15 greens and took 29 putts. His bid for a six-birdie, bogey-free round ended on his last hole, the ninth, when his drive landed in the right rough, he had to chip out into the fairway because low-hanging tree branches obstructed his trajectory to the green and he missed his par putt after knocking his nine-iron approach to 20 feet. “Right now we are jockeying for position,” he said. Furyk knows the odds he is facing. At the 2002 P.G.A. Championship at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Minnesota, Furyk opened with a 68 and held a share of the lead. He followed it with rounds of 73, 76 and 71 to finish ninth. Since 1958, the first-round leader has gone on to win the P.G.A. Championship nine times, most recently in 2000, when Tiger Woods pulled off a wire-to-wire victory at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky. Woods carded a 71 on Thursday, which included a double bogey on his last hole, the ninth. Image Lee Westwood teeing off on the par-5, 598-yard 13th hole. Westwood shot a 66 and was one stroke back of the leaders. Credit Stuart Franklin/Getty Images Woods, a five-time winner this year, was in a group with Keegan Bradley and Davis Love III. On their 10th hole, they were put on the clock after falling out of position. On their 11th, Woods missed a birdie putt of less than five feet, which he attributed in part to haste. One of the best stories, and scores, of the first round was supplied by Kiradech Aphibarnrat, a 24-year-old from Thailand who posted a 68 in the morning. In a nod to his portly physique and swing-out-of-his-shoes style, Aphibarnrat has earned the sobriquet the Asian John Daly after the 1991 P.G.A. Championship winner. “I am really proud of that name,” Aphibarnrat said. A few years ago, Aphibarnrat gave up his birth name, Anujit Hirunratanakorn, in an effort to sway his fortunes. “I believe in luck,” he said, adding that his new name “is more lucky.” Before he became one of Asia’s rising stars with a victory on the European Tour and two titles on the Asian Tour, Aphibarnrat was lapping fields in a racecar. In his late teens, he said, he raced Subaru Imprezas. “I was not so bad,” he said. The hazards were far more dangerous than in golf, so when he was 21, Aphibarnrat gave up racing as a birthday present to his mother. “She was so happy, she was crying,” he said. Golf has its spills and thrills, but it is not the same. “Golf is like shot by shot,” Aphibarnrat said. “But racing, you have to go and go. It’s more intense.”

