How Baboons Think (Yes, Think)

Abstract: Royal is a cantankerous old male baboon whose troop of some 80 members lives in the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana. A perplexing event is about to disturb his day. From the bushes to his right, he hears a staccato whoop, the distinctive call that female baboons always make after mating. He recognizes the voice as that of Jackalberry, the current consort of Cassius, a male who outranks Royal in the strict hierarchy of male baboons. No hope of sex today. But then, surprisingly, he hears Cassius’s signature greeting grunt to his left. His puzzlement is plain on the video made of his reaction. You can almost see the wheels turn slowly in his head: “Jackalberry here, but Cassius over there. Hmm, Jackalberry must be hooking up with some one else. But that means Cassius has left her unguarded. Say what — this is my big chance!” The video shows him loping off in the direction of Jackalberry’s whoop. But all that he will find is the loudspeaker from which researchers have played Jackalberry’s recorded call. The purpose of the experiment is not to ruin Royal’s day but to understand what goes on in a baboon’s mind, in this case how carefully the animals keep track of transient relationships. Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth, a husband-and-wife team of biologists at the University of Pennsylvania , have spent 14 years observing the Moremi baboons. Through ingenious playback experiments performed by themselves and colleagues, the researchers say they have worked out many aspects of what baboons use their minds for, along with their limitations. Reading a baboon’s mind affords an excellent grasp of the dynamics of baboon society. But more than that, it bears on the evolution of the human mind and the nature of human existence. As Darwin jotted down in a notebook of 1838, “He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.” Dr. Cheney and Dr. Seyfarth are well known for a 1990 book on vervet monkeys, “How Monkeys See the World,” in which they showed how much about the animals’ mental processes could be deduced from careful experiments. When a baby vervet’s call is played to three females, for instance, the mother looks to the source of the sound. The two others look to the mother, evidence that vervets know whose baby is whose. An experiment like this — recording the sounds, waiting until the animals are in the right place and performing numerous controls — can take months to complete, but the results are widely admired by other biologists. “Any work of Dorothy and Robert’s is going to be as good as you get in the field,” said Robert M. Sapolsky, a Stanford biologist and an author who has studied baboons in the wild for many years. “There is no one else in the area of animal behavior who does such incredibly interesting experiments in the field,” said Marc Hauser, a biologist at Harvard who was their first student. Dr. Cheney and Dr. Seyfarth have summed up their new cycle of research in a book titled, after Darwin’s comment, “Baboon Metaphysics.” Their conclusion, based on many painstaking experiments, is that baboons’ minds are specialized for social interaction, for understanding the structure of their complex society and for navigating their way within it. The shaper of a baboon’s mind is natural selection. Those with the best social skills leave the most offspring. “Monkey society is governed by the same two general rules that governed the behavior of women in so many 19th-century novels,” Dr. Cheney and Dr. Seyfarth write. “Stay loyal to your relatives (though perhaps at a distance, if they are an impediment), but also try to ingratiate yourself with the members of high-ranking families.” Baboon society revolves around mother-daughter lines of descent. Eight or nine matrilines are in a troop, each with a rank order. This hierarchy can remain stable for generations. By contrast, the male hierarchy, which consists mostly of baboons born in other troops, is always changing as males fight among themselves and with new arrivals. Rank among female baboons is hereditary, with a daughter assuming her mother’s rank. News of that fact gave great satisfaction to a member of the British royal family, Princess Michael of Kent. She visited Dr. Cheney and Dr. Seyfarth in Botswana, remarking to them, they report: “I always knew that when people who aren’t like us claim that hereditary rank is not part of human nature, they must be wrong. Now you’ve given me evolutionary proof!” Baboons live with danger on every side. Many fall prey to lions, leopards, pythons and the crocodiles that in the wet season stalk the fords where baboons cross from one island to another. Baboon watchers are subject to the same hazards. Dr. Cheney and Dr. Seyfarth say their rules are not to work alone or to wade into water deeper than knee high. They often find themselves sitting in a tree with baboons waiting out a lion below. But going into New York is more petrifying, they contend, than dodging Botswana’s predators. The baboons will bark to warn of lions and leopards, but pay no attention to some other species dangerous to humans like buffalo and elephant. On two occasions, baboons have attacked animals, a leopard and a honey badger, that threatened their human companions. “We haven’t lost any post-docs,” Dr. Seyfarth said. For female baboons, another constant worry besides predation is infanticide. Their babies are put in peril at each of the frequent upheavals in the male hierarchy. The reason is that new alpha males enjoy brief reigns, seven to eight months on average, and find at first that the droits de seigneur they had anticipated are distinctly unpromising. Most of the females are not sexually receptive because they are pregnant or nurturing unweaned children. An unpleasant fact of baboon life is that the alpha male can make mothers re-enter their reproductive cycles, and boost his prospects of fatherhood, by killing their infants. The mothers can secure some protection for their babies by forming close bonds with other females and with male friends, particularly those who were alpha when their children were conceived and who may be the father. Still, more than half of all deaths among baby baboons are from infanticide. So important are these social skills that it is females with the best social networks, not those most senior in the hierarchy, who leave the most offspring. Although the baboon and human lines of descent split apart some 30 million years ago, the species have much in common. Both are primates whose ancestors came down from the trees and learned to survive on the ground in large social groups. The baboon mind may therefore shed considerable light on the early stages of the evolution of the human mind. In some of their playback experiments, Dr. Cheney and Dr. Seyfarth have tested baboons’ knowledge of where everyone stands in the hierarchy. In a typical interaction, a dominant baboon gives a threat grunt, and its inferior screams. From their library of recorded baboon sounds, the researchers can fabricate a sequence in which an inferior baboon’s threat grunt is followed by a superior’s scream. Baboons pay little attention when a normal interaction is played to them but show surprise when they hear the fabricated sequence implying their social world has been turned upside down. This simple reaction says a lot about what is going in the baboon’s mind. That the animal can construe “A dominates B,” and distinguish it from “B dominates A,” means it must be able to break a stream of sounds down into separate elements, recognize the meaning of each, and combine the meanings into a sentence-like thought. “That’s what we do when we parse a sentence,” Dr. Seyfarth said. Human language seems unique because no other species is capable of anything like speech. But when it comes to perceiving and deconstructing sounds, as opposed to making them, baboons’ ability seems much more language-like. Assuming that early humans inherited the same ability from their joint ancestor with baboons, then when humans first started to combine sounds in the beginning of spoken language, “their listeners were all ready to perceive them,” Dr. Seyfarth said. Baboons may be good at perceiving and thinking in a combinative way, but their vocal output consists of single sounds that are never combined, like greeting grunts, the females’ sexual whoop and the males’ competitive “wahoo!” cry. Why did language, expressed in combinations of sounds, evolve in humans but not in baboons? A possible key to the puzzle lies in what animal psychologists call theory of mind, the ability to infer what another animal does or does not know. Baboons seem to have a very feeble theory of mind. When they cross from one island to another, ever fearful of crocodiles, the adults will often go first, leaving the juveniles fretting at the water’s edge. However much the young baboons call, their mothers never come back to help, as if unable to divine their children’s predicament. But people have a very strong ability to recognize the mental states of others, and this could have prompted a desire to communicate that drove the evolution of language. “If I know you don’t know something, I am highly motivated to communicate it,” Dr. Seyfarth said. It is far from clear why humans acquired a strong theory of mind faculty and baboons did not. Another difference between the two species is brain size. Some biologists have suggested that the demands of social living were the evolutionary pressure that enhanced the size of the brain. But the largest brains occur in chimpanzees and humans, who live in smaller groups than baboons. But both chimps and humans use tools. Possibly social life drove the evolution of the primate brain to a certain point, and the stimulus of tool use then took over. Use of tools would have spurred communication, as the owner of a tool explained to others how to use it. But that requires a theory of mind, and Dr. Cheney and Dr. Seyfarth are skeptical of claims that chimpanzees have a theory of mind, in part because the experiments supporting that position have been conducted on captive chimps. “It’s bewildering to us that none of the people who study ape cognition have been motivated to study wild chimpanzees,” Dr. Cheney said. “Baboons provide you with an example of what sort of social and cognitive complexity is possible in the absence of language and a theory of mind,” she said. “The selective forces that gave rise to our large brains and our full-blown theory of mind remain mysterious, at least to us.”

Monkeys and Apes
Families and Family Life
Animals
Language and Languages
University of Pennsylvania
Cheney Dorothy


