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4月30日 NYT： McCain Offers Market-Based Health Plan
By Michael D. Shear TAMPA, April 29 -- Sen. John McCain on Tuesday rejected calls by his Democratic opponents for universal health coverage, instead offering a market-based solution with an approach similar to a proposal put forth by President Bush last year. McCain's belief in the power of the free market to meet the nation's health-care needs sets up a stark choice for voters this fall in terms of the care they could receive, the role the government would play and the importance they place on the issue. Democratic Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) have vowed government action to fulfill what they cast as a moral right for Americans to have health insurance. They favor mandates for coverage; McCain (R-Ariz.) proposes tax incentives. Obama and Clinton would impose new regulations on insurers; McCain's plan is designed to avoid direct regulation. The Democrats would build on the current employer-based system; McCain would shift to a more individual approach. In a speech at a cancer research center here, McCain dismissed his rivals' proposals for universal health care as riddled with "inefficiency, irrationality and uncontrolled costs." He said the 47 million uninsured Americans will get coverage only when they are freed from the shackles of the current employer-dominated system. McCain's prescription would seek to lure workers away from their company health plans with a $5,000 family tax credit and a promise that, left to their own devices, they would be able to find cheaper insurance that is more tailored to their health-care needs and not tied to a particular job. Under McCain's plan, $3.6 trillion worth of tax breaks over a decade that would have gone to businesses for coverage of their employees would be redirected to individuals, regardless of whether they are covered by a company plan. "Insurance companies could no longer take your business for granted, offering narrow plans with escalating costs," McCain said. "It would help change the whole dynamic of the current system, putting individuals and families back in charge, and forcing companies to respond with better service at lower cost." Health experts predict a robust debate in the general-election campaign as anxiety about the cost of health care grows against the backdrop of a worsening economy, higher gasoline prices and rising unemployment. "Health will increasingly become reframed as part of the broader pocketbook and economic concerns," said Drew Altman, president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health research group. "The real health reform debate hasn't really begun -- the debate between the Democrats and the Republicans about the fundamental differences in how to reform health care." Altman's group released a poll Tuesday showing that nearly 30 percent of Americans have faced a serious problem in paying for medical care or insurance in the past year. The survey also found that 25 percent of workers made job decisions based primarily on health-coverage considerations. McCain's proposal is similar to one that Bush put forth in his 2007 State of the Union address. That plan, which would have replaced employer tax breaks for health insurance with a $15,000 tax deduction for married couples, flopped in Congress, failing to get even a committee hearing. McCain's plan is aimed primarily at giving individuals the power to make health-care decisions by granting the same tax breaks for insurance whether workers get a policy from an employer or on their own. Aides call it a "radical" rethinking of health care that would drive costs down and give people more choice. But it also leaves McCain open to criticism that he is not doing enough for the poor and sick, who could face steep premiums and limited choices as they search for an insurance company willing to cover them. Critics of McCain's plan said it would do little to help people already struggling with health-care costs. Unlike his Democratic opponents, for instance, McCain would not mandate coverage for people with preexisting conditions who have not already been covered by a company health insurance plan. Critics say that would leave millions of people without coverage. "Our next president has to get health-care costs under control. But like President Bush, John McCain won't stop rising health-care costs," asserts the Service Employees International Union, which has endorsed Obama, in a new television ad running in the swing state of Ohio. "When it comes to making health care affordable . . . we'll still be feeling the pain." McCain sought to answer those charges Tuesday by saying he would create what he called a guaranteed access plan, or GAP, to help provide coverage of last resort for the sick and other "high-risk" people until the marketplace has matured enough to take care of them. He gave few details of how such a program would work, who would run it or how it would be financed. He said it might be operated by a nonprofit organization with funds from the federal and state governments. And he said he would work with governors to solicit ideas from their experiences with similar state-run programs. McCain advisers said such a program could cost as much as $7 billion a year. But McCain vowed not to "create another entitlement program that Washington will let get out of control." He added: "Nor will I saddle states with another unfunded mandate." In a statement, Clinton said McCain's plan has "fundamental flaws" and charged that it would abandon millions of Americans to expensive, high-risk insurance arrangements. "Older Americans or those with pre-existing conditions would be allowed to get only one type of coverage in a high risk GAP pool," Clinton said. "That kind of arrangement does more to help insurers than individuals." Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan said, "John McCain is recycling the same failed policies that didn't work when George Bush first proposed them and won't work now." McCain also promised to fight for health savings accounts, a centerpiece of Bush's health-care efforts, and to lobby insurance companies for better coverage of preventive care. And he said he would provide incentives for doctors and hospitals to use cutting-edge technology to reduce medical costs. In his own television commercial, which began running Tuesday across Iowa, McCain says, "I can characterize my approach on health care by choice and competition, affordability and availability." The discussion about health care has for months centered on the debate between Obama and Clinton. But by highlighting his plan now, McCain is refusing to cede the issue to the Democrats. Aides said he is driven by a belief that his rivals' approach would drive up costs and make health care less accessible. "Clinton and Obama would put the government in charge of the choices you have to make," said Carly Fiorina, a top adviser. "John McCain's plan puts the choice, the power, the decision in the hands of the individual and the family." Daily Reading： Wednesday of the Sixth Week of EasterApril 30, 2008
Reading 1 Acts 17:15, 22—18:1 After Paul’s escorts had taken him to Athens, they came away with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible. Then Paul stood up at the Areopagus and said: “You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious. For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’ What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything. Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything. He made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions, so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’ as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination. God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent because he has established a day on which he will ‘judge the world with justice’ through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead.” When they heard about resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, but others said, “We should like to hear you on this some other time.” And so Paul left them. But some did join him, and became believers. Among them were Dionysius, a member of the Court of the Areopagus, a woman named Damaris, and others with them. After this he left Athens and went to Corinth. Responsorial Psalm Gospel Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. 4月29日 Daily reading： Memorial of Saint Catherine of Siena, virgin and doctor of the ChurchApril 29, 2008
Reading 1 Responsorial Psalm Gospel Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. 4月28日 NYT： History Hints a Recession Would Hit City HardApril 28, 2008 Federal officials may still be debating whether the American economy will fall into a full-blown recession this year. But economists in New York City are pondering another question: If there is a national recession, how deep will it get here? If the last two recessions are any guide, economists say, the city could be headed into a wrenching reversal that will last longer than the national downturn. Though by many measures the city’s economy is still chugging along even as the nation’s sputters, there are troubling signs: Business-tax revenues and the number of building permits are dropping while unemployment and office space availability are creeping up. Perhaps most important, big investment banks continue to report losses on securities tied to mortgages, causing the elimination of thousands of high-paying jobs on Wall Street, with many more layoffs in the works. James Parrott, the chief economist for the Fiscal Policy Institute, a liberal research group, said he believed the city had been in a recession for months. Employment in construction has already started to decline, as it usually does at the start of a recession, he said. Retail sales would be following suit, he added, if not for the surge of foreign tourists taking advantage of the weak dollar. Once the layoffs on Wall Street start rippling through the city’s economy, Mr. Parrott said, “it’s going to take something unforeseen to prevent us from having a massive job loss.” The situation has worsened enough that the New York City Independent Budget Office, which said a month ago that it expected a brief and mild recession, is preparing a forecast that is likely to be significantly bleaker, said Ronnie Lowenstein, the director. The local economy, she said, “will be considerably worse than it is now.” Still, predicting downturns is risky work. Every recession has its own personality, and the city’s sprawling economy has reacted differently to each one. More dependent on Wall Street and more closely linked to the global economy than the rest of America, the city has been battered harder by recessions that started in the financial markets than by those that began in manufacturing. Looking to history for clues about how New York might fare in a new recession, economists note that the city suffered more and for a longer period than the nation as a whole during the last two downturns — at the start of the 1990s and in the early years of this decade. So far, however, no one is forecasting a recession that would rival the financial disaster that the city endured in the 1970s, when it teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. That crisis was the most severe downturn in the city’s fortunes since World War II. In 1973, the national inflation rate already was rising when the supply of foreign oil was disrupted. High interest rates, combined with falling productivity and rising unemployment, led to a condition known as stagflation. New York City fared much worse than the rest of the country. Unemployment and the crime rate soared as 600,000 jobs were lost. Several large corporations, including General Electric, packed up their headquarters and decamped to the suburbs, or farther away. By the spring of 1975, the city was on the verge of defaulting on its debts. The State Legislature created the Municipal Assistance Corporation, which borrowed billions of dollars to keep the city afloat. (Experts widely believe the city’s finances, even in a weakening economy, are much better today, with projections of a surplus of more than $4 billion this fiscal year.) When the next national recession struck in early 1980, followed by another in mid-1981, New York City was still rebounding. Nationally, that downturn spurred thousands of business failures, many of them manufacturers. But the city’s manufacturing sector had already shrunk markedly, leaving it with less to lose, economists said. As a result, those recessions were considered relatively mild in New York. In 1982, when the national unemployment