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

    5/29-31/2004 sat-mon (re fri biz)
    - keep hope-vs-doom comin' with $5/mon. check to Timesizing.com, Box 622, Cambridge Ma 02140 -
    - #visitors to any of our 707 files, F Sa Su: 504,270,356 - wk's daily avg: 586     -
    TIMEsizing awareness = strategic glimmers of hope in weekend's GoogleNews:
    1. Allen-Edmunds keeps its shoe factories in the U.S. & eliminates overtime to stay competitive on quality if not quantity
    2. EU is flushing its living standards down Turkish toilet of 6-day workweeks
    3. more erosion of French worksharing at Peugeot
    4. British full-time workers fall behind, averaging 46 hours/week compared to 41.6 in rest of EU
          •      Phil Hyde to speak at *shorter-hours conference, Jun.10-13, Chicago: all welcome

    + random glimmers of hope indexing (j) Wall St.Journal, (t) NYTimes or (g) Bos.Globe (archives):
    1. consumer spending, by 0.3% in April, and a Chicago-area factory-index, to 68 in May, rise (5/29 t.B4) - but relation to population?? and conclusion that factories are hiring in age of robotics is outdated
    2. office politics give liberal talk radio a rocky start - but it's started, and Al Franken, head to head with Rush Limburger, has temporarily agreed to not be paid (5/31 t.C1) = a labor of love?
    3. Dems and even some in GOP call for more Congressional oversight of Bush (5/31 t.A13)
    4. and for his next feat, a billionaire sets sights on Bush (5/31 t.A13) - George Soros is big bankroller of Dems, having come to US with zilch several decades ago and built up a $7B fortune by market speculation, oops, investment

    vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing, in j, t, & g (Boston Globe):
  1. DOWNsizing results = dysfunctional executive pay:
      $10.7m for ousted chairman of Royal Dutch/Shell - Sir Philip Watts was awarded pay & option package worth over £5.84m despite Shell's proven annual reserves being overstated by 10% in each of last 6 years (5/29 t.B1)
  2. prison news (archives):
    1. can prints lie? yes, man finds to his dismay (5/31 t.A1) - Rene Ramon Sanchez kept getting arrested for Leo Rosario's drug crimes cuz police had placed Sanchez' fingerprints on Rosario's card and it took hell and high water to correct it
    2. America's Abu Ghraibs - scenes from domestic prisons look a lot like Iraq (5/31 t.A21) - more men than women are raped in America because of American prisons
  3. headlines from hell (tm) from (j) Wall Street Journal or (t) NY Times or (g) Boston Globe (archives):
    1. terrorist warnings: editorial - Ashcroft & FBI director Mueller issued vague warning on Wed. but Ridge of Homeland Security has that responsibility so where was he? (5/29 t.A24) = another Bush flip-flop?! and then another: 'FBI issues and retracts urgent terrorism bulletin (5/29 t.A12)
    2. inquiry calls FDIC lax (5/29 t.A12) - who's FDIC? only the people who are supposedly insuring your bank account
    3. a timid press poses a risk to all: Ginna Gracey of Dover MA (5/31 t.A20)
    weekend roll-up -
    5 issues/wk - wk's avg homepage hits/issue: 49
    hope of the weektm from the WSJ & the NYT:
    • 16 TIMEsizing items (?? new or saved jobs)  + bogus hope: • 8 makework items (?? new 'jobs')
    vs. doom of the weektm from the WSJ & the NYT:
    • 5 DOWNsizings, over 40,200 jobcuts   • 4 bankruptcies  
    • 5 eroding-retirement stories   • 2 homelessness stories   • 7 prison stories   • 2 workplace-death stories
    {{ ytd: 387 timsizngs (1636+ new or sav'd jobs) + 64 upsizngs (84521+ new jobs) + 176 makwrk (36803+ 'jobs') =
    total: 122960 = 43% of cuts, VS. 219 dnsz (286854+ cuts) + 85 bnkrp ($350m+) +20 homlss +69 jail +14 deth }}


    5/28/2004 friday - ‘hope is not a plan’, but we do have a plan
    - want the Timesizing ‘take’ on some issue or event? email us -
    - we have 707 textfiles: # visitors yesterday 5/27/thu: 685 (5/29/2003/thu: 818)
    TIMEsizing awareness = strategic sharework (vs.makework) in yesterday's GoogleNews:

    1. Moon Kook-hyun, president of Yuhan Kimberly company in S.Korea, is often cited by Pres. Roh Moo-hyun as exemplary model of worksharing
    2. campaign to bring down working hours by tackling unpaid overtime is on the agenda of European finance industry
    3. Unisys survey reveal that 16-24 year-old workers in UK suffer from stress and relationship problems due to inflexible working practices and long working hours
    4. meanwhile, back in darkest USA, it's not uncommon for rural kids to spend 90 minutes on schoolbus one-way - some Navajo kids spend 4 hours a day on roundtrip
          •     Phil Hyde to speak at *shorter-hours conference, Jun.10-13, Chicago: all welcome
    + random glimmers of hope prioritizing today's (j) Wall St Journal or (t) NYTimes (archives):
    1. Canada: Inuit vote for autonomy = new SC-sized territory (28000 sq.mi) in northern Labrador called Nunatsiavut (t.A6) - joins other Inuit territory to west, Nunavut = Eskimo power!
    2. India: stepping back from privatization - why sell it off if it's making profits and saving taxpayers money? - new economic plan proposes totally scrapping Privatization Ministry (t.A6) - which effectively made taxpayers pay for their own shakedown in favor of wealthy investors = Bush-level devastation
    + clouded hope: UPsizing gov't (and private-sector inefficiency) = makework (archives) vs. sharework creating ?? new ‘jobs’:
    1. CACI International Inc., defense co. that provides civilian interrogators to Abu Ghraib, may face ban on contracts with the government (j.A3) - still just "may"???
    2. federal advisers decided a revised food pyramid should seek to recommend more fish and fiber and fewer refined grains such as white bread (j.A1) - do we really need to waste taxpayers' money on telling us what we already know and have been told months or years before by the private sector?
    3. banking on German discontent - bailout of Berlin's Bankgesellschaft spurs protest plays, cabaret - a bank founded in 1994 by the Berlin city gov't into which the city injected 1.75 billion euros ($2.4B) in 2001 to keep it open and in 2002 agreed to pay for up to 21.6 billion euros in future losses - civic groups are now finally calling for it to be declared insolvent (j.A6) - these amounts could revitalize the whole of east Germany if centrifuged, even if just used to provide makework for the non-rich instead of the rich

vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t) -

  • CEOs are constantly UPsizing their own pay, perks & pensions, to economy-strangling levels:
    1. Dell Inc. - Pres. Kevin Rollins 'earned' $36m last year after exercising stock options (j.B3)
  • CEOs implement UPsizing fake growth thru takeovers on diversity-choking scale (archives):
    1. report links oil mergers to slight rise in gas prices - extensive series of oil company mergers in 1990s reduced competition in gasoline sales - study by Congressional auditors requested by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) - of 8 mergers studied, 6 led to price increases averaging 1-2 cents a gallon (t.C6) - while anti-trust slept
    2. Softbank broadband will pay $1.28B for Japan Telecom (j.B2)
  • CEOs end up DOWNsizing their own consumer markets - overviews (archives):
    1. Bill Griffith's Zippy cartoon - Zippy to George Washington encased in Washington Monument: "aren't you the George...who smirks & squints inappropriately as he discusses war & outsourcing?" (g.C23)
    2. Washington wire - pileup - backers of 4 free-trade deals, including one with Bahrain awaiting signing and one with 5 Central American nations awaiting Congress's ratification, have scant hope for final passage given lawmakers' election-year jitters about job losses (j.A4) - sacrifice of public will to economic fads in non-election years is another powerful argument for continuous issue-oriented referendums a la Swiss
    3. jobless east Germans are fleeing to west as former DDR enters 14th year of double-digit joblessness, leaving behind eerie landscape of ghost cities & depression-level unemployment - Hoyerswerda, Saxony, with 23½% jobless is Germany's fastest-shrinking city - lost 39% of residents since 1988 (t.C1>W1>7)
    4. it's out of college and onto jobless rolls in China - 110 million migrant workers left the countryside in search of city jobs in factories or construction - grossly undercounted official unemployment is only 4.3% - excludes laid-off workers cuz they get meager welfare benefits - experts estimate 200m jobless = 15% of gross population (1.3B) nevermind just of workforce - so China must sustain 7% growth indefinitely just to break even on employment (t.A3) - unless they exit the global Dark Ages & implement automatic adjustment of workweek vs. joblessness = worksharing
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s job - today's total, 38000 +?? jobcuts, made it into j (WSJ) or t (NYT):
    1. after 20 years, baby Bells face some grown-up competition - cable & Internet players milk babybell Verizon's old cash cow, local phone service; 21,000 more jobs vanish from Verizon thru buyouts since Dec. - 'machines don't call in sick' (j.A1) - and they don't buy phone service either
    2. poor economy is emptying east German towns - 17,000 jobs lost since 1989 as Schwarze Pumpe coalmine in Hoyerswerda, Saxony, 'modernizes' (t.W7) - still think technology creates more jobs than it replaces? - still think job creation via economic growth, or gov't makework, can handle it?
    3. unspecified jobs cut as Southwest Airlines offers early retirement to help reduce costs (t.C3)
  • DOWNsizing results = bankruptcies (archives):
    1. RCN Corp. filed for Chapter 11 (j.B6, t.C7)
    2. FiberMark Inc., FiberMark North America Inc. and FiberMark International Holdings LLC in Chapter 11 jointly (t.C6)
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s retirement (archives):
    1. public pension officials back proxy-rules proposal - urge regulators to ignore corporate lobbying against proposal to make it easier for shareholders to nominate candidates to corporate boards (j.B2)
    2. Tyco plans $500m pension plan contribution (t.C3) = an exception that proves the rule
  • DOWNsizing results = prison news (archives):
    1. US prison population grew 2.9% last year to almost 2.1m inmates, with one in every 75 men living in jail, 'Justice' Dept. said (j.A1) - ah, wasn't it 2.2m (2,166,260) way back on 7/28/2003?!
    2. Abu Ghraib - high priority put on prison interrogation led to use of untrained workers - sense of urgency contributed to loose standards and abuse (t.A11) - oh, that's OK then - go ahead and murder and torture prisoners and stir up more terrorism against us
  • headlines from hell, noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) (archives):
    1. get out the magnifying glass, there's "new evidence of momentum for economy" (t.C4) = pathetic!
    2. Britain will send 370 more soldiers and extra firepower to the southern zone it controls in Iraq (j.A1) - UK dumbs down along with US - never heard "if you're in a hole, stop digging!"?
    3. Washington turf battle muddles nation's terror-warning system [as Bin Laden laughs?!!] - Homeland Security officials said they had little advance notice of Ashcroft's warning about a possible attack and believed the information wasn't new or specific enough to merit an announcement (j.A1) - our national safety is in the hands of uncoordinated and politically obsessed idiots - can't believe it? how about this...
    4. White House told officials in federal education, domestic security and other programs to trim 2006 budgets - administration played down (j.A1)

    5/27/2004 thursday - ‘hope is not a plan’, but we do have a plan
    - want the Timesizing ‘take’ on some issue or event? email us -
    - we have 707 textfiles: # visitors yesterday 5/26/wed: 741 (5/28/2003/wed: 883)
    TIMEsizing awareness = strategic sharework (vs.makework) in yesterday's GoogleNews:

    1. S.Korean conglomerates resolve to implement cut from 44 to 40-hour workweek as scheduled
    2. but U.S. job sharing dropped from 26% in 2001 to 22% in 2003
          •     Phil Hyde to speak at *shorter-hours conference, Jun.10-13, Chicago: all welcome

    + random glimmers of hope prioritizing today's (j) Wall St Journal or (t) NYTimes (archives):
    1. automakers increase SUV rebates - cashback on large vehicles signals trouble for Detroit in the lucrative market (j.A8) - can't get rid of gas guzzlers, so...
    2. a new crop of diesel cars hits the market - amid rising gas prices, VW, Mercedes, Jeep roll out fuel-efficient models (j.D1) - and there's also the hybrids

    vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t) -

  • CEOs are constantly UPsizing their own pay, perks & pensions, to economy-strangling levels:
    1. NY Stock Exchange ready to battle Grasso over being owed $48m more in bonus pay (t.C1)
    2. Tyco consulted outside attorneys before not disclosing pay of top lawyer, witness says - prosecutors say Mark Belnick was given up to $17m without board approval or public disclosure, despite supposed to have appeared in a proxy (j.C5)
  • CEOs end up DOWNsizing their own consumer markets - overviews (archives):
    1. steel town finds lost jobs tough to replace - despite years of effort, Aliquippa PA kept sliding; stuck in fiscal Catch 22 - J&L Steel closed in 1987, taking jobs & most of city's tax base (j.A1)
    2. outsourcing 101 (j.A20) = again the Wall St Journal strains to paint it as dandy - 'critics miss that the world economy is dynamic - jobs created overseas generate jobs at home' - well, defenders miss that change doesn't equate to dynamism, the better paying full-time jobs generated at home are few and longer-hours, the many lower paying ones aren't keeping up with population growth, and as national and global income keeps concentrating in the top brackets, the home consumer base keeps weakening
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s retirement (archives):
    1. in little Rockville CT, a trial on pension fund losses could shake Wall Street - was subsequently lost $125m improperly invested? (t.C1)
    2. venture funds have convinced states to tighten their laws on public disclosure so pension funds and university endowments can keep risky investment details secret (j.A1>C1)
  • DOWNsizing results = prison news (archives):
    1. Iraq prison report's missing pages include reference to Rumsfeld (j.A2) - shades of missing pages in Admiralty Log when Churchill pulled destroyer escort from the Lusitania
    2. prison interrogations in Iraq seen as yielding little data on rebels (t.A1)
  • DOWNsizing results = suicides - lack of work-life balance kills (archives):
      Ninth Circuit Court 2-1 ruling upholds Oregon's law authorizing assisted suicide, the only one in the nation - federal appeals court rebukes Ashcroft - Atty Gen's edict exceeded authority, panel says (t.A1, j.A1)
  • headlines from hell, noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) (archives):
    1. officials warn of US terror threat [every time his polls fall, Bush cries wolf?] - FBI, Ashcroft say al Qaeda may seek to affect elections (j.A3) - which way? Qaeda is virtually an arm of the CIA, ready to threaten anytime needed - America's enemies would love Bush to win again to keep us sinking fast to banana republichood
    2. citing a 'shamed America,' Gore calls for Rumsfeld, Rice, Tenet and 3 others to resign - Bush's rival of 2000 says the pResident has made the world a more dangerous place (t.A20) - then why not call for Bush's impeachment & a war crimes trial? and where was he 2 years ago? and would it have been different with a guy who's name means 'blood' and 'puncture'?
    3. WSJ tapdances on NYT's grave apology yesterday for giving Bush a free ride on Iraq - 'NY Times criticizes its own Iraqi-weapons coverage' - and outs main target, once-reliable reporter Judith Miller (j.A1>B1)
    4. NYT readers harsher (t.A30) - Times should have taken own advice and placed apology above the fold on front page: Nils Johnson-Shelton of Brooklyn
      - insufficient embarrassment that snookered for 2 years by Bush: Roger Lippman of Seattle
      - disappointing no apology till after Chalabi's fall from grace: Steven Sherman of Chapel Hill
      - self-flogging now won't unspill the blood in Iraq: Jon Bell of Tucson
      - already obvious 2 years ago that any Iraq-9/11 connection was a stretch & neo-con dream of planting democracy in Mideast was wishful thinking at best or dangerously delusional at worst; history might have been different if press & Congress had just done their jobs & challenged the bullies in the White House: Anne Travers of Monclair NJ
    5. 2 shrines intact [?? - 'just a few bullet holes'] but US reputation is marred after clashes with rebels (t.A10) - top candidate to lead Iraq's interim gov't says he doesn't want the job = nuclear scientist Dr. Hussain al-Shahristani (t.A10) - the quagmire goes on
    6. court ruling bolsters estate-planning tool which many wealthy use to escape estate taxes - popular family limited partnerships, under cloud since last year, get reprieve (j.A1>D1)
    7. computer worm is turning faster - installing security patches [eg: in crappy Windows] is now constant rush job against speedier invaders - time between announcement of flaw & appearance of virus down from 281 days in '99 to 10 days today [j.B3]
    8. in the Sierras, a raging debate over clear-cutting - to Red Emerson, leveling trees and planting anew helps nature do its job [j.A1] - right, so let's also dragnet our fisheries


    5/26/2004 wed. - ‘hope is not a plan’, but we do have a plan
    - want the Timesizing ‘take’ on some issue or event? email us -
    - we have 707 textfiles: # visitors yesterday 5/25/tue: 770 (5/27/2003/tue: 929)
    TIMEsizing awareness = strategic sharework (vs.makework) in yesterday's GoogleNews:

    1. Communications Workers of America union unfortunately still believes in employers' job-security "guarantees" without shorter hours
    2. Wal-Mart and other big retailers are getting deluged with overtime lawsuits
    3. Prof. Harriet Presser of UMd/CollegePk says harm that evening, night and weekend shiftwork does to health and family life can be cut by cutting hours
          •     Phil Hyde to speak at *shorter-hours conference, Jun.10-13, Chicago: all welcome