Navy Secretary Nominee Drew Notice Over Divorce

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama’s nominee for secretary of the Navy was involved in a divorce that drew national attention for his secret taping of a conversation between his wife and his family priest that he used against her in court proceedings. The nominee, Ray Mabus, is a former governor of Mississippi and a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and he served in the Navy during the Vietnam War. Mr. Mabus, a Democrat, was a strong supporter of Mr. Obama in the campaign last year. In 1998, as Mr. Mabus and his wife, Julie (now Julie Hines), sought to work out their marital problems, he surreptitiously recorded a meeting the couple had with the Rev. Jerry McBride, a mutual friend. Mr. Mabus had told Mr. McBride in advance that he had been advised by a lawyer to tape the conversation, according to court records. Neither man mentioned the recording to Ms. Hines. During the session, she admitted having an affair and told her husband, “I will hate you till the day I die, and I will tell my children.” An expert psychiatric witness for Mr. Mabus referred to Ms. Hines’s recorded comments as evidence that he should get legal custody of the couple’s two daughters. The judge in the case awarded legal custody to Mr. Mabus and split physical custody between him and Ms. Hines. After the ruling, Ms. Hines, who expressed regret for her comments, sued Mr. McBride, his church and the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi, alleging malpractice and fraud. She did not sue Mr. Mabus, who broke no laws by recording the meeting. The suit drew attention in 2002 as a potential test case for privacy rights involving churches. Ms. Hines went on something of a media blitz, describing in nationally televised interviews what she called a betrayal by her priest in collusion with her ex-husband. A judge dismissed her suit in 2006; the Mississippi Supreme Court is expected to consider an appeal this year. A White House official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations on a personnel matter, said that officials who reviewed Mr. Mabus’s background knew about the messy divorce and did not view it as material to his potential duties as Navy secretary. In response to questions, the White House released a statement Sunday that said, “The president nominated Governor Mabus to be secretary of the Navy because he has the proven leadership and experience our nation needs to serve in this important position.” The United States senators from Mississippi, Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker, both Republicans, said last week when Mr. Mabus was nominated that they would support him. Mr. Wicker, who sits on the Armed Services Committee, which will review the nomination first, said in a statement Friday, “I look forward to assisting his confirmation process and to working with him to strengthen and improve our Navy.” Mr. Wicker did not respond to a request for comment Sunday. Mr. Mabus declined to comment Sunday. But his lawyer, Richard C. Roberts III, said Mr. Mabus recorded the session with his wife based on advice from his lawyer at the time and after having learned that she was having an affair. “It would just be a travesty,” Mr. Roberts said, “if this became a controversy when Ray Mabus was nothing more than a private individual confronting his wife about an adulterous affair in a manner prescribed by his lawyer. “For what it’s worth,” Mr. Roberts added, “Ray Mabus is probably one of the most intelligent, honorable people I know. I can’t imagine a better choice for secretary of the Navy.” Reached at home late Sunday, Ms. Hines said that she was still pursuing her case against the church and offered no criticism of Mr. Mabus’s nomination. “I’m very happy for his children because they’re proud of their father,” she said. Mr. Mabus was governor of Mississippi from 1988 to 1992 and served as the United States ambassador to Saudi Arabia for two years under President Bill Clinton. In the early 1970s, Mr. Mabus served in the Navy, aboard the cruiser Little Rock. As a civilian, he won distinguished public service awards from the Defense Department and the Army.

United States Defense and Military Forces


Obama and Economic Team Discuss Strategy

Abstract: VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. — Amid the latest signs of a faltering recovery, President Obama held a lengthy conference call with economic advisers on Wednesday to discuss a course of action in a partisan election season that leaves them little room to maneuver. The call, which the president held from his vacation retreat, was with his Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner; Christina D. Romer, the soon-departing chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers; and Lawrence H. Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council. The discussion came as the second report in two days pointed to a weaker-than-expected housing sector — a weakness that acts as a drag on the broader economy. “The discussion focused on recent data reports, global markets and economic growth,” said a White House statement afterward. “The economic team provided an update on the next steps to keep the economy growing, including assistance to small businesses and the extension of tax cuts to the middle class.” The president also is considering an initiative that would match public and private investments in transportation infrastructure projects. He hinted at the idea repeatedly, without details, during a multicity trip last week before he left on vacation. “We need 21st-century infrastructure — not just roads and bridges, but faster Internet access and high-speed rail — projects that can lead to hundreds of thousands of new, private sector jobs,” Mr. Obama said in Seattle. Yet when Congress returns from its summer break in September, all such efforts will hit a wall of Republican opposition. In part, the White House statement about the vacationing president’s conference call was intended to signal to voters his continued engagement on economic matters, even as his options are limited. The call came on a day when the government reported that sales of new homes fell unexpectedly in July, the first month in which buyers no longer could get a tax credit that was part of a federal stimulus program. That news followed an industry report on Tuesday that sales of existing homes in July slid to the lowest level in a decade. Together, the reports stoked fears among more pessimistic forecasters of another recession , though most economists still expect the economy to recover — if more slowly than previously thought. Also this week, on Tuesday, the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, delivered a blistering attack on the administration’s stimulus policies to set the opposition’s tone for the final campaign stretch. But on the same day, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that the policies had lifted growth in the second quarter by up to 4.5 percent. Some private forecasters have reduced their growth projections partly because the administration’s stimulus plan is winding down and a polarized Congress shows little sign of doing more. Mr. Obama and Congress’s Democratic leaders have only a short time for action between lawmakers’ return and their departure again in October to campaign for re-election. And Republicans are emboldened in their opposition, as polls attesting to the public’s frustration with persistent high unemployment make the party increasingly hopeful of winning control of Congress in November. In any case, nothing the White House and Congress do would show results before the elections. Even so, the pressure to act could well intensify next week when Mr. Obama is back in Washington. His week will be dominated by foreign policy — Mr. Obama gives a prime-time address on the end of combat operations in Iraq on Tuesday and then hosts two days of Middle East peace talks — yet it will end that Friday with the release of unemployment data for August, which has Democrats braced for disappointing news. The administration’s main initiative now, which the president proposed at the start of the year, would provide additional tax cuts to small businesses and create a government-backed body to increase lending to them. It has been stalled by Republicans in the Senate. Also, Congress must act by the end of this year if the Bush-era income tax cuts are to be extended beyond their Dec. 31 expiration. Mr. Obama wants to extend the tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans, but the Republicans are insisting on extending all the tax cuts given the economy’s continued weakness. The fight over tax cuts for the wealthy is likely to dominate discussion in coming weeks, and the president and his economic and political teams have only begun to focus on their strategy. Republicans say Democrats want to impose a big tax increase on successful small businesses by letting the tax rates for the wealthiest Americans expire, while Democrats counter that Republicans are fighting for the wealthiest 2 percent, who do not need the money and would not spend it to stimulate the economy. While data show that fewer than 3 percent of small businesses would pay higher taxes if the top rates revert to their pre-2001 level, enough Democratic lawmakers feel vulnerable to Republicans’ arguments about small businesses that the White House and Congressional leaders could end up postponing the issue until after the elections, in a lame-duck session. With the president on vacation, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been the administration’s public face. At a forum in a pizza restaurant in Washington on Wednesday, he said, “To extend those tax cuts costs $700 billion over 10 years at a time when we are worried about the economy, when long term, we have to be worried about deficits.”

United States Economy
United States Politics and Government
Obama Barack


Home Price Declines Moderating, Index Says

Abstract: In a hint of hope for the country’s struggling housing market, home prices did not fall as fast in April as they did in previous months, according to figures released Tuesday. Home prices continued to fall as unemployment rose and new foreclosures hit the market. But the pace of declines, which had been accelerating, leveled off slightly , according to the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index , a closely watched yardstick of the market. “This is a real relief,” Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a research note. “With sales volumes now stable and likely to rise a bit over the next few months, we think sustained slower price falls are a decent bet.” In April, home prices in 20 major metropolitan areas fell 18.1 percent from a year ago. Although that is a stark drop from April 2008 (when prices were already 15 percent below their April 2007 levels), it is milder than the 19 percent decline recorded in January. “It echoes parts of the larger economy,” said David M. Blitzer, index chairman at Standard & Poor’s. “The stock market bottomed in March and started to go up. Consumer sentiment numbers have gotten better as well. There’s a little pickup in the way people view the financial world, and it’s beginning to show up in housing.” Home prices in eight markets actually crept up in April from a month earlier as bargain-hunting buyers tiptoed back into markets. Prices in Cleveland, Dallas and Denver all rose more than 1 percent for the month, although those cities and all of the 20 metro areas in the survey were still down for the year. But single-home prices are still plunging in parts of the United States hit hardest by the housing boom and bust. Prices in Las Vegas fell 3.5 percent from a month earlier, and were down 32.2 percent from April 2008. Prices in Phoenix were 35.3 percent lower than a year ago. While the rate of decline did slow a bit, home prices are still under enormous pressure as potential buyers lose their jobs or suffer wage cuts. Home mortgage rates have also bounced back from record lows as investors put more pressure on government bonds, leading to concerns about whether higher borrowing costs will pressure sellers to cut their prices even further. But over all, economists characterized the numbers as a positive, if small, step for the housing market. “This is the critical moment,” Mr. Blitzer said. “You have to slow the descent before you can turn up.” But in a more subdued note, the private Conference Board reported Tuesday that consumer confidence retreated in June after improving steadily for three months. Consumers said their current economic conditions were worse, and their expectations for the future — which had nudged the index higher — also fell. The Conference Board’s index of consumer confidence fell to 49.3 in June, from 54.8 in May. Fewer consumers said that business conditions were good or that jobs were plentiful. And more people expect that jobs will be harder to get in six months, and that business conditions will be worse. Fewer consumers plan to buy new cars, major appliances or new homes.

Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Index


Surviving the Pain and Sharing the Hope

Abstract: PAMELA WARD, of Queens, says she knows the cost of drug and alcohol addiction. Though she has never abused either, “I had relatives who did, and it affected the entire family,” she said. Lorenzo Regester, of Brooklyn, has first-hand knowledge of the impact of drug addiction. “I started dabbling in heroin at about 17,” he said. He said his former heroin addiction led to burglaries and burglary attempts that caused him to spend a total of 10 years in prison for three separate convictions. Ms. Ward, 38, and Mr. Regester, 42, say they want to use their painfully gained personal insights to help others overcome drug addiction. This, they say, is among the reasons they are working toward new careers as substance-abuse counselors. There is plenty of room for them to join the ranks. “Demand is expected to be strong for substance-abuse and behavioral-disorder counselors because drug offenders are increasingly being sent to treatment programs rather than to jail,” the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics says in its current Occupational Outlook Handbook. In another report, the bureau estimates that there were about 8,000 such counseling jobs in New York State last year, paying an average salary of $39,000. Both Ms. Ward and Mr. Regester received training at the Outreach Training Institute, a nonprofit group that offers courses to people seeking to become state-credentialed drug-abuse and alcoholism counselors in New York. Ms. Ward completed the 10-month course in May, and Mr. Regester is scheduled to complete it in October. Substance-abuse counselors in New York are not required to have the state credential, and many do not. But the state requires that so-called qualified health professionals make up as much as 50 percent of counseling staffs in substance-abuse programs. Credentialed counselors are counted toward that requirement, said Charles W. Monson, an associate commissioner in the state’s Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services. The credential also benefits counselors by increasing their chances of being promoted, he said. The 20-year-old Outreach Training Institute is one of nearly 100 groups that the state has certified to provide the 350-hour credentialing courses. (A list of the groups is at www.oasas.state.ny.us/training/350providers.cfm .) At Outreach, about 70 percent of the students are or have been working counselors who have decided to pursue the credential. Most of the others, like Ms. Ward and Mr. Regester, are starting counseling careers and pursuing the credential simultaneously. Two-thirds of the 257 people who enrolled at Outreach during the year ended May 31 had themselves previously abused drugs or alcohol or both, and nearly half had served prison terms for various crimes, said Mark Armiento, the institute’s director. Mr. Armiento is also vice president of the institute’s parent organization, the Outreach Project, which operates addiction treatment and counseling programs. To be accepted at the Outreach Training Institute, applicants “have to be clean of substances for a year,” Mr. Armiento said. The institute does not test them to determine compliance, he said, “but if they flag, we’ll know, and we’ll refer them to treatment and they’ll be out of the course.” A high school or equivalency diploma is also a requirement, and many who enroll have more; among the 257 participants, 29 percent had associate’s or bachelor’s degrees and 8 percent had master’s or doctoral degrees, Mr. Armiento said. The subjects include the psychology of addiction, toxicology testing, individual and family counseling, adolescent addiction, legal and confidentiality issues and preventing relapse. Students attend training two days a week over the 10 months, at the institute’s sites in Brooklyn, Queens or Brentwood, on Long Island. Few students pay the full $4,450 tuition, Mr. Armiento said; depending on their financial circumstances and other factors, most pay half to two-thirds and many pay no tuition. Graduates must pass a state test and meet varying experience requirements as working counselors before the credential is granted; novices may gain the experience by working as paid counselor trainees. MS. WARD said she expected to be employed as a counselor trainee in one of the Outreach Project’s own programs. In the past, she said, she has been a supervisor and coordinator with another organization that helps addicted women who have H.I.V. Ms. Ward declined to go into detail about her relatives’ addictions, but said they involved alcohol and drugs. “They’re now in sobriety and doing well,” she said. Mr. Regester said he had successfully completed treatment for his heroin addiction during his last term in prison, and then worked as a substance-abuse counselor’s aide at the prison, from which he was paroled in 2002. He is now seeking to become a counselor, he said, so that “my past life experiences” can help others recover from — or avoid — the “bad choices I made.”

Drug Abuse and Traffic
Therapy and Rehabilitation
Alcohol Abuse


In the Off Season, It’s Easier to Check on Vineyards Online

Abstract: IN summer and early fall, when outings to East End wineries are in full swing, Long Island wine enthusiasts can simply drive to their favorites to find out what’s going on. In cold weather, though wineries remain open for tours and sales, sometimes with shortened business hours, armchair research can be more practical. The most efficient place to check the off-season picture is www.liwines.com , the address of the Long Island Wine Council, a trade association. It lists the wineries and their Web sites, which advertise events and display current wines, with prices. The best wine blog for chatty reviews and news is Lenndevours, published by Lenn Thompson, whose day job is in Internet marketing. It is reached at www.lennthompson.typepad.com . Mr. Thompson has a good palate; his tasting notes are usually on target. Though clearly a cheerleader for local wines, he doesn’t hesitate to criticize. Cellarette ( www.cellarette.wordpress.com ), a blog run by Eileen Duffy, a sommelier and part owner of Six Corners, a Westhampton Beach wine shop, merits a quick visit periodically to see which Island wines inspire her enthusiasm. Long Island Wine Press, a free quarterly magazine-style guide published in Mattituck by the Times/Review Newspapers in conjunction with the Wine Council, offers sketches about producers, a regional map and a summary of wines and prices. The guide can be found in wine stores, restaurants and hotels, but the price data may lag that online. The New York Wine and Grape Foundation, a trade association based in the Finger Lakes region and financed by the wine industry and state, helps consumers zero in on top wines. Visitors to www.newyorkwines.org who click on its NY Gold button will find medal-winning wines in the 2008 New York Wine and Food Classic and in other contests.

Wines
Computers and the Internet
Blogs and Blogging (Internet)
Long Island (NY)


Before Hitting and Fielding, Young Mets Seek Edge by Running and Stretching

Abstract: PLYMOUTH, Mich. — Thirty minutes west of Detroit, at an indoor sports complex that could otherwise pass as a warehouse, several of the more intriguing members of the Mets gathered to train this off-season. Inside the complex, framed jerseys hung on one wall. N.F.L. players and other athletes milled about, stretching, pulling their limbs every which way with elastic bands. Rap music was thumping. A giant American flag hung to the side, and next to it was a quotation from General George S. Patton. “May God have mercy upon my enemies,” it read, “because I won’t.” Amid it all, Mike Barwis barked orders in a loud, raspy voice. About six years ago, Jeff Wilpon, the Mets’ chief operating officer, introduced himself to Barwis on the sideline during a Michigan football practice in nearby Ann Arbor. The Wilpon family has strong ties to the university — Fred Wilpon, a Mets co-owner and Jeff’s father, is a graduate — and, at the time, Barwis was the football team’s strength and conditioning coach. Jeff Wilpon and Barwis hit it off, and eventually, the Mets hired Barwis as a consultant. Fast forward a few years. Sandy Alderson, the Mets’ general manager, and other team executives decided after the 2013 season that they wanted to offer a more regimented off-season training program for some of their younger players. The Mets suggested the idea to Ruben Tejada, the shortstop who fell from grace last season, and Wilmer Flores, one of the team’s top position prospects. Lucas Duda, who missed a good chunk of the 2013 season with an intercostal strain, also signed on, as did Dominic Smith, who as a first baseman just out of high school was taken with the Mets’ first-round pick in the 2013 draft. Patrick Biondi and Phillip Evans, two recently drafted players, became part of the group, as well. The program was voluntary, the cost split between the organization and each player. The players came for about four weeks in the fall and returned recently to put in a few more weeks before spring training. Juan Lagares, the center fielder who dazzled at times in his 2013 rookie season, joined the others this time around and quickly learned what it was like to deal with Barwis. Barwis is always on the move, hand-slapping and hugging. He says he rarely sleeps. He refuses to discuss his background in mixed martial arts. He will talk about the two wolves that he said he raised years ago, bottle-feeding them as cubs and eventually taking them on hikes. He studied exercise physiology at West Virginia and then became a strength and conditioning coach for the university, eventually working with just about every varsity team. When Rich Rodriguez left to coach the Michigan football team, Barwis followed. And when Rodriguez was fired after three seasons, Barwis departed, too, although he decided to stay in the area and start his own business. Image Wilmer Flores, center, performed an agility drill. Credit Joshua Lott for The New York Times The place seems to have taken on his persona. It appears loud and harried, but with a plan. When the various young Mets arrived, Barwis would evaluate them and come up with a nutrition and workout regimen. He wanted them to work on their balance, explosiveness, strength, speed and flexibility. He tutored them on running and cutting. Or, as he put it, “How to place your foot, angle rotation of your shoulder. Whether or not my hand clears my hip to open up my hip when I make a cut. You know, redirection. Is my toe pointed in the right direction, at the right time, to make sure my pelvis engages properly? Am I engaging the right muscles to get the most power out of my body in this situation?” Going through a speed and agility drill last Tuesday, Duda tapped his toes through a ladder-style obstacle, cut around five cones, and then smoothly caught a football at the end. He looked like an N.F.L. tight end, although it would help the Mets a lot more if he looked as if he belonged at first base. He has lost about 10 pounds. “I feel like I’m more coordinated,” Duda said. In spring training, Duda and Ike Davis will apparently compete for the starting spot at first base, although it’s possible the Mets will seek another option. Whether Duda really is more agile and quicker in the field after working with Barwis will be known soon enough. Among those Mets who showed up, it was Tejada who clearly has the most to prove. Last season was a disaster for him. After a solid 2012 season in which he hit .289 in 464 at-bats, he came to spring training in 2013 overweight, played poorly to start the season, was injured and was essentially banished to Class AAA Las Vegas, with the Mets making it clear they were unhappy with his attitude. In a radio interview, Alderson said it was “like pulling teeth” to get Tejada to do extra work. Alderson, Wilpon and John Ricco, the team’s assistant general manager, visited Barwis’s facility recently, watched the players work out and were pleased with Tejada’s “renewed commitment to be better,” Alderson said in a phone interview. “This is my career, my future,” the 24-year-old Tejada said as he worked out last week. “That’s why I came here.” The others have much to prove, too. If Flores can improve his agility, he could be in the mix for second base, a position he played in the minor leagues, but not impressively. For all these players, being here this past month was striking if for no other reason than the hostile climate. It was so cold last week that the University of Michigan canceled classes for weather reasons for the first time since 1978. But Alderson said he liked the frigid, remote location of the workouts; it meant fewer distractions. And then there was the testimony from Smith, who is only 18. Working out here, he said, his chest grew, his belly shrunk, his legs thickened. Smith hit .301 in 51 games of rookie league ball this past summer. He would seem to be at least a few years away from Citi Field; meanwhile, he says he plans on future trips to Plymouth. Unless, of course, it keeps getting colder.


Lenders Give Newsprint Maker a Waiver

Abstract: The newsprint maker AbitibiBowater said Tuesday that some of its lenders had granted one of its units a waiver, after it failed to meet the requirements under a $210 million receivables purchase agreement. AbitibiBowater is scrambling to restructure its crippling debt, which is owed largely by its Abitibi-Consolidated and Bowater subsidiaries. Demand for newsprint has fallen as newspapers have struggled with declining readership and advertising. A receivables purchase agreement allows lenders to secure loans against the payments that a company expects to receive. The waiver and amendment granted by Citibank and Eureka Securitisation extends the termination date of the loan to Sept. 1 and increases the delinquency ratios permitted. However, the waiver and amendments granted by the lenders would terminate immediately if the company fails to deliver its financial statements by April 30. AbitibiBowater, the largest newsprint maker in North America, will pay its lenders a fee equal to 6 percent of $210 million, as a consideration for the waiver and amendments. Last week, the company, which is based in Montreal, said it was evaluating new restructuring options after the $1.8 billion debt exchange offer for its Bowater subsidiary received insufficient support from lenders. The company is also trying to restructure $2.4 billion in debt held by its Abitibi-Consolidated unit, but this recapitalization plan was contingent on the successful completion of the Bowater exchange offer. However, the company said it planned to continue the Abitibi-Consolidated recapitalization process and amend it as necessary to take into account the failure of the Bowater exchange offer.