rate had risen to 10.8 percent, it was 9.8 percent in the city. The next two recessions, however, were largely about Wall Street and what it financed — and so New York felt the pain. In the mid-1980s, the city and its growing financial sector were on a tear. The stock market was rising steadily, and big investment banks like Morgan Stanley and Salomon Brothers were growing from tightly held partnerships into big public companies. A building boom took root. Office buildings and condominiums sprouted across the metropolitan area, many of them financed by the aggressive lending of savings and loan associations. By mid-1987, the city had added back about 300,000 jobs, and its unemployment rate had fallen below 6 percent. Personal incomes were rising along with the stock market. The city’s median family income increased by more than 15 percent during the ’80s. Then the stock market crashed in mid-October 1987, wiping out all of the year’s gains in a single day. But its dire effects were not immediately felt. The city’s economy continued to expand, along with the nation’s, for two more years. But the growth masked the cutbacks that had begun on Wall Street, where the banks had been eliminating jobs throughout 1988. With Wall Street in a tailspin, a downturn was well under way in New York when the national recession officially began in July 1990. Two years later, the city’s unemployment rate had risen to more than 11 percent. That national recession officially ended in 1991, but the downturn lingered in New York, for another year and a half by Mr. Parrott’s estimate. Corporations continued eliminating layers of management in what came to be known as the first “white-collar recession.” Before it was over, one of every 10 jobs in the city — about 360,000 in all — were lost. The city did not begin to recover until 1994, when another financial boom began, this one culminating in the mania for dot-com stocks. The dot-com party came to an abrupt end in March 2000. This time, the job cuts started not on Wall Street, but in computer services. Employment in data processing and other business services fell fast, but overall employment in the city continued growing until the end of 2000. Then came the devastating terrorist attack on Sept. 11. About 80,000 jobs were lost in the 15 weeks after the attack, turning what had been a mild downturn into a deep recession. Travel and tourism-related businesses suffered even more than financial services. Officially, the national economy pulled out of that recession at the end of 2001. But the city kept shedding jobs until 2003, eventually losing more than 225,000. What lessons, then, do those downturns hold for economists parsing the current economic troubles? Economists say the post-9/11 recession is less instructive because of the anomaly of the attack and its localized impact on the economy. But some economists see parallels in the current situation to the recession of 1990, as both were preceded by easy and abundant credit. Although the current national slowdown began with the bursting of a housing bubble in Sun Belt states, the city could again remain in recession after the national economy recovers because Wall Street firms financed much of that lending, economists said. Mr. Parrott described the borrowing of recent years as “excessive,” saying that aggressive mortgage lending and the leveraged trading of mortgage-related securities inflated the bubble. Ms. Lowenstein said: “Even if it didn’t start on Wall Street, Wall Street is very much involved. Given the difficulties we’re seeing in the financial sector, it’s hard to imagine that we’re not going to see some fairly significant losses that could well exceed what’s happening in other areas of the country.” Though job losses on Wall Street this time around may not rise as high as during the last two recessions, she said, the damage could be equally severe. “There may be fewer financial-sector jobs lost, but each job is very much more valuable,” Ms. Lowenstein said. “The loss of those jobs has a much greater impact on the economy because they are so well-paid.” NYT: Loan Industry Fighting Rules on MortgagesApril 28, 2008 WASHINGTON — The mortgage industry, facing the prospect of tougher regulations for its central role in the housing crisis, has begun an intensive campaign to fight back. As the Federal Reserve completes work on rules to root out abuses by lenders, its plan has run into a buzz saw of criticism from bankers, mortgage brokers and other parts of the housing industry. One common industry criticism is that at a time of tight credit, tighter rules could make many mortgages more expensive by creating more paperwork and potentially exposing lenders to more lawsuits. To the chagrin of consumer groups that have complained that the proposed rules are not strong enough, the industry’s criticism has already prompted the Fed to consider narrowing the scope of the plan so it applies to fewer loans. The debate over new mortgage standards comes in response to a severe crisis in the housing and financial markets that many economists trace back to overly loose credit and abusive loans. Those practices, combined with low interest rates, led to inflated market values that have declined rapidly in recent months as investors have begun to lose confidence in the financial instruments tied to those loans. Four months ago, the Fed proposed the new standards on exotic mortgages and high-cost loans for people with weak credit. The Fed’s proposals came after it was criticized sharply as a captive of the mortgage lending industry that had failed over many years to supervise it adequately. Proposals are pending in Congress on mortgage standards, but it is not clear whether they will be adopted this year. The Fed has its own authority under housing and lending laws to adopt mortgage standards. The plan presented by the Fed was proposed by its chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, and Randall S. Kroszner, a former White House economist in the Bush administration who is now a Fed governor and leads the Fed’s consumer and community affairs committee. The plan would not cover existing mortgages but would apply only to new ones. It would force mortgage companies to show that customers can realistically afford their mortgages. It would require lenders to disclose the hidden fees often rolled into interest payments. And it would prohibit certain types of advertising considered misleading. The Fed is expected to issue final rules this summer. Earlier this month, as the comment period was about to close, the Fed was deluged with more than 5,000 comments, mostly from lenders who said the proposals could affect loans that have not presented problems. Some bankers and brokers also said the rules would discourage them from lending to some creditworthy borrowers. The plan was criticized in separate filings by three of the industry’s most influential trade groups — the American Bankers Association, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Independent Community Bankers of America. More modest concerns about some of the provisions were also raised by the National Association of Home Builders and the National Association of Realtors. Regulators have been meeting about the proposals with bankers, brokers and consumer groups in recent weeks and are continuing to do so. Some of the groups seeking changes maintain that the proposals threaten to make borrowing for a home far more expensive and would unfairly deny mortgage brokers the right to earn certain fees. Small community banks, which have played no significant role in the housing crisis, have urged the Fed to limit the scope of the proposed rules so that they do not discourage them from issuing loans. Lending groups have also raised concern that they would lead to frivolous and expensive litigation. “We support many of the provisions in the proposed rule, but we do have concerns about the increased regulatory burden, liability and reputational risks that lenders might face,” said Kieran P. Quinn, chairman of Column Financial, Credit Suisse’s mortgage lending subsidiary in Atlanta, and the chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association. On at least one major aspect of the proposed restrictions — how broadly they should apply — the industry appears to be making headway. In a recent speech, Mr. Kroszner suggested that in response to criticism that the plan was including too many kinds of loans the Fed was considering whether to narrow the plan. “We have heard from commenters who have expressed concern that in the current market environment, the proposed trigger could cover the market too broadly, and we will carefully consider the issues they raise and other possible approaches to achieve our objective,” Mr. Kroszner said last month at a conference of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals. Before this year, the Fed had applied an extra set of protection from abusive lending practices to a subset of subprime borrowers under the Home Ownership Equity Protection Act of 1994. The Fed has applied the law to fewer than 1 percent of all mortgages — those with interest rates at least eight percentage points above prevailing rates on Treasury securities. Some economists and housing experts say the Fed’s lax oversight helped enable lending companies to reap enormous profits by providing millions of unsuitable and abusive loans to homeowners who often did not fully understand the terms or appreciate their risk. As of January, the most recent month of available data, about a quarter of all subprime adjustable mortgages were delinquent, twice the level of the same period last year. Lenders began foreclosure proceedings on about 190,000 of these mortgages in the last three months of 2007. The new rules would apply extra protection to any mortgage with an interest rate three percentage points above Treasury rates. Officials said that they would cover all subprime loans, which accounted for about a quarter of all mortgages last year as well as many exotic mortgages known in the industry as “Alt-A” loans. These loans are made to people with relatively good credit scores but who might provide little documentation of their income or assets, or who make smaller than usual down payments or purchase loans that have unusual terms, like interest-only payments for an initial period. Many mortgage brokers and bankers complain that the lower threshold would unnecessarily include many borrowers who are not at risk from abusive practices. “There are a lot of community banks that have shied away from these loans because nobody wants to be a higher-priced lender,” said Karen Thomas, a lobbyist for the Independent Community Bankers. “With the trigger being set so low, it is encroaching on traditional, common sense mortgages. Our fear is it will result in less credit availability, which is not what we need in an already tight credit market.” But consumer groups say that the proposed rules are already weak and that efforts to further weaken them would render them all but useless. “The Fed has accurately diagnosed that this is a brain tumor and responded by prescribing an aspirin,” said Kathleen E. Keest, a former state regulator who is now a senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, a group supporting home ownership. “In the industry, there is a fair amount of denial. They just don’t get it. There is a calamity within the industry, and they don’t have a new script yet, so they rely on the old script, which is that regulation will raise costs.” But, she went on, “What we now see is that the unintended consequences of deregulation are worse. Their line is that regulation will cut back access to credit. That’s been their line ever since the small loan laws were adopted in the early 1900s.” At the same time, letters urging the Fed to further tighten the rules were sent by Sheila C. Bair, the Republican head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, as well as senior members of the House Financial Services Committee. In her letter, Ms. Bair, whose agency regulates many banks, urged the Fed to apply the proposed restrictions to loans that are three percentage points or higher than equivalent Treasuries. To prevent lenders from evading the limit by creatively structuring the loan and fees, she also suggested that the Fed impose the tighter restrictions if the loan fees exceeded a dollar amount. While the Fed plan would require disclosures that could make it harder for lenders to include hidden sales fees that are usually paid to the mortgage broker, Ms. Bair suggested that the plan go further and ban some practices. The plan, for instance, would require subprime lenders to explicitly describe fees that are now hidden. But Ms. Bair has proposed the elimination of such fees, saying such a ban would “eliminate compensation based on increasing the cost of credit and make the amount of the compensation more transparent to consumers.” Ms. Bair also proposed making it easier for borrowers to sue lenders without having to show that they were engaged in a pattern of abusive practices, which is a requirement under the proposed Fed rules. She said that forcing borrowers to show a pattern of abuse “clearly favors lenders by limiting the number of individual consumer lawsuits and the ability of regulators to pursue individual violations.” Ms. Bair also recommended that the Fed eliminate a so-called safe harbor provision in the proposal that protects lenders who fail to verify the income or assets of a borrower in some circumstances. Daily Reading: Monday of the Sixth Week of EasterApril 28, 2008