    + random glimmers of hope prioritizing today's (j) Wall St Journal or (t) NYTimes (archives):
    1. NYT apologizes for compromising 'news' to support Iraq war over the last year (t.A10)
    2. Erica Verillo of Williamsburg MA: on Mon. eve Bush gave lovely explanation of his Iraq policy (t.A24):
      • 'occupation will end' on June 30 (but our troops will stay)
      • Iraq will be given 'full sovereignty' (but new Iraqi gov't will have no control over US military decisions for Iraq)
      • Coalition Provisional Authority will end (but its hand-picked ministers will continue following the Authority's policies)
      • Iraq will have 'democracy' (but Iraqi citizens will not initially choose their own president, VP, or any member of their gov't)
      • Abu Ghraib will be torn down (but a new high-security prison will be built in its place)
    3. Bush feels pressure at the pump - has options but no quick fix for rising gas prices (j.A4) - drivers combatting $2/gal. gas prices increasingly use mass transit and car pooling (j.D1>4)
    4. the Chalabi fiasco - the Iraqi politician is a pawn in a much larger strategic game - 'the more we dig into last week's raid against him, the more curious it seems': WSJ editorial (j.A16) - and Bush campaign still has the gall to charge Kerry with flipflopping?! (t.A16) - ha!
    5. Kerry has early win in narrowing gap on fund raising - no longer any doubt that he'll have the money to compete with Bush in Nov. (j.A4)
    6. Hans Blix endorses Kerry as multilateralist - says Iraqis have suffered more from Bush's war than they did under Saddam [certainly arguable] - war in Iraq has only made threat of terrorism worse [certainly true] - says whole world should vote against Bush on Nov.2 because so much depends on that vote (j.A16) - Bush has enmired America in accelerated fiscal and military self-destruction that unless stopped will make no American's life worth even a dime
    + clouded hope: UPsizing gov't (and private-sector inefficiency) = makework (archives) vs. sharework:
    1. Rumsfeld shelved a proposed $23B deal with Boeing for Air Force to buy and lease aerial refueling tankers till year end or later, amid congressional criticism (j.A1>3)
    2. the gov't is set to limit how much salt Americans should consume to 2300 mg a day - Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee of Dept. of Health & Human Services and Agriculture are considering a raft of diet-related issues (j.A1>D1) = more 'conservative' micromanagement from another unecessary gov't committee

    vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t) -

  • CEOs are constantly UPsizing their own pay, perks & pensions, to economy-strangling levels:
    1. chasing Mr. Grasso's millions (t.A24) - board of directors of NYSE 'non-profit' voted unanimous approval of Grasso's pension benefits, bonuses and deferred compensation that would allow him to take home nearly $200m knowing full well its magnitude -, but by leaving the board out of his suit, Spitzer is giving directors everywhere an all-purpose defense = 'I was too dumb, lazy, clueless, indifferent, gullible, [overpaid myself,] etc. to know the difference (j.A17) - Grasso defends pay, pledges to sue NYSE for $48m more (j.C4)
    2. Adelphia ex-executive testifies he was upset over compensation - govt's star witness, James R. Brown, former VP of finance, was 'offended' in late 90s that some employees got much more compensation than he, e.g., 3 Adelphia Business Solutions employees got equity worth up to $20m while he'd never received stock during his 14 years' tenure (j.C3)
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s job - today's total, 100 jobcuts, made it into j (WSJ) or t (NYT):
      5% workforce cut (100 jobs lost) plus a benefits-cut for survivors in Troy MI as BBDO Worldwide gets hysterical over difficult condiions in the automotive sector, instead of just trimming 5% of its workweek (24 minutes a day for the whole firm, including top executives), re-investing overtime savings in overtime-targeted training&hiring and keeping everyone together working, earning & buying at least 95% as many cars as usual (t.C8)
  • DOWNsizing results = bankruptcies (archives):
      Lantis Eyewear Corp., New York, filed for protection & agreed to sell its assets (t.C4)
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s retirement (archives):
      discount cards still leave fat markups on generic drugs - cost of 90 Fluoxetine pills: wholesale $4, Walgreens card at Walgreens stores $25, AARP card mail order $34, Medco card mail order $41, no card $85 (j.B1)
  • DOWNsizing results = 1 homelessness story in (j) WSJ or (t) NYT (archives):
      Gaza Strip: assessing Israeli damage - Israeli military destroyed or badly damaged 45 buildings and left 475 Palestinians homeless during its weeklong attack on Rafah according to UN Relief & Works Agency, but Mayor Said Zughrub said 300 homes demolished and 200 damaged beyond habitability, so many more than that homeless (t.A12) - Israeli gov't does to others what was done to Jews, so 2 'wrongs' make a 'right'? compare, Bush and Kerry both tilt toward Sharon, but our Israel-Palestine policy has become so unbalanced that it's little more than an embrace of the rightwing jingoist whom Bush labeled a 'man of peace': columnist Nicholas Kristof - Israelis are far more critical of Israeli policy than Americans are: former ambassador Edward Walker Jr. (t.A25)
  • DOWNsizing results = prison news (archives):
    1. Iraq prison interrogators, civilians, were paid by Army under computer-services contract (j.A3) - who would try civilians from U.S.? - they're subject to neither Iraqi nor military justice (t.A11)
    2. abuse of captives more widespread, says Army survey - pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known (t.A1)
    3. Major Gen. Geoffrey Miller advised a senior officer at Abu Ghraib last summer that use of dogs in Iraq prison helped produce successful interrogations (j.A4)
  • headlines from hell, noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) (archives):
    1. Brazil: unemployment rises to 13.1% - gnaws away at popularity of Pres. Lula who came to office pledging to create 10m jobs in his 4-year term (t.W1) - Lula needs natural market-demanded sharework dba Timesizing, not artificial job creation aka makework
    2. former Bush 'Justice' Dept. official John Yoo: "terrorists have no Geneva rights - don't blur the lines between Guantanamo & Abu Ghraib" (j.A16) - oh no? A. everyone has Geneva Convention rights and B. 80-90% of prisoners in both places are not terrorists due to policy of random capture of Iraqis by US military and C. Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq has made war criminals out of all Americans fighting in Iraq or guarding prisoners there or in Guantanamo - so impeach Bush and set war-crime trials for the rest of his administration - compare, 'history will note Bush administration officials for their breathtaking assault on the rule of law here and abroad': Elizabeth Ferrari of San Francisco (t.A24)


    5/25/2004 tuesday - ‘hope is not a plan’, but we do have a plan
    - want the Timesizing ‘take’ on some issue or event? email us -
    - we have 707 textfiles: # visitors yesterday 5/24/mon: 775 (5/26/2003/mon: 617)
    TIMEsizing awareness = strategic sharework, not makework, in yesterday's GoogleNews:

    1. business travel an unrecognized source of megahours aka 'blank check on your life'
    2. 10 years ago, Ford had 14,000 employees in Genk, Belgium - now it has only 5000 & its best-selling vans are built in Turkey where people work 6 days a week for 1/3 the money
    3. long hours & low pay also go together in US academe - at 58.2 hours/week, Iowa State U. faculty average the most
          •     Phil Hyde to speak at *shorter-hours conference, Jun.10-13, Chicago: all welcome

    + random glimmers of hope prioritizing today's (j) Wall St Journal or (t) NYTimes (archives):
    1. Nader calls for impeachment of Bush over war in Iraq (t.A21) - glad SOMEbody's got the guts to do it! why did he wait so long? the Republicans would have been screaming for impeachment in Bush's first 6 months if parties reversed
    2. online today - Kerry has leads in many of the 16 states considered key to Nov. election (j.A1)
    3. Hastert questions McCain's Republicanism, & if that means blindly kowtowing to Bush, he's right, but if it means fidelity to GOP principles, McCain's the truest Republican out there (j.A4)
    4. options expensing gets support from investors - stockholders aren't too worried about effect on earnings (j.C3) = some longer-term wisdom from speculators for a change?
    + clouded hope: UPsizing gov't (and private-sector inefficiency) = makework (archives) instead of sharework:
    1. McCain critic champions transportation bill loaded with pork - Hastert homestate of Illinois to get $58m Fox River bridge - compare the 2 'bridges to nowhere' in Alaska - compare Bush's 2 bridges to nowhere: current Iraq & budget policies (j.A4)
    2. where's the beef? heading for the Supreme Court - some producers balk at having to pay into a government ad campaign - Court agreed to decide constitutionality of a 1985 federal law that requires beef producers to pay into a fund supports generic campaigns to promote more beef consumption (t.C12)
    3. century-old death records provide a glimpse into medicine's history - researchers at U.Mich. and U.Mass. are combing...through the death records of some 50,000 people in 2 Massachusetts communities, Holyoke and Northampton, from the medically revolutionary years of 1850 through 1912 when doctors were learning how the body really worked & why traditional blood-letting level techniques generally didn't - 3-year project titled 'Grammars of Death' is supported by #300,000 grant from taxpayers via National Institutes of Health (t.D5)

    vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t) -

  • CEOs are constantly UPsizing their own pay, perks & pensions, to economy-strangling levels:
    1. saying Grasso duped Big Board, suit seeks return of $100m (t.A1) - NYSE insider Frank Ashen is behind the case - could be star witness at trial (j.C1) - prominent Wall St CEOs aren't charged in Spitzer's lawsuit, but still are part of 'ugly' picture - dodged bullet but still hit by the flak = clubby CEOs who rewarded Grasso for doing favors & pulling regulatory punches (j.C1)
    2. compensation at nonprofits is scrutinized - Dick Grasso isn't alone (j.C1) - no 'taxable profits' but huge CEO pay anyway
    3. is the NHL skating on thin ice? team owners contend they are losing $100Ms cuz payers are overpaid (t.C19) - so owners are the only ones allowed to be overpaid?
    4. foreign-born CEOs are increasing in U.S., rarer overseas (j.B1) - cuz US-born CEOs are spoiled skill-less by labor surplus & powerlessness, & waaay overpaid?
  • CEOs implement UPsizing fake growth thru takeovers on diversity-choking scale (archives):
    1. 10 takeovers just in Company News column today (t.C4) = column record
    2. biggest is GE unit GE Commercial Finance buying division of Boeing, Boeing Capital, for $2B (t.C4, j.B6)
  • CEOs end up DOWNsizing their own consumer markets - overviews (archives):
      hot source of outsourcing - Indian-born business professor has booming business teaching US workers how to work with colleagues in India = 'awareness training' (j.A1>B1) = kiss off your jobs & then kiss up their new occupants?
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s job - today's total, 2100 jobcuts, made it into j (WSJ) or t (NYT):
    1. 1500 jobs gone as USF Corp. reacts to workers' call for union by closing down its Red Star regional trucking unit (j.B6)
    2. 600 jobs cut as Aon Corp. outsources most of its US IT infrastructure to Computer Sciences Corp. (j.A10)
  • DOWNsizing results = bankruptcies (archives):
      Distribution Dynamics (Holdings) Inc., Pro Fasteners, Northwestern Co., Rainbow Fastener Co. file Chapter 11 jointly (j.B15)
  • DOWNsizing results = 1 homelessness story in (j) WSJ or (t) NYT (archives):
      reality vs. best-laid plans for the homeless - homelessness is a great subject for drama, a catastrophe & a fact of urban life, a political issue & a mass of individual stories - Kia Corthron's new play 'Light Raise the Roof' shows a fractured community of the homeless caught between NYC laws that treat them as criminals & families that can't or won't care for them anymore (t.B3)
  • DOWNsizing results = prison news (archives):
      end the Rockefeller laws - harsh drug laws have driven our prison population from 200,000 to 2 million in 30 years: WSJ editorial page opinion by Gen. Barry McCaffrey & Pres. Mitchell Rosenthal of Phoenix House (j.A16)
  • DOWNsizing results = suicides - lack of work-life balance kills (archives):
      mood disorder - in debate over antidepressants, FDA weighed risk of false alarm [& pressure from pharma industry!] - doubting alarming data on suicide and kids, officials halted presentation by their own drug-safety analyst Andrew Mosholder who concluded that young people taking these drugs were more likely to become suicidal - above all, FDA want to drive people away from the medications (j.A1) -above even safety??? = another Bush era "triumph"
  • headlines from hell, noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) (archives):
    1. US [aka Bushies] is committing millions in additional aid to Haiti, bringing YTD total to $160m, "to help the nation establish democracy" (j.A1) - 'there they go again!' - the democracy-dissing usurper meddles everywhere
    2. health mailbox - most countries have already banned practice of feeding ground-up remains of cows to pigs & chickens but not US (j.D3) - US is still in the dark ages on mad cow disease
    3. 'the 2004 election has one issue: the war on terror' (j.A10) - don't they mean the super-wealthy's war on everyone else? the terrorism hysteria is just for distraction
    4. 2 more Bush flipflops: - failing to disband Iraqi militias, US moves to accept them (t.A1)
      - no.2 Army general, Geo. Casey, to move in as top U.S. commander in Iraq, replacing Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez (t.A1)
    5. "I'd give it away...personal cinemas at every seat of every plane...music.... Give people more of what they want and success will follow." - Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Group of Cos. (ad, t.C7) = G.K. Chesterton's pan-utopian flaw


    5/22-24/2004 sat-mon (re fri biz)
    - keep hope-vs-doom comin' with $5/mon. check to Timesizing.com, Box 622, Cambridge Ma 02140 -
    - #visitors to any of our 707 files, F Sa Su: 679,413,521 - wk's daily avg: 703     -
    TIMEsizing awareness = strategic glimmers of hope in weekend's GoogleNews:

    1. DaimlerChrysler goes to 32-hour workweek for June-July at its Durango plant in Newark, Del.
    2. GM to close Moraine OH plant for a week of June 14-21 to cut oversupply of 3 SUV brands idling but keeping employed 4000 employees - if saved 25% = 1000 + did same last week at Oklahoma City plant
    3. employees at VW-Brazil's Sao Jose dos Pinhas plant strike to cut workweek from 42 to 40 hours
    4. another WSJ article tiptoeing around overcapacity caused by CEOs' kneejerk downsizing instead of timesizing
    5. Economic Times of India explores impact of US overtime changes on employees in India
          •      Phil Hyde to speak at *shorter-hours conference, Jun.10-13, Chicago: all welcome

    + random glimmers of hope indexing (j) Wall St.Journal, (t) NYTimes or (g) Bos.Globe (archives):
    1. 2 UPsizings - 325 new jobs as General Dynamics hires engineers at its Sterling Heights MI operations for research on Army's Future Combat Systems program of satellite-linked tanks & troops (5/22 t.B4)
      - unspecified new jobs as Alcoa plans a $1B aluminum smelter on Trinidad, as part of its effort to focus on nations with low-cost energy (5/24 j.A1>3)
    2. greening of John McCain - assaulted by his own party with the kind of sputtering rage that makes the target look good and the attacker look silly - Dennis 'has dirt, will travel' Hastert was so spiffed by McCain's whack at Bush's wartime taxcuts that he accused the former POW of not knowing meaning of sacrifice! (5/24 t.A26)
    3. soldier who refused to return to Iraq is found guilty of desertion - Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia of Florida National Guard said the war was 'oil driven' & immoral (5/22 t.A22) - good for him! - if they all stood up against Bush the Antichrist, this insane war would collapse - heroic Mejia got max sentence of 1 year, demotion to private, & 'bad-conduct' discharge after prison = small price to pay to avoid dying for a lying madman
    4. Grace Giorgio of Atwood IL: if Dems want to avoid same disaster they keep blaming Nader for, they should include him in the presidential debates - he can say the things that Kerry can't, Kerry will gain credibility with those considering a Nader vote, & the Dems will demo their commitment to real democracy = rule of many, with multivocal debates that include voice of 3rd parties (5/22 t.A24)
    5. Canada's PM Paul Martin to call vote despite his Liberal Party's troubles & likely defeat (5/23 g.A10) - a modicum of integrity somewhere in the world
    6. Michael Moore takes top Cannes Film Festival prize - first to win Palme d'Or since Jacques Cousteau's 'Silent World' 48 yrs ago! - audiences hail 'Fahrenheit 911' (5/23 g.A12, 5/24 j.A1>B4) - this guarantees its wide distribution here in USSA (Union of Soviet States of America) regardless of Bushie censorship
    7. nearly 200 law students & alumni at UCal-Berkeley denounce Prof. John Woo who co-wrote legal memo in 2002 that laid out reasons US did not have to comply with international treaties & opened door for abuse of Iraqi prisoners (5/23 g.A19)
    8. chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee & Bush friend Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) questions Bush policies on Iraq, terrorism at Tufts U. commencement - speaks against neglect of allies, use of force (5/23 g.A27) - another big Republican breaks ranks & jumps off juggernaut to jihad
    9. war in Iraq - NH Republican and former US Marine Joel Saren of E.Hampstead NH: I am so embarrassed for our country to think that our Secy of Defense knew of treatment of Iraqi prisoners and told no one = one more example of arrogance of Bush administration - do we want our troops to be treated in same way? (5/23 g.L12)
    10. violence does not beget peace - it is surprising that a president who claims the spiritual path can miss the central messages of all great religions: Wm. Patterson of Newton MA (5/23 g.L12)
    11. it's time for us to go home cuz we've become the problem - we've accomplished our goals: Saddam's gone, there are no WMDs, Shias & Sunnis have united (against us), and Iraqis have freedom of speech [tho not of press] - let's take Sen. Geo.Aiken's old Vietnam advice: declare victory & leave: Rick Leskowitz of Needham MA (5/23 g.A23)
    12. an Israeli minister provoked an uproar after he said Rafah images reminded him of suffering under the Nazis (5/24 j.A2) - a cabinet minister or a Christian minister??
    + clouded hope = makework – PUFFsizings, creating unspecified new ‘jobs’ (archives):
    1. high contract pay luring US poor to Iraq - thousands aid 'reconstruction', join Halliburton & KBR (5/23 g.A26)
    2. analysts often clueless about army contractors they cover - in classified work, few details emerge (5/23 g.H3)
    3. seeking safeguards - McCain inserts key provision in defense bill to discourage conflicts of interest on Defense Policy Board in in working with defense contractors etc. (5/23 g.A24)
    4. Wal-Mart's expansion from a regional discount chain to the world's largest retailer aided by many taxpayer subsidies - more than $1 billion in 'incentives' for stores & warehouses from state & local gov'ts over decades: Good Jobs First report (5/24 t.C7<1) - so taxpayers were dragged unknowing into subsidizing the devastation as this corporate cancer bankrupted thousands of diverse local businesses, destroyed jobs & wrecked lives
    5. in Europe's parliament, a fondness for the perks = gravy train gone mad (5/24 t.A1) - "I've been accused of being greedy...parasite...leech; & that's just by members of my own party." Bill Miller, member from Scotland

    vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing, in j, t, & g (Boston Globe):
  • DOWNsizing appetizers = mega takeovers (archives):
    1. as part of its winding down, Enron reached a deal to sell its natural-gas pipeline business CrossCountry Energy for $1.77B to NuCoastal (5/24 j.A1>C5)
    2. Verizon Communications sells Verizon Hawaii to Carlyle Group for $1.65B (5/22 t.B4)
  • 3 DOWNsizings, totaling 3642 lost jobs reported in Wall Street Journal (j) or NY Times (t):
    1. 10% of workforce cut (2350 jobs lost) as Alcoa Fujikara Automotive in Mexico over-reacts to stronger competition, instead of just trimming 10% of its workweek (down to four 9-hour days for whole firm, including top execs), re-investing overtime savings in overtime-targeted training&hiring and keeping everyone together working, earning & buying at least 90% as much automotive stuff as before (5/22 t.B3)
    2. 872 jobs (74% of plant's assemblyline workforce) cut at plant near Newport, Del. as GM moves to drop Saturn L-series sedan & wagon a year earlier than planned (5/22 t.B4, 5/24 j.B4)
    3. 420 (380+40) jobcuts as Tecumseh Products Co. mower & A/C engines to combine operations in Tecumseh MI & Clinton MO as customers move overseas and closes plant in St.Clair MO (5/22 t.B4)
  • DOWNsizing overviews noted in (j) WSJ or (t) NYT or (g) Boston Globe (archives):
    1. class of '04 is graduating into an economy where employers are slow to hire, so many seniors are finding no jobs (5/23 g.H1>G6)
    2. source of problem - MIT students demand new course on hot subject: outsourcing - & school delivers (5/23 g.mag14)
  • DOWNsizing results = dysfunctional executive pay:
      public-pension-fund officials from 5 states (CA, NY, OH, CT, NC) met with Walt Disney Co. directors to discuss issues such as management succession and executive pay (5/24 j.A1>B2)
  • DOWNsizing results = 1 new bankruptcy (archives) in WSJ (j) and/or NYT (t):
      personal bankruptcies keep rising - 2.8% up in FY - from 1.57m on 3/31/03 to 1.62m pm 3/31/04 (5/22 t.B4)
  • DOWNsizing results = eroding-retirement noted in (j) WSJ or (t) NYT or (g) Boston Globe (archives):
      coalition promoting drug discount cards - lobbyists from 68 organizations representing seniors, blacks & Hispanics hope 5.5m sign up to get $1200 in free medicine over next 19 months, and some critics of the law are helping (5/22 t.B4) - oh oh
  • prison news (archives):
    1. Pentagon reviews 33 detainee deaths - indicate that Abu Ghraib abuse wasn't isolated situation (5/24 j.A3)
    2. 2 Afghan deaths linked to Company A, 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, same unit that oversaw interrogations at Iraq prison (5/24 t.A1)
    3. American prisons: other views - no no, things in US prisons are totally unlike Abu Ghraib: US prison officials (5/24 t.A26)
  • headlines from hell (tm) from (j) Wall Street Journal or (t) NY Times or (g) Boston Globe (archives):
    1. almost 100,000 Americans die each year as a result of preventable errors in US hospitals (5/23 g.Parade4) - maybe the 50m uninsured are the lucky ones?
    2. Pope speaks out vs. gay marriage (5/23 g.A7) - out of touch with new social unit: from reproductive pair to productive person, from procreative couple to creative individual
    3. online today - spam has grown from a headache into a security issue (5/24 j.A1) - Internet 'phishing' scams soared in April (5/24 j.B5)
    4. Russia embraces capitalism but not democracy (5/24 j.A12<1) - ah, isn't that a bit like here in the USSA (Union of Soviet States of America)?
    5. going public without profits or a product? yes, in 2004 - nanotechnology the next hot sector ripe for hungry investors? (5/24 t.C4) = too much money consolidated too tightly at the top chasing too little productivity supported by too starved a consumer base at the bottom
    weekend roll-up -
    5 issues/wk - wk's avg homepage hits/issue: 67
    hope of the weektm from the WSJ & the NYT:
    • 19 TIMEsizing items (1000+ new or saved jobs)  • 4 UPsizings (325+ new jobs)  + bogus hope: • 14 makework items
    vs. doom of the weektm from the WSJ & the NYT:
    • 10 DOWNsizings, over 18,952 jobcuts   • 4 bankruptcies   • 8 eroding-retirement stories   • 4 prison stories  
    {{ ytd: 371 timsizngs (1636+ new or sav'd jobs) + 64 upsizngs (84521+ new jobs) + 168 makwrk (36803+ 'jobs') =
    total: 122960 = 50% of cuts, VS. 214 dnsz (246654+ cuts) + 81 bnkrp ($350m+) +18 homlss +62 jail +12 deth }}


    5/21/2004 friday - ‘hope is not a plan’, but we do have a plan
    - want the Timesizing ‘take’ on some issue or event? email us -
    - we have 707 textfiles: # visitors yesterday 5/20/thu: 792 (5/22/2003/thu: 902)
    TIMEsizing awareness = strategic sharework, not makework, in yesterday's GoogleNews:

    1. employees are mad that EU's considering preserving opt-out of 48-hour workweek maximum & employers that EU's considering abolishing it - time for referendum
    2. in US, Fed still trying to fight inflation by boosting unemployment, instead of Timesizing method = draw a line on work per week & use to balance inflationary & deflationary incentives
    3. another random wishlist of demands instead of prioritized & strategized issue-targets starting with timesizing: Communications Workers of America
          •     Phil Hyde to speak at *shorter-hours conference, Jun.10-13, Chicago: all welcome

    + random glimmers of hope prioritizing today's (j) Wall St Journal or (t) NYTimes (archives):
    1. UPsizings with unspecified new jobs: - Sundiro Honda Motorcycle will invest 150m yuan ($18.1m) in new Tianjin plant, near Beijing (j.B5)
    2. real reform is needed in corporate governance, not just protest votes: Steve Westly of Sacramento, member of CalPERS Bd of Admin (j.A11)
    3. Bush still has more cash but Kerry leads fund-raising race on Web (t.A19)
    4. mutiny by 4 Republicans over Bush's tax-cutting forces delay on budget vote - John McCain, Olympia Snowe & Susan Collins of Maine, Lincoln Chaffee of R.I. (t.A19)
    5. Soros re Abu Ghraib: 'we are victims who have turned into perpetrators' (j.C4) - compare Israel gov't vs. Palestinians
    6. German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to oppose sending NATO troops to Iraq (t.A3)
    7. Blair pelted on back by 2 condoms full of purple flour in House of Commons, by 2 protesters from Fathers 4 Justice, pushing for divorced dads' rights (j.A1, t.A10) - occasionally some feed-back gets to these insulated plutocrats - compare Belgians' sporadic pies-in-face for Bill Gates
    8. UN Security Council passed 14-0 a resolution demanding Israel halt demolition of Palestinian homes - US abstained (j.A1) - can't quite decide if demolishing homes OK or not?
    9. 4 northeast states join against pollution: NY, PA, NJ, CT - an attempt to force Allegheny Energy plants in Pa. to halt emissions that drift across state lines (t.A25)
    + clouded hope: UPsizing gov't (and private-sector inefficiency) = makework (archives) instead of sharework:
    1. House approves $447B in spending for military (t.A18) - the Republican makework campaigns funneled into super-rich pockets thru the Pentagon are ever so much more expensive to taxpayers than the Democratic ones funneled into the social safety net
    2. base motives - even in a war, Congress votes for bases over soldiers - the 'war on terror' [our quotes] isn't cheap - $422.2B next year to be precise (j.A10) - sounds a trifle high to counter 19 guys with boxcutters, unless you're trying to stuff a few croneys' pockets
    3. Kerry too is still talking about gov't creation of millions of jobs: Phillip Wells of Dellwood MO (j.A11) - instead of just refereeing work sharing
    4. Pentagon investigates Honeywell contract that could be worth $1.2B - accusation of providing false statements to Air Force in connection with upgarding satellite ground-stations (j.B4)

    vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t) -

  • CEOs are constantly UPsizing their own pay, perks & pensions, to economy-strangling levels:
    1. big public pension funds press Disney for timeline to replace Eisner (j.B2) - did they at last top out over 'highest paid CEO in world'?
    2. banned from street but not necessarily banished - fines & penalties levied on Wall St execs: $400m Mike Milken 1990, $393m Robert Vesco '72, $100m Ivan Boesky '86, $75m Robert Brennan '95, $60m Richard Strong 2004... (t.C2) - imagine how much they stole or 'earned' if these are their fines
    3. suit expected to be filed soon over $139.5m pay package for Grasso - a contention that Big Board directors were manipulated (t.C6) - yeah, sure
  • CEOs implement UPsizing fake growth thru takeovers on diversity-choking scale (archives):
    1. Tellabs to buy Advanced Fibre Communications for $1.9B (j.A1>B4, t.C1>6) = mega
    2. Southwest Bancorp to pay $165m for Klein Bancshares of Texas (t.C4) = banking (archives)
  • CEOs end up DOWNsizing their own consumer markets - overviews (archives):
    1. multiyear - SBC Communications Inc. has laid off 29,000 workers in past 3 years (j.B5)
    2. industrywide - when a company leaves America - Phil Hall of Fairfield CT is unimpressed with David Sikora's claim (5/11) that his outsourcing of software engineering jobs to India will create savings to build new jobs in U.S. since Sikora never detailed the lower compensation of Indian workers (j.A11) - or exactly what mechanism brings those savings to US jobs instead of just to Sikora's own pocket
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s job - today's total, 10,080 +?? jobcuts, made it into j (WSJ) or t (NYT):
    1. 22% workforce cut (10,000 jobs lost) as Mitsubishi Motors unveils 3-yr restructuring plan to cut costs (and markets), instead of just trimming 22% of its workweek (down to five 6¼-hour days for the whole firm, including top executives), re-investing overtime savings in overtime-targeted training&hiring and keeping everyone together working, earning & buying at least 78% as many cars as usual (j.A1>3, 5/22 t.B3, 5/24 j.A10)
    2. 80 jobs up in air or cut as GM moves Saab Cars US sales unit from Ga. to Detroit (t.C4)
    3. unspecified cuts as Nippon Oil Corp. posts loss on write-downs and costs of early-retirement program (j.B5)
  • DOWNsizing results = bankruptcies (archives):
      RCN's CEO David McCourt: why I'm filing Chapter 11 - cable industry is in grip of monopoly mindset and cable rates have soared 40% despite all the technological innovation and surge in new players - since 2000, nearly 70 major telecom firms have gone bankrupt and 100s vanished before even making it to Ch.11 - bankruptcy sidelined so many upstarts that incumbents were spared real competition (j.A10) - so McCourt can't make enuf $$??
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s retirement (archives):
      more than 17,000 employers have dropped their traditional pension plans in the last 10 years & countless others have scaled them back - but United Methodist Church bucks trend on employee pensions - voted to start 'old-fashioned' defined-benefit plan for its 25,000 US pastors and lay employees, the very type of plan that so many companies have scuttled - in other types of pension plans, already has $12B, on par with Bank of America and Dow Chemical (t.C1)
  • headlines from hell, noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) (archives):
    1. Kerry a flipflopper? ha! check out Bush's flipflops this year alone:
      1. the Chalabi treatment - yesterday's raid repeats the very ambivalence that has hurt Bush in Iraq = the strange hostility toward a [neo-con] ally in Iraq = managed to turn one of [Bush's] closest allies in ousting Saddam into opponent of [Bushie] purposes (j.A10) = yet another Bush reversal
      2. no nation-building - yes, nation-building in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti...
      3. small gov't = huge gov't
      4. uphold Clean Air Act - weaken Clean Air Act (t.A25, 4/15 headline from hell #4)
      5. sulfur content of gasoline (4/23 random hope #3)
      6. fight/endorse Sharon plan to keep Israeli settlements in Gaza & West Bank (4/15 headline from hell #5)
      7. Scalia orders tape erase, Scalia apologizes for seizing tapes (4/08 headline from hell #2)
      8. withhold Clinton papers from 9/11 panel - yield Clinton papers (4/03-05 headline from hell #4)
      9. Condy can't testify publicly on attacks - Condy can testify (3/31 random hope #2)
      10. supports Israeli assassination of Yassin - decries assassination of Yassin (3/23 headline from hell #6)
      11. proposes slashing closing costs on home-mortgage loans - retreats (3/23 headline from hell #7)
      12. Bush abandons Sen. Lugar & retreats from ratifying 140-nation UN Convention on Law of Sea (3/19 headline from hell #5)
      13. 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 (3/18 headline from hell #2)
      14. rules eased on upgrading US schools now that 'No Child Left Behind' law is leaving more & more children behind (3/16 headline from hell #4)
      15. White House backs away from rosy jobs forecast (2/19 national downsizing)
      16. Bush distances self from his economist's praise for outsourcing jobs (2/13 headline from hell #4)
      17. White House backs away from Bush '02 nuke-terror warning (2/10 headline from hell #3)
      18. Bush, in reversal, champions program to help manufacturers - $40m for 'Manufacturing Extension Partnership' he once targeted for elimination (1/16 puffsizings)
    2. Hollywood can make anything happen on screen - so why can't it figure out how many tickets it sold last night? = lack of ticket data distorts real popularity of films (j.W1>10) = symptom of lack of feedback in America in biggest, most obvious, most important areas?
    3. in Canadian healthcare, some are more equal than others - PM Paul Martin, Canada's leading proponent of gov't healthcare, goes to a private clinic (j.A11) - Canadians didn't say everyone 'equal' in Canadian healthcare, just everyone covered, which means no American can criticize Canada while millions of Americans, never mind equality, are not even covered - 43 million back in Nov/2000, which means 50m today or one in six
    4. 'the 2004 election has one issue: the war on terror' (j.A10) - don't they mean the super-wealthy's war on everyone else? the terrorism hysteria is just for distraction


    5/20/2004 thursday - ‘hope is not a plan’, but we do have a plan
    - want the Timesizing ‘take’ on some issue or event? email us -
    - we have 707 textfiles: # visitors yesterday 5/19/wed: 847 (5/21/2003/wed: 960)
    TIMEsizing awareness = strategic sharework, not makework, in yesterday's GoogleNews:

    1. EU tries to baby Britain into line on 48-hour workweek max directive
    2. Microsoft goes backward on worktime = cuts vacation time for new employees - richest man in world can't afford to LEAD on worktime???
    3. businesses in Virginia toss a coin on whether new overtime law will actually pass
          •     Phil Hyde to speak at *shorter-hours conference, Jun.10-13, Chicago: all welcome

    + random glimmers of hope prioritizing today's (j) Wall St Journal or (t) NYTimes (archives):
    1. the right[wing] price - for Fox News, ad-sales market isn't fair, balanced - despite ratings lead, network has hard time winning top rates for its show - CNN with half the viewers is still seen as 'No.1 brand' and yardstick of quality (j.A1) - only low-class dumb-ass suckers for Bushy infoganda watch Fox 'News'?
    2. Catholic lawmakers protest to Church - 48 RC members of Congress who are Dems have signed letter to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of DC saying that the threats of some bishops to deny communion to pro-choice pols are 'deeply hurtful', counterproductive & 'miring Church in partisan politics' - 'helping destroy Church by politicizing eucharist' - different treatment from Iraq war issue (t.A1)
    3. Blair pelted on back by 2 condoms full of purple flour in House of Commons, by 2 protesters from Fathers 4 Justice, pushing for divorced dads' rights (j.A1, t.A10) - occasionally some feed-back gets to these insulated plutocrats - compare Belgians' sporadic pies-in-face for Bill Gates
    4. UN Security Council passed 14-0 a resolution demanding Israel halt demolition of Palestinian homes - US abstained (j.A1) - can't quite decide if demolishing homes OK or not?
    + clouded hope: PUFFsizings = makework (archives) instead of sharework:
    1. biotech's dismal bottom line: more than $40B in losses - as scientists search for cures, they gobble investor cash; a handful hit the jackpot = ultimate roulette game (j.A1)
    2. the House approved 216-213 a compromise $2.4 trillion budget for 2005, but GOP leaders struggled to find enough votes in the Senate (j.A1>2)
    3. the Senate passed 99-0 a 10-year, $5.6B initiative to help the nation respond to a chemical, biological or radiological attack (j.A1>D4)

    vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t) -

  • CEOs are constantly UPsizing their own pay, perks & pensions, to economy-strangling levels:
    1. US Airways Group Inc. - new CEO to be paid 29% less than predecessor to cut costs = $425k = median salary of 4 low-fare airline CEOs (j.C13) - at last they're cutting The Great Leak Upward!
    2. Tyco lawyer Mark Belnick was paid $36m over 3 years (t.C4)
    3. Freddie Mac's ex-CEO seeks $53.7m in withheld pay by suing regulator, Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, with overstepping its enforcement powers (j.A3)
    4. Intel balks at majority-shareholder request to expense employee (esp. exec) stock options (t.C1)
  • CEOs implement UPsizing by fake growth thru takeovers on diversity-choking scale (archives):
    1. Cardinal Health to pay $1.62B for Alaris Medical Systems (j.A1, t.C4)
    2. Madrid-based Telefonica Moviles SA reached a $1B deal for control of Chilean mobile-phone firm Telefonica Movil Chile (j.C13)
  • CEOs end up DOWNsizing their own consumer markets - overviews (archives):
      IBM's CEO Sam Palmisano sees huge gains from taking on more corporate HR outsourcing business (j.B5)
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s job - today's total, unspecified jobcuts, made it into j (WSJ) or t (NYT):
      unspecified cuts as Newark RC Archdiocese in NJ may close 16 churches - early immigrant parishioners have moved on - changing demographics and shrinking finances force church leaders to make tough choices (t.A25)
  • DOWNsizing results = bankruptcies (archives):
      Japan: bankruptcies decline in April for 16th consecutive month as troubled companies helped by economic recovery and gov't aid to small businesses - 1189 firms filed, 22% down from last April leaving $5.36B in debt, 32% down (t.W1)
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s retirement (archives):
    1. White House violated ban on using public moneyh for propaganda with videos that pomoted new Medicare law - GAO said Bush had violated federal law by producing 'covert propaganda' = news segments that portray new Medicare law as a boon to the elderly (j.A1>D5, t.A1>23) - infoganda alert
    2. FASB sets guideline on Medicare acctg to prevent companies from booking as a one-time gain to earnings a federal subsidy for sponsoring retiree health coverage (j.C7)
    3. Calpers to cut 38 hospitals in network - Calif. pension fund cites high costs of care; 415,000 members affected = more than 1/3 of its 1.2m beneficiaries, meaning that their care won't be covered after Jan.1 unless they switch to other plans with higher deductibles and other costs (j.A3, t.C5)
  • DOWNsizing results = prison news (archives):
      Afghanistan: 'top to bottom' prisons review ordered by top US general there, Lt. Gen. David Barno - already ongoing: investigations of 3 detainee deaths and 2 accounts of torture and abuse (t.A6)
  • headlines from hell, noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) (archives):
    1. the war's dark side: filling in the blanks - 2 striking documentaries about journalists in Iraq suggest how rarely the harshest images and unwelcome
      news from Iraq have penetrated American newscasts until now - 'Control Room' opens today in Manhattan, 'War Feels Like War' is on PBS in July (t.B1)
    2. House bill expands child tax credit [thus further subsidizing reproduction in age of overpopulation] - measure includes new benefits for higher-income families (t.A18) - thus further consolidating income in strangling, 'black hole' economy

    5/19/2004 wed. - ‘hope is not a plan’, but we do have a plan
    - want the Timesizing ‘take’ on some issue or event? email us -
    - we have 707 textfiles: # visitors yesterday 5/18/tue: 817 (5/20/2003/tue: 994)
    TIMEsizing awareness = strategic sharework, not makework, in yesterday's GoogleNews:

    1. Trades Union Council in Britain is stepping up its campaign for shorter working hours
    2. more on French govt's unpopular attack on their 35-hour workweek
    3. Bushies' party line on their overtime slight of hand
          •     Phil Hyde to speak at *shorter-hours conference, Jun.10-13, Chicago: all welcome

    + random glimmers of hope prioritizing today's (j) WSJ or (t) NYT (archives):
    1. UPsizings with unspecified new jobs: - Tiffany opening 2 Iridesse stores devoted to pearl jewelry this year, 4 next year, first one in McLean VA (t.C3)
    2. Sonia Gandhi surprises again, declining Prime Minister's post in India (j.A1, t.A1) - a worthy grand-daughter-in-law of the great Mohatma & a welcome
      contrast with the complusive power grasping in America
    3. recycling plan wins support - Dell & HP are supporting proposal to place more financial burden of recycling used PCs on mfrs rather than consumers or local gov'ts (t.C1>3)

    vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t) -

  • CEOs are constantly UPsizing their own pay, perks & pensions, to economy-strangling levels:
      shareholders voice anger toward Interpublic - complain about poor stock performance & rich bonuses to executives (t.C6)
  • CEOs implement UPsizing by fake growth thru takeovers on diversity-choking scale (archives):
    1. Belgian drug & chemical maker UCB to buy Brit biotech firm Celltech Group for $2.7B (t.W1)
    2. stockholders of US life ins.co. MONY approve $1.5B sale to French ins. co. AXA in close vote (t.C4)
    3. pachinko gaming machine mfr Sammy Corp. to acquire video game maker Sega Corp. for $1.45B in Japan (t.C3) - more & more, Takeover&Downsizing Capitalism is wasting itself; top managers need fewer&fewer mgmt skills as they surround themselves with a deeper & more desperate labor surplus; but they're making their own markets weaker&weaker & by ignoring Timesizing Capitalism, are running their world (& ours) down a steepening mountain towards a cliff
  • CEOs end up DOWNsizing their own consumer markets - overviews (archives):
      Hong Kong's economic 'recovery' is jobless so far - 7.2% unemployment in Q1 (j.A16)
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s job - today's total, 300 jobcuts that made it into j (WSJ) or t (NYT):
      300 jobs up in the air as Kellogg moves snacks unit from Elmhurst IL to Battle Creek MI (t.C3)
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s retirement (archives):
    1. rising copayments for drugs can have an adverse effect on the health of patients with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, as healthcare costs have soared in recent years and employers have shifted more of the expense to employees, a study in the Journal of the AMA found - shifting prices make it hard to pick a drug card - Medicare officials say seniors might want to let prices stabilize before choosing a card (j.A1>D3) - but ever trying to dilute the bad news, the WSJ juxtaposes this piece of nonsense -
    2. raising the retirement standard - baby boomers can potentially have a higher living standard than their parents in retirement depending on their ability to curb free-spending ways, according to research that accounted for pensions, Soc Sec and non-pension wealth until 2050 (j.D1>2) - well, assuming you've got some income & assuming you've got no debt and assuming you can currently live on next to nothing & assuming you've got someplace safe for your savings, ANYbody can potentially have a 'higher living standard' than their parents - they needed a big research project to tell us this?!
  • headlines from hell, noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) (archives):
      Greenspan gets Bush nomination to another [his 5th] term at Fed (j.A2, t.C1) - more years of obscure pontificating limited entirely to the surface-structure of the economy


    5/18/2004 tuesday - ‘hope is not a plan’, but we do have a plan
    - want the Timesizing ‘take’ on some issue or event? email us -
    - we have 707 textfiles: # visitors yesterday 5/17/mon: 854 excl.spiders (5/19/2003/mon: 914 also excl.spiders)
    TIMEsizing awareness = strategic sharework, not makework, in yesterday's GoogleNews:

    1. quit buying the BS about finding meaning in your job (& letting your employer lure you into workaholism) - just work to live, not live to work
    2. full-page ad touting one firm's workaholism as a selling point - spare us such sleep-deprived 'service'!
    3. more on Siemens' backward motion in Deutschland, raising hours & cutting wages
    4. in France, Chirac copies Bush and strains his non-mandate into a more direct attack on the popular 35-hour workweek
    5. a longer, more strident version of the Chirac story
          •     Phil Hyde to speak at *shorter-hours conference, Jun.10-13, Chicago: all welcome