Jim Furyk
Adam Scott
PGA Championship
Golf


N.B.A. Playoffs — Knicks Hit Bump on Road to Round 2

Abstract: BOSTON It was all going so smoothly for the Knicks, and we have come to understand that they don’t often do smooth. For the better part of N.B.A. time, they have not been known as a team that walks the straightest line to success, or anywhere, for that matter. But Sunday afternoon at a TD Garden that housed a fair number of New York fans ready to party, the Knicks had the Celtics right where they wanted them, wondering where a 20-point third-quarter lead had disappeared to and on the brink of following it into N.B.A. playoff oblivion. The Knicks were looking at a four-game sweep of their traditional rivals, the likelihood of a full week off before the next series and the right to claim that no team, not even Miami, had acquitted itself better in the first round. And that’s when Jason Terry, who couldn’t wait to hit the floor when J. R. Smith’s tattooed right arm connected with his head Friday night in Game 3, rose to the moment of poetic opportunity. He scored the final 9 points of overtime in a 97-90 Celtics victory and claimed that Smith was on his mind only when he touched the area around his nose. “Still hurts right now,” he said, still playing Smith’s inexplicable but hardly criminal mistake for all it was worth. “Long as I feel that, I’ll be thinking about it.” Let’s just say that there have been acts of aggression far more severe across the playoff decades than what got Smith suspended for Game 4 — a fair number of them perpetuated by Knicks. More concerning was what the incident portended for a franchise infamous for tripping over its own intransigence. If this was how Smith and the Knicks were dealing with the good fortune of drawing the Rajon Rondo-less Celtics, how would they respond to anticipated adversity ahead? The absence of Smith, the Knicks’ second-leading scorer, was felt most in the first half, when their second unit — which begged for an appearance by Chris Copeland but got Quentin Richardson instead — had not one player capable of creating his own shot. With the exception of a third-quarter burst by Raymond Felton while Carmelo Anthony sat with four fouls, the Knicks regressed in both halves to a style that will not beat Miami. Call it Melo and Four Statues. Game 4: Knicks vs. Celtics 12 Photos View Slide Show › Image Richard Perry/The New York Times “Honestly, as far as J. R. goes, we miss — I missed — him out there,” Anthony said. “But J. R. being out doesn’t change the way I shoot the basketball. Those are the shots I’ve been taking the whole series. I missed a lot. A ton.” He missed 25 of 35, to be exact, including a bricked 3-pointer on the Knicks’ last chance to tie. Anthony also committed seven turnovers. Felton, who has all but destroyed the defensive reputation of Avery Bradley, said of Anthony: “When the game is on the line, you’re going to give the ball to No. 7. That’s what we’ve been doing all year. There’s no need to change it now.” This speaks to the endless debate on how Anthony and the Knicks should play, too often argued in black and white when the color of the discussion should be gray. It’s not as if Anthony makes a predetermination to take 35 shots and dominate the ball. He is not necessarily afflicted by selfishness as much as he settles into old habits — probably cultivated in too many Amateur Athletic Union showcases — of holding the ball for three or four seconds too long, breaking the team’s offensive rhythm. But if Bad Melo had to emerge with the Knicks on the verge of sweeping a team they are clearly better than, so be it. They are not the Nets, choking away a 14-point lead in the last four minutes at Chicago and falling behind by 3-1 to a team without its best player. The Celtics will go to New York for Game 5 on Wednesday night, still without a competent point guard and with a bench pretty much imported from China. Despite that 20-point lead and stellar offensive games from Paul Pierce and Jeff Green, Boston was fortunate to survive regulation, when Anthony missed two free throws and the reserve forward Chris Wilcox deflected Jason Kidd’s side-court inbounds pass intended for an open Tyson Chandler at the rim. From the looks of the Celtics, Sunday’s win will be meaningful only if the late burst by Terry can take on the mystical quality of Dave Roberts’s steal of second base against Mariano Rivera in Game 4 of the 2004 American League Championship Series. You remember that one? Bradley, who grew up in Tacoma, Wash., and was in middle school when the Red Sox overcame a 3-0 series deficit against the Yankees, did not. “Don’t know anything about that,” he said, looking bewildered. Terry, out of Seattle, added, “Don’t tell anyone — I’m a Mariners fan.” How’s this for fate? Terry’s 3-pointer in transition that put Boston ahead for good came off an outlet from Green, who was in the right spot to catch a rare Chandler tap-out (off a missed Iman Shumpert jumper) that didn’t land in the hands of a Knick. Terry, a veteran scorer who has made nobody in New England forget Ray Allen in his first Celtics season, was giddy in the locker room, promising that the Celtics would fight on in New York, even if the Knicks should suit up Patrick Ewing along with the returning Smith. Terry is old enough to remember the head butts and brawls that plagued the 1990s Knicks. Little came easy to Ewing, John Starks and those characters who walked a fine line between passionate and pugnacious. Based on the weekend in Boston, we may assume little has changed.