Reading 1 Responsorial Psalm Gospel Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. 4月27日 NYT： For Many, Thrift Shops Are a Wardrobe EssentialApril 26, 2008 Your Money By CAITLIN KELLY SHEENA MASSIE, dragged by her mother to garage and estate sales as a child, once cringed at the sight of used goods. “The very thought of being caught by my peers buying other people’s junk was mortifying,” said Ms. Massie, a 25-year-old waitress in Canal Winchester, Ohio, near Columbus. “If someone else didn’t want it, why would I?” But, like Ms. Massie, who with her mother is opening a thrift shop, more consumers are concluding that brand new is not necessarily better. According to the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops, the industry is growing at a rate of 5 percent a year. And as the prices of gasoline and groceries edge higher and debt — be it mortgage or credit card — weighs more heavily, saving money on clothes, shoes and household goods has become increasingly essential for many people. “With the economy in its current condition, I think people will begin turning to more thrifty ways of shopping,” said Ms. Massie, whose store, Thrift on the Canal, opens next month. “We want everyone that shops with us to enjoy the same thrill we do when we go thrifting.” The thrift shop association estimates that there are 25,000 such stores in the United States. Britt Beemer, the founder and chief executive of America’s Research Group, a consumer behavior research firm, said surveys have found that 16 to 18 percent of Americans shop in thrift stores, while 12 to 15 percent visit consignment stores. “Thrift shops are not on the radar screen for many shoppers,” Mr. Beemer said. He predicted that more would turn to them, especially for back-to-school clothing. TheThriftShopper.com, a two-year-old Web site, is viewed 70,000 times a day, mostly by women age 30 to 50, said Mike Gold, who runs the site with his wife, Julie. Mr. Gold said he discovered that thrift shop fans are everywhere when he met the auctioneers and experts of “The Antiques Roadshow,” a popular PBS series. “Every single one of them was an avid thrift shopper,” he said. Ms. Gold added, “One said she even buys her clothes there.” Kara Lake, a 34-year-old mother in Braintree, Vt., who is home-schooling her five children, ages 8, 7, 6, 3 and 6 months, said she was one of those fans, particularly since a tight budget is normal. She said she grew up in rural Vermont wearing thrift shop clothing and “can count on two hands when I’ve bought something new.” Because many families have only one or two children, she said, the clothing is only gently used. “We can still give our kids the best things.” Ms. Lake said she easily found clothes with labels like Old Navy, the Gap and Banana Republic. “It doesn’t make any sense to me to buy anything brand new if the clothes are well taken care of.” She also finds clothes for herself from midpriced labels like Ann Taylor and J. Jill, shopping twice a month and spending, in all, $15 to $20 for an armful of clothing for herself and several of her children. Consignment shops, which typically have higher prices but offer higher-end or designer merchandise, have their fans as well. Clothing must be washed or dry cleaned before sale, and the selection in such shops tends to be more carefully edited. Mason Bechtel, a retired administrative assistant for a major financial services firm in Houston, grew up choosing between having several new dresses each season from Loehmann’s, a discount store, or just one from Bonwit Teller. “I realized that shopping at the best shops, I felt stupid,” she said. “Why pay $120 for a dress I could find in a resale shop?” Ms. Bechtel, whose mother ran a Lilly Pulitzer shop in Westport, Conn., admits to having expensive, if classic taste. “I still wear the same clothes from the same shops — but I usually pay nothing more than $20.” Thrift and consignment shoppers love getting a bargain. For Ms. Bechtel, it was a $25 Black Watch plaid blazer with a black velvet collar and $25 for a St. John knit suit — new, typically costing four figures. Julie Gold, a co-owner of TheThriftShopper.com, said buying used clothing takes more diligence than simply rifling the racks at a local retailer. “In a thrift store, you really have to dig,” she said. “It takes a lot of time, energy and patience.” But, thrift shoppers say, the time demanded is repaid with single-digit price tags and a wide variety of styles in one place. Two national chains, Buffalo Exchange and Crossroads Trading Company, allow shoppers to bring in clothes they no longer want for cash or to trade for clothes in the store. Both promote their fashionable offerings, in an attempt to appeal to younger shoppers. And both offer a combination of new and what they term “recycled” clothes. “A lot of the neighborhood men who shop in our store are very style-conscious,” said Mary Dalton, the manager of a Crossroads store near the Castro district in San Francisco. “They can recycle their clothing and not wear it into the ground. Sustainable businesses are becoming more trendy, so people are more open to it.” Prices, she said, range from $6 to $75, and popular jeans like Diesel or G Star cost $50 to $65 a pair compared with a regular retail price that can be double or triple that. “People will get three or four garments for the price of one,” she said. “We get all kinds of customers, from an attorney who needs work clothes to the college-age hipster. The age range is very, very wide.” Consumers can also make money by selling or donating clothing or household goods to thrift and consignment shops. Donations can offer a tax deduction, while selling items that are worth more than you paid, can make consigning lucrative, Ms. Massie said. “I once found a vintage Carlton Ware money box for $2.50 and made a $45 profit and a pair of Ruehl jeans for $9.99 that I sold for $60. I know of a lady who bought a necklace for $3.50, and it was a diamond over one carat worth over $8,000. “That’s why I shop in thrift stores.” NYT: Recession Diet Just One Way to Tighten BeltApril 27, 2008 By MICHAEL BARBARO and ERIC DASH Stung by rising gasoline and food prices, Americans are finding creative ways to cut costs on routine items like groceries and clothing, forcing retailers, restaurants and manufacturers to decode the tastes of a suddenly thrifty public. Spending data and interviews around the country show that middle- and working-class consumers are starting to switch from name brands to cheaper alternatives, to eat in instead of dining out and to fly at unusual hours to shave dollars off airfares. Though seemingly small, the daily trade-offs they are making — more pasta and less red meat, more video rentals and fewer movie tickets — amount to an important shift in consumer behavior. In Ohio, Holly Levitsky is replacing the Lucky Charms cereal in her kitchen with Millville Marshmallows and Stars, a less expensive store brand. In New Hampshire, George Goulet is no longer booking hotel rooms at the Hilton, favoring the lower-cost Hampton Inn. And in Michigan, Jennifer Olden is buying Gain laundry detergent instead of the full-price Tide. Behind the belt-tightening — and brand-swapping — is the collision of several economic forces that are pinching people’s budgets or, at least, leaving them in lit-tle mood to splurge. The price of household necessities has surged, with milk topping $4 a gallon in many stores and regular gasoline closing in on $3.60 a gallon nationwide. Home prices are sliding, wages are stagnant, job losses are growing and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, a broad measure of stock performance, is down 6 percent in the last year. So consumers are going on a recession diet. Burt Flickinger, a longtime retail consultant, said the last time he saw such significant changes in consumer buying patterns was the late 1970s, when runaway inflation prompted Americans to “switch from red meat to pork to poultry to pasta — then to peanut butter and jelly.” “It hasn’t gotten to human food mixed with pet food yet,” he said, “but it is certainly headed in that direction.” Retail sales figures and consumer surveys confirm that Americans are strategically cutting corners, whether it is at the coffee house or the airport. (In: brewing coffee at home and flying coach. Out: Starbucks and first class.) In March, Americans spent less on women’s clothing (down 4.9 percent), furniture (3.1 percent), luxury goods (1.3 percent) and airline tickets (1.1 percent) compared with a year ago, according to MasterCard SpendingPulse, a service of the credit card company that measures spending on 300 million of its cards and estimates purchases with other cards, cash and checks. Wal-Mart Stores reports stronger-than-usual sales of peanut butter and spaghetti, while restaurants like Domino’s Pizza and Ruby Tuesday have suffered a falloff in orders, suggesting that many Americans are sticking to low-cost home-cooked meals. Over the last year, purchases of brand name cookies and crackers have fallen, according to Information Resources, which tracks retail sales. Sales of Nabisco graham crackers have dropped 7.5 percent, and Keebler Fudge Shoppe cookies have slipped by 12.3 percent. Not even beer is immune. Sales of inexpensive domestic beers, like Keystone Light, are up; sales of higher-price imports, like Corona Extra, are down, the firm said. Some are skipping drinks altogether. The number of people ordering an alcoholic drink fell to 31 percent last month from 42 percent last summer, according to a survey of 2,500 people conducted by Technomic, a restaurant industry consulting firm. “People have started to shift spending as if we were in a recession,” said Michael McNamara, vice president for research and analysis at MasterCard. Such trade-offs were on vivid display last week in Ohio, where layoffs have been rampant. At Save-A-Lot, a discount grocery store in Cleveland, Teresa Rutherford, 51, chided her sister-in-law, Donna Dunaway, 44, for picking up a package of Sara Lee honey ham (eight ounces for $2.49). “We can’t afford that!” she said. “Get the cheap stuff.” They settled on a 16-ounce package of Deli Pleasures ham for $3.29, or 34 percent less an ounce. The women said that soaring prices for food and fuel had changed what they buy and where they buy it. “We used to eat out at Bob Evans or Denny’s once a month,” said Ms. Rutherford, who works in an auto-parts factory. “Now we don’t go out at all. We eat in all the time.” Ms. Dunaway, a homemaker, used to splurge on the ingredients for homemade lasagna, her husband’s favorite, before food prices began to surge this year. “Now he’s lucky to get a 99-cent lasagna TV dinner, or maybe some Manwich out of a can,” she said. “I just can’t afford to be buying all that good meat and cheese like I used to.” By no means has the economic downturn been bad for all product categories. For instance, sales of big-ticket electronics, like $1,000 flat-panel televisions and $300 video game systems, are on the rise, according to retailers and research firms. Falling prices for such devices and a looming government deadline to convert to digital television have helped. So has the view, sensible or not, that the technology is a good investment. At a Best Buy in Southfield, Mich., James Szekely, 28, a mechanical engineer, was shopping for a big high-definition TV that he expected would cost at least $2,000, an expense he rationalized because “at least we can watch movies at home.” (In a survey conducted this month by the NPD Group, a research firm, consumers suggested that they would sooner cut spending on clothing, furniture and eating out than on video games.) At Home Depot, sinks and faucets are selling briskly. Managers at the chain