AbitibiBowater Inc
Citibank
Newspapers
Eureka Securitisation


Plain Truth About Taxes and Cuts

Abstract: You’re going to hear a lot about taxes over the next two years. Some of the things you hear will be true. Others will be less true. The goal here today is distinguish between the two. Last week, Charles B. Rangel , the Democrat who heads the House Ways and Means Committee, introduced a bill to overhaul the tax code. Above all, it would raise taxes on the affluent to pay for the elimination of the alternative minimum tax, which is hitting more and more upper-middle-class families. The bill has no chance of becoming law anytime soon. Yet Republicans immediately and gleefully seized on the proposal as a preview of what a Democratic president would do. Vice President Dick Cheney called it “a bad proposal” filled with “terrible ideas” that would do “an awful lot of damage” to the economy. Most Democrats are less eager to talk about the Rangel proposal, but it’s clear that they also think a fight over taxes can work to their advantage in 2008 and beyond. Tax policy, as they see it, is one way to soothe the middle class’s economic anxiety. There are big philosophical questions about taxes that facts alone can’t answer. How important is it to let people keep the money that they earn? Will higher tax rates cause more cheating? How important is it to ensure that take-home pay is rising for every group of Americans? But there are also some basic facts that ideology can’t change. If you keep these five in mind, you will have an easier time keeping up with the debate: As a group, the rich pay a greater share of taxes than in the past. The top 1 percent of taxpayers — those with adjusted gross income of at least $267,000 in 2004 — paid more than 25 percent of all federal taxes that year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That was up from 15 percent in 1979. People sometimes pick nits with these statistics, and the numbers are indeed imperfect. They don’t include state and local taxes, which hit the middle class and the poor harder than federal taxes. On the other hand, the numbers ignore money that the government sends back to taxpayers, like Social Security, which mostly goes to the poor and middle class. But don’t get bogged down in all this. The big picture is clear enough. The main reason for the trend is also clear. The affluent are paying more of the taxes because they’re making so much more money. Tax cut advocates like to argue that taxes on the affluent have entered the realm of Robin Hood. This year, Ari Fleischer, Mr. Bush’s former press secretary, wrote an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal suggesting that a small slice of taxpayers was being asked to foot almost the entire bill for the federal government. “The problem is that there is a tipping point after which piling taxes onto the rich will leave the government unable to meet its obligations,” Mr. Fleischer wrote. Reading that, you would probably assume that the tax rates on high-income families have soared over the last generation. But they haven’t. A family in that top 1 percent of earners paid a total federal tax rate — including everything from payroll taxes to income taxes to capital gains taxes — of 30 percent in 2004. That was down from 41 percent a decade before. Since the 1950s, tax rates on high-income families have generally been falling . The top earners pay a bigger share of the government tab than in the past because their incomes have risen so sharply — even more sharply than their tax bills. (Mr. Fleischer was able to claim the opposite by looking only at income taxes.) The affluent, in short, are paying less in taxes on every dollar they earn but earning many more dollars. Corporates taxes have dropped significantly in recent decades. There are two strange facts about corporate taxes. Everyone from Mr. Rangel on the left to Fred Thompson on the right is saying that high corporate taxes are hurting American companies. But the effective corporate tax rate isn’t any higher than it has been on average over the last 25 years, and it’s far lower than it was in the 1960s and ’70s. “A dirty little secret is that the corporate income tax used to raise a fair amount of revenue,” says Richard Clarida , a Columbia University economist and former Treasury Department official under Mr. Bush. What’s going on here? This country really does have a high corporate tax rate, but it also has so many loopholes that companies can often avoid paying the tax. A much smarter policy, economists say, would include a lower rate with fewer loopholes. “Both the incentive and the ability to avoid the tax would then be smaller,” says Leonard Burman , director of the Tax Policy Center in Washington. The nation’s total tax bill hasn’t changed much over the years. Put it all together — less corporate tax collection and lower individual tax rates, combined with more income for the people who face the highest tax rates — and the trends mostly cancel each other out. The taxes that the federal government took in last year equaled 18.4 percent of the gross domestic product, almost exactly the average since 1980. The overall tax burden rose in the 1990s, fell during Mr. Bush’s first term and has drifted up in the last few years as corporate profits and upper-end incomes surged. The obvious conclusion is that moderate shifts in taxes don’t dictate economic growth. Mr. Bush’s father and Bill Clinton raised taxes — and the economy grew for almost the entire decade of the 1990s. The current administration has cut taxes — and the economy has grown for almost all of this decade. So if short-term economic growth were the only thing to worry about, you could make a good argument either for cutting taxes or for raising them. Unfortunately, there is another problem out there. The budget deficit is worse than either party says it is. Mr. Bush has predicted that the deficit will disappear by 2012. But that prediction depends on the fiction that the alternative minimum tax will be allowed to grow ever larger in coming years. The Democratic presidential candidates, meanwhile, are promising to pay for their new programs in part by getting rid of some of Mr. Bush’s tax cuts. But those tax cuts are already scheduled to expire under current law. The official budget numbers have already taken their demise into account. White House officials are absolutely correct when they note that the current budget deficit isn’t especially large. But it will soar in coming years, as baby boomers stop working (and stop paying very much in taxes) and instead move onto the Social Security and Medicare rolls If nothing changes over the next couple of decades, the United States will build up a debt burden to resemble Argentina’s, as Mr. Burman points out. There are several ways to prevent that. Taxes could be raised across the board, or they could be raised on the affluent. Or the Medicare budget — a much bigger problem than Social Security — could be held in check if the government figured out how to say no to some expensive medical procedures. Or all of the above could happen. But something has to give. No amount of clever argument can pay the bills.

Taxation
United States Politics and Government
Economic Conditions and Trends
Federal Taxes (US)
Rangel Charles B


Police Went Beyond What Cab’s Sticker Allows, Suit Charges

Abstract: Just as the taxi pulled to the curb in front of Terrence Battle’s home, flashing lights came on. Three officers in street clothes approached, and one asked the driver if everything was O.K. It was, the driver said. “The other officers were shining lights in the car,” Mr. Battle said. “They told me to get out of the car.” It was around 3:30 on a Saturday morning in October. Mr. Battle, 38, had started the day many hours earlier at his job as a radio executive for Hot 97 FM, and 98.7 KISS-FM. He ended it by performing at a comedy club, then taking the subway as far as the Broadway Junction station in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. For the last leg home, he caught a livery cab. As Mr. Battle stood outside the cab, a few yards from his own front door, he realized that no one else was around. He also felt every inch and ounce of his 6-foot-5, 280-pound body, dimensions that added to his worries. “I was conscious of not making any sudden moves,” he said. “I’m a big guy. It was very dark. I was scared.” The officers requested identification and told him he was going to be frisked, and he raised his arms. But the officers went beyond patting him down. “They went into my pockets,” he said. “They went into my shoulder bag.” When he asked them what was going on, Mr. Battle said, “they told me they were able to do this because of a decal on the back of the cab, that this sticker gives them permission to search me.” The sticker identified the car as being enrolled in the Taxi/Livery Robbery Inspection Program , which invites officers on patrol to pull a taxi over and check on the driver’s well-being. However, there is nothing on the sticker — or in the law — that permits police officers to search Mr. Battle’s pockets and bag without probable cause to believe that he had committed a crime. The police may frisk someone only if they have a reasonable belief that the person is armed and dangerous. On the street, Mr. Battle said, he was told only that by entering a cab with the safety decal he had given his consent to a personal search. After his encounter was reported in The Daily News in November, the authorities said that an open partition in the cab was suggestive of a robbery, and that Mr. Battle resembled a person wanted in eight robberies in Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York, Brooklyn. A police statement described the department as the aggrieved party. “This falls under the category of damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” the statement said . “The police properly made the stop and questioned a passenger who fit the description of the robbery suspect.” No apology was offered, Mr. Battle said. “To check on the safety of the driver, I completely understand that,” he said. “Harassing the passengers is not right. It’s humiliating, for one thing. I went from being scared to being angry.” Last week, he and another man who had been searched in a different encounter, Munir Pujara, filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city. Mr. Pujara, 37, a lawyer who works for a social services agency in the Bronx, said he was taking a cab to his home in Harlem after working late on a Friday night in September. The cab was stopped by the police on Fordham Road, and Mr. Pujara said he was ordered out. “I asked, ‘What will happen if I don’t get out?’ ” he said. “They told me, ‘You will be arrested.’ ” On the street, he said, he asked the officers if they had any cause to pull him out of the car. “The officer was saying he had the right to search me as part of the driver safety check,” Mr. Pujara said. “He told me to turn around and spread my legs.” He was then frisked, he said. Celeste Koeleveld, a senior lawyer for the city, wrote in an e-mail that she could not comment on the claims of Mr. Pujara and Mr. Battle, but asserted the driver safety program “is operated in an entirely lawful manner.” After a cab is stopped, she said, “further investigation is conducted only if there is a basis for suspecting that criminal activity is afoot.” That was good news, said Chris Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who is representing the two men. “It’s nice to see the city recognize the police should not be questioning and searching passengers without suspicion,” Mr. Dunn said. “Unfortunately, it is happening regularly.”

