Timesizing® Associates

hopes/dooms du jour,
March 2-31, 2004
[Commentary] ©2004 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 117, Harvard Sq, Cambridge MA 02238 USA (617) 623-8080 - HOMEPAGE

3/31/2004  wednesday   - “hope is not a plan”—but we do have a plan
we have 701 textfiles: # visitors 3/30/tue: 927 excluding spiders (4/01/2003/tue: 847 including spiders)
TIMEsizing awareness = strategic glimmers of hope in yesterday's GoogleNews:

  1. another reporter strains to avoid seeing the obvious in 35-hour workweek France
  2. conference in Brisbane, Australia, proposes national Go Home on Time Day to restore family time & family values
+ random glimmers of hope in j (Wall St.Journal) &/or t (NYTimes):
  1. 1 UPsizing - 16 new jobs as Sony Corp. sets up holding company to oversee financial-service operations (j.page D6)
  2. Rice to testify publicly on attacks - Bush caves in to pressure (j.A3, t.A1) = another Bush reversal = 'ABB'

vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t):
  • DOWNsizing appetizers = general news re takeovers, alias 'M&As' (archives):
      EU regulator orders Germany to overhaul takeover law & stop protecting VW from hostile takeover (j.D6) = 'how can we weaken our economy further?'
  • DOWNsizing overviews noted in j (Wall St.Journal) & t (NYTimes) & g (BostonGlobe):
    1. Bob Dole says Bush should repeat all the good economic statistics till voters can recite them in their sleep - may be impossible when the real joblessness in this economy is keeping us up at night: Zoey Chenitz of NYC (t.A22)
    2. are we losing more jobs than we're gaining? - sr. fellow William Hawkins of US Business & Industry Council says yes in mfg, no in services (j.A15) - but what about those call centers?
    3. at tax time, it's hard to cut ties - many young adults are still getting parental support, whether because they are entering the workforce at low pay or returning home to save rent (j.D2)
  • 1 DOWNsizing, totaling 1065 lost jobs reported in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (NY Times):
      1065 jobcuts as Johnson Controls shifts production from Mich. & Ken. to Mexico (t.C4)
  • DOWNsizing results = 1 dysfunctional-executive-pay item - NEW FEATURE:
      former employer CSX Corp. reports pay of Treasury Secretary John Snow, who today said outsourcing was good for the economy - base $129k + other $115k in 2003, $1.25m + $336k in 2002, $1.2m + $398k in 2001 (j.A1) - bottom line: what can he know about joblessness?
  • DOWNsizing results = 2 eroding-retirement stories (click for archives): 
    1. IRS scrutinizes pension plans & their employer tax breaks (j.B2B)
    2. Medicare: slouching toward bankruptcy (j.A15) - unless pols represent the majority for a change & restore the burden to those in the top brackets who have looted all the money
  • DOWNsizing results = 1 work-linked suicide - lack of work-life balance kills (click for archives):
      suicide bomber blew himself up in Bolivia's Congress, killing 2 policemen - one of nation's army of out-of-work miners (j.A1)
  • headlines from hell (tm)  noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times):
      consumers face rapidly rising credit-card fees - as economics of industry change, issuers seek to boost income from penalties; $35 late charge (j.D2<1)


    3/30/2004  tuesday   - “hope is not a plan”—but we do have a plan
    we have 700 textfiles: # visitors 3/29/mon: ? excluding spiders (3/31/2003/mon: 891 including spiders)
    TIMEsizing awareness = strategic glimmers of hope in yesterday's GoogleNews:

    1. outrageous arguments proferred in Germany in favor of longer workweeks despite robotics 'to be more competitive'!
    2. Britons argue that retirement should no longer be distinct phase of life - people need to mix & match work, & extend leisure & learning throughout their lives
    + random glimmers of hope in j (Wall St.Journal) &/or t (NYTimes):
    1. 2 UPsizings, 275 new jobs - 150 as Toyota sets joint venture with China FAW for engine production in Changchun, Jilin Province (j.page C14)
      - 125 as Spain doubles its Afghan force to compensate for Iraq pullout (j.A1)
    2. NATO adds 7 post-Communist countries: Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia; Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia (t.A3, j.A1) - or maybe just joined a new USSR?
    3. 9/11 panel wants Condi Rice under oath in any testimony - compromise sought - need 'penalty of perjury,' chairman Tom Kean, former GOP gov. of NJ says, citing conflict in accounts (t.A1) - GOP in turmoil
    + 18-in-1 tips - NEW FEATURE in j (Wall St.Journal) &/or t (NYTimes):
      18 laws of corporate reputation start with 'maximize most powerful asset' (j.B7)

    vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t):
  • 3 PUFFsizing items = makework rampant, creating 300 +?? new ‘jobs’:
    1. briefly - Japan military commissions new elite commando unit of 300 to fight terrorists & guerillas (j.A16)
    2. Pentagon blasts Air Force airtanker contract for cozy ties to Boeing, inappropriate procurement & latter's ethical lapses (j.A6) - sayonara to $23B in pork
    3. deal to outfit Iraqi army creates stir - Pentagon reopens bidding for midsize ($18.6B?!) contract after outcry over selection of Nour USA (j.A4) - gee, Jordan's Queen Nour has sleazy mil.supplier named after her?
  • DOWNsizing appetizers = 2 big takeovers, alias 'M&As' (archives):
    1. Lyondell Chemical buys Millennium Chemicals for 1 stock + 1.3 debt = $2.3B (j.A2, t.C4)
    2. Amgen purchase to bolster pipeline - stock swap with Tularik valued at $1.3B (j.D7, t.C1)
  • DOWNsizing overviews noted in j (Wall St.Journal) & t (NYTimes) & g (BostonGlobe):
    1. outsourcing of computer work may create U.S. jobs - higher productivity allows for investment in staffing, expansion - boosted domestic jobs by est. 90,000 last year, a study says (j.A1>2) - yeah, & black may be white & pigs maybe fly - establishment must be getting a trifle concerned
    2. online today - readers debate whether the benefit of low-cost imports is worth the price of a big trade gap & the movement of jobs overseas - readers were generally supportive of David Wessel's column in which he emphasized the benefit of cheap imports & wondered over the failure of politicians to pitch global trade effectively to voters - some however were less convinced of free trade's magic (j.A1>D7)
  • 2 DOWNsizings, totaling 194 + ?? lost jobs reported in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (NY Times):
    1. 194 engineering & tech support jobcuts by power co. Reliant Resources of Houston (t.C4)
    2. unspecified cuts as a TXU Corp. subsidiary shuts 12 generating units in Texas (j.C14) - subsidiary unnamed so could duplicate Reliant
  • DOWNsizing results = 3 dysfunctional-executive-pay items - NEW FEATURE:
    1. big pay lures military elite ($50k pay + $23k pension) to private-sector jobs = $100-200k pay (t.A1)
    2. SEC investigates whether timing chosen by some firms in granting stock options ends up understating executives' compensation (j.A1)
    3. Tyson said the SEC is investigating whether it fully disclosed job perks given to retired CEO Don Tyson & his son (j.A1)
  • DOWNsizing results = 1 prison item (click for archives):
      oiling the revolving door - US corrections system to release 600,000 prisoners this year - ½ will be back within 3 years because Congress began cutoff in education aid in 90s (t.A22)
  • headlines from hell (tm)  noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times):
    1. 2 'friendly fire' inquiries blame US actions in deaths of 10 Marines & 2 Arab journalists (j.A1)
    2. hearts, minds & padlocks - Bremer ordered shutdown of popular Baghdad newspaper on Sun. (t.A22) = freedom of the press? - world hatred of USA & danger to US citizens leaps again
    3. Bush advisers poised to call for greater scrutiny of fertility clinics (j.A1) - what happened to Republican respect for freedom & privacy?
    4. White House sought compromise on disclosure of Rice remarks but far short of public testimony 9/11 panel wants (j.A1) - Bushies get privacy, everyone else gets strip-searched?
    5. humiliating hoax - con man posing as cop calls Ariz. Taco Bell & orders mgr to strip-search customer - mgr complies (j.A1) - girls better stay out of fastfood joints now that boys have cellfones & mgrs are stupid - hitech world requires much stronger common interest
    6. tax evasion growing, federal citizen Oversight Board reports, but IRS can't reverse cuz law-enforcement ability sinking (t.C1>2) = fruits of Bush's free ride for top brackets?


    3/27-29/2004 sat-mon (re fri biz)
    - #visitors to any of our 700 files, F Sa Su: 626,?,? - wk's daily avg: 760? -
    3 TIMEsizing items = strategic glimmers of hope in weekend's GoogleNews:

    1. John de Graaf of PBS/Seattle wants cap on overtime capped & 3 weeks vacation
    2. Schroeder betrays his base & backs base-betraying Blair in uncapping workweek
    3. despite lack of regulation, 5-day workweek is now norm in Taiwan
    + random glimmers of hope, indexing t (NY Times) & j (Wall St.Journal) & g (Boston Globe):
    1. consumer confidence unexpectedly shows rise (3/27 t.B4) - the Jones's musta got another home-equity loan - compare 'Japanese household spending rises for 4th month in a row' (3/27 t.B3) - the lower it goes, the easier it is to show a small rise
    2. Ohio - poll gives Kerry slim edge, 46%, on Bush, 44% - key battleground state (3/27 g.A5) - ABB = anyone but Bush = return to normalcy!
    3. Kerry battles Bush on economy & says US on 'dead-end road' (3/29 j.A1) - Kerry says his plan will trigger 10m jobs (= good, but how?) - corporate taxcuts proposed as incentive (3/27 g.A3) = more corporate welfare? = bad, but 'ABB'!
    4. Bush faces continued hemorrhage of 9/11 capital - Condy forced to defend her resistance to testifying in public before panel (3/29 j.A1) - Bush asked aides 'to go back over everything, everything - see if Saddam did this' referring to 9/11 - Condy confirms on '60 Minutes' tho she previously denied (3/29 t.A1)
    5. Bush's efforts to smear Clarke aren't working - Colin Powell says on TV that Clarke 'served his nation very, very well' (3/27 t.A1) - Frist on Fri. urged Clarke's 2002 testimony be declassified to expose imagined contradictions (3/29 j.A1) - 'please do!' says Clarke (3/29 g.A1)
    6. Bush's ads on Kerry's defense votes may backfire - Bush urged not to overreach in attacking Kerry's Senate record on foreign policy (3/29 j.A1>4)
    7. CIA faces budget squeeze (3/29 j.A4) - cdn't happen to more deserving agency
    8. Israel's state prosecutor Edna Arbel calls for Sharon's indictment for taking bribes from developer (3/29 t.A11)
    9. setback for Chirac: French veer left in 21 of France's 26 regional départements - big gain for Socialists fueled by economic frustration (3/29 t.A3, j.A16)
    10. Caribbean leaders vote not to recognize Haiti's new US-backed govt (3/29 j.A1)
    11. late-abortion ban faces challenges in 3 federal courts (3/29 j.A1)

    vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing, in j, t, & adding g (Boston Globe):
  • 1 general PUFFsizing item = makework rampant:
      wish fulfilment for Woody Johnson, billionaire NY Jets owner - poof! Bloomberg has $300m in taxpayer cash for a stadium (but not for libraries or police) (3/29 t.page A25) - more welfare for the rich
  • DOWNsizing appetizers = 1 big takeover, alias mergers & acquisitions (M&As):
      Albertson's buying Shaw's, New England grocery chain, for $2.47B (3/27 t.C1, 3/29 j.B4)
  • DOWNsizing overviews noted in WSJ (j), NYT (t) or Boston Globe (g): 
    • cashmere is moving to China & Scotland feels chill as knitting industry goes from 57000 employees in early 80s to 18600 today, only 4000 in cashmere (3/27 t.B14)
    • online today - pockets of opportunity - ever thought about becoming a pharmacist? a funeral director? in a slack labor market, we identify 10 jobs where applicants have the leverage (3/29 j.A1) - guess tight job market's making a lot of people deathly ill
  • 3 DOWNsizings, totaling 6170 lost jobs reported in Wall Street Journal (j) or NY Times (t):
    1. 7% workforce cut (4000 US jobs lost) as MCI telecoms, the former WorldCom, closes 3 call centers, instead of just trimming its workweek 7% (34 minutes a day for whole firm, including top executives), re-investing overtime savings in overtime-targeted training&hiring and keeping everyone together working, earning, confident & buying at least 93% as many phone services as before (3/27 t.B4, 3/29 j.B8)
    2. 1770 Scots jobcuts by Pringle knitwear (3/27 t.B14)
    3. 400 cuts as Abbott Labs closes Bedford MA office ahead of buying TheraSense (3/27 t.B4) - again the toxic takeover-downsizing connection
  • DOWNsizing results = 2 dysfunctional-executive-pay items - NEW FEATURE:
    1. Delphi Corp. - no bonuses were received by executive officers in 2003 but Chairman-CEO J.T. Battenberg III got $1.68m base salary & $1.2m restricted stock & $732k long-term incentive payout & 960k stock options (3/29 j.B8) - 'poor baby!'
    2. Conseco execs get $34m in '03 pay, mostly in stock, about ½ of it to CEO Wm. J. Shea (who only started 2 yrs ago!) just as firm is emerging from one of largest bankruptcy filings in US history = "retention incentives" (3/29 j.C8) - $17m for one year after starting the previous year!? - at this cost, wouldn't Conseco be much more competitive if this guy left?!
  • DOWNsizing results = 1 bankruptcy in WSJ (j) and/or NYT (t):
      Spring Air Partners - North America, Inc. et al. in Ch.11 (3/29 j.B6)
  • DOWNsizing results = 4 eroding-retirement stories: 
    1. Medicare myopia - Medicare's financial condition is more a function of gov't priorities than rising healthcare costs says reader Diane Archer of NYC (3/29 t.A24)
    2. how Lucent's retiree programs cost it zero, even yielded profit - trusts paid the tab - till now; facing the need for cash, company imposes cuts - 'there are now 5 retirees for every US worker,' the handout said (never mind there are 10 automata for every worker) - 'unfortunately, the numbers just don't work' (3/29 j.A1) - especially when CEOs now take 400-500 times what ordinary worker gets, instead of previous 30-90
  • headlines from hell (tm) from Wall Street Journal (j) & NY Times (t) & Boston Globe (g):
    1. pace of consumer spending slowed in Feb. (3/29 j.A1>B2) so naturally - rising inventories, at least at high-tech firms (3/29 j.B1)
    2. FBI files on Kerry reported stolen (3/27 g.A3) = Watergate deja vu
    3. book accuses Justice Dept. of covering up midnight burning of radioactive waste at nuclear plant - "Ambushed Grand Jury" by Wes McKinley & Caron Balkany (3/27 g.A2)
    4. US & France apparently at odds over labor rights - should workers have some as yet 'undefined' role in corporate mgmt? (3/27 t.B3) - ah, isn't this all defined by decades of employee reps on EU works councils?!
    5. German business confidence slips in Mar. for 2d mon. in row (3/27 t.B3)
    weekend roll-up -
    5 issues/wk - wk's avg homepage hits/issue: 75
    hope of the weektm from the WSJ & the NYT: • 18 TIMEsizing items 
    • 3 UPsizings (1400+ new jobs)  + clouded hope: • 3 makework items (2000+ new 'jobs')
    vs. doom of the weektm from the WSJ & the NYT:
    • 4 DOWNsizings, 490 jobcuts   • 2 bankruptcies  
    • 4 eroding-retirement stories   • 2 homelessness stories   • 1 prison story   • 1 work-linked suicide story
    {{ ytd: 236 timsizngs (636+ new or sav'd jobs) + 30 upsizngs (74659+ new jobs) + 98 makwrk (36503+ 'jobs') =
    total: 111798 = 63% of cuts, VS. 153 dnsz (177417+ cuts) + 53 bnkrp ($350m+) +12 homlss +18 jail +9 suic }}

      3/26/2004  friday   - “hope is not a plan”—but we do have a plan
      we have 700 textfiles: # visitors 3/25/thu: 919 excluding spiders (3/27/2003/thu: 820 including spiders)
      TIMEsizing awareness = strategic glimmers of hope in yesterday's GoogleNews:
      1. more on Chirac's "reforms" - subtext: relengthening 35-hour workweek
      2. Japanese researcher dances around focus on shorter hours
      3. more on DaimlerChrysler's slippage back up to 40 hours a week
      4. a local US view of Bush's overtime attack
      5. a national US view of Bush's overtime attack
      6. a Bangladeshi banker's view of US economy, particularly the slippery worktime underpinnings of our claims to productivity pre-eminence
      7. as White House seeks to deflect criticism, Bush defends his policies (t.A1) - good, let's keep the SOB on the defensive
      + random glimmers of hope in j (Wall St.Journal) &/or t (NYTimes):
      1. Kerry to propose eliminating tax break on US companies' overseas profits (t.A11)
      2. push is on to limit aid to rich universities (t.A10)
      3. fishing banned from a third of Great Barrier Reef (t.A7)
      4. CALPERS nominated NYSE critic Arthur Levitt & corporate-governance activist Ralph Whitworth to serve on NYSE board (j.A1)
      5. online today - do taxcuts pay for themselves? some congressmen say so, writes Steve Liesman, but evidence is flimsy, & even White House is skeptical (j.A1)

      vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t):
    • 1 PUFFsizing item = makework rampant, creating 2000 new ‘jobs’:
        up to 2000 marines to go to Afghanistan from ships in Persian Gulf as reinforcements (t.A3)
    • DOWNsizing overviews noted in j (Wall St.Journal) & t (NYTimes) & g (BostonGlobe):
      1. offshoring will increase despite growing political backlash, poll of 180 cos. finds - 86% expect to outsource more tech jobs in next 12 mons. compared to only 32% two years ago (j.A1>B3) - today's economic design can't resolve clashing needs for competitive productivity versus need for (employees =) consumers - like primitive organism with common area for voiding & eating
      2. Kerry targets offshore outsourcing with corporate-tax overhaul to prod MNCs to invest more in US - would eliminate 'rape me' taxbreak that lets US firms defer taxes on income earned abroad while cutting their overall taxrate 1.75% (j.A1)
    • 1 DOWNsizing reported in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (NY Times):
        440 cuts: Wyeth pharmaceuticals to shut Marietta PA factory (t.C4, j.B2)
    • DOWNsizing results = 3 dysfunctional-executive-pay items - NEW FEATURE:
      1. AT&T CEO David Dorman got 27% raise to $3.92m in pay & bonus last year (j.A1>B4)
      2. regulators prepping case vs. Grasso focus on board's vote for his $139.5m payout (t.C1)
      3. ex-head of Vodafone testifies on bonuses - Sir Christopher Gent in Germany's first criminal trial over executive pay - he got $7m bonus in fiscal 2001 as part of over $300B in acquisitions (t.W1)
    • DOWNsizing results = 2 eroding-retirement stories (click for archives): 
      1. Bush clears 28 discount-card programs to offer Medicare drug services - 15 cards will be available nationally (j.B4) - does this sound kludgy or what?!
      2. Krugman: the Medicare muddle - looking for savings in all the wrong places (eg: private sector) - SocSec privatizers constantly spin two separate programs, SocSec & Medicare, as one to heighten panic (t.A19)
    • DOWNsizing results = 2 bankruptcies in (j) WSJ and/or (t) NYT (click for archives): 
      1. wire maker for cars & computers, International Wire Group (t.C4)
      2. ZB Co. Inc. et al. in Chapter 11 (j.B7, t.C5)
    • DOWNsizing results = 1 homelessness story (click for archives):
        Illinois: counting the homeless - 6,958 in Chicago, 958 outside shelters (t.A13)
    • DOWNsizing results = 1 workplace-suicide story - lack of work-life balance kills (click for archives):
        US Regular Army, with 23 suicides last year, finds its rate in Iraq, 17.3 per 100k, is higher than reservists' & than overall 12.8 - but only one classified as suicide (& none included in war-casualty count) - preventive steps inadequate, study finds - 72% of 756 surveyed last summer (most having seen combat) said their whole unit's morale was low & 52% admitted their own was too - unscreened civilian rate for 18-34 age range is 21.5 but soldiers are screened - avg 2/mon. jumped to 5 in July with new inductees (t.A8) - note also high morale of Afghanistan war 'did a 180' in Iraq war - compare Bob Herbert: the wrong war - how the White House exploited our grief & anger (t.A19)
    • headlines from hell (tm)  noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) & g (Boston Globe):
      1. corporate profits increase 29%, biggest jump in 20 years (j.A2) - fastest growth in 2 decades in '03 last half (t.C3) - but since we're far past the point of diminishing returns in uncapped concentration of income, the 'black hole' effect will actually turn this profit increase into a nail in our economic coffin, like a new 'great-tasting cigarette' (t.A6)
      2. Bush vetoed UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel's killing of Sheik Yassin (j.A1) - isolationism continues - for the rest of the world, scum 'R' US
      3. Senate voted 61-38 to join the House in making the harming of a fetus during an attack on a woman a discrete crime (j.A1, t.A1) = dissecting women
      4. Bush-push for weaker controls on mercury pollution, just as he did on arsenic in drinking water (t.A5)
      5. diet researchers found corelational, not causal, link between increased use of highly subsidized corn sweeteners & surging US obesity (j.A1) - 'causal' is as good as it gets
      6. the wrong war - how the White House exploited our grief & anger - Bush never pursued Osama with same focus, tenacity & resources as Saddam - war on Iraq was sold the way a butcher would sell rotten meat, a something that was good for us (t.A19)
      7. Homeland Security freezes hiring - potential budget shortfall of $1.2B is affecting 2 big frontline units & fee-assessment shortfall a 3rd (j.A4) - but wait, maybe this is good cuz 'timing couldn’t be worse for Bush' (but compare skimping of Park Service)
      8. measure to limit taxcuts narrowly fails in House - bill sought use of 'pay as you go' policy (t.A14) - so much for GOP fiscal responsibility - now they're fiscal rascals
      9. Okla.City: 6th graders out of control - all but 11 of 136 at FD Moon Academy were suspended after 2 days of table-tossing disruption (t.A13) = wages of neglect by 2 working parents?
      10. Indonesia: Suharto tops Transparency Intl's list of embezzling leaders - rest are Marcos of Philippines, Sese Seko of Zaire, Abacha of Nigeria, Milosevic of Yugoslavia, Baby Doc of Haiti, Fujimori of Peru, Lazarenko of Ukraine, Aleman of Nicaragua, Estrada of Philippines (t.A7)