suspect that consumers, loath to spend money on a splashy kitchen renovation or new roof, are settling for a cheaper bathroom “refresh.” Another top seller at home improvement stores: programmable thermostats and insulation, which can cut fuel bills. Many retailers are struggling to adjust to the new needs. Clothing sales have started to sink at department stores like Macy’s, Kohl’s and J. C. Penney. So have furniture sales at companies like Bombay and Domain, both of which have filed for bankruptcy protection. Consumers are spurning small indulgences. Starbucks is warning of a drop-off in purchases, and sales have dipped at higher-end restaurant chains, including the steakhouses Ruth’s Chris and Morton’s. To drum up business, Domino’s is offering a new deal: three 10-inch pizzas for $4 each. “We are not recession-proof,” said the chain’s president, J. Patrick Doyle. But chains that emphasize low prices, like TJ Maxx and Wal-Mart, are thriving. And cut-rate supermarkets, like Save-A-Lot, are swamped. “People are not not spending, but they are changing how they spend,” said Marshal Cohen, chief analyst at the NPD Group. And they are often willing to sacrifice convenience or swallow their pride. George Goulet, 52, the business traveler switching from the Hilton to the Hampton Inn, now books flights that depart in the afternoon rather than the early morning. “It’s a lot cheaper,” he said. “I can really see the difference.” Mary Gregory, 55, a telephone company operator in Cleveland, used to eat red meat at least once a week. Now it is hardly ever on her menu. “I usually buy turkey instead,” she said. “Any recipe that calls for meat, like chili or spaghetti, I try to substitute turkey.” Carl Hall, a retired construction worker in Detroit, wants to buy a fence for his backyard. But he decided not to buy a finished product at Lowe’s, the home improvement chain where he was shopping recently. With money tight, “I am looking to put it together myself,” he said, adding that he hoped to save $200. As the compromises mount, people are even coming up with clever schemes to hide their cost-cutting. Holly Levitsky, a 56-year-old supermarket cashier in Cleveland, buys a brand of steak sauce called Briargate for 85 cents and surreptitiously pours it into an A1 steak sauce bottle she keeps at home. “My husband can’t even tell the difference,” she said. Mary M. Chapman, Brenda Goodman and Christopher Maag contributed reporting. DailyReading: Sixth Sunday of EasterApril 27, 2008
Reading 1 Reading II Gospel Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. 4月26日 Daily Reading： Saturday of the Fifth Week of EasterApril 26, 2008
Reading 1 Responsorial Psalm Gospel Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. 4月25日 NYT: The Greening of America
By William Booth LOS ANGELES -- Spurred by visions of their cities frying in a warmer world, mayors around the nation have grasped a green solution: trees! Like Johnny Appleseed, they have vowed to sow their seeds in great profusion, promising millions of new trees in the coming years. Arbor Day, that old fusty holiday, is getting a makeover. Cities once planted trees because they were beautiful. Now trees are being retasked as "green infrastructure" managed by "urban foresters" to work as powerful energy-saving, carbon-sucking, wastewater-treating tools to save the planet. But as the mayors spin their green dreams, their releaf teams have had to confront a brutal reality: Planting a tree is a lot harder than it looks. Urban tree farming can be a time-consuming, expensive and exasperating experience -- like children, trees require years of maintenance. Businesses complain about the cost, neighbors about the sap. Their roots are murder on sidewalks; their limbs tangle with power lines. "The city sidewalk can be one of the most hostile environments for a young tree," a cramped cell of garbage soil surrounded by smothering asphalt, says Gregory McPherson, a scientist with the federal Center for Urban Forest Research. "A virtual conflict zone," as one arborist put it, beset by disease, pollution, drought, insects -- not to mention drunk drivers and staple guns and trip-and-fall lawsuits. "It's a tough life," sighs Marcia Bansley, executive director of Trees Atlanta. It's hard out there for a poplar. Trees are the new potholes. On his first day in office, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa helped pat moist mulch around a golden medallion sapling, the first in an audacious promise to transform this dense, dirty, dry city by planting 1 million new trees. That was almost three years ago. Lessons learned? "We have learned that a million is a really big number," says Nancy Sutley, a deputy mayor who oversees the mass reforestation project, which has experienced some serious growing pains. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino last year promised to add 100,000 trees by 2020, a goal that sounds almost humble compared with those of his counterparts. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels envisions a new tree for every man, woman and child in the city -- 649,000 maples, sweet gums and cherries over the next 30 years. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, announcing his "Tree by Tree" project, is going for a million by 2025. A million just has that aspirational ring. Indeed, Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon is calling his bid "One Million Trees for One Million People." The state of Nebraska is shooting for a million in a decade. New Mexico recently unveiled its "Plant a Million More" campaign. The Sacramento region is betting it can add 5 million. Going global, the United Nations launched the Billion Tree Campaign. (Less numerically ambitious programs are underway in cities such as Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Indianapolis and Washington.) Not be outdone, on Earth Day last year Mayor Michael Bloomberg promised New Yorkers a million trees in 10 years. The cost of planting a single street tree in Manhattan? About $1,000. Estimated cost of the urban reforestation project is $600 million, annual maintenance not included. An early hurdle faced by New York? The city can't hire trained arborists fast enough. Driving around Los Angeles in his Prius is Andy Lipkis, the founder of TreePeople, one of the nation's most experienced organizations of "citizen foresters," who is helping Mayor Villaraigosa reach his million mark. Lipkis points to shady boulevards lined with ficus trees and then to entire neighborhoods devoid of any shrubbery at all, and he confirms what satellite imagery tells us: Poor people don't have plants. The thinnest tree cover is, no surprise, over the city's most impoverished neighborhoods. Where ritzy Bel Air has 53 percent canopy coverage, gritty South Central has only 7 percent. Nationwide, three dozen cities have lost a quarter of their tree canopy since 1972, according to the group American Forests, which discovered that America is missing 600 million trees, as our major metropolitan areas fade from green to gray. But here's the problem: The increased density of American cities means there is less room for trees to replace the missing. The same is true in the suburbs: All those new mini-mansions built to the edge of the property line don't have big yards. When Los Angeles launched its "Million Trees LA" project, it was assumed there would be plenty of room, but as it turns out, "the space is actually quite tight," says McPherson, the scientist with the Forest Service who surveyed the city's bio-inventory with the help of aerial reconnaissance and computer algorithms. McPherson found just 1.3 million spots to "realistically" plant in Los Angeles, most in the yards of private homes. New York faces a similar squeeze. Bloomberg plans 220,000 trees along city streets, which essentially means "a tree in every single place where it is possible to plant a street tree," Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff told the Associated Press. Another 380,000 trees will be planted in parks and shoehorned onto traffic medians, and the remaining 400,000 will be the responsibility of community organizations, businesses, cooperatives, developers and any New Yorker with a patch of dirt and a shovel. Treewise, "Washington is in pretty good shape," says Mark Buscaino, executive director of Casey Trees, a community group that helped plant 1,500 trees in the city last year. Canopy cover in Washington is a nice, leafy, green 35 percent, he says, and per capita the city spends more than New York or Los Angeles on its forest, which includes about 120,000 street trees. To the community of activist-arborists, a tree is really so much more. Trees ease stress, fight cancer, lower crime, build civility, store water, bolster real estate prices, etc. They exhale oxygen, inhale carbon dioxide. Yet while the mayors stress the importance of trees in the fight against global warming, their ability to sequester heat-trapping greenhouse gases is not that super-duper. Consider: There are 1.9 million trees in Washington, a mature urban forest that in a single year absorbs the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from the tailpipes of 9,700 cars, according to David Nowak, a research scientist with the Forest Service. So planting a million new trees is a drop in the bucket, especially in a city such as Los Angeles, where there are 5.2 million vehicles registered in the county. Actually, the greatest benefit of trees is shade, which reduces energy use in the summer. But everybody likes trees, right? Apparently, no. According to the community tree planters toiling on the streets, businesses don't like trees (when foliage blocks signage). Bureaucrats don't like trees (because they're a hassle). And despite what they say now, politicians have not been tree huggers. The first item cut in any tight budget year is usually tree maintenance. "When you say, 'What's the cost of a tree?' it is more than buying a tree and putting it in the ground. It's also taking care of it," says Ray Tretheway, executive director of the Sacramento Tree Foundation, who explains it takes two or three years for a tree to establish a home. Here's a great idea: free trees. Los Angeles has sponsored hundreds of "tree adoptions." But what happens when the saplings go home? "When we plant street trees, we make sure the soil is amended, we stake them, tie them, mulch and add nutrients. We have people committed to watering them," says Dore Burry, the environmental services manager with the Koreatown Youth and Community Center, which has planted 2,600 street trees for Million Trees LA. "When you give away free trees, we have very little assurance of high survivorship." Especially, when cities give away small, vulnerable six-inch seedlings in bags or tubes -- the kind of tree offered today, on Arbor Day, around the country. Many arborists now urge cities not to distribute free seedlings for fear the green swag just ends up in the trash. Los Angeles recently stopped the practice. Planting street trees often requires both a city permit and the permission of neighbors, who give many reasons for not wanting a tree at the curb. They don't like dogs, who do like trees. Tree activists have heard people complain about sap, birds, squirrels, spiders, leaves and shade. Oh, and they don't want their views blocked. Burry explains that neighborhoods with the fewest trees are the toughest places to plant. "These are often the harshest environments, communities on the bad side of environmental justice issues -- lots of renters, working class, two-job individuals. For us it is much more costly." Burry says it takes intense community outreach -- many meetings, much door knocking, to get neighbors to agree to plant and care for new trees. Then: "Sometimes there has been no organic life on the street in 20 years. The soil is extremely dry, nutrient-poor, compacted. We have to pour gallons and gallons of water and just let it sit, and still sometimes you dig and it's like concrete. This loud clang." Other challenges? "They don't have water hoses," Burry says. Trees in Los Angeles are tagged with gang graffiti. Vandalism is not uncommon. So is aggressive pruning by municipal trimmers, which can leaves trees with severe, lethal haircuts ("trim more than 30 percent of a pine and you've killed it," Lipkis says). Certain species of trees planted beneath street lamps can fry themselves out by attempting to photosynthesize 24 hours a day. The average life span of a street tree is seven years, because mortality is so high in the first few years. Since the Million Trees LA program began, the city and its partners have added 141,357 trees to the urban biosphere. Or so they hope. Half of those trees were given away as seedlings or adoptions. It's anybody's guess whether they are still alive. Bottom line? Los Angeles can account for at least 70,000 new trees in parks, on streets, around schools and developments, which is many times more trees than they were planting before. "It's ambitious, it's a very, very ambitious goal," says Larry Smith, executive director of North East Trees, one of the community groups working on the Million Trees LA project. "The reality of what it takes is settling in. We want a million trees but what we really want is healthy, mature, urban trees. We want trees we can take care of, not just numbers." Says Lipkis: "The danger is that it becomes all about reaching a million," and that it becomes a public relations ploy, and not a forest. "You could fly a helicopter over L.A. and dump out a million seeds, but that's not the point, is it?" Staff writer Ashley Surdin contributed to this report. Daily Reading: Feast of Saint Mark, evangelistApril 25, 2008