Car Services and Livery Cabs
Taxicabs and Taxicab Drivers
Search and Seizure
Police Department (NYC)
Battle Terrence
Pujara Munir
Suits and Litigation
Civil Rights and Liberties


Alabama Approves a Rescuing Tax

Abstract: MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A new tax intended to rescue Alabama’s most populous county from a budget crisis became law on Friday as the Legislature gave less-than-enthusiastic final approval to the revenue measure. Gov. Bob Riley signed the occupational tax into law after the Senate, on a 12-to-9 vote with 10 abstentions, approved it. The move cleared the way for about 1,000 laid-off Jefferson County workers to begin returning to jobs. Shortly after the Senate’s vote, the House gave final passage to a companion bill that calls for the hiring of a county manager to oversee the finances in the financially troubled county, home to about 640,000 people and Alabama’s largest city, Birmingham. The Legislature’s special session, which started Monday, wrapped up in five days, the minimum required to pass a bill. Mr. Riley, a Republican, praised lawmakers for dealing quickly with such a difficult issue. “A lot of people took very difficult votes for the ultimate good of Jefferson County, and I appreciate them doing that,” said the governor, who was in the Senate talking individually to lawmakers when Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom struck the gavel ending the session. The bill levies a 0.45 percent tax on all workers in the county, replacing an occupational tax, more than 40 years old, that had been thrown out by the courts. The bill also sets up a referendum in June 2012 for Jefferson County residents to vote on the tax. If the tax is defeated, it will be phased out over five years. After more than one-fourth of the county’s work force had been laid off in the budget crisis, residents faced long lines to conduct county business because satellite courthouses had closed and other offices reduced their hours.

Budgets and Budgeting
Taxation
Alabama
Law and Legislation
Layoffs and Job Reductions


Israel Helps Set Up Database of Property Lost in Holocaust

Abstract: JERUSALEM — As millions of Israelis paused in reflection on Monday at the sound of the siren marking Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Internet here was buzzing. The first online database of more than half a million pieces of property lost by Holocaust victims, many in Eastern Europe, had just been uploaded as a first step toward restitution. After years of quiet diplomacy that accomplished little, organizers of the new project, financed by the Israeli government, said the idea was to harness technology in the struggle for restitution and to make as much noise as possible. “This is an activist approach,” said Bobby Brown, executive director of the Holocaust Era Asset Restitution Taskforce, known by its acronym, Project Heart . “We believe there are no secrets anymore about the Holocaust.” Pointing to the success of public drives in the past, like the campaign for Soviet Jewry and the settlement of claims of Holocaust victims by Swiss banks, Mr. Brown said the issue of property restitution had to be out there on Twitter and Facebook, although negotiations with countries where properties were located “do not have to be made public right away.” The project, a nonprofit global campaign of the Jewish Agency for Israel, a quasi-governmental body, has set up offices in Milwaukee and Brussels. It was announced at a news conference in Jerusalem on Sunday, and another news conference is planned for Wednesday in New York City. In line with the open approach, donors are paying for advertisements for Project Heart over the next six weeks in Times Square. This is the first worldwide list of property confiscated, looted or forcibly sold during the Holocaust era to be made available to survivors and their heirs. Compiled from hundreds of European archives, including tax records and voter registries, it includes real estate and land, movable property like art and jewelry, and intangible personal property like stocks, bonds and savings accounts. The project has already invited potential claimants to submit their details to the Web site, which is in 13 languages. Many of the properties in the database are listed with the names of the original owners, and sometimes their professions, information culled from the public records to help potential claimants find a match. Some 650,000 pieces of property were uploaded this week, and Mr. Brown hopes that the list will grow to a million by the end of the year. About 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland alone, he noted. Other Jewish organizations have dealt with restitution for decades. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany has focused on Germany and Austria. The World Jewish Restitution Organization was established in 1993 to focus on Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Communist governments. There has been some progress in the issue of community-owned property, but none on personal property, according to Mr. Brown. The subject of restitution has long been a delicate one between governments, and this is the first time that the Israeli government has become involved, providing Project Heart with an annual budget of more than $2.5 million for three years. About a third of the 750,000 Israelis who are above retirement age are Holocaust survivors, and many live in poverty. Once the information-gathering phase is completed, the project plans to move on to a more aggressive stage of legal and public action to try to get the cooperation of governments that have not cooperated so far. This will involve lobbying politicians and possibly helping with class-action lawsuits. Lea Nass, the deputy minister for senior citizens, said the official stamp of the government on the project should help advance the cause. Even if agreements are reached with countries, myriad questions will remain. Each country would have to establish criteria for verifying claims, evaluating the property and working out timelines for any payout. At the news conference in Jerusalem, Natan Sharansky, the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, said the Holocaust “was not only genocide, but it was also the greatest theft in history.” Yet there were also moments of kindness and heroism, one of which has recently come to light. The granddaughter of a Polish woman who lived just outside the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II presented Mr. Brown with his first piece of recovered property this week. She said her grandmother used to leave food for the forced laborers outside the camp in pots hidden in the bushes. One night, when she came to collect the empty pots, she found a jeweled necklace that had been placed in one of them. The granddaughter, Magdalena Wojciechowska, 40, of Lodz, Poland, returned the necklace to Mr. Brown, saying it was “Jewish property.” After taking the necklace to New York for the news conference, Mr. Brown said he would hand it over for safekeeping to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem.

Israel
Holocaust and the Nazi Era
Reparations and Restitution
Computers and the Internet
Jewish Agency for Israel


Nomination of Neelie Kroes to Lead Digital European Panel Is Held Up

Abstract: BERLIN — The nomination of Neelie Kroes , who was hard-nosed as Europe’s antitrust chief, to a new post as commissioner for the digital agenda was in doubt Friday after she was accused of being evasive during a testy appearance before a committee of the European Parliament . Members of the two biggest blocs in Parliament, the conservatives and the Socialists, expressed concerns about the failure by Ms. Kroes to endorse clearly what they considered pro-consumer lines on price caps for mobile phone roaming, redeployment of broadcast frequencies for wireless broadband and revisions to digital copyright law. After the hearing in Brussels, an Austrian member of the Industry, Research and Energy Committee, Paul Rübig, said the panel’s political leadership had met and agreed to invite Ms. Kroes to a second, closed-door meeting next week in Strasbourg to clarify her positions. Her “nomination is on hold at the moment and it is now up to her,” Mr. Rübig said. A spokesman for Ms. Kroes, Jonathan Todd, said she was willing to clarify any lingering uncertainty. “Neelie Kroes will work with Parliament to reassure them on anything that remains unclear,” he said. Ms. Kroes, a Dutch economist who had little dealing with the Parliament in the more executive role of competition commissioner, is now in the position of having to use her political skills to salvage her nomination. Parliament does not vote on individual commissioners, but the 27-member commission as a whole. If opposition to a particular nominee is strong enough, the body can threaten a veto when it votes Jan. 26. In 2004, pressure from Parliament forced the commission president, José Manuel Barroso, to replace Rocco Buttiglione, who was Italy’s candidate for commissioner of justice and home affairs. If Ms. Kroes does not win the support of the industry committee, Mr. Barroso is likely to ask the Dutch government to select someone else, rather than risk losing his entire slate of commissioners. The three-hour hearing Thursday began on a friendly note, with Ms. Kroes laying out a broad agenda to increase investment in technology, extend Europe’s broadband network and increase government purchasing of open-source software. But questioning grew pointed as Ms. Kroes gave equivocating responses to questions on touchy issues like her stance on roaming price caps for mobile phones in Europe, which will expire in 2011 unless extended by lawmakers. Malcolm Harbour, a conservative from Britain, said he was disappointed by her failure to endorse a new power that European lawmakers gave national regulators to force dominant telephone companies to separate themselves from their land-line networks. Britain was the first to enact such a separation with BT, which Mr. Harbour described as a success. “Those are the sort of remedies you should be championing,” he told Ms. Kroes. Angelika Niebler, a German conservative and the former chairwoman of the committee, said she was frustrated by Ms. Kroes’s refusal despite repeated questioning to back clearly an extension of the price caps on roaming charges, if studies show such a measure was needed. Ms. Kroes, a market centrist and a member of the Parliament’s small Liberal Democratic Alliance, had opposed the retail price caps when they were being debated last year, saying she thought wholesale limits were adequate. During the hearing, Ms. Kroes said she wanted to await the results of two Parliamentary studies that would be conducted over the next 18 months before deciding whether to extend price controls. Ms. Kroes seemed taken aback by the criticism. “There seems to be quite a tough misunderstanding,” she said. She said she was prepared to act decisively in cases where market forces alone were inhibiting competition.