Basketball
Knicks
Celtics
Carmelo Anthony
J R Smith
Jason Terry


Governors Devise Bipartisan Effort to Reduce Opioid Abuse

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Alarmed at an epidemic of drug overdose deaths, the National Governors Association decided over the weekend to devise treatment protocols to reduce the use of opioid painkillers. The guidelines are likely to include numerical limits on prescriptions, or other restrictions, governors said. Bipartisan concern about the abuse of addictive pain medications unexpectedly dominated sessions of the National Governors Association, and governors said they would take their concerns to the White House, where they are scheduled to hold a business meeting with President Obama on Monday after a more social gathering at the White House on Sunday night. Gov. Peter Shumlin of Vermont, a Democrat, and Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky, a Republican, led the effort to press states to take action. Opioids “are passed out like candy in America,” Mr. Shumlin said. He cited federal data showing that health care providers wrote more than 250 million prescriptions a year for painkillers, enough for every American adult to have a bottle of pills. In 2014, more than 47,000 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and opioids — primarily prescription pain medicines and heroin — were the main drugs responsible for overdose deaths. The governors’ health and human services committee approved Mr. Shumlin’s proposal to develop protocols to ensure safer prescribing of opioid pain relievers. Mr. Bevin said that the roots of the problem were economic, and that the solution must involve “the people who develop, sell, profit from and approve these drugs.” Governors said they had decided to act because they had not received enough help from doctors or from drug companies that make the addictive prescription pain medications. Gov. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, a Democrat, said doctors had “pushed back” when she tried to limit the amount of opioids that could be prescribed by certain health care providers. Governors heard a presentation by Andrew Dreyfus, the president of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, whose policies were described as a possible model for states. The company requires “prior authorization” for certain opioid prescriptions and requires some patients to use a single drugstore for opioid prescriptions. With these and other safety measures, Mr. Dreyfus said, the Blue Cross Blue Shield plan has reduced claims for short-acting opioid painkillers like Vicodin and Percocet by 25 percent and reduced claims for long-acting opioids like OxyContin by 50 percent, by switching patients to short-acting pain treatments. In Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, and the legislature are working on a comprehensive bill to limit the amount of opioids that could be dispensed to patients on their first prescription. State officials said at least 1,100 people in Massachusetts died of opioid overdoses in 2014, an increase of 65 percent from 2012. Dr. Patrice A. Harris, the chairwoman-elect of the American Medical Association , said doctors welcomed the opportunity to work with governors on solutions to end this public health problem. But she added, “The A.M.A. wants to make sure that prescribing decisions — the decision to prescribe or not to prescribe — stay in the hands of physicians.” Most states have programs that collect and analyze data on the prescribing of controlled substances, and governors said doctors should routinely check these databases to identify patients who are abusing prescription drugs. Governors said they expected drug companies to resist their efforts. But Mr. Shumlin said he was optimistic because “you have the most conservative Republican governors and the most liberal Democratic governors agreeing” on the urgent need for action to combat the epidemic. A monograph prepared by the National Governors Association acknowledges the difficulties that its members face. “Reducing the opioid pill supply, for example, can have the unintended consequence of increasing heroin use,” it said. “Laws aimed at unscrupulous providers can make ethical providers less willing to prescribe out of fear of scrutiny from law enforcement.” And “one state’s successful efforts to reduce illicit sources of prescription drugs can shift illegal activities to neighboring states.”

Governors
US states
Opioids
Drug Abuse
Pharmaceuticals
AMA
Matt Bevin
Peter Shumlin


Secret Service Pulls Agents From Detail for Drinking

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Secret Service has sent home three of its agents who were in the Netherlands to provide security for President Obama’s trip there, according to senior law enforcement officials, citing “disciplinary reasons” in connection with the agents’ drinking. One of the agents who was sent home was found passed out in a hallway, the officials said, adding that the agents were caught drinking before Mr. Obama arrived there this week for meetings with European allies. A spokesman for the Secret Service declined to provide further details about the episode. The disclosure, first reported by The Washington Post, is the latest embarrassment for an agency whose agents’ behavior has been under scrutiny since April 2012, when several were caught with prostitutes in their hotel rooms during a presidential trip to Cartagena, Colombia. After that scandal, the Secret Service imposed new guidelines and regulations in an attempt to crack down on agents’ behavior while they were traveling, particularly when they were abroad. The agency ruled that “alcohol may only be consumed in moderate amounts” on the trips, and that agents were prohibited from drinking alcohol less than 10 hours before reporting for duty. Under the new guidelines, Secret Service employees were also prohibited from inviting foreigners to their rooms, other than hotel staff members and law enforcement counterparts. And in an apparent attempt to clarify whether agents were allowed to spend time at strip clubs and brothels, a Secret Service memo was explicit: “Patronization of nonreputable establishments is prohibited.” The agency also created an “Inspection Hotline” for employees to report misconduct. Despite the negative attention from that event, the inspector general’s office for the Department of Homeland Security said in a December report that there was not widespread misconduct among Secret Service agents, and that the agency’s leadership had not “fostered an environment that tolerates inappropriate behavior.” The agency dismissed many of the employees involved in the Cartagena episode, and in December — amid accusations that he had not stringently investigated the Secret Service’s scandals — the acting inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, Charles K. Edwards, resigned. According to the report, roughly 83 percent of the 2,575 agency employees who participated in a survey conducted by the inspector general said they were not aware of other employees who had behaved like those who were caught in Cartagena. It also said that 61 percent of those queried said they “believed management does not tolerate misconduct.” The inspector general’s office said that as part of its investigation it had interviewed more than 200 Secret Service supervisors and senior officials. According to a senior United States official, the inspector general’s office also reviewed five years of internal investigations. Mr. Obama has been in Europe this week, working to persuade his European allies to support sanctions against Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and to help finance an economic recovery for Ukraine. He left the Netherlands on Tuesday for Brussels.

Secret Service
Ethics Misconduct Malfeasance
Netherlands
US