Reading 1 Responsorial Psalm Gospel Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. 4月24日 NYT： Empty Talk on TaxesApril 24, 2008 Editorial One of the toughest questions that will face the next president is what to do about taxes. There can be no real progress on health care, rebuilding the military or any other major issue without dealing with rising budget deficits and mounting debt from nearly eight years of profligate spending and tax breaks for the wealthy. And that is why it has been so distressing to see all three of the presidential hopefuls pretend they can make good on their promises without broadly raising taxes. This is the reality: To restore the health of the budget, let alone keep ambitious campaign pledges for spending more money, the next president, regardless of which party wins, will have to tax the American people more than any of the candidates has been willing to admit. Senator John McCain’s tax talk is particularly divorced from reality. The presumed Republican nominee has been offering a free-lunch extravaganza — hundreds of billions of dollars in new tax breaks per year, on top of extending President Bush’s tax cuts, with no credible way to make up for the money the government will lose. The more criticism he has faced, the more nonsensical his justifications have become. Among his more peculiar recent comments is his insistence that today’s superlow tax rates on capital gains — which overwhelmingly benefit the very richest Americans and which he wants to preserve — are important for working people with 401(k) retirement plans. Memo to Mr. McCain: 401(k) savers get no benefit from a low capital gains rate. All of the money in those plans is eventually taxed at ordinary income tax rates, not at the special reduced rate for capital gains. Sadly, blundering and blustering on taxes is a nonpartisan affliction. In their debate before the Pennsylvania primary, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama both took the bait when George Stephanopoulos, one of the ABC News moderators, asked them about a “read-my-lips,” no-new-taxes pledge. Mrs. Clinton promised to not raise taxes on “middle-class Americans, people making less than $250,000 a year.” Mr. Obama pledged to cut taxes starting at incomes less than “$200,000 and $250,000.” Apart from their rather odd definition of middle class, neither candidate’s numbers add up. In the United States today, anyone making anywhere near a quarter-million dollars a year is in the top 3 percent or so of taxpayers. (The median income is about $50,000.) Even in the states with the largest percentage of taxpayers making above $200,000 — Connecticut and New Jersey — only 6 percent of the population makes that much. In effect, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are saying that they can pay for their promises mainly by raising taxes on the top 3 percent of taxpayers. That’s neither politically nor economically plausible. Perhaps the candidates are afraid the American people can’t handle the truth about what it would take to meet the nation’s economic challenges. Or perhaps they are underestimating those challenges. In either case, it’s hardly confidence-inspiring at a time of war and economic crisis. WP: Citing Supply, Sam's Club and Costco Limit Sales of Rice
By Marcus Kabel The two biggest U.S. warehouse retail chains are limiting how much rice customers can buy because of what Sam's Club, a division of Wal-Mart Stores, called yesterday "recent supply and demand trends." The broader chain of Wal-Mart stores has no plans to limit food purchases, however. The moves come as U.S. rice futures hit a record high on global food inflation, although one rice expert said the warehouse chains may be reacting more to stockpiling by restaurants and small stores than to shortages. Sam's Club followed moves by Costco Wholesale, based in Seattle, which in some stores limited bulk rice purchases. Sam's Club declined to say whether this was first time it had restricted sales of bulk foods. The limits affect 20-pound bags, not retail-sized ones. Costco chief executive Jim Sinegal declined to comment yesterday. Sam's Club said it would limit customers to four bags at a time of imported jasmine, basmati and long-grain white rice. The warehouse chain caters heavily to small businesses, including restaurants. Sam's Club spokeswoman Kristy Reed said she could not comment on whether the problem was caused by short supplies or by customers stocking up in anticipation of higher prices. David Coia, USA Rice Federation spokesman, said there is no rice shortage in the United States. "It's possible that small restaurants and bodega-type neighborhood stores may be purchasing rice in larger quantities than they do typically to avoid higher prices," Coia said about the warehouse chain restrictions. BJ's Wholesale Club, a smaller chain based in Natick, Mass., said it is not imposing limits. The Sam's Club restriction is effective immediately at all locations where quantity restrictions are allowed by law. It does not apply to other staples such as flour or oil. "We are working with our suppliers to address this matter to ensure we are in stock, and we are asking for our members' cooperation and patience," Reed said in a statement. Sam's Club has 593 stores compared with 2,523 Wal-Mart Supercenters that combine a grocery section with general merchandise. Costco has 534 warehouses worldwide, most of them in the United States. Wal-Mart spokeswoman Deisha Galberth said Wal-Mart stores have no plans for restrictions similar to those at Sam's Club. "We are not seeing any signs of concern in the supply chain that would cause us to limit the sales of any items," Galberth said. U.S. rice futures soared to an all-time high Wednesday as investors bet that surging world demand will continue to pressure already dwindling stockpiles. Rice for the most actively traded July contract jumped 62 cents, to $24.82 per 100 pounds on the Chicago Board of Trade, after earlier rising to a record $24.85. Relentless demand from developing countries and poor crop yields have pushed rice prices up 70 percent this year, raising concerns of severe shortages of the staple consumed by almost half the world's population. Brazil announced yesterday that it temporarily halted rice exports to ensure domestic supply as global prices rise. The steep increases have followed similar jumps in the price of wheat, corn and soybeans that have added to Americans' rising grocery bills and led to violent food riots in poor countries including Haiti, Senegal and Pakistan. IHT： Fresh off Pennsylvania victory, Clinton raises millions, mostly online
By Jeff Zeleny and John M. Broder Thursday, April 24, 2008 NEW ALBANY, Indiana: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's fund-raising roared to life on Wednesday, with her campaign collecting more than $8 million in the hours after she won the Pennsylvania primary, and the fresh infusion of cash immediately went to helping her mount a vigorous fight in Indiana, the next primary state. Senator Barack Obama, relying on an already strong financial advantage, barely mentioned his Democratic rival — or his defeat — as he filmed new television commercials here, reassured superdelegates that he was still the front-runner and deployed scores of campaign workers to Indiana, North Carolina and the half-dozen other states that remain on the primary calendar. Obama said Democrats should be concerned that "there's been some time lost" in turning the party's focus to Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. But he said again and again that Clinton was trailing in pledged delegates and the popular vote and that he would fight through the nine remaining contests "to wrap up this nomination as quickly as possible." Clinton's overnight fund-raising success, however, gave her the means to compete on a more level field with Obama. Her chief fund-raiser, Terry McAuliffe, said the campaign was on track to raise nearly $10 million in online donations in the 24 hours after her Pennsylvania victory, the campaign's best one-day money haul. While Obama had started April with more than $40 million, Clinton's campaign was essentially broke, with millions of dollars in debt. Her dire financial straits had threatened to derail her campaign before her nine-point victory in Pennsylvania allowed her to make a fresh case to voters and party leaders that she would be the strongest Democratic presidential nominee. The Clinton campaign was scrambling to milk the jump in contributions, transforming its home page to a donation page, something it had experimented with for several days last month with great success. Indiana, like North Carolina, holds its primary on May 6. Clinton is seeking to replicate her campaigns from Ohio and Pennsylvania to win over voters there who share many similarities and concerns. She arrived in Indianapolis on Wednesday sharply focused on the economy, by far the chief concern of Democratic voters across the country, according to exit polls. She promised that as president she would deliver "jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs" across the Rust Belt, which has seen a severe erosion of manufacturing jobs in recent decades. A senior Clinton aide said that she would tailor her message in Indiana to appeal to lower-income workers in the cities and to voters in rural areas and small towns. The aide said Clinton would continue to raise questions about Obama's readiness to face the many economic and national security challenges facing the country. He did not rule out running some version of an advertisement that the campaign ran in the final days of the Pennsylvania race showing images of the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor and Osama bin Laden and questioning Obama's fitness to lead in perilous times. She has two advertisements on the air in Indiana, both focusing on trade and the loss of jobs. Her campaign is also circulating fliers in Indiana criticizing Obama's health care plan, claiming that it would leave 15 million Americans uncovered, a claim Obama disputes. As they campaigned Wednesday in Indiana, Clinton and Obama intensified their vigorous behind-the-scenes fight for superdelegates, with them and their surrogates making calls to win over people who are uncommitted or suddenly unsure of whom to support. Obama drew the support of Governor Brad Henry of Oklahoma, who said squabbling among Democrats would "be disastrous for the party." A superdelegate from Nebraska also endorsed Obama, as did a group of supporters of former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, while Clinton received new support from one superdelegate. Obama argued that he had made progress in the Pennsylvania primary, despite his defeat. And he sought to play down questions about whether he can win in the general election, claiming that he would draw support from independent voters and Republicans eager for a change in Washington. "Don't worry about the party being divided in November," Obama told voters in this southeastern Indiana town. "The Democratic Party is going to recognize, as soon as we have a nominee, that there is too much at stake for us to be divided." While polls show Obama comfortably ahead in North Carolina, polls in Indiana indicate that the race is tight, with each candidate enjoying countervailing advantages. Obama is from neighboring Illinois and is better known in Indiana than in many other states because of the overlap of media markets. Clinton begins with a sizable base of middle- and lower-income, less-educated voters that have rallied behind her elsewhere in the Midwest, and she has been working