Kroes Neelie
European Parliament
Appointments and Executive Changes
Politics and Government
Antitrust Actions and Laws
Europe


A Tenant Blacklist, Culled From Tedium

Abstract: At New York City Housing Court, on the second floor of a dingy office building in Lower Manhattan, a woman sits quietly with a shawl pulled around her shoulders, looking up names on an old government computer and copying them into a sleek mini-laptop at her side. Behind her, tenants shift anxiously on their feet, clutching paperwork and waiting to speak with one of a handful of clerks sitting behind a glass partition. The woman, who gives her name only as Carolyn out of fear of losing her job, sits at one of the three public-access computers in the room eight hours a day, five days a week. She is searching an online database for the names of tenants with cases before the court. The information she turns up will soon be compiled in a document and sold to landlords, who will use it as a kind of blacklist designed to prevent supposedly litigious or financially irresponsible tenants from renting apartments. The state Office of Court Administration, which operates New York’s court system, charges a $20,000 initial fee and $350 per week thereafter for a daily data feed of housing court cases. The seemingly innocuous list of index numbers identifies every new housing court matter and updates existing ones. The feed used to include tenants’ names and addresses as well, but after years of complaints and negotiations, housing advocates and politicians thought they had won a victory when, in 2012, the Office of Court Administration began scrubbing that information. But just as some Wall Street banks find ways to stay a step ahead of regulators, so, too, have companies that sell tenant names to landlords found a way around this hurdle. Under state law, housing court records are public, so the companies have taken to hiring people like Carolyn to spend hours plugging the index numbers on the court system’s data feed into the electronic case files to find the corresponding names and addresses. The resulting list can include anyone who was in court records, whether because they failed to pay rent, withheld it to force a landlord to make repairs, broke the terms of a lease, or as a result of a landlord’s error. Companies that compile the information for landlords “have an extra step now, and it costs them a bit more, but the result is still the same,” said New York State Senator Liz Kruger, one of the elected officials who worked on the 2012 deal. “It is frustrating. We thought we had stopped these tenant blacklists, but the companies have found a way around it, and now it looks like we are back where we started.” Andres E. Correa wound up on one of the lists. Mr. Correa had been living in an illegal sublet for several years when the landlord sued the tenant whose name was on the lease to evict him, and also sued Mr. Correa. After hiring a lawyer, Mr. Correa, who said he was unaware the sublet was illegal, struck a deal with the landlord: In the court case, Mr. Correa would be identified only as Andres Doe. When the case was settled, however, Mr. Correa’s name was recorded in the court records and then picked up by a tenant-screening company. “It has been a nightmare,” said Mr. Correa, adding that he had been unable to sign a lease and had moved eight times in the past two years. Eventually, he hired James B. Fishman, a lawyer who has brought two class actions against screening firms, to help him clear his name. Nearly all landlords, whether small-time or with thousands of units, perform background checks on prospective tenants. Numerous screening companies offer those who hire them various options to choose from, such as criminal records, watch lists for sexual offenders and eviction histories. Typically, the housing court information notes whether a tenant has been sued, the type of case, the amount of rent the landlord claimed and the outcome. Federal credit-reporting laws allow screening companies to report information going back seven years, and landlords across the country are able to view it. “It is a balancing act between public information and the misuse of public information,” said David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration. “We were responsive to advocacy groups who believed that the selling of names was leading to misuse,” he said, “and the reality is, this has made it a lot harder for people to misuse the information.” It certainly has made it more costly. For the past year and a half, Carolyn, 31, who is herself a tenant in Queens, has been paid by the hour to sift through a mountain of data for her employer. She declined to name the company, but there are only three firms currently paying the Office of Court Administration for its housing court-data feed: CoreLogic SafeRent, TransUnion Rental Screening Solutions and ALM, a legal media company. After compiling the lists of names, they can then sell the information to other screening companies or directly to landlords. There are typically 300 to 400 housing court judgments filed each day in New York City. Carolyn said that it took her up to two weeks to update the information for a single borough, adding that she was running about six months behind. Sitting day after day in such proximity to those whose names she is gathering takes its toll. “It’s a job. The company sends me a list of case numbers and it is basically like data entry,” she said. Her employers are based in the South, and she rarely has direct contact with them; she has far more with the people she is profiling. “Sometimes it is difficult. I know that not all tenants are bad tenants, and some people fall on bad times.” Some tenants know what she is doing. She said a woman once screamed at her, “telling me that she knows what I do is just a job, but that people should know there is a tenant blacklist. And then people come in all the time and ask if their name is in the system, and if that means they are on the blacklist. I mean, c’mon. Yes!” Most tenants do not realize that housing court information can be used against them, said Judge Fern A. Fisher, who, as the deputy chief administrative judge for New York City Courts, oversees housing court. “I don’t think most people are aware that companies have access to what happens in housing court. They should, but I think more people are concerned with keeping a roof over their heads.” Even winning a case may not keep someone off a bad-tenant list. If a tenant withholds rent to force a landlord to make repairs and the judge ultimately sides with the tenant, the only thing that shows up on a screening report is that there was a money judgment against the tenant for the remaining rent owed. Some tenants may even find themselves on a list mistakenly because their name is a common one. None of the list brokers would comment on how the data they collect is used, but CoreLogic’s website is clear about the rationale: “Experience shows that past lease performance is the single most important predictor of future resident behavior.” Screening companies typically have their own systems for flagging potentially troublesome tenants. And while some landlords simply follow along, others adopt a more thorough approach. “I don’t necessarily disqualify a tenant when I see there has been a housing court case,” said Robert J. Klehammer, the vice president of multifamily rental management at FirstService Residential New York, which manages 8,000 rental apartments across the city. “But I will ask the broker to go back and get an explanation.” Mr. Klehammer is perhaps more understanding than many, having spent over a decade working as an assistant commissioner at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. But, he said, screening reports are critical for weeding out problems. “There are a lot of people out there who lie. And it is up to us, as a third-party manager, to make sure we don’t rent to any bad tenants.” Money is also an issue. “Most of our fees are based on the rents we collect, so if a tenant is delinquent on their rent, I don’t earn a fee. That puts a premium on me to get tenants who will pay the rent.”

Landlord
Rent
Real Estate
Housing
Archive
NYC
Blacklist


In Hindsight, Mets Made Right Move by Not Pursuing Ramirez

Abstract: On a day when a throng in Los Angeles was saying goodbye to Michael Jackson, Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez was in New York surrounded by reporters in the visitors’ clubhouse at Citi Field . They were there to chronicle the East Coast return of the latest star to be outed in Major League Baseball’s still-unfolding so-called steroid era. Ramirez was suspended for 50 games on May 7 for violating Major League Baseball’s policy on performance-enhancing drugs. Shortly after the suspension was announced, Ramirez said that he had seen a physician who prescribed medication that turned out to be banned under baseball’s drug policy. As reporters waited for Ramirez to arrive, one of the clubhouse televisions showed scenes from the Jackson memorial, with speaker after speaker giving emotional testimonies. One clip showed the Rev. Al Sharpton saying: “I want his children to know, there wasn’t nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what your daddy had to deal with.” Right on cue, Ramirez walked into the visitors’ clubhouse. He hesitated when he saw all the reporters and said something about being a most wanted man. He then made his way to his locker, sat down and announced the ground rules: “Anybody have questions about the game? We can talk about the game. I’m not talking about anything that I talked about in San Diego.” Ramirez returned Friday in San Diego and briefly addressed his suspension by saying he was sorry. On Tuesday, he had even less to offer. “Don’t you feel you owe fans an explanation?” he was asked. “I already talked about that, sir,” he replied. He had the same response when asked again, “You don’t feel you owe any more?” He was then asked how he expected to be received. He said: “I don’t know. What do you think? Next.” Someone asked Ramirez why he didn’t want to talk about the suspension. “Because that’s in the past,” he said. “Next.” He also didn’t want to talk about the All-Star Game, even though, it was noted, that game is in the future. “I got to go hit,” he said. “I got to get ready for a game.” Ramirez went 2 for 4 and drove in three runs before being tossed from the game in the fifth inning of the Dodgers’ 8-0 win. Ramirez was thrown out after flipping his elbow guard in the direction of the plate umpire, John Hirschbeck, who had called him out on strikes for the third out. Ramirez was on his way out to left field when he was ejected. There has been talk in the wake of the Mets ’ continued sputtering that the team should have gone hard after Ramirez in the off-season, when he was a free agent. But signing him would have been a colossal blunder. Despite the Mets’ 2009 swoon, there is general acknowledgment that the team, while playing without three key everyday players, is at least playing with some heart. Ramirez takes away that underdog veneer. It’s one thing to be in third place with three of your position players injured, but it’s quite another to be in third place because Manny Ramirez received a drug suspension and can’t play. That one won’t evoke any sympathy. On Tuesday, I asked General Manager Omar Minaya if the Mets had really pursued Ramirez in the off-season. He said the Mets didn’t go after him very vigorously. “We were keeping eyes on him, but we went after some pitching,” he said. Whether the Mets really wanted Ramirez and fell short or were lukewarm and allowed the moment to pass, they were wise to let him stay in Los Angeles. Imagine: The Mets make a splash and sign Ramirez, bringing him home, and then a month into the season they are blindsided by the positive drug test. After two consecutive season-ending collapses, the Mets needed that? Minaya may be receiving criticism for some of the team’s shortcomings, but had be signed Ramirez, then endured the drug revelation, he would have been lambasted without mercy. Not many fans expect the Mets to make a serious move toward the playoffs now. Some, including those with real knowledge of the game, are urging Minaya and the Mets to engage in a fire sale and look ahead to 2010. After all, there is no Jose Reyes to lead off, no Carlos Beltran to patrol center field, no Carlos Delgado to provide home run power. They still have David Wright at third, Francisco Rodriguez in the bullpen and Johan Santana pitching every fifth day. After that, the Mets are assured only of mysteries. Yet somehow, some way, these Mets may have the National League East right where they want it. This isn’t the time to be talking about white flags or fire sales. At this time last season, the Mets were in third place, two and a half games behind Philadelphia. By July 24, they were alone in first and were there as late as Sept. 19 before collapsing. After Tuesday night’s loss, the Mets were in fourth place, four and a half games behind Philadelphia. They are unlikely to catch the Phillies any time soon, but maybe, with reinforcements, they’ll be the ones moving into first place in September. And they’ll be doing it without Ramirez, who seems blasé at best about everything from his drug suspension to how he is perceived by the public. Someone asked Ramirez if there was any point last season when he thought he would become a Met. “That’s in the past,” he said. Good thing for all concerned.