      3/25/2004  thursday   - “hope is not a plan”—but we do have a plan
      we have 699 textfiles: # visitors 3/24/wed: 861 excluding spiders (3/26/2003/wed: 781 including spiders)
      TIMEsizing awareness = strategic glimmers of hope in yesterday's GoogleNews:

      1. update on Congressional overtime legislation in short & long versions
      2. more on pipedream of phasing into retirement with shorter hours
      3. DaimlerChrysler & its employee-represented works council to extend half their employees from 35 to 40 hours a week = going backwards in time
      4. unions should demand that CEOs use workers’ higher productivity to support shorter hours for full pay, spread the work & increase jobs & markets
      5. more claims that France's shorter workweek drives off foreign investment, as if France 'desperately needs' foreign investment
      + random glimmers of hope, in j (Wall St.Journal) &/or t (NYTimes):
      • atheist Michael Newdow presents case for taking 1954-inserted 'God' back out of US pledge of allegiance - justices appear to search for way to reject his case (t.A1) - but they don't have a leg to stand on cuz there’s no 'God' in the Constitution
      • EU regulators led by monopoly-slayer Mario Monti rule against Microsoft (t.C1)
      • grand jury indicts tax protester Irwin Schiff who helped 1000s of tax evaders over past 9 years - Schiff says either [A] his legal argument is right or [B] he's delusional (t.C1>8) - check box B
      • NYT impressed that Richard Clarke accepted responsibility for 9/11 & apologized for failing to see the many signs pointing to it - 'only problem with his apology was that so few of those failures really seemed to be his' (t.A26) - Maureen Dowd noticed that, as Bush Inc. was sliming Clarke, the 9/11 families were stroking him - he'd been stunned to discover not that 9/11 was Qaeda but that on US planes were Qaeda operatives whom FBI knew by name - & did nothing (t.A27) - under fierce cross-examination, Clarke insists Bush ignored Qaeda threat (j.A3)
      • federal appeals court overturned ruling that ordered Interior Dept. to shut down much of its Internet access including National Parks component because of security problems in native American trust fund it administered (t.A12)
      • UN rights panel condemns Israel's killing of Hamas leader Sheik Yassin (t.A11)
      + 3 tips - NEW FEATURE, in j (Wall St.Journal) &/or t (NYTimes):
      • ask personal Journal - what to do after creditcard co. rejects your disputed-charge claim? - appeal to Customer Assistance Group at www.occ.treas.gov/customer.htm or 800-613-6743 (j.D1) = WSJ recommending GOV'T agency??!
      • list of all those cheap travel sites: Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Hotels.com, Priceline, Hotwire (j.D5)
      • new program X1.com ($99) searches hard disks really well, e.g., email (j.B1)

      vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t):
    • 2 DOWNsizings, totaling 50 + unspecified lost jobs reported in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (NY Times):
      1. 6% unit workforce to be cut (50 lost jobs) as Deutsche Bank overhauls US equities division, instead of just trimming its workweek 6% (29 minutes a days for whole firm, including top executives), re-investing overtime savings in overtime-targeted training&hiring & keeping everyone working, earning, confident & buying at least 94% as many equities as before (t.C4)
      2. ?? jobs to be cut as Bertelsmann's music unit, BMG, dismantles most of Arista Records (j.D10)
    • DOWNsizing results = 3 dysfunctional-executive-pay items - NEW FEATURE:
      1. CEO David Siegel warned US Air's survival threatened by Southwest unless paycuts - all 32,000 for everyone employees must participate in the sacrifice - even his $600k salary? - nope, all he's willing to give up is a 30-day window in April when he can quit with a $4.5m severance package (j.A1>11) - contrast timesizing Lincoln Electric's "all sacrifice together, starting at the top"
      2. SEC report shows managers of Putnam Investments, charged with civil fraud in the fund scandal, were given 'lavish' paychecks - Justin Scott $14.3m, Omid Kamshad $8.7m (j.C1) - if we move it all to the top, there's no bottom to support it
      3. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts' pay grew 67% to $2m in 2003 as bonus remained flat at $6m (j.B3)
    • DOWNsizing results = 1 eroding-retirement story (click for archives): 
      1. Medicare's health to fail, rapidly - financial outlook is now seen as bleaker than Social Security's [wasn't it always?!] - trustees report program is on track to go bankrupt in 2019 instead of projected 2026 (t.A1, j.A2) - so restore the tax levels on the people who with the super-excess mind-boggling most & spare us the mock hysterics
    • DOWNsizing results = 1 prison item (click for archives):
      1. oh, those Web entanglements: British spouses look up old friends on Friends United & want mate swap - former prison friends can reconnect thru Convicts Reunited (t.A4)
    • headlines from hell (tm)  noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) & g (Boston Globe):
      1. going urban - last year, 48% of world's population lived in cities & rising - world's biggest city is Tokyo with 35m people (t.A6)
      2. Dow in 5th straight daily decline on earnings & terror worries (j.A1) & short positions climb on Nasdaq in latest month ending 3/15 - boosts bears (j.C15)
      3. behind wave of corporate fraud, a change in how auditors work - 'risk based' model narrowed focus of their procedures, leaving room for trouble (j.A1)
      4. arms-control group Institute for Science & National Security says Bush inflated Libya's nuclear-arms bid (t.A10)
      5. WSJ tries to blame Clinton for 3Q00 recession on twisted logic that his paying down national debt did it (j.A16) - compare their logic that job loss via outsourcing good for US economy, that downsizing is 'creative destruction', that forests need lumber cos. to 'cull' them, etc.
      6. very hard labor - Kansas branch of AFL-CIO is union-busting union - laid off Connie Stewart after 26 yrs of faithful service in violation of her seniority and contract with OPEI union (j.A16)


      3/24/2004  wednesday   - “hope is not a plan”—but we do have a plan
      we have 699 textfiles: # visitors 3/23/tue: 914 excluding spiders (3/25/2003/tue: 788 including spiders)
      TIMEsizing awareness = strategic glimmers of hope in yesterday's GoogleNews:

      1. Siemens is determined to ruin its German consumer base one way or another - by outsourcing or transforming it into a Third-World long-hours sweatshop
      2. British Medical Assoc. continues to resist EU worktime max of 58 hrs/wk for MDs, setting inconvenience of recruiting & training over jeopardizing patient safety with 70-hour weeks for young doctors
      3. ditto at hospitals in Republic of Ireland
      + random glimmers of hope, in j (Wall St.Journal) &/or t (NYTimes):
      • 3 UPsizings, 1400 + unspecified new jobs - 1400 jobs as Virgin Atlantic plans to boost fleet, routes & workforce (j.page D8)
        - ?? jobs as Malaysian discount carrier AirAsia to expand (j.D8)
        - ?? jobs as Shiseido Co. of Japan plans expansion in China with 200 new cosmetics stores (j.B4)
      • courtcase poses challenge to Scientology's secret 1993 taxbreak in violation of First Amendment & 1989 Supreme Court decision - Michael & Marla Sklar of L.A. are heroically suing IRS to deduct costs of their children's Jewish religious schooling, now allowed only to 'Church' of Scientology (t.C6)
      • Mizuho Financial & 2 other major lenders to return Japanese public funds of $5.95B they received in 1998-99 to bolster their finances (j.A8)
      • Temasek Holdings, Singapore's gov't investment arm, intends to open its books to the public this year for 1st time in its 30-year history (j.A8)
      • Philips Electronics, Europe's largest maker of consumer electronics, plans to require all its 50,000 suppliers worldwide to comply with basic environmental & labor standards (j.A8)

      vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t):
    • 1 PUFFsizing item = makework rampant, creating unspecified new ‘jobs’:
      1. Lockheed Martin & Raytheon won $1.1B contract over 6 years to R&D 2 ground-based missiles for US Army (t.C6)
    • DOWNsizing results = 1 dysfunctional-executive-pay item - NEW FEATURE:
      1. Putnam is alleging ex-CEO Lawrence Lasser concealed improper trading to maintain power & preserve his compensation, more than $100m over 5 years (j.A1>C1)
    • DOWNsizing results = 1 eroding-retirement story (click for archives): 
      1. Medicare's health to fail, rapidly - financial outlook is now seen as bleaker than Social Security's [wasn't it always?!] - trustees report program is on track to go bankrupt 7 years ahead of projection in 2019 instead of 2026 (t.A1, j.A2) - so restore the tax levels on the people who with the super-excess mind-boggling most & spare us the mock hysterics
    • headlines from hell (tm)  noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) & g (Boston Globe):
      1. credit-card delinquency rose to record in 4th quarter - American Bankers Assoc. reported the seasonally adjusted % of card accts past due 30 days or more rose to 4.43% in 4Q03, surpassing previous record of 4.09% set in 3Q03 (j.D2)
      2. & we ain't the only ones - 'consumer debt hinders S.Korean recovery - surge in credit card delinquencies' (t.W1)
      3. US drops 'survey & manage' forest rule, the main brake on clearcutting - Bush eliminated reqt for federal agencies to survey for rare species in Pacific Northwest & establish buffers to protect them - change will open up 1000s of acres of species-rich old-growth to destruction by industrial logging (t.A17) - ergo, Bush vs. biodiversity as well as every other kind of progress except for suicidally near-sighted top brackets
      4. & internationally, proposal to limit oil & coal projects draws fire - govts & mining cos vs. environmentalists & Nobel laureates (t.W1>7)
      5. newly released documents shed light on tactics used by Microsoft, e.g., to torpedo Go Inc. that was developing OS for handhelds in early 90s (t.C1>2)
      6. online swindlers, called 'phishers', lure the unwary - last year EarthLink found that more than half the dozen culprits it identified were under 18 years of age (t.A1)


      3/23/2004  tuesday   - “hope is not a plan”—but we do have a plan
      we have 699 textfiles: # visitors 3/22/mon: 932 excluding spiders (3/24/2003/mon: 794 including spiders)
      TIMEsizing news = strategic glimmers of hope in yesterday's GoogleNews:

      1. 24/7 email & cellphones have made it vital to set firm boundaries on work
      2. HP customer engineers' 24/7 pagers raised overtime costs & lowered morale as customers' operating schedules increasingly broke boundaries of normal workday
      3. Brazilian unions argue that by shortening the workweek from 44 to 40, 1.8 million more people will be employed
      4. older workers want shorter work hours, if they can find work
      + random glimmers of hope, in j (Wall St.Journal) &/or t (NYTimes):
      • executive Reese Jones files suit to fight tax shelter(!) - accuses unnamed firm & its associates Chenery, Sussex Financial and LeBoeuf Lamb Greene & MacRae of knowing plan was abusive, just an effort to use bank loans to generate paper losses to show the IRS (t.page C5)

      vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t):
    • 1 PUFFsizing item = makework rampant, creating unspecified new ‘jobs’:
      1. Lockheed Martin & Raytheon won $1.1B contract over 6 years to R&D 2 ground-based missiles for US Army (t.C6)
    • DOWNsizing appetizers = 1 mega & 2 banking takeovers, alias 'M&As' (archives):
      1. US Oncology agrees to $1.3B acquisition by Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe (t.C6)
      2. First National Bankshares of Florida buys Southern Community Bancorp for $228m (t.C6)
      3. Whitney Holding acquires Madison Bancshares for $unspecified (t.C6)
    • DOWNsizing overviews noted in j (Wall St.Journal) & t (NYTimes) & g (BostonGlobe):
      1. next on the outsourcing list - more U.S. jobs may end up migrating offshore to cheaper countries, could threaten more careers - analysts, accountants, architects, attorneys have reason to be concerned (j.A1>B1>) - economists too? ifso, we'll soon get a change of tune from 'good for US economy!'
      2. Mass. Gov. Romney targets outsourcing of jobs with $29m corporate-welfare initiative (g.A1) - but his solution reinforces the problem = rob the poor & give to the rich
      3. what the jobless statistics don't reveal - labor profs at Northeastern U. think informal household job survey (up 2m) diverges from formal employer one (down 0.6m), 3/01-2/04, because it counts self-employment, whether or not you have clients (g.A11)
    • 1 DOWNsizing, totaling unspecified lost jobs reported in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (NY Times):
      1. ?? jobs to be cut as Royal Dutch/Shell slims operations in Nigeria & boosts output (j.B12)
    • DOWNsizing results = 3 dysfunctional-executive-pay items - NEW FEATURE:
      1. for Wall Street chiefs, big paydays continue despite investor outrage: Citigroup's Sanford Weill $44.7m, Merrill's Stanley O'Neal $28m, Bear Stearns' James Cayne $26.8m. Goldman Sachs' Henry Paulson $20m, JP Morgan Chase's Bill Harrison $20m (j.C1>8)
      2. Kohl's CEO Lawrence Montgomery stock-opts for $29.2m (j.A6)
      3. Reebok CEO Paul Fireman gets smaller ($1.54m) bonus, bigger ($1.13m) salary (j.B11)
    • DOWNsizing results = 1 homelessness story (click for archives): 
      1. richest man in town - at 84, Tom White has achieved his life's goal - he's given away his entire fortune - says rich guys brag they did it all themselves but that's baloney - everyone gets breaks & he's had a lot of breaks himself - now supports Sojourner House homeless shelter in Roxbury MA & Partners in Health in Haiti (g.E1>5)
    • headlines from hell (tm)  noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) & g (Boston Globe):
      1. US markets get global chill (j.C16) - stock indexes fall to '04 lows on investors' concerns re terrorism, Asian stability, oil prices, fund-trading scandals - Dow below 10,065 (t.C1, j.A1)
      2. 'look up for new products in aisle 5' - instore TV advertising gains traction globally - timely pitch at shoppers (j.B11) = straining for deeper use of downsized consumer markets instead of centrifuging income with less work & more leisure
      3. 'let us now praise truth tellers' - Krugman lists casualties of Bush vindictiveness -
        • Gen. Eric Shinseki 'sent to Coventry' for his high estimate of postwar troops needed
        • Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV exposed false info in 2003 State of the Union & presto, somebody in White House 'outs' his CIA wife
        • Richard Foster was threatened with dismissal if disclosed true Medicare drug costs
        • now Richard Clarke smeared for exposing Bush war-on-terror fiasco (t.A25) - his insider status puts White House on defensive - Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz took advantage of national tragedy of 9/11 to promote their agenda on Iraq (t.A16)
      4. Aaron McGruder 'Boondocks' cartoon: almost-elected PRez Bush almost prevented 9/11, almost captured bin Laden, almost found WMDs - good enuf to re-elect?? (g.F11)
      5. wave of anger rolls across Arab world as assassination-minded Israel fires a missile at quadriplegic Palestinian spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin in a wheelchair just as he finishes dawn prayers (t.A11) = time to cut off their $3½B allowance
      6. Monday the White House reversed stand on the killing of Yassin (j.A10) = another Bush reversal? - under pressure, US criticizes Israel move - death of Sheik raises question of Hamas' fate (don't they mean Israel's fate?) - Palestinians swear vengeance for killing of cleric by Israelis - 'new martyr' or, for Sharon, an 'archmurderer' (t.A1) - [but Sharon is no different - echoes 'origins of the final solution', book by Christopher Browning (j.D8)]
      7. White House retreats from proposed regulation to slash closing costs on home-mortgage loans (j.A1) = another Bush reversal?! - met opposition from small service firms (j.A2)
      8. Park Service will face questions on its 15-mon. $352K overseas-travel spending by irresponsible executives (j.A8) - meanwhile they're cutting operations...
      9. EU antitrust fine for Microsoft said to be $613m (t.C1) = pocket change for Gates


      3/20-22/2004 sat-mon (re fri biz)
      - #visitors to any of our 699 files, F Sa Su: 736,495,570 - wk's daily avg: 754 -
      3 TIMEsizing items = strategic glimmers of hope in weekend's GoogleNews:

      1. reader corrects Barney Frank's emphasis from bigger gov't to better gov't, including reversing the increase of workhours
      2. family life clobbered by lengthening US working hours
      3. surge of lawsuits on working hours
      random glimmers of hope, indexing t (sat-mon. NY Times) & j (mon.Wall St.Journal):
      1. democracy looks for an opening - in the boardroom (3/22 j.A1) - ya mean like, workers' councils in Europe?!
      2. Soros presses anti-Bush effort - book assails policy in Iraq (3/22 g.A1)
      3. four of the 21 cartoon strips (19%!) in Sunday paper are anti-Bush: Opus, The Boondocks, Doonesbury, Stone Soup (3/21 g.cartoon section)
      4. the voice of (that other) America - is there a place for Al Franken & the left on talk radio? (3/21 t.mag cover story) - certainly hope so now that NYT has cut coverage! - unofficial dean of talk-radio industry says that because of tenor of the times, talk radio might begin slanting leftward (3/21 t.mag 83)
      5. apres janet jackson, a deluge of puritanism - Rush Limbaugh: 'I haven't heard Howard Stern, but when federal gov't gets involved in this, I get a little frightened' (3/21 t.2:1>8)
      6. about 300 war protesters march in downtown San Francisco, disruptions are few (3/20 t.A8) - in NYC & worldwide, 1000s protest Iraq war (3:21 t.A20) - police & protesters each credit themselves for peaceful Manhattan march (3/22 t.A24)
      7. Blix blames pols like Bush & Blair, not intelligence agencies, for Iraq (3/20 t.A17)
      8. despite sluggish economy (but due to 5-yr lifetime welfare cap), welfare rolls actually shrank over past 3 years to 2m families - but households receiving food stamps increased 35% to 10m (3/22 t.A1,19) - & Americans on the new welfare program, disability, increased to 5.7m by last June, rising 5% in 1 year
      9. bank-cop fight: Spitzer takes on US regulator (3/22 j.C1) - or de-regulator? - go get'im, Elliot!
      10. EU takes on Windows, ie: Microsoft, ie: Bill Gates (3/20 t.page A26) - US antitrust too compromised to do it? - but ... Nebraska court revives suit against Microsoft (3/20 t.B4)
      11. Ted Kennedy says foreign-born Schwarzenegger should be able to seek presidency (3/22 g.A3) - great, then Phil Hyde can too

      vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing, in j, t, & adding g (Boston Globe):
    • DOWNsizing appetizers = 1 big takeover, alias mergers & acquisitions (M&As):
      • holders of Travelers Property Casualty & St. Paul Cos. approved their $16.4B merger (3/22 j.C14)
    • DOWNsizing overviews noted in WSJ (j), NYT (t) or Boston Globe (g): 
      1. in Florida groves, cheap labor means machines (3/22 t.A1) - but then, robust markets better mean timesizing, or ... no markets
      2. guest worker plan will hike jobless rate - a giant inward sucking sound also aggravates the nation's jobless problem: high levels of legal & illegal immigration (3/22 g.A11) - a big thankyou for this op ed to Lawrence Harrison of Tufts U. & Vernon Briggs of Cornell
      3. job losses mount, payrolls shed 9500 in Feb/04 as Massachusetts lags US - most since 16,100 of Feb/03 - joblessness fell from Jan's 5.6% to 5.3%, but only because thousands gave up looking for jobs & were no longer counted as jobless (3/20 g.A1)
      4. French voters in provinces turn sour on Chirac - Socialists gain in the face of unemployment & budget cuts (3/22 t.A3)
    • DOWNsizing results = 2 dysfunctional-executive-pay items - NEW FEATURE:
      1. 'poor baby!' - DuPont CEO's bonus dropped 41% to 1.3m during 2003 (3/22 j.A12) - better start timesizing, not downsizing!
      2. Baxter Int'l paid CEO Harry Kraemer $1.5m excluding options in 2003 (3/22 j.C14)
    • DOWNsizing results = 1 bankruptcy in WSJ (j) and/or NYT (t):
      • Enco Recovery Corp. in Ch.11 (3/2 t.C5)
    • DOWNsizing results = 4 eroding-retirement stories: 
      1. concerns raised over consultants to pension funds - SEC beginning inquiry - possible conflicts seen in risky investments for public employees (3/21 t.A1) = foretaste of Bush-privatized Social Security alias 'personal savings accts'? - also, in La., pension official Brian Minturn blows the whistle on adviser conflicts (3/21 t.A16)
      2. 'the Medicare bill: a capital whodunit' (3/21 t.4:10) - huh? it's clear Bush 'dunit': misinformation to Congress, duplicity, doctored budget estimates, cf. WMD claims - young Naomi Newman of NYC asks herself if a public service career is worth it
      3. what can I do now? - with pensions at risk, the stock market scary, & Social Security in peril, you may feel like you're sinking (3/21 g.E1)
      4. mutual fund firms adding disclaimers (3/22 g.A1) - 'we may not be able to protect you from frequent trading activity' - or fraud? - gee, let's hurry & privatize Social Security!
    • DOWNsizing results = 1 homelessness story (click for archives): 
      • blues musicians get help surviving hard times - Whistling Britches Thompson was living in a shelter when he was found & helped by Tim Duffy & his Music Maker Foundation (3/21 t.A10)
    • headlines from hell (tm) from Wall Street Journal (j) & New York Times (t) & Boston Globe (g):
      1. Bush accounts of 9/11 response reveal gaps, inconsistencies (3/22 j.A9)
      2. Clinton aides plan to tell 9/11 panel of repeatedly warning Bush team in late 2000 on Qaeda's security threat (3/20 t.A1)
      3. pResident stumps in Fla., blasts Kerry - meanwhile CBS releases '60 Minutes' transcript in which former Bush counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke says for months Bush ignored warnings about growing Qaeda threat & badgered him to find way to tie Iraq to 9/11 - Kerry says Bush is incapable of solving Americans' economic problems cuz he doesn't even see them (3/21 g.A22)
      4. Europe - French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin calls the Iraq war "a mistake and even a culpable fault" (3/21 g.C4)
      5. "Bush-Cheney '04" t-shirts read "made in Burma" alias brutal dictatorship Myanmar, violate embargo - Kerry spokesman: "All this time we were wrong that Bush doesn't have a jobs program - turns out it's in Burma" (3/20 t.A10, g.A3)
      6. Bush coddles terror harbors: yesterday, Pakistan; today, Powell asserts Saudi bond despite rift - & unexpected visit by Powell to Baghdad sets off angry walkout by 30 Iraqi & other journalists in protest over deaths of 2 colleagues who were shot on Thurs. (3/20 t.A6) - Powell keeps swimming in cesspool - 6 GI's are charged with abuse of prisoners in Iraq (3/21 t.A9)
      7. reporting live, outside credibility - Bush persists in spinning actor/PR expert/faux-news specialist Karen Ryan as real freelance journalist in HHS videos designed to plug controversial & costly Medicare drug program via local TV stations (3/20 t.26)
      8. 'abusing native Alaskan boys wouldn't have much effect because their culture fairly loose on sexual matters' - Jesuit priest Wm. Loyens apologizes for linking abuse, native culture (3/20 g.A5) - it's the Roman Catholic church that has the culture problem! = open season on the kids of the parish
    • 3 jokes du weekend (tm)  reported in j (Wall St. Journal) &/or t (New York Times) - NEW FEATURE:
      1. pResident, marking anniversary of war, urges world to unit to combat terrorism (t.A7) - maybe when he quits distracting & starts leading!
      2. 'EU’s plans for terrorism lack cohesion' (3/22 j.A7) - look who's talking!
      3. Bush accuses Kerry of defunding anti-terrorism in 1995 - but Bush himself did it right after 9/11 - FBI's counterterror budget was squeezed by Ashcroft in early weeks after 9/11 - bonus: ex-counter-terrorist adviser Richard Clarke says Bush staff repeatedly ignored warnings on terror before 9/11 - Wolfowitz said, 'you give bin Laden too much credit' (3/22 g.A2, t.A19)
    weekend roll-up -
    5 issues/wk - wk's avg homepage hits/issue: 65
    hope of the weektm from the WSJ & the NYT:
    • 11 TIMEsizing items  • 8 UPsizings (28100+ new jobs)  + clouded hope: • 4 makework items
    vs. doom of the weektm from the WSJ & the NYT:
    • 5 DOWNsizings, 21835 jobcuts   • 1 bankruptcy  
    • 14 eroding-retirement stories   • 2 homelessness stories   • 4 prison stories  
    {{ ytd: 218 timsizngs (636+ new or sav'd jobs) + 27 upsizngs (73259+ new jobs) + 95 makwrk (34503+ 'jobs') =
    total: 108398 = 61% of cuts, VS. 149 dnsz (176927+ cuts) + 51 bnkrp ($350m+) +10 homlss +17 jail +8 suic }}


    3/19/2004  friday   - “hope is not a plan”—but we do have a plan
    we have 699 textfiles: # visitors 3/18/thu: 827 excluding spiders (3/20/2003/thu: 743 including spiders)
    TIMEsizing news = strategic glimmer of hope in today's NYT:

    1. ex-economic adviser Todd Buchholz's optimism about jobs in tech context would require timesizing but, time-blind, he fails to connect the dots (t.A19)
    + random glimmers of hope, in j (Wall St.Journal), t (NYTimes) & g (Boston Globe):
    1. 4 UPsizings, unspecified new jobs - GM finance unit, GMAC, to open federally insured bank in Utah to exploit Utah's laxer regs (t.page C3)
      - LG Philips plans $21.6B flat-screen factory complex in Paju, S.Korea (j.A1>B4)
      - ProMOS Technologies starts up new $3.2B chip plant in Taiwan next year (j.B4)
      - Fujitsu to invest $1.5B in new advanced-semiconductor plant in Mie, Japan (j.B4)
    2. Republican ads strain to spin Kerry as 'weak on defense' but most-cross-the-board-respected Republican John McCain disagrees (t.A1)
    3. who did Kerry hear 'ya gotta beat Bush' from? yesterday, Spain, today: Poland's Pres. Aleks Kwasniewski questions US steps in Iraq - feels misled over WMDs (j.A12, t.A11) & former PM of Malaysia Mahathir Mohamad thinks Kerry would keep world safer than Bush (g.A10)
    4. N.C., Ark., Wa., Tex., La. challenge shelter used to evade State Unemployment Tax Acts - 'SUTA dumping' cost 14 states $120m last year, involves eliminating high-layoff units & transfering survivors to newly-created ones (j.A6)
    5. Toshiba to supply hybrid gas-electric motors to Toyota affiliate Alsin AW (j.B5)
    6. massive 100'-diameter asteroid 2004FH passed within 26,500 miles of Earth, closest brush on record: NASA (j.A1, t.A17)

    vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t):
  • 1 PUFFsizing item = makework rampant, creating unspecified new ‘jobs’:
    1. Massachusetts sues Big Dig managers for $146m to recover overcharges (t.A17) - Big Dig project in downtown Boston maximized present & future costs by burying major, frequently expandable highway in tunnel - thank you, Ted Kennedy
  • DOWNsizing appetizers = 1 mega takeover, alias M&As (mergers & acquisitions):
    1. Manitoba Telecom Services to acquire Canadian telecom firm Allstream for $1.1B (j.A1>B5)
  • DOWNsizing overviews noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times):
    1. Washington wire - Dems complain 90,000 people a week exhaust jobless benefits, & Senate fight looms on Dem amendments for jobless aid & against outsourcing (j.A4)
    2. filings for jobless benefits decline for a 3rd week (t.C3), lowest level in several years (j.A2) - but workforce & eligibility have also declined, & new jobless claims have been below 'threshold' (400k) for over 6 mons. with only weak job creation
    3. work in progress - everyone from Lou Dobbs to Art Buchwald is weighing in against outsourcing (j.A1>online)
    4. Penn. may reward keeping jobs in U.S. - Gov. Ed Rendell (D) endorsed bill to reward bidders for state contracts ($1B yrly) who use US workers (t.A17)
    5. the pump on the stump - Bush already faces re-election trouble over job losses & now come high gas prices (j.A1)
    6. Taiwan losing many jobs to China - mfg shrank from 50% of GDP in late 80s to 25% as 10,000s of firms moved to China - early 90s' 1.5% jobless up to 5.2% in 2002 & now recovery hype cuz down only to 4.5% (t.C1>W1)
  • DOWNsizing results = 1 dysfunctional-executive-pay item - NEW FEATURE:
    1. Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson 'earned' $21m via exercising 475,000 options in 2003 (j.B4)
  • DOWNsizing results = 1 eroding-retirement story (click for archives): 
    1. Senate Democrats claim Medicare chief broke law - questions about who told whom to withhold what (t.A13) - what questions, there's an email from ex-administrator Tom Scully (3/18 j.A4)
  • DOWNsizing results = 1 prison item (click for archives):
    1. punitive crime laws cannot take credit for drop in crime else Calif's violent-crime rate would have plummeted relative to NY's 1994-2002, but Calif. with 3-strikes law added 34,724 inmates, while NY, without, added only 315: Vincent Schiraldi of Justice Policy Inst. (t.A18)
  • headlines from hell (tm)  noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) & g (Boston Globe):
    1. US House passes banking overhaul measure (t.C4, j.A2) = repeal of hard-learned Glass-Steagall separation of banking, brokerage & insurance, meaning dropping depression-protection?
    2. addressing/facilitating the unthinkable, US revives study of nuclear-bomb fallout - nuclear scientists tackle project with both deterrence & retaliation in mind (t.A1>16) - Bushies are getting evermore suicidal..on all our behalf
    3. taken for a ride on phony WMDs - Bush stance: 'if you’re not with me, you’re with terrorists' - Bush's keeps trying to slash military pay & benefits, provokes Army Times article 'Act of Betrayal,' then tries accuse Kerry of it (t.A19)
    4. Powell-Bush will celebrate Pakistan as a 'major non-NATO ally' (t.A6) - these are the people who've been selling nuclear arms to Libya et al. for the last 10 years
    5. Washington wire - marooned: Bush abandons Sen. Lugar & retreats from ratifying 140-nation UN Convention on Law of Sea (j.A4) = yet another Bush reversal & another dose of Bush's terrorism-inviting unilateral isolationism

      3/18/2004  thursday   - “hope is not a plan”—but we do have a plan
      we have 697 textfiles: # visitors 3/17/wed: 860 excluding spiders (3/19/2003/wed: 863 including spiders)
      TIMEsizing news = strategic glimmers of hope in yesterday's GoogleNews:

      1. overtime - a Finnish view
      2. overtime - a Detroit view
      + random glimmers of hope (archives), in today's t (NY Times) & g (Boston Globe):
      1. 1 iffy UPsizing, 100 new jobs - Qualcomm may start research in India (t.page C7)
      2. who did Kerry hear from, saying 'you’ve got to win'? well, today there's the new PM of Spain (g.A8), & tomorrow there's the ex-PM of Malaysia?! (3/19 g.A10)

      vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t):
    • 1 PUFFsizing item = makework rampant, creating unspecified new ‘jobs’:
      1. Pentagon moves to withhold 15% of pay ($300m) to Halliburton until auditors sure gov't not overcharged (j.A5, t.A12) = Cheney's makework goes AWOL like Bush's national guard 'service'
    • DOWNsizing appetizers = 1 mega & 1 banking takeover, alias M&As (mergers & acquisitions):
      1. Fisher Scientific Int'l is buying Apogent Technologies for $2.7B (j.A14, t.C9)
      2. South Financial Group buys Florida Banks Inc. for $169m (t.C4)
      • 1 piece of good news - 2 Brazilian airlines, Varig & TAM, call off merger plans (j.D3)
    • DOWNsizing overviews noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times):
      1. where the jobs are - sectors from securities industry to healthcare are adding staff - even in jobless recovery, people are finding work if have right skills or willing to move (j.D1) = just more strained damage control?
    • 3 DOWNsizings, totaling 8,735 lost jobs reported in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (NY Times):
      1. 18.5% worldwide workforce to be cut (6,600 lost jobs) as Bombardier overhauls rail unit & shuts down 7 plants across Europe, instead of just trimming its workweek 18.5% (to four 8hr.9min. days for whole firm, including top executives), re-investing overtime savings in overtime-targeted training&hiring & keeping everyone together working, earning, confident & shopping at least 81.5% as much as before (j.A13, t.W1)
      2. 1,535 US jobs trimmed as Thomson of France closes 2 plants & shifts work to China (t.C4)
      3. 600 cuts as Kroger's closes 15 Ralph's supermarkets in southern Cal. (t.C4)
    • DOWNsizing results = 3 dysfunctional-executive-pay items - NEW FEATURE:
      1. Reuters Group PLC - new chairman Niall Fitzgerald to get $900k/yr compared to post's current salary of $522k, up 72% (j.B3)
      2. Dow Chemical Co. - CEO Wm. Stavropoulos gets $2.3m bonus, but salary reduced from $1.84m to $1.3m (j.B3) - 'poor baby': down $0.54m, up $2.3m
      3. Kellogg Co. - CEO Carlos Gutierrez got $4.6m last year in 'incentive program' (j.B3) - when you've already got millions, only a complete bore finds incentive in more of the same
    • DOWNsizing results = 3 eroding-retirement stories (click for archives): 
      1. over-50 set minds its own business - signalling what US retirement is becoming, Rand study shows growing % of older workers are starting own businesses (j.D2) - what choice do they have? - rich CEOs have looted their pensions & nobody will hire them
      2. Medicare actuary Richard Foster reveals email warning - June 20 directive points to 'extremely severe consequences for insubordination' (j.A4) - also, the Orwellian spinmeisters of Medicare (3/19 t.A18)
      3. worse, Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) said some lawmakers & groups tried to induce him to vote for Medicare bill with promises of financial support for his son's House candidacy - House ethics committee sets full inquiry on bribery claim (t.A24)
    • DOWNsizing results = 1 workplace sabotage - NEW FEATURE:
      1. Thomson SA - apparent case of arson caused $750,000 in damage to TV picture-tube plant in Marion, Ind. just hours after firm shut down production there & laid off 990 workers (j.B3) - see downsizing #2 above & background 6/14/2003 #1
    • headlines from hell (tm)  noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) & g (Boston Globe):
      1. US national parks told to quietly cut services - superintendents in New England (& Grand Canyon!...) get memo on avoiding outcry (g.A14) = 'service-level adjustment' - Massachusetts state parks will get by on less 'green' funding (3/21 g.B4)
      2. Bush's Saudi policy goes 360° since 9/11 - first, public confrontation, while quietly flying bin Laden family members out with minimum interrogation; then, cooperation; then back to confrontation (j.A4) = 2 more Bush reversals? - or backroom oil buddies throughout?
      3. the real flipflopper - Bush charges Kerry with flipflopping, but Bush is 'serial flipflopper' on: Saudis (above), free trade; nation building; states' rights in re gay marriage; Homeland Security; McCain-Feingold; negotiating with N.Korea; Sarbanes-Oxley; independent 9/11 commission; & worst, federal spending - Bush never vetoed a single spending bill & Bush lied & covered up actual cost of Medicare drug benefit to dupe conservatives into voting for it (j.A17) - looks like conservatives are catching on!
    • joke du jour (tm)  reported in j (Wall St. Journal) &/or t (New York Times) - NEW FEATURE:
      • Cheney attacks Kerry's record on the military (t.A1) - too scared to let AWOL Bush do it?

      3/17/2004  wednesday   - “hope is not a plan”—but we do have a plan
      all 697 textfiles: # visitors 3/16/tue: 900 excluding spiders (3/18/2003/tue: 933 including spiders)
      TIMEsizing news = strategic glimmers of hope in yesterday's GoogleNews:

      1. on Monday, the 6 largest union federations in Brazil launched campaign to reduce legal work week from 44 to 40 hours without cutting pay
      + random glimmers of hope (archives), in today's j (Wall St. Journal) & t (NY Times):
      1. 2 UPsizings, unspecified new jobs - South Korean chip maker Hynix Semi plans sink $800m into new plant in Wuxi, China (t.W1) & - German carparts maker Continental AG plans to sink $300m into new plant in Brazil (j.B10)
      2. could Howard Stern's anti-Bush rants rock the vote over to Kerry? (g.page D1) - Dems are getting more converts than Bush - compare flip to anti-outsourcing by rightwinger Lou Dobbs (2/26, 3/05 j.A14)
      3. Bush's other Arab problem - Arab Americans who buoyed Bush in 2000 now poll poorly for Bush in 4 battleground states (j.A1)
      4. how diplomat Robert Silverman won allies in the heart of Iraqi resistance - under Silverman's plan, groups feeding insurgency got voice in government = a change of mood for Sunnis (j.A1) - that's what we've been saying all along! - give people a way to redress their grievances politically & they won't turn to terrorism
      5. H-P to sell PCs in Asia that use Linux instead of monopolist MS Windows (j.A1)

      vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t):
    • 1 PUFFsizing item = makework rampant, creating unspecified new ‘jobs’:
      1. Halliburton poobah (chair, prez & CEO) David Lesar was paid $1.2m in '03, up 9% from year earlier, plus $1m bonus (plus options?) for total of $2.2m +?? (j.B7)
    • 2 DOWNsizings, totaling 13,100 lost jobs reported in j (Wall Street Journal) & t (New York Times):
      1. 7% combined-workforce cut (13,000 jobs to be lost) as Bank of America gobbles FleetBoston (10/28/2003 #1) & cuts expences (j.A3) - again the toxic takeover-downsizing connection
      2. 100 jobcuts (42%) as NRG Energy plans to relocate its headquarters (t.C4)
    • DOWNsizing overviews noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) & g (Boston Globe):
      1. citing low hiring, Fed leaves short-term interest rates low at 1% - note #jobs economists deem needed just to keep up with population has magically sunk from 150,000 to 125,000/mon. (t.C1)
      2. Colin Powell assures India that Bush won't try & stop outsourcing of hi-tech jobs, but tries to use the veiled threat to get India to open markets to US firms (t.A9) - Indian officials 'see no link' (g.A6)
    • DOWNsizing appetizers = 1 banking takeover, alias M&A (mergers & acquisitions):
      1. Provident Bancorp to buy Warwick Community Bancorp for $153.4m (t.C4, j.B10)
    • DOWNsizing results = 2 eroding-retirement stories (click for archives): 
      1. seems like the last word on Medicare wasn't - a debate about cost puts prescription drug coverage right back in the political pillbox (t.A12)
      2. inquiry ordered on Medicare official Richard Foster's charge that he'd been told to withhold estimates of the true high cost of the law (t.A12)
    • DOWNsizing results = 1 homelessness story (click for archives): 
      1. Russian police searched for 2 homeless men whose scavenging may have triggered a gas explosion at an apartment building, killing at least 32 (j.A1)
    • DOWNsizing results = 3 prison items (click for archives):
      1. report faults prison system in 7 deaths in Vermont - communications problems, stress, budget cuts, overcrowding - 2400 inmates expected in next 3 years in facilities that can only accommodate 1600 (t.A18)
      2. in Florida, those with felony convictions are denied the right to vote - permanently, ie: even when they've served their time: Howard Simon, Fla. ACLU (t.A24)
      3. Guantanamo & American jailers get mixed reviews from detainees - some chained, some forced to stand for hours, some beaten & electroshocked, some interrogated with guns held to their heads, some forced to kneel so jailers could stand on the backs of their legs (t.A9)
    • headlines from hell (tm) noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) & g (Boston Globe):
      1. statistics lie re true cost of living (CPI) - eg: measured inflation may be low, but while CPI tracks cost of medical devices, it only tracks transfer of charges from employers to employees with a 2-year lag... (g.A15)
      2. as scandals mount, boards of mutual funds feel the heat - critics say trustees have history of lax policing, close ties to mgmt (j.A1)
      3. poll finds hostility hardening toward U.S. ie: Bush policies - signs that wounds among some allies over Iraq have grown worse (t.A3) - Bush has squandered American power, credibility & influence & turned us/US into a fundamentalist theocracy like our enemies, alias an 'Evil Empire'
      4. bans on interracial unions offer perspective on gay ones - Supreme Court struck down interracial marriage prohibitions in 16 states in 1967 - 14 other states had repealed their laws before the '67 decision (t.A16) = eugenics in America
      5. wet, scarce & incendiary - water remains a raging issue in the West, where decades-old contracts supplying agrobiz on the cheap are expiring (j.A1>B1)

      3/16/2004  tuesday   - “hope is not a plan”—but we do have a plan
      all 696 textfiles: # visitors 3/15/mon: 890 excluding spiders (3/17/2003/mon: 900 including spiders)
      TIMEsizing news = strategic glimmers of hope in yesterday's GoogleNews:

      1. Canadian paper industry has 21st-century productivity but 19th-cent. workhours
      2. New Zealanders are gearing up to push for average working week of 37˝ hours
      3. Taiwan is gearing up to bring the workweek down from 48 to 44 hours a week
      4. Indiana moms have jobsharing & reduced schedules, some with no loss of benefits
      random glimmers of hope (archives), in today's j (Wall St.Journal) & t (NY Times)):
      1. 1 UPsizing, 28,000 new low-wage jobs - Home Depot's CEO led a revolution, but left some behind - last year, added 30k employees (j.B1) - counted 2k on 1/29/03
      2. Spain's plan to quit Iraq throws wrench into Bush coalition goals - loss of closest Bush ally on Continent is blow to efforts to establish broader 'coalition' (j.page A14) - incoming Spanish govt is planning shift in allegiances - will mend ties with France & Germany & put U.S. relations on ice (j.A14) - until we dump Bush & his gang
      3. WSJ includes 6 slanted letters saying 'au revoir, France (& now Spain!): we're cutting the cord' (j.A21) - maybe bellicose Bushies are cutting a cord but the rest of us/U.S. are cheering them on!
      4. rules eased on upgrading US schools now that 'No Child Left Behind' law is leaving more & more children behind (t.A17) - yet another Bush reversal
      5. absent from unit in Iraq for months, soldier turns protester & surrenders (t.A12) - if courtmartial him, better courtmartial Bush too!
      6. poll shows concerns about US heading in wrong direction (t.A1) - higher %s feel Kerry will increase jobs, improve economy & ensure SocSec is there for us (t.A18)
      7. US takes steps to tighten Mexican border (t.A16) - if don't enforce immigration laws, why have them? - should be referendum call

      vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t):
    • 1 PUFFsizing item = makework rampant, creating unspecified new ‘jobs’:
      1. Halliburton poobah (chair, prez & CEO) David Lesar was paid $1.2m in '03, up 9% from year earlier, plus $1m bonus (plus options?) for total of $2.2m +?? (j.B7)
    • DOWNsizing overviews noted in Wall Street Journal (j) & New York Times (t): 
      1. additional strained damage control - 'offshoring can generate jobs in the U.S.' (j.B1)
    • DOWNsizing appetizers = 1 mega & 2 banking takeovers, alias mergers & acquisitions:
      1. Safeco selling insurance unit to grp led by Berkshire & White Mtns Ins. for $1.35B (t.C9)
      2. BNP Paribas' Calif. unit, BancWest, to acquire Community First Bankshares for $1.2B (j.D7; 3/17 t.C4)
      3. Umpqua to buy Humboldt Bancorp for $340m (t.C9)
    • DOWNsizing results = 4 eroding-retirement stories (click for archives): 
      1. financial surgery - how cuts in retiree benefits fatten companies' bottom lines - trimming a healthcare plan creates accounting gains, under some arcane rules - an improper shield against rising medical costs (j.A1) - American CEOs continue cannibalizing their consumer base, lurching toward economic armageddon
      2. health benefits terminated for Weirton Steel retirees despite their having accepted low wages in return for free lifelong heathcare (t.A9)
      3. discount health cards, big feature of Bush Medicare, rarely prove useful, regulators warn (j.D5)
      4. & US not alone in betraying retirees - UK stocks' pension problem: recovery supposed to erase widening pension-fund deficits (j.C16)
    • 1 homelessness story (see archives): 
      1. Richard Salyer is dead at 59; fought homelessness at roots (mental illness, drugs, asociality) - built NYC chapter of Volunteers of America - put faith in guidance rather than handouts (t.C19)
    • headlines from hell (tm) from Wall Street Journal (j) & New York Times (t) & Boston Globe (g):
      1. Greenspan revises his position on danger of budget shortfalls = "not dangerous" - & now cites risks of restoring taxes on the rich = "dangerous" (t.A1) - Greenspan has totally lost it!
      2. Fannie Mae posts derivatives losses of $6.9B (j.A6) - why the heck is Fannie Mae playing the ridiculously risky derivatives market?! - do taxpayers now have to cover their gambling losses?
      3. Venezuela's Supreme Court gave major boost to Pres. Chavez's opponents, ruling signatures on recall petitions needn't be validated (j.A1) - oh so Donald Duck & Mickey Mouse can sign 100s of times - this is anti-democratic corruption at highest level of Venezuelan judiciary
      4. where is WSJ/NYT coverage of Monday's march on Washington by military families???

      3/13-15/2004 sat-mon (re fri biz)
      - #visitors to any of our 694 files, F Sa Su: 713,478,577 - wk's daily avg: 773 -
      6 TIMEsizing items = strategic glimmers of hope in weekend's GoogleNews:

      1. parents & overtime
      2. workaholics an obstacle to worksharing unless willing to reinvest in training & hiring
      3. Barney Frank is digging toward timesizing solution but still no cigar
      4. the French work to live, not live to work - vive la France!
      5. before timesizing, plagues 'useful' for eliminating excess workhours from job market
      6. overtime lawsuits are up as employers try to cut corners & squeeze employees
      random glimmers of hope, indexing t (sat-mon. NY Times) & j (mon.Wall St.Journal):
      1. Kerry: 'if president of U.S. can find time to go to rodeo, he can find time to do more than one hour in front of commission that's investigating what happened to America's intelligence' - Bush: 'his bill (Kerry's 1995 intelligence budget-cutting bill) was so irresponsible he didn't have a single co-sponsor in US Senate.... That is no way to lead nation in time of war.' (3/14 t.page 4:1) - but 1995 was time of peace, not war
      2. Kerry asks Bush for monthly debates until Election Day (buried on 3/14 t.A13) - incoherent Bush unlikely to come out from under the oval desk
      3. improving economic 'signals' (ie: smoke) may no longer deliver votes for Bush - nagging anxiety on jobs, pay haunts Bush re-election (3/15 j.A1)
      4. political fallout of bombs hits US & Europe - Socialists' win in Spain is blow to Bush (3/15 j.A1) - Bush's ally Aznar rejected - voters clearly reiterate opposition to Iraq war (3/15 t.A1) - Zapatero takes strong stand against 'unjust war' (3/15 t.A10)

      vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing, in j, t, & adding g (Boston Globe):
    • 1 general PUFFsizing item = makework rampant:
      1. top US general in Iraq Sanchez criticizes Cheney's Halliburton ('jobs' untold!) for lag in building new bases for troops = Army's first open knock of conduct in Iraq or Kuwait (3/15 j.page A3)
    • DOWNsizing overviews noted in WSJ (j), NYT (t) or Boston Globe (g): 
      1. consumer confidence declines 2d consec.mon. because economy creating fewest jobs at this stage of 'expansion' than any recovery since World War II/Depression (3/13 t.B2, 3/15 j.A2)
      2. expert sees no diff in 3rd-World's rosy job forecasts & Bush's = zero credibility (3/13 t.A22)
      3. Bush-ballyhooed 'jobs czar' left jobless - Nebraska businessman Anthony Raimondo's appt dropped as Dems found he laid off 75 two yrs ago & planned $3m factory in China (3/13 t.A22)
      4. little secrets behind 18.4% profit jump last year at US firms with no hiring (3/14 t.3:1) = technical:
        • outsourcing offshore to save money
        • weak dollar while payments for same amts of US goods are in strong foreign currencies
        • lower corporate tax rates
      5. in this 'recovery', a college education backfires - # employed college grads 25 & over fell from 78% in 2000 to 76% in 2003, lowest in 25 yrs - no other group has taken the same beating the last 4 years (3/14 t.3:3) - maybe now we'll get some action on work sharing just as when rich kids starting get hurt in the civil rights marches
      6. Trump is firing as fast as he can...on 'The Apprentice' (3/14 t.2:1) - Americans are turning suicidally sado-maso, 'amused' by downsizing like Colosseum rabble drooling over death
      7. 'ease pain of downsizing while awaiting future gain/new jobs' (3/14 g.D1) - what new jobs??
      8. political quiz on the economy - why didn't Bush's trade rep, Robert Zoellick, draw fire now he's joined Mankiw in supporting the free-trade death of the American economy? (3/14 t.A13)
      9. Canada: 21,200 jobs lost in Feb, first drop in 6 mons. - joblessness 7.4% for 3rd mon. (3/13 t.B4)
      10. huh? - low labor standard leads South Africans (one company, Tiger Wheels) to export jobs to Alabama (3/13 t.A3) - sounds like Murdoch is trying to counter huge outsourcing from US to low-standard 3rd world, but wouldn't this just expose deterioration of Ala.?
    • DOWNsizing appetizers = 2 big takeovers, alias mergers & acquisitions:
      1. EDS sells UGS PLM Solutions for $2.05B to Bain, Silver Lake & Warburg Pincus (3/15 j.A3, t.C2)
      2. Cinemark theater chain plans $1.5B merger with Madison Dearborn Partners (3/14 t.A16)
      • EU sent Oracle list of objections to PeopleSoft bid & expects to rule even before US trial in June
    • DOWNsizing results = 1 bankruptcy in WSJ (j) and/or NYT (t):
      1. Orlando Hyatt Hotel Assocs. Ltd. Partnership (3/15 j.B6)
    • DOWNsizing results = 2 eroding-retirement stories: 
      1. White House suppressed $534B true cost of '$400B' bill, Medicare's chief actuary Richard Foster says (3/15 j.A4) - as Kerry said, 'most crooked, lying group he's seen'
      2. don't shortchange the people - Greenspan last mon. testified that private-sector employees would have to work past 65 or have less Social Security & Medicare benefits but never asked gov't workers including Congress & himself to make any such sacrifice - Sharon MA's Tom McMahon (3/15 g.A14) - why not restore split between SocSec funds & general treasury? & why not end split between public & private sector pensions? = example of insulated & isolated decision-makers = not a feedback system
    • headlines from hell (tm) from Wall Street Journal (j) & New York Times (t) & Boston Globe (g):
      1. Army says its agents exceeded authority in going to U.Tex Law conference on Islamic law & women's rights to spy on attendees (3/13 t.A5) = advance of the US police state
      2. re 'how power lobby won battle of pollution control at EPA' (3/06), what good is democratic process if a few lobbyists can subvert laws passed by elected officials to protect environment & our health? - Malverne NY's Tom Portuese (3/13 t.A22)
      3. fired Motorola CEO paid $2˝m last yr (3/15 j.B4) = perverse incentives, 'deathwish' capitalism
      4. study finds waning appetite for newspaper & TV news (3/15 t.C7) - so why doesn't WSJ support, & NYT support more strongly, prez candidate who models newspaper-reading?!
      5. another insult to our soldiers - Bush makes some go months without pay, just like Russia (3/15 t.A25) - & he won't attend their funerals
      6. PSR: Libyan's overtures for nuke disarming began in '99, so no support for Iraq war there - & with more terrorism after 9/11 than before, Bush has made us no safer despite squandering 100s of lives, billions of $$ & whole year chasing the red herring of Iraq - FL's Paul Tate (3/15 t.A24)
      7. beyond duck blind - scaly scallywag Scalia has conflict of interest in Cheney's energy-taskforce secrecy (3/15 t.A24) - Scalia refuses to take himself off Cheney case (3/19 t.A1) - a Cheney-Scalia duck hunt that's proving costly - Sandi Schiffman of NYC was 'excused' as juror because she once met prosecutor among large group on canoe trip, so why proper for Scalia to serve as judge when good friends with defendant Cheney? - John P. Mackenzie of Long Is. City: if it took Scalia 21 pages to argue his impartiality, there are definitely reasonable questions - Barrie Grenell of San Francisco: mind-boggling that judge can decide for self what constitutes conflict of interest & that decision is final - ditto congressmen deciding own pay, healthplan & pension (3/21 t.A10)
    weekend roll-up -
    5 issues/wk - wk's avg homepage hits/issue: 83
    hope of the weektm from the WSJ & the NYT:
    • 17 TIMEsizing items  • 1 UPsizing (4000+ new jobs)  + clouded hope: • 7 makework items
    vs. doom of the weektm from the WSJ & the NYT:
    • 2 DOWNsizings, 9500 jobcuts   • 6 bankruptcies   • 7 eroding-retirement stories   • 3 work-linked suicide stories  
    {{ ytd: 207 timsizngs (636+ new or sav'd jobs) + 19 upsizngs (45159+ new jobs) + 91 makwrk (34503+ 'jobs') =
    total: 80298 = 52% of cuts, VS. 144 downsz (155092+ cuts) + 50 bnkrpt ($350m+) +8 homlss +13 prsn +8 suic }}


      3/12/2004  friday   - “hope is not a plan”—but we do have a plan
      all 695 textfiles: # visitors 3/11/thu: 840 excluding spiders (3/13/2003/thu: 1434 including spiders)
      TIMEsizing news = strategic glimmers of hope in yesterday's GoogleNews:
      • 100 jobs saved as Columbia Forest Products mill in Nipigon ONT shares the vanishing work, cuts to 3-day workweek & uses unemployment insurance to pay employees for other 2 days
      • Joe Robinson & his 'more vacation!' campaign gets some PR from Voice of America
      • GOP-led Congress takes it to heart - schedules 40 fewer days in session than under Clinton - works on 'priorities' like 'cheeseburger bill'
      • opposition-led S.Korean parliament impeaches Pres. Roh - may jeopardize shift from 44 to 40-hour workweek?
      random glimmers of hope, indexing today's t (NY Times) & g (Boston Globe):
      • 1 UPsizing - IBM is hiring in Calcutta, city says = 4000 jobs by end of 2004 (j.A13)
      • Kerry sticks it to them - refuses to apologize for off-mike comments that GOP most crooked, lying group he's ever seen - Hastert 'took it personally' (t.A18) - but was himself acutely frustrated with flipflops by Bush's staff on transit bill (j.A4)
      • Kerry vs. Bush - 4th-generation Republican appalled at Medicare bill spun as great for geezers, unimpressed with quiet refusal to fund education & unaccustomed to GOP presidents running record deficits & making up stories about nukes & chem- & bio-weapons to justify starting needless war - agrees with Kerry that Bush is scary (t.page A20) - so Nader's right: true conservatives are waking up
      • stocks tumble again in biggest drop since May (j.A1) - keep this up & Bush vanishes
      • Senate panel moves vs. GOP staffers who spied on Dem memos (j.B3)

      vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t):
    • 2 PUFFsizings = makework rampant, creating unspecified new ‘jobs’:
      • Halliburton's Iraq costs examined - 'significant deficiencies' at Kellogg Brown & Root unit (j.A8)
      • & 'star wars' is baaack - pointed questions on missile defense system - debate over placing interceptors in Alaska (t.A15)
    • DOWNsizing overviews noted in Wall Street Journal (j) & New York Times (t): 
      • slow job growth puzzles monthly survey of 55 economists - outsourcing to overseas isn't main suspect - since 2001, 188k outsourced in svcs, 502k in mfg, tot 690k = only 1.2% of 58.6m overall layoffs, net overall decline of 2.3m (j.A2)
      • macro investor Steve Liesman explains how US tax code spurs firms to offshore jobs (j.A1)
      • no more excuses - all Bush has to show for 3 years of job-creation promises is megadebt (t.A21)
      • Australia's jobless rate climbed in Feb. for first time in 8 months, from Jan.'s 5.8 to 5.9% (t.W1)
    • DOWNsizing results = 2 bankruptcies in (j) WSJ and/or (t) NYT (click for archives): 
      • Durango Georgia Paper Co/Converting Corp/LLC in Chapter 11 (j.B7)
      • Holiday RV Superstores Inc. in Chapter 11 (j.B7)
    • DOWNsizing results = 3 eroding-retirement stories (click for archives): 
      • Democrats' edge on dealing with Social Security stays strong at 13% & voters oppose Greenspan's view that benefits for younger workers may have to be cut by 59% to 34% (j.A4)
      • GM reports retiree-health liability rose to $63.4B despite $4B from new Medicare law (j.A12)
      • & US not alone in betraying retirees - German lawmakers approve state-pension cuts (j.A13)
    • headlines from hell (tm) from Wall Street Journal (j) & New York Times (t) & Boston Globe (g):
      • US Feb. budget deficit totaled $96.7B same as last year (j.A12)
      • 1 guess who's behind SCO's campaign vs. Linux? - new proof that Microsoft plays role in Linux fight - pours millions into SCO (t.C1>5)
      • same B.S. - House, Senate budget drafts boost defense spending & pare taxes (j.A8)

      3/11/2004  thursday   - “hope is not a plan”—but we do have a plan
      all 695 textfiles: # visitors 3/10/wed: 934 excluding spiders (3/12/2003/wed: 1474 including spiders)
      TIMEsizing awareness = strategic glimmers of hope in yesterday's GoogleN