to expand her appeal to higher-income suburbanites, according to party officials here. Sarann Warner, the vice-chairwoman of the Democratic Party in Hamilton County, in suburban Indianapolis, said there had been a surge in Democratic Party registration in the county, long a Republican bastion. "Democrats are coming out of the woodwork," she said, adding that she had no idea whether they were Clinton or Obama supporters. She said she was neutral in the contest. Kip Tew, a former state Democratic Party chairman who supports Obama, said 150,000 new voters had registered as Democrats since January. He said Indiana was unique politically and geographically, but more like Ohio and Missouri than Pennsylvania. Obama narrowly won the Missouri primary while Clinton won in Ohio by 10 points. Tew said that he expected Clinton to run strongly in small towns and rural areas. "It's hard to predict how they will vote," he said. "People have consistently underestimated the power of the Clinton brand in Democratic politics." WP： For Children, a Better BeginningStudy Finds Progress on Array of Issues From Birth to 10 By Donna St. George In a wide-ranging look at how children have fared in their first decade of life, a study to be released today offers a promising picture of American childhood: Sixth-graders feel safer at school. Reading and math scores are up for 9-year-olds. More preschoolers are vaccinated. Fewer are poisoned by lead. The analysis, which created a composite index of more than 25 key national indicators, reports an almost 10 percent boost in children's well-being from 1994 to 2006. This overall improvement comes in spite of two significant negative trends: increased rates of childhood obesity and low-birth-weight babies. "There are some really encouraging signs of progress," said Ruby Takanishi, president of the nonprofit Foundation for Child Development, which funded the research. "I think it's important as a country . . . to see that there are things that parents can do, that government can do, that institutions can do, to make measurable differences for children." Experts familiar with the report credited shifts in government policy, in the economy and in parenting for the advances highlighted in the study, done by Kenneth C. Land, a Duke University sociologist and demographer. But they also cautioned that significant problems remain and that the recent economic downturn could take a toll. Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University, said the greatest progress tracked by the report occurred before the nation's economy slowed in 2001. "With the economy weakening further, we may see an additional slowing of the improvement or perhaps even some backsliding," he said. The report brought together a broad collection of mostly federal data, much of it from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Census Bureau, and the Education and Justice departments. When figures were not available for some years, the report used estimates. The study is unusual for its melding of trend lines over 12 years: in education, health, safety, economics, social relationships and community involvement. The authors said the idea was to examine how the younger half of American children is doing -- apart from generally improving statistics on teenage pregnancy and substance abuse. The report showed, for example, that mortality rates for children ages 1 to 4 have declined by one-third, from 42.9 per 100,000 in 1994 to 28.1 in 2006. Land said possible reasons include better medical care and nutrition, mandatory use of car seats and safer playground equipment. The homicide rate for children ages 5 to 9 dropped by half, from 1.2 per 100,000 in 1994 to 0.6 in 2005. "Even for relatively rare events, that's still good news," Land said. Another statistic that stood out was in the number of sixth-grade students who said they feared attack or harm at school, or on the way to or from school. The report showed a 36 percent decline, from 14.3 percent in 1995 to 9.1 percent in 2006. That progress came as fewer mothers smoked during pregnancy, with statistics showing a decline from 14.6 percent in 1994 to 9.3 percent in 2006, also a 36 percent drop. Craig Ramey, director of the Center on Health and Education at Georgetown University, said he took heart from the findings: "We still have quite substantial levels of problems to deal with, but isn't it nice to see some trend lines that say some programs are having impact?" In family life, more parents limited television watching with three or more rules about programs or hours in front of the screen. For children ages 3 to 5, the percentage climbed from 54 percent in 1994 to 70 percent in 2006. For children ages 6 to 11, the numbers rose from 60.3 in 1994 to 73.2 in 2006. To a lesser extent, more parents read to their young children. The percentages of children who were read to by a relative every day in the previous week rose from 57 percent in 1994 to 59.8 percent in 2006. Parents are more engaged than in previous generations, said Takanishi, but "they can't do the job alone, and government policies can't do the job alone," she said. "It takes both." At school, more children attended full-day kindergarten -- with 70 percent enrolled in 2006, up from 48.6 percent in 1994. And among 9-year-olds, National Assessment of Educational Progress scores in reading and math increased by what Land called a significant amounts. Scores remained flat in science. Several experts suggested that some of the good news was the result of a blend of research, policy changes and public health campaigns, as in cases of smoking during pregnancy and exposure to lead-based paint. With lead, the study reported a striking decline in the percentage of children younger than 6 with elevated levels of lead in their blood, which can have damaging health and neurological effects. In 1997, 7.6 percent of children tested positive for elevated levels; the percentage fell to 1.2 in 2006, marking an 84 percent decline, according to the report. Takanishi said she was "blown away" by the change. "For all of us who have been working in these areas for a number of decades, it gives us some hope that change is possible," she said. Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of its Center on Children and Families, said the forces behind some of the trends were less clear. "This sounds like good news, but it's hard to say what produced it," Sawhill said. On any given topic, she said, there are multiple "crosscurrents" to consider. She and others expressed great concern about some trends. The prevalence of low-birth-weight babies increased in the 12 years. In 1994, 7.3 percent of live births were low-weight. By 2006, it was 8.4 percent, representing a 15 percent uptick. Such births often are accompanied by health complications and developmental delay. The increase is at least partly the result of better technology to keep struggling infants alive, said Ramey of Georgetown. Other factors cited in the report were delays in childbearing and fertility drugs that lead to multiple births. Obesity, the report noted, ranked as one of the most adverse health trends for the age group. The report points out that obese children accounted for 12.7 percent of 6-to-11-year-olds in 1994, and an estimated 20.6 percent in 2006. For children ages 2 to 5, the figure climbed from 8.4 percent to 15.8 percent in the same period. Said Cherlin, of Hopkins: "I think we now need to do for obesity what we did for smoking." Daily Reading: Thursday of the Fifth Week of EasterApril 24, 2008
Reading 1 Responsorial Psalm Gospel Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. 4月23日 NYT： Seizing on Primary Win, Clinton Says Tide Is TurningApril 23, 2008 By MICHAEL LUO and PATRICK HEALY Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today seized on her decisive victory over Senator Barack Obama in Pennsylvania to proclaim “the tide is turning” in the Democratic nominating fight, arguing that her performance on Tuesday proved she was best suited to take on Senator John McCain in the fall because of her capacity to carry key swing states. “I won the states that we have to win — Ohio, now Pennsylvania,” she said on CNN in one of six appearances on morning news shows Wednesday. “It’s very hard to imagine a Democrat getting to the White House without winning those states.” Mrs. Clinton won the Pennsylvania popular vote, 55 percent to 45 percent, giving her a critical boost as the she heads into the next nominating contests in North Carolina and Indiana in 13 days. Polls suggest that Mr. Obama is better positioned in those states than he was in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama’s campaign was left struggling to explain on Wednesday why he had once again been unable to leave his opponent on the mat, as well as his troubles gaining the backing of white working-class voters. But Obama campaign officials were able to point to at least one unyielding reality on their side: he still possesses a lead in pledged delegates that will be almost impossible for Mrs. Clinton to erase. In a memo sent to reporters late Tuesday, Bill Burton, Mr. Obama’s national press secretary, called the race “fundamentally unchanged,” meaning that Mrs. Clinton’s victory had done little to help her cut into Mr. Obama’s pledged-delegate lead. The Obama campaign announced early on Wednesday that it had secured another super-delegate endorsement, that of Gov. Brad Henry of Oklahoma, who had previously said he would wait until the convention to make public his choice. Mrs. Clinton’s victory in Pennsylvania indeed did little to close the pledged-delegate gap. It yielded her at least 80 pledged delegates, compared with at least 66 for Mr. Obama, with 12 still to be awarded, according to the Associated Press. David Plouffe, the campaign manager for Mr. Obama, said on Wednesday that while the final breakdown of delegates from Pennsylvania was not yet complete, he too projected that Mrs. Clinton would have a net gain of about 12 pledged delegates from her victory, whittling Mr. Obama’s overall lead to about 159 pledged delegates by the campaign’s calculation. A total of 187 delegates are at stake in the next big primaries on May 6. “We don’t believe that the structure of the race is going to change,” Mr. Plouffe said. In a conference call with reporters, Mr. Plouffe sought to dismiss concerns about how Mr. Obama would fare against Mr. McCain. He ticked through a list of states where polls indicated Mr. Obama was a stronger opponent than Mrs. Clinton in facing Republicans. “We think this is a flawed exercise, to somehow suggest that performance in primaries is a leading indicator or what would happen in a general election,” Mr. Plouffe said. He added that Mr. Obama had a high favorability rating among Democrats who supported Mrs. Clinton. In making her case today, though, Mrs. Clinton pointed to the popular vote totals and contended that, counting those cast in the Florida and Michigan primaries, she had now garnered more primary votes than any previous Democratic nominee. But both candidates were barred from campaigning in the Florida and Michigan contests, and Mr. Obama’s name was not on the ballot in Michigan, because the states moved up their primary dates against the national party’s wishes. The states’ convention delegates were stripped by the Democratic National Committee. As the race moves to Indiana and North Carolina, much of the immediate focus in the Clinton campaign is on scrounging for cash to combat what has been a widening disparity in resources with the Obama campaign. In Indiana, where polls show a toss-up at this point, Mr. Obama has spent more than three times as much as Mrs. Clinton on television advertising so far; in North Carolina, where Mr. Obama is leading by a significant margin in polls, his spending on TV ads has been more than double hers. During her television interviews Wednesday morning, Mrs. Clinton took pains to mention her web site, as she did the night before in her victory speech, saying that her campaign had brought in over $3 million online overnight. That would seem to prime the campaign for its best 24 hours of online fundraising to date, exceeding the $4 million it brought in after the news broke following the Feb. 5 nominating contests that she had loaned $5 million to her campaign. The campaign is scrambling to take advantage of the spike in contributions, transforming its home page into a donation page, something it had experimented with for the first time on several days last month. Mrs. Clinton also defended herself against criticism that her attacks on Mr. Obama have engendered a negative tone in the race that is damaging to the Democrats’ prospects in November. She said the current contest had been decidedly mild compared to past races. “Everybody is going to compare and contrast,” she said on MSNBC. “I think that is part of the way campaigns are run.” With the pitched battle for the Democratic presidential nomination now set to rage on at least through the May 6 primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, its harshening tone has become an issue for many party leaders. Appearing on MSNBC, Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts urged Mr. Obama, who he is backing, to avoid negative campaigning in favor of “a compelling vision that unifies people.” He said the American public is “not well served” by campaign tactics that seek to diminish an opponent. For their part, the North Carolina Republican Party is planning to roll out a television advertisement on Monday that attacks a pair of Democrats running for governor in the state for endorsing Senator Barack Obama. The ad includes a video clip of Mr. Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, excoriating the United States. The release of the commercial, which Republican officials said would first be seen during 6 p.m. newscasts in the state on Monday, injects a potentially divisive racial element into the state’s primary. Mrs. Clinton faces major challenges going forward. Her campaign had essentially run out of money before the overnight spike in contributions, with a pile of unpaid bills, and she faces growing frustration among some Democratic officials, who would that she quit the field in light of Mr. Obama’s overall lead. Mrs. Clinton’s victory was propelled by her strong performance among women, older voters and less affluent and less educated voters; among white union members with no college education, she won almost three-quarters of the vote, polling showed. Speaking to supporters in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, Mrs. Clinton emphasized that she had triumphed despite trailing Mr. Obama financially. “He broke every spending record in this state trying to knock us out of this race,” she said. “Well, the people of Pennsylvania had other ideas.” Still, she said in calling for more donations, “we can only keep winning if we can keep competing with an opponent who outspends us so massively.” Amid chants of “Yes she can” — a riposte to Mr. Obama’s motto, “Yes we can” — Mrs. Clinton described herself as “a president who is ready to lead on Day One — that means ready to take charge as commander in chief and make this economy work for middle class families — and I thank you, I thank you Pennsylvania, for deciding I can be that president.” Mr. Obama congratulated his opponent at a Tuesday night rally in Evansville, Ind. But he also implicitly chided Mrs. Clinton for the negative tone of her attacks over the past week — and, tacitly, acknowledged his own missteps. “It’s easy to get caught up in the distractions and the silliness and the tit-for-tat that consumes our politics, the bickering that none of us are entirely immune to,” he said. “That trivializes the profound issues — two wars, an economy in recession, a planet in peril.” He added that Americans “believe that the challenges we face are bigger than the smallness of our politics.” Chief among the challenges facing Mrs. Clinton, besides paying bills and financing new advertising, was persuading impatient Democratic superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials — to at least remain neutral in the contest and let the remaining primaries play out through early June. The Pennsylvania Democrats who cast their ballots in Tuesday’s primary did so with the economy weighing heavily on their minds, according to surveys of voters leaving polling places. Those surveys showed that more than half the voters questioned believe that the worsening state of the American economy is the most important issue confronting the country, with about 90 percent saying the United States has already slipped into a recession. Half of those polled also said that they were looking for a candidate who could bring about change, which has been the main theme of Mr. Obama’s campaign. Mr. Obama leads in delegates, but has consistently trailed Mrs. Clinton in polls taken in Pennsylvania, though the gap had been closing in recent days. About one-quarter of those who participated in the exit polling, conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for five television networks and The Associated Press, endorsed the idea that experience, which Mrs. Clinton has emphasized in her campaign, is the most important quality to be sought in a candidate. For the polling, the margin of sampling error in the sample of 40 precincts across the state was plus or minus four percentage points. Both candidates performed strongly among the same constituencies that have supported them in other primary states. Mr. Obama was backed overwhelmingly by black voters, and also scored well among voters younger than 45 and among college graduates, the results show. Geographically, he performed best in Philadelphia and its suburbs, which has the largest concentration of population in Pennsylvania, while Mrs. Clinton won the majority of the vote in the rest of the state. Just as a loss in Pennsylvania would probably have ended her campaign, Indiana poses another make-or-break challenge for Mrs. Clinton, according to several of her advisers, who said that they would urge her to quit the race if she lost that state. Mrs. Clinton, former President Bill Clinton and their allies have campaigned frequently in Indiana in recent weeks, and she has obtained some important endorsements there, including support from Senator Evan Bayh, the state’s former governor. “She has to win Pennsylvania and Indiana — pretty much everyone in the campaign agrees on that,” said one senior Clinton adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the campaign’s electoral expectations. But Clinton advisers emphasized that neither they nor Mrs. Clinton were feeling anything close to defeatist — rather, they said, they believed that a Pennsylvania win would help her build momentum in Indiana and other states in the region with coming contests, like West Virginia and Kentucky in May. Clinton advisers said they were already picking states, cities and towns where they would dispatch staff members and volunteers from Pennsylvania, and were budgeting for television advertising. They are also planning a busy travel schedule for the Clintons, for their daughter, Chelsea, and for an army of surrogates. They are expected to focus heavily on Indiana, and to a lesser extent in North Carolina, where Mr. Obama is widely seen as strong. A greater concern in the shorter term for Mrs. Clinton is fundraising: She raised $21 million in March, compared with Mr. Obama’s $42 million. In the latest campaign finance filings, Mrs. Clinton reported $10.3 million in outstanding primary debts but only $9.5 million available to cover them, leaving an $800,000 shortfall at the end of March. In February, the Clinton campaign had a $3 million surplus. By comparison, Mr. Obama had $43 million in cash for the coming primaries and a campaign debt of less than $660,000 at the end of March. Mr. Obama is spending 75 cents for every dollar he is taking in; Mrs. Clinton is spending $1.10. Michael M. Grynbaum, John Holusha and Jeff Zeleny 4月22日 NYT： Hedge Fund Investing and PoliticsApril 22, 2008 Dealbook If you were a member of the Wall Street aristocracy, one of those hedge fund hot shots who makes half a billion dollars a year, which horse would you bet on in the race for the White House? Senator John McCain seems like the natural choice for the rich who are voting their wallets. After all, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, might help the wealthy keep more of their supersize incomes by making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Barack Obama, the two Democratic contenders, talk about getting tough on the rich. But at least Mrs. Clinton has a lot of old friends on Wall Street. Maybe she could figure out how to create a bubblicious economy like the one her husband presided over in the 1990s. Wall Street likes a good bubble. And Mr. Obama? He backs something called the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, a measure that would limit all offshore accounts that the wealthiest hedge funds have set up. That’s not something Wall Street wants. And yet for all of this, many of the wealthiest hedge fund managers are lining up behind the Obama campaign. Many of the top 10 managers on Alpha magazine's mind-blowing 2007 rich list, which was released last week, have put money on Mr. Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign contributions. They have each given the maximum donation allowed, $2,300. (Let’s face it, this is pocket lint to these guys.) Mr. Obama’s hedge fund contributors include: John Griffin, the founder of Blue Ridge Capital, who made $625 million in 2007, according to Alpha. Mr. Griffin is backing Mr. Obama after initially supporting Mitt Romney. Kenneth C. Griffin (no relation) of the Citadel Investment Group in Chicago, who earned $1.5 billion. He contributed to the Obama campaign after the senator came to his office last year. Stephen Mandel of Lone Pine Capital, who took home $710 million last year. And, of course, George Soros, who earned almost $3 billion last year. It is no surprise that Mr. Soros, a Democratic stalwart, is backing Mr. Obama. Mr. Soros campaigned against President Bush in 2004, and Moveon.org, which the billionaire investor has plied with tens of millions of dollars, endorsed Mr. Obama in February. Of course, not every Richie Rich is backing Mr. Obama. James H. Simons, the mathematician who runs Renaissance Technologies, who made $2.8 billion last year, has donated to Mrs. Clinton. And Steven Cohen of SAC Capital, whose take home pay was $900 million, is splitting his money down the middle: He donated $28,500 to both the Democratic and Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. (He had given money to John E. Sununu and Christopher J. Dodd.) John Paulson of Paulson & Company, the top earner, with $3.7 billion last year, doesn’t appear to have a financial dog left in the hunt: He gave to Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giuliani. Philip Falcone, who founded Harbinger Partners and made $1.7 billion last year, has given to the Republican National Committee, but to no individual candidate. (His firm may have bought itself influence in another way: It recently won agreement from The New York Times Company to add two members to its board.) Timothy Barakett of Atticus Capital, who made $750 million, and O. Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global Investors, who earned $520 million, don’t appear to have given money to either side. By the way, just so we don’t forget: these guys are not like you and me. The median American family earned $60,500 last year. So why is Mr. Obama such a popular choice among the hedge fund crowd? In a word, access. Unlike Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama is relatively new to national politics and is therefore open to bringing new people — and new money — into the tent. For money types who want a table, or at least to look involved and get an invitation to the right parties, Mr. Obama is the candidate. As one of the hedge fund managers on the Alpha list said, “To be in Hillary’s inner circle, you had to be giving a decade ago, when Bill was president.” The same goes for Mr. McCain. The Clintons’ Wall Street sanctum is filled with old pals from the worlds of banking and private equity. These people have been with the Clintons since the beginning. They include Roger Altman, chairman of Evercore Partners and former deputy treasury secretary under President Clinton; and Steven Rattner, co-founder of Quadrangle Partners (Mr. Rattner’s wife, Maureen White, is a co-chairwoman of finance for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign). And it’s not as if Mrs. Clinton has no hedge fund support. Avenue Capital’s co-founder, Marc Lasry, has been a longtime Clinton supporter — so much so that he hired her daughter, Chelsea. And then there is what some Wall Streeters describe as the “iconoclast thing.” Hedge fund managers like to think of themselves as outsiders with fresh perspectives. The Obama campaign is trying to project a similar image. Mr. Obama might be struggling with the blue-collar vote in Pennsylvania, but he has nailed the hedge fund vote. Then again, politics, like the markets, can change fast. As one hedge fund manager who is backing Mr. Obama said, “It is very possible I may change my mind.” They don’t call them hedges for nothing. The latest news on mergers and 4月21日 NYT： Working Life (High and Low)April 20, 2008 WHEN Jean Capobianco was diagnosed for the second time with breast cancer, her doctors ordered a mastectomy. She first contracted the disease three years earlier and suffered through seven months of chemotherapy. After her cancer came back, her husband walked out on her. “He told me he wasn’t sexually attracted to me anymore,” she said. For more than a decade, Jean and her husband had been a truck-driving team, driving hazardous waste. Now, with husband and truck gone, her career as a long-haul driver was gone as well. After she recovered, Jean started looking for work. She spotted a help-wanted ad from Roadway Package Systems, which said it was looking for independent contractors to deliver packages. “I needed a job,” said Jean. “They tell you, ‘You’ll make all this money working for yourself.’ ” She soon discovered that her new employer had embraced a controversial strategy to squeeze down costs by millions of dollars each year: it insisted that Jean and the other drivers were independent contractors, not employees. The I.R.S., New York and many other states are investigating this strategy, convinced that many companies use it to cheat their workers and cheat on taxes. Jean arrived at the Roadway terminal in Brockton, Mass., at 6 each morning and spent the next 90 minutes loading 100 to 140 packages into her truck. She usually left the terminal around 7:30 a.m. and returned after 6 p.m. Jean had to leave her job for two years when she suffered a severe back injury while lifting a package. Before she could return to work, FedEx Ground, which had acquired Roadway, required her to purchase a truck. The list price was $37,800, with Jean having to make 60 monthly installments of $781.12 and a final, one-time payment of $8,000. In Jean’s view, it was ludicrous for Roadway and FedEx to call the drivers independent contractors. “We’re told what to do, when to do it, how to do it, when to take time off,” Jean said. “You have to wear their uniform. You can’t wear your hair certain ways. You have to deliver every single thing they put on the truck.” Jean called it “a great deal for FedEx. They don’t have to pay for trucks, for the insurance, for fuel, for maintenance, for tires,” she said. “We have to pay for all those things. And they don’t have to pay our Social Security.” By some estimates, this arrangement saves FedEx $400 million a year, giving it a significant cost advantage over U.P.S., which treats its drivers as regular employees. Moreover, FedEx Ground has sought to rebuff a Teamster organizing drive by arguing that its 15,000 drivers have no right to unionize because they are independent contractors. “These drivers are more like business people,” said Perry Colosimo, a FedEx Ground spokesman. “They can set their own hours. They can buy routes. They can develop their business.” In 30 lawsuits, FedEx Ground drivers have argued that they are employees, not independent contractors, and that the company should therefore pay for their trucks, insurance, repairs, gas and tires. In one lawsuit, a California judge ruled that FedEx Ground was engaged in an elaborate ruse in which FedEx “has close to absolute control” over the drivers. Last December, FedEx acknowledged another setback: the I.R.S. ordered it to pay $319 million in taxes and penalties for 2002 for misclassifying employees as independent contractors. FedEx could face similar I.R.S. penalties for subsequent years. FedEx said it would appeal. To attract drivers, FedEx Ground often runs ads claiming that its drivers earn $60,000 to $80,000 a year. Many drivers say those ads are deceiving. Gross income can exceed $60,000, but Jean, echoing many drivers, said she had to pay nearly $800 a month for her truck, $125 a week for gas, $55 a week for business equipment, $4,000 a year for insurance policies, plus outlays for tires, maintenance and repairs. Some years, Jean calculated, her net pay was just $32,000, amounting to $10.25 an hour. Many drivers find it hard to walk away because they have invested so much in their trucks. If they leave, they might still be stuck with years of monthly payments and the final payment of $8,000. One morning in August 2004, Jean doubled over in pain. Three days later, her doctor informed her she had ovarian cancer. “The doctor told me to stop working immediately,” Jean said. She not only finished her route that Friday but worked the following Monday and Tuesday as she struggled to find someone to cover her route. Her terminal’s two replacement drivers demanded unrealistic amounts, she said. “They knew they had me over a barrel.” On Aug. 21, 2004, surgeons removed a large, malignant tumor and did a hysterectomy. The next week the doctors told her she had Stage 4 cancer that had spread to her lungs. She would need chemotherapy through late December. Jean had twice beaten breast cancer, and she was intent on beating this, too. She fully expected to return to her job in January, and called FedEx Ground’s headquarters to request a leave of absence. Weeks later, a letter arrived saying she was terminated. “I was crazy with anger,” she said. Fired and with no income, Jean stopped making payments on her truck. She had already paid more than $40,000 on it, but now she was powerless to prevent it from being repossessed. “Ten years of beating my brains out for them, and they throw me away like I was a piece of garbage,” Jean said. FedEx Ground officials said they had sympathy for Jean but had to terminate her under company rules, because she was no longer covering her route and she hadn’t found a replacement driver. Company officials said they were free to terminate her because in FedEx’s view she was an independent contractor and therefore not protected by the Americans With Disabilities Act. That law requires companies to make reasonable accommodations to keep employees who have cancer or other disabilities. Jean has sued FedEx, asserting that it violated the act. “To this day, I still can’t understand how they can get away with it,” Jean said. “You work for a company for 10 years and you give 150 percent. I used to go above and beyond. And then I get sick, something totally out of my control. And then to get fired.” Her voice dropped off, then tears streamed down her cheeks. • Just inside the door of the men’s room was a rack that held sweaty biking shirts, damp bathing suits and clammy running shoes. The aroma seemed to belong more to a high school locker room than to a corporate headquarters. But this was the house of Patagonia, the apparel company that prides itself on letting its employees take their play every bit as seriously as they take their work. At lunchtime many days, Patagonia employees go surfing for two hours, while a half-dozen others take a 100-minute, 27-mile bike loop in the hills overlooking the Pacific. One of the sweaty biking shirts belonged to Andy Welling, a sales manager at Patagonia’s headquarters in Ventura, Calif. At 41, Welling is a fiend about staying in shape — he bikes several days a week at lunchtime, and joins Patagonia’s weekly pick-up soccer game. He often makes up for his lunchtime cycling by working a few hours at home in the evening. Patagonia is so mellow about flextime that the receptionist at headquarters, an 11-time world Frisbee champion, is allowed to take three months off each summer to run a surfing school. “I could make quite a bit more money working somewhere else,” Welling said. “But to have the quality of life and to remain physically fit, by cycling or going surfing, you can’t put a dollar amount on it.” Welling has taken advantage of another Patagonia offering: the child care center at headquarters. He drops off his two boys, 5 and 3, at 9 and often has lunch with them. “Being able to have my kids a few feet away from me all the time is fantastic,” Welling said. “It is a bonding relationship I never would have had if I were working somewhere else.” Patagonia is not like anywhere else. With 1,300 workers and $275 million a year in sales, it donates 1 percent of its annual sales to environmental groups. Four days a week at lunchtime, the company offers yoga and Pilates sessions; there are also occasional classes on fly fishing. Each year Patagonia lets 40 employees take paid two-month internships with an environmental group. The best spots in the parking lot are reserved for the most fuel-efficient cars, and above dozens of parking spots are solar panels that supply all the power for one of Patagonia’s administration buildings. Patagonia has 900 applicants for every job opening at headquarters. It sponsors civil disobedience training for employees who want to participate in environmental protests. Its mission statement calls for making the best outdoor products while doing the least damage to the environment. Its Synchilla fleece vests are made from recycled plastic bottles. At headquarters, 20 surfboards are tucked under the stairs to the second floor, and employees often work barefoot. “When you walk through the front door, we don’t want you to stop being the person you are,” said Lu Setnicka, Patagonia’s director of training. This unusual blend of work, play, family and environmentalism grows out of the philosophy of Patagonia’s founder and principal owner, Yvon Chouinard. Born in Maine and raised in Burbank, he felt passionate about just one activity in high school: the Southern California Falconry Club. He learned how to rappel down cliffs to visit falcon nests, and out of that grew a lifelong passion for mountain climbing. Dissatisfied with the era’s soft-iron pitons — small spikes that climbers drive into rock and attach ropes to — Chouinard set out to produce stronger ones. He bought an anvil, taught himself blacksmithing, and made his first pitons out of an old harvester blade. For several years, he lived on less than a dollar a day, selling pitons out of his car and pursuing his passions by climbing in Yosemite and Wyoming. As demand for his pitons grew, Chouinard rented a metal shed in Ventura and hired a small staff. By 1970, his company had become the nation’s largest producer of climbing equipment. During an excursion to Scotland, he purchased a rugby shirt and concluded that the thick, sturdy shirt was ideal for rock climbing. When he returned to California, his climbing friends asked for shirts just like it, and soon Chouinard expanded into the apparel business, importing rugby shirts. As the company grew, it had one unbending rule — the business closed whenever the waves in the Pacific were running six feet high, hot and glassy. “Since none of us wanted to be in business, we wanted to blur the distinctions between work and play,” Chouinard said. “That meant we had to break a lot of rules of business.” Chouinard often jokes about his M.B.A. philosophy: management by absence. Many years he disappeared for six months to go ice climbing in the Alps or surfing, skiing and climbing in South America. His was the ultimate flextime. Chouinard has a simple philosophy that he says ensures that employees don’t abuse their flextime. “Hire the people you trust, people who are passionate about their job, passionate about what they’re doing. Just leave them alone, and they’ll get the job done.” Shannon Ellis, Patagonia’s vice president for human resources, says the unusual flextime policies yield increased productivity. “A lot of people recognize that what they have here is unique, and I don’t think they want to jeopardize that,” she said. In addition to the child care center, Patagonia offers other family-friendly benefits like eight weeks of paid maternity and paternity leave. It also pays 100 percent of the health insurance premiums for its workers, even part-timers. Chouinard says this helps attract the gung-ho outdoors types Patagonia wants — workers who test the company’s products as they climb and surf and convey their expertise and enthusiasm to customers. “All of these things I’m doing are not to have a socialist birth-till-death utopia here,” Chouinard said. “Every one of these things is good business.” Lisa Pike, who oversees Patagonia’s environmental grants, said: “He’s proving Wall Street wrong. You can do the right thing and still have an extremely profitable company.” This article is adapted from "The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker," by Steven Greenhouse, a reporter for The New York Times. The book, published by Knopf last week, examines difficulties faced by workers at companies like Fed Ex and Wal-Mart, and points to Patagonia and Costco as models for corporate America. |
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