Ramirez Manny
Baseball
Steroids
Athletics and Sports
New York Mets
Los Angeles Dodgers


‘I’ve Become a Racist’: Migrant Wave Unleashes Danish Tensions Over Identity

Abstract: TAARNBY, Denmark — Johnny Christensen, a stout and silver-whiskered retired bank employee, always thought of himself as sympathetic to people fleeing war and welcoming to immigrants. But after more than 36,000 mostly Muslim asylum seekers poured into Denmark over the past two years, Mr. Christensen, 65, said, “I’ve become a racist.” He believes these new migrants are draining Denmark’s cherished social-welfare system but failing to adapt to its customs. “Just kick them out,” he said, unleashing a mighty kick at an imaginary target on a suburban sidewalk. “These Muslims want to keep their own culture, but we have our own rules here and everyone must follow them.” Denmark, a small and orderly nation with a progressive self-image, is built on a social covenant: In return for some of the world’s highest wages and benefits, people are expected to work hard and pay into the system. Newcomers must quickly learn Danish — and adapt to norms like keeping tidy gardens and riding bicycles. The country had little experience with immigrants until 1967, when the first “guest workers” were invited from Turkey, Pakistan and what was then Yugoslavia. Its 5.7 million people remain overwhelmingly native born, though the percentage has dropped to 88 today from 97 in 1980. Bo Lidegaard, a prominent historian, said many Danes feel strongly that “we are a multiethnic society today, and we have to realize it — but we are not and should never become a multicultural society.” The recent influx pales next to the one million migrants absorbed into Germany or the 163,000 into Sweden last year, but the pace shocked this stable, homogeneous country. The center-right government has backed harsh measures targeting migrants, hate speech has spiked, and the anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party is now the second largest in Parliament. Some of the same hostilities were reflected this weekend in Germany, where voters in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s home state embraced anti-immigrant candidates — an emphatic rejection of her refugee policy. There is new tension between Danes still opening their arms and a resurgent right wing that seeks to ban all Muslims and shut Denmark off from Europe. Mr. Christensen, the retired banker, supports emerging proposals for his country to follow Britain in exiting the European Union. There is tension, too, over whether the backlash is really about a strain on Denmark’s generous public benefits or a rising terrorist threat — or whether a longstanding but latent racial hostility is being unearthed. Analysts say that the public voiced little opposition after 5,000 Poles and 3,300 Americans, among other Westerners, emigrated to Denmark in 2014, but that there has been significant criticism of the nearly 16,000 Syrian asylum seekers who arrived that year and the next. They and other migrants were not invited, and many ended up here by accident, intercepted on their route to Sweden. Critics complain that these newcomers have been slow to learn Danish — though the Immigration Ministry recently reported that 72 percent passed a required language exam. Some Danes bristle at what they see as ethnic enclaves: About 30 percent of new immigrants lived in the nation’s two largest cities, Aarhus and Copenhagen, where Muslim women in abayas and men in prayer caps stand out among the blond and blue-eyed crowds on narrow streets. Perhaps the leading — and most substantive — concern is that the migrants are an economic drain. In 2014, 48 percent of immigrants from non-Western countries ages 16 to 64 were employed, compared with 74 percent of native Danes. The Immigration Ministry has sought to avoid what it calls “parallel societies” of migrants living in “vicious circles of bad image, social problems and a high rate of unemployment.” Tightened immigration requirements, the ministry said in its latest annual report, weed out those “who have weaker capabilities for being able to integrate into Danish society.” Omar Mahmoud, 34, an Iraqi engineer who entered Denmark a year ago and lives in a refugee center in Randers, a city of 60,000, is trying his best to fit in. He and his wife are taking Danish classes, and their three children are learning the language and making Danish friends in school. They are Muslim, but attend church to learn about Christianity, and he said he was not opposed to his son’s eating pork, a staple of the Danish diet, though it is forbidden in Islam. Mr. Mahmoud said his family had not encountered direct insults or threats, but was frightened by the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim tenor in the public discourse. “It’s like foreigners are put in a special clan, separate from the Danish people,” he lamented. Still, Mr. Mahmoud said that “some of the Danish people are angels” and that he was relieved to be far from the violence of Iraq. “I’m in my heaven now.” Anders Buhl-Christensen, a center-right city councilman in Randers, said the influx had forced a more honest conversation about national identity. “Our problem in Denmark is that we’ve been too polite,” he said. “No one dared talk about” immigration, he added, “because they were afraid they’d be called racist.” Image A Friday prayer last month in the Grand Mosque of Copenhagen, also known as Hamad Bin Khalifa Civilization Center. Credit Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times ‘It’s not racism to be aware of the difference’ Denmark is just one of many European nations grappling with the wave of migrants amid a spate of terrorist attacks across the Continent by Islamic extremists: A recent Pew Research Center survey found that at least half the citizens in eight of 10 countries polled said incoming refugees increased the likelihood of terrorist attacks. The confluence of these and other factors has prompted a re-examination of the postwar promise of a unified, borderless Europe . Macedonia, Hungary and Slovenia have all built border fences. Denmark imposed new identity controls on its border with Germany in January, and for the first time since 1958, Sweden requires entering Danes to show identity papers . Many analysts saw Britain’s surprise vote to leave the European Union as an angry expression of concern that British — or, especially, English — identity was being diluted by the nation’s growing diversity. Debate is raging anew over whether certain Islamic modes of dress — full-body swimsuits, known as burkinis, in France and face veils in Germany — inherently contravene countries’ values. Similar themes are seen as underpinning a wave of new measures here in Denmark. The government has made its citizenship test more difficult and slashed by nearly half a package of integration benefits. A measure passed in January, though rarely enforced, empowers the authorities to confiscate valuables from new arrivals to offset the cost of settling them. Last year, Denmark placed ads in Arabic-language newspapers stressing its tough new policies, essentially suggesting: Don’t come here. Muslims do not assimilate as easily as Europeans or some Asians, said Denmark’s culture minister, Bertel Haarder, partly because, as he put it, their patriarchal culture frowns on women working outside the home and often constrains freedom of speech. “It’s not racism to be aware of the difference — it’s stupid not to be aware,” Mr. Haarder said. “We do them a blessing by being very clear and outspoken as to what kind of country they have come to, what are our basic values.” But much of the difference remains unspoken. This is a country where pedestrians wait for a green light to cross even when no cars are in sight, a contrast to the bustling streets of Middle Eastern capitals. Birgitte Romme Larsen, a Danish anthropologist who has studied refugees and asylum seekers in rural areas, mentioned an African refugee who did not realize that closing his curtains during the day was interpreted as being unduly secretive. Other newcomers were not aware that congregating and talking loudly at a grocery might offend Danish sensibilities. “These implicit expectations cannot be written into an integration folder” migrants receive, Ms. Larsen said. Image Signe Gadeberg, right, and her friend Fatima Al-Gharawi, a native of Iraq, in Copenhagen last month. Credit Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times ‘A Dane of a different color’ Sherif Sulaiman, an organic food scientist who moved to Denmark eight years ago from Egypt, said Muslims must not close themselves off in enclaves but open themselves up for interaction. He is the manager of an Islamic center that opened in 2014 and invites Danes in for meals and for an annual “harmony week.” Mr. Sulaiman pushed to have the mosque complex use Scandinavian architectural style and furniture, and lends its conference room to a church for meetings. “We should be like this glass — transparent,” he said, pointing to a window. “As long as we follow the rules of the country, we are part of Danish society.” But some dark-skinned immigrants who have lived in Denmark for decades say assimilation seems an elusive and ever-shifting target. Image Sylvester Bbaale, who operates a food truck, came to Denmark from Uganda as a baby in 1989. He said he was beaten on the street last year by three men who told him to go back to Africa. Credit Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times Patricia Bandak and her brother Sylvester Bbaale came to Denmark from Uganda as babies in 1989. Like their native neighbors, they are polite and punctual and ride their bicycles everywhere. The siblings are not Muslim but said they frequently encountered racism: In school, they were called the N word, and told that they should stop eating Ugandan food like matoke, a starchy fruit. Mr. Bbaale, 27, who operates a food truck, said he was beaten on the street last year by three men who cursed at him and told him to go back to Africa. “For a lot of people, being Danish is in your blood, so I will never be Danish,” said Ms. Bandak, 28, who became a Danish citizen in 2010 and is studying documentary film. “I call myself a Dane of a different color.” Then there is Ozlem Cekic, a Turkish-born Muslim who served as a leftist member of Parliament from 2007 to 2015. Her three children were born in Denmark, she wrote a 2009 memoir in Danish, and, she said, “I even dream in Danish.” Image Ozlem Cekic, a Turkish-born Muslim, served in Parliament from 2007 to 2015. She is inundated with accusations that Muslims are milking the welfare system and plotting against Danes, she said. Credit Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times Yet Mrs. Cekic, 40, said she often received death threats and heard shouts of “Go home!” on the street. Every time terrorists strike Europe, she is bombarded by hundreds of hate messages. Lately, people have inundated her with accusations that Muslims are milking the welfare system and plotting against Danes. While in Parliament, Mrs. Cekic held “dialogue coffees,” at which she would explain — in fluent Danish — why she is as Danish as anyone. “They meet me for coffee and suddenly they say their problem isn’t with me but with those other people,” she recalled. “I tell them, ‘I am the other.’” Image Housam Mohammed Shamden, a Syrian refugee, and his family having dinner last month at the Randers, Denmark, home of Kind Citizens group members, who try to help immigrants settle in. Credit Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times ‘Denmark is closing in on itself’ Karin Andersen is one of thousands of Danes trying to help the immigrants settle through groups formed on Facebook called Venligboerne, or Kind Citizens. She spends several days each month with Housam Mohammed Shamden, 38, his wife and two daughters, who fled Syria in 2014 and now live in Randers, with small Danish flags taped to the front door of their apartment and tucked into flower vases. “Danes are so concerned about losing their culture,” said Ms. Andersen, 62, a retired teacher. “But how many help the ones who want to be part of it?” However many, they are often drowned out by reports of Muslims being spat at and showered with racist slurs. In May, two Danes ripped the head scarves off two girls. The month before, a national controversy erupted after a public swimming pool in Copenhagen created girls-only lessons in response to Muslim requests. “Freedom of speech is now interpreted as freedom to say anything hateful,” said Julie Jeeg, a law student who volunteers with an antiracism group. “Denmark is closing in on itself. People are retreating inward.” Witness the “ meatball war .” In January, after revelations that a Randers day care center had stopped serving pork meatballs since its Muslim students would not eat them, the Town Council narrowly passed a measure requiring that pork be served “on equal terms with other kinds of food.” The councilman who pushed the measure, Frank Noergaard of the Danish People’s Party, said he was incensed that “pork could be abandoned in Denmark,” adding, “If you give in on pork, what’s next?”

Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis


LaMarcus Aldridge Finds His Comfort Zone With the Spurs

Abstract: OKLAHOMA CITY — It may be hard, watching LaMarcus Aldridge bop and twirl through these playoffs, to recall the days much earlier this season when his play was not so poised. Aldridge, 30, joined the San Antonio Spurs last summer on a four-year deal worth $84 million. He had made four All-Star teams with the Portland Trail Blazers, the only N.B.A. team for which he had played. But San Antonio represented a rarefied new environment, one with its own inscrutable language, distinguished culture and sophisticated style of play. David West, another new signee last summer, remembered commiserating with Aldridge as they waded through their first weeks and months together. “We always talked about it, trying to figure it out,” said West, 35, a 13-year veteran in the league. “It probably wasn’t until a couple months in where you say, ‘O.K., I got it.’ You start to recognize the hand signals, eye contact with guys, and everything else. It just came with time.” The efforts have been vividly realized in the Spurs’ Western Conference semifinal series against the Oklahoma City Thunder. San Antonio holds a lead of two games to one after an impressive road victory at Chesapeake Energy Arena, and Aldridge has scored 103 points in the three games so far. Aldridge’s numbers in Game 3 — 24 points, while shooting 8 for 21 from the field — represented a downturn from the ridiculously high standard he set in his first two games. Yet the Spurs never stopped giving Aldridge the ball, reinforcing the notion that he and Kawhi Leonard will be the pillars on which the team will rest its fortunes this postseason. It was pointed out to Aldridge after the game that, for all the talk through the season about his subsuming himself into the Spurs’ group, in the past three games he resembled the individually dominant player he had been in Portland. “It’s not about me,” he said. “It’s about the team. If it ends up being like that, then fine. But I’m just doing what the game gives me.” In Game 1, Aldridge scored 38 points without playing the fourth quarter. He scored 41 points in Game 2, making 33 of his 44 shot attempts in the two games. Midrange play has become unfashionable in the bombs-away league of today, but Aldridge has at least temporarily restored a measure of sheen to it. The Spurs have built their reputation on passing and movement, but they have been more than happy to let Aldridge engage in a more ponderous form of post-up play. With the Thunder showing him different defensive looks, Aldridge — with a combination of footwork, strength and shot-making ability — has easily dismantled most of them. “He’s taking his time, being patient, not forcing anything, being smart,” the Spurs’ Danny Green said. “He’s doing a lot for us and taking a lot of pressure off us offensively, because he’s carrying that load. We have to have him continue to do that.” After Aldridge scored at will in Game 2, much of the discussion during a three-day layoff centered on how the Thunder might approach him in their next meeting and whether they might double-team him more often. There was a simple tension that underpinned the discussion: Employing a second Thunder defender to help cover Aldridge would unbalance the Oklahoma City setup and risk revving up the Spurs’ passing offense. Yet the public was watching Aldridge slowly gobble up the Thunder on his own. Aldridge was curious, too, and he quickly discerned a pattern as Game 3 unfolded. “When I tried to go quick to the baseline, they doubled early, and I think that’s their scheme,” he said. “If I try to go baseline, they’re going to double-team me. Other than that, they played me straight up.” Months ago, Aldridge had far different concerns. It took him a while to feel comfortable expressing himself in the Spurs’ system and to learn to use it to his benefit. He acknowledged to reporters in the first month that he did not feel like himself, that the team’s “good-to-great passes” mantra was reverberating inside his head at all times. “It’s almost like learning a different language,” guard Patty Mills said of what Aldridge and other new players experience upon joining the team. Aldridge commended Coach Gregg Popovich for putting him and the other new players in positions to succeed, giving them options down the stretch with which Popovich knew they would feel comfortable. Green said there was nothing to worry about. “He has the sets down pat,” Green said of Aldridge. “He knows the sets better than most of the guys on the team.” It was not as if the acclimation process had particularly harmed the Spurs. The team won 67 regular-season games, and Aldridge made the All-Star team. He averaged 18 points per game in the regular season, down from the 23.3 he averaged in his final two seasons with Portland. But he was taking an average of 6.2 fewer shots per game this season than in those last two seasons with Portland. The increase in his shot attempts in the playoffs has been by design. “He’s been rounding into form, and we’ve been pushing him to do it because we know the type of player he is,” West said. “That initial time when he got here, he was trying to figure himself out, find his way. But we just need him to be himself, and the rest of us will adjust to him and Kawhi.” More important than Aldridge’s personal numbers, then, has been the continuing, subtle dynamic in which he has joined Leonard — himself groomed from a young age with the Spurs — to gradually take the team’s gearshifts from Tim Duncan and other linchpin veterans. Duncan, 40, played around seven minutes at the start of each half in Game 3 and scored 2 points in all. He appeared on the court for two seconds in the fourth quarter, merely to inbound the ball to Leonard, and the moment felt indicative of something larger. It was a funny thing to ask of a five-time champion and 15-time N.B.A. All-Star, one who had been cooling on the bench all game. But as Duncan settled back in his seat, his broad smile seemed to indicate how well it has all gone.

Basketball
Playoffs
Oklahoma City Thunder
Spurs
LaMarcus Aldridge


Keeping Pitchers Under Thumb at World Baseball Classic

Abstract: TORONTO Fans better get used to it. For the foreseeable future, the World Baseball Classic is going to be dominated by that geek detail that has crept into the sport in recent years: the dreaded pitch count. Citizens have long since learned that government is run by lobbyists and other special interests behind the curtain. The Classic is monitored closely by pitching coaches, that mystical society of true believers who operate their own virtual sect within baseball. Major league pitching coaches are acutely aware of the doings under the dome here in dank Toronto. “It’s a courtesy,” said Marcel Lachemann , Team U.S.A.’s pitching coach, a monkish sort with a constant look of preoccupation. “I want to know what they’re thinking.” Lachemann is in continual communication with his brethren in spring training. “I’ve got their numbers; they’ve got mine,” Lachemann said, implying a speed-dial cult. The pitching coaches are worried that the highly temporary national squads might overwork their borrowed pitchers. Oh, and they shouldn’t underwork them, either. “A lot of times, we’re kind of restricted by the preference of their parent club,” Davey Johnson , the U.S.A. manager, said before the 15-6 victory over Venezuela on Sunday night that put the United States into the second round in Miami. With as many as eight games in 17 days, Johnson and Lachemann have to abide by the Classic pitching rules , which are as complicated as manuals for setting up a home cable television system, more convoluted than income tax codes. All teams must limit their starting pitchers to 70 pitches in the first round, and must then hold out those starters for four days, with a sliding scale for fewer number of pitches. To ensure there are no mistakes and no skullduggery, the Players Association, which is operating the Classic in conjunction with Major League Baseball, has asked the retired left-hander Mike Myers to operate the clicker here in Toronto. The pitching rules heighten the makeshift feel of early spring training, albeit performed by many of the best players in the world. There are essentially two games within a game — the first dominated by starting pitchers, the second dominated by fearsome hitters teeing off on inexperienced relief pitchers.  This was certainly the case Sunday night as Venezuela held a 3-2 lead after five innings before Team U.S.A. came close to ending the game under the 10-run mercy rule. The American starter Roy Oswalt went into his third start of the spring hoping for his maximum 70 pitches over five innings. Instead, he gave up a run-scoring single in the fourth on his 65th and last pitch. This was quite normal for spring training, which, we cannot forget, is what the Classic is likely to keep interrupting. “You know, when you put a U.S.A. jersey on and you compete, no matter where you are at, it’s just about competing,” Oswalt said. In his real world, an intense veteran like Oswalt has the status to overrule a catcher or a pitching coach. But there is no arguing in the Classic. Reach 70 pitches and what happens? Sirens go off? A trapdoor opens? The Pitch Count Marshals come running out with oversize butterfly nets? We just don’t know. We do know that the rules say the Game Operations Technical Committee will inform the umpires of pitch violations. A game could be forfeited. Hence the clicker. Oswalt said he did not have contact with the Houston staff, but with a smile he said he assumed there was contact with Lachemann. The Americans’ left-handed reliever J. P. Howell said he heard every day from his Tampa Bay trainers, who were making sure he was doing his conditioning routine. All the Classic teams feel the pressure from the major league teams. Seattle, which seems to have a disproportionate supply of talent for a losing franchise, has imposed a one-inning limit on Canada’s Phillippe Aumont, a right-handed prospect who just turned 20. Aumont can warm up only once, and must pitch exactly one inning. On Saturday, the Venezuelan manager, Luis Sojo, seemed boggled by having two starting pitchers from Seattle: Carlos Silva and Félix Hernández. He used each for four innings in the same game, saying that Saturday was the mandated work day for both, which made no sense, because Silva and Hernández will not be pitching on the same day during the regular season. This wacky subtext will loosen up in the second round, when pitchers have more relaxed pitch counts. On the other hand, Johnson and Lachemann will have to find satisfactory work for all 16 of their pitchers. “It’s not your normal season staff, where you got a sixth reliever, even seven at times,” Johnson said. “It’s about starting and getting some innings. “So we just have to kind of play it and keep our fingers crossed.”  None of this is likely to change if the Classic survives. The clubs are locked into this time of year. Oswalt was dubious about a postseason Classic because of the length of the playoffs and he did not expect a midseason break like hockey takes every four years for the Olympics. “Then you are talking about trying to play eight games in eight days, then you have eight days off in the middle,” Oswalt said. “So it’s really about the only time you can do it.” The Classic is likely to go on just like this: amusing, imperfect and dominated by clickers and cellphones.

World Baseball Classic
Baseball
Major League Baseball
Lachemann Marcel
Johnson Davey
Oswalt Roy
Toronto (Ontario)