    + random glimmers of hope prioritizing today's (j) WSJ or (t) NYT or (g) Boston Globe (archives):
    1. Bush needs help, but will his friends Greenspan & Bandar be able to deliver? for various reasons, probably not - Bush's poll numbers are plummeting (j.A4) - maybe we can get back to normal-rate deterioration with Kerry and get rid of high-speed deterioration with Bush
    2. Iraq colors Bush-Berlusconi talks gray - prison abuse, attacks on Italian troops, domestic Italian political pressures - mounting criticism of Berlusconi (j.A4) - maybe Italy can get rid of this prime-ministerial, media-strangling gangsta
    3. Dem filed federal lawsuit to force Bush to turn over estimates of real cost of Medicare legislation (j.A1)
    + clouded hope: PUFFsizings = makework instead of sharework, creating ?? new ‘jobs’ (archives):
    1. the hole in our science - back in 1993, Congress abruptly voted $1B just to shut down the largest basic science project of all time, the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas, after blowing $3B on it (j.A18) - such projects should occur only by taxpayer referendum = no taxation without representation & puhleez cut the crap about 'diminished international repute of American science' - this is just more special-interest parasitism on the taxpayer, unless The Taxpayer expressly votes for it
    2. the Pentagon suspends nearly $160m in payments to Halliburton in a dispute over charges for feeding personnel in Iraq (j.A1>2, t.C2) - HOW MUCH was that burger??
    3. France reaches tentative deal with EU to rescue Alstom & let it retain its gas-turbine business (j.A1>17) - still looking for pricetag on this chunk of corporate welfare

    vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t) -

  • CEOs are constantly UPsizing their own pay, perks & pensions, to economy-strangling levels:
    1. Google founders Sergey Brin & Larry Page face wealth, resentment and a changed culture - from brainy free-spirited grad students to billionaires with $4B apiece (j.B1) - economic theory really sucks in the area of $centrifuge mechanisms
    2. GlaxoSmithKline PLC - shareholders vote to approve revised pay package for CEO after last year voting against one because of excessive golden parachute (j.A16)
    3. Tyco witness recalls loans to top workers - relocation aid program could be fairly elastic - $15m improper no-interest loan to former top company lawyer Mark Belnick to relocate from Harrison NY to Manhattan & then to Utah where no Tyco offices - loan to former treasurer Barbara Miller in 1998 to build house in Montana where no Tyco offices (t.C2)
    4. 157 Nortel managers & directors were blocked by Ont. Securities Commission from trading in company securities in the midst of the firm's accounting fiasco - Nortel fired 3 top officials last month & plans to restate past results & slash reported net income for 2003 in half (j.A1>6)
  • CEOs implement UPsizing by fake growth thru takeovers on diversity-choking scale (archives):
      as fresh prospects dry up, petroleum industry strikes deals - BP's Roger Skinnner buys, sells assets in pursuit of profit; shedding tired fields - exploration gets short shrift (j.A1) - note executives' recourse to M&As when the going gets tough = the appearance of productivity
  • CEOs end up DOWNsizing their own consumer markets - overviews (archives):
      he lost his house to a new steel mill that promised work - now Mr. Cheng and 1000s of other farmers of Weicun are wondering if China will ever deliver (j.A1) - & no jobs, no consumer base
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s job - today's total, 4930 jobcuts that made it into j (WSJ) or t (NYT):
    1. 4000 more jobs cut (8%) since 5/01/2003 #1 as Transportation Security Administration (TSA) redistributes staffing at security-check sites - TSA's current workforce of screeners is down to 45,000 currently, 10000 below last year's level (j.D7)
    2. 30% workforce up in the air (930 jobs lost) as Ford Motor Credit cuts 85 sales branches (52%) and 'shifts' employees, instead of just trimming 30% of its workweek (down to four 7-hour days for the whole firm, including top executives), re-investing overtime savings in overtime-targeted training&hiring and keeping everyone together working, earning & buying at least 70% as many cars as usual (j.A16)
  • DOWNsizing results = bankruptcies (archives):
      FV Steel & Wire in Chapter 11 (j.C15)
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s retirement (archives):
      health mailbox - no penalty for delay getting now-available drug-discount card, but steep penalty for delay getting Medicare drug benefit starting at $35/mon. in Nov.15, 2005 or as soon as you're 65(?) = for each month you postpone, premium is 1% higher for life (j.D6)
  • headlines from hell, noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) & g Boston Globe (archives):
    1. DOW 9906 - Iraq bombing sends markets sharply lower (j.A1, t.C1) - Bush has really screwed himself with this Saddam obsession - Bush Sr. was conservative - Bush Jr. is weird
    2. another call for another dictator = old Iraq army could provide a leader, Jordan's king says - a 'tough guy' will be needed in Baghdad after June, according to King Abdullah (t.A8) - yep, we're right back to where Bush started us, except for 777 dead-for-nothing Americans and 1000s of dead Iraqis, most of them innocent
    3. Bush needs help, but - the ability of high oilprices or interest rates to abort 'recovery' is limited - BUT importance of interest rates has increased in last decade as outstanding loans on single-family homes jumped from $3T to $7T (j.A4) = one big source of record consumer debt
    4. note spin vs. democracy in India = political crisis[??] roils India's markets - stock selloff gains steam as investors ponder look of Sonia Gandhi's new democratically elected gov't (j.A3) - more evidence that near-sighted super-rich credit Democracy only when rightwing consumerbase-bashers are elected
    5. UN sells out = backs gene-modified crops to help world's poor farmers (j.B10) - frankencrops without longterm testing to 'help poor farmers'?? - oh suuure


    5/15-17/2004 sat-mon (re fri biz)
    - keep hope-vs-doom comin' with $5/mon. check to Timesizing.com, Box 622, Cambridge Ma 02140 -
    - #visitors to any of our 705 files, F Sa Su: 724,439,483 - wk's daily avg: 756     -
    TIMEsizing awareness = strategic glimmers of hope in weekend's GoogleNews:

    1. Aussie Inst. of Family Studies finds fathers working over 48 hrs/wk have less vitality & more negative effects on family life than those working 40 or less - for this they needed a study?
    2. OECD softens up Brits for more breach of pension contracts & work till ya drop - but whence the jobs & whither the agism?
    3. Chas. Stein gropes thru Levy&Murmane's clueless book on technology - continues strain for makework instead of switching to sharework
    4. WSJ sounds little alarms about 'liberal' Roh in S.Korea, despite timesizing imperative
          •      Phil Hyde to speak at *shorter-hours conference, Jun.10-13, Chicago: all welcome

    + random glimmers of hope indexing (j) Wall St.Journal, (t) NYTimes or (g) Bos.Globe (archives):
    1. 1 UPsizing, 450 new jobs: Toyota to bolster Ann Arbor center for vehicle design (5/17 j.A6)
    2. Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' - a film to polarize along party lines (5/17 t.B1) - don't they mean, 'a film to strengthen Democrats'? after all, the neo-cons have already done more than anyone could have imagined to 'polarize' - movie shows Bush family long in bed with autocratic Saudis, gave them special flights out of US after 9/11 when even Gore grounded, despite 15 of the 19 Sept.11 terrorists being Saudi
    3. no way to run a war: editorial! (5/17 j.A20) - swelling call to quit Iraq... (5/17 j.A4) - but editorial by novelist Mark Helprin winds up calling for another dictatorship! 'what remains is to pick a strongman, see him along' - ah, isn't this where we came in?! - favorite spell 'remount the army'
    4. the hawks loudly express their second thoughts - 'conservatives' [ha!] reassess their principles in a new debate on the war - most blame administration for botching the 'mission' - 'fair amount of conservative despair; I'm angry at administration for having made so many mistakes': Wm. Kristol (5/16 t.4:5)
    5. saving Private Lynndie England - Frank Rich says Bushies losing control of media (5/16 t.2:1)
    6. the next casualty of the Iraq war could be Blair - for all his servility, Blair got zilch quid pro quo (5/16 t.4:3) - first we make sure Bush goes, then that Blair IS next, not just 'could be'
    7. why the Saudis may not rescue oil markets this time - may not be able to hike output enuf with China consumption up &, as US influence fades, so do incentives to pump more (5/16 t.3:5)
    8. Israeli rally today evokes '82 rally of 100,000s vs. then defense-minister Sharon's conduct of war in Lebanon, but now tables have turned - leftists are calling for a pullout from Gaza Strip quagmire and, this time, so is Sharon (5/15 t.A3)
    9. healthcare leads other issues in Canadian vote - pols promise to heal ailing universal coverage system - but majority of Canucks still view it with patriotic pride seeing it as a national resource that distinguishes them from US where 43-plus millions go uninsured (5/17 t.A6)
    10. some happy front-page news at last = same-sex couples prepared for first gay marriages in Massachusetts after Supreme Court refused to step in to block the unions (5/17 j.A1, t.A1) = a second Berlin Wall falls
    11. a campaign becomes a cause - Dennis Kucinich is hoping to influence the Dems to take an unambiguous stance against the Iraq war (5/17 t.A1>16)
    + clouded hope = makework – PUFFsizings, creating unspecified new ‘jobs’ (archives):
    1. the growing insurgency in Iraq is forcing contractors to spend more on employee security, creating a drain on funds available to rebuild Iraq (5/17 j.A1) - never mind the drain of Halliburton executives' pay & Cheney's percentage
    2. the Cannes cacophony - demonstrators object to French govt's benefits policy for part-time actors & artists (5/17 t.B1)

    vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing, in j, t, & g (Boston Globe):
  • 3 DOWNsizings, totaling 4500 lost jobs reported in Wall Street Journal (j) or NY Times (t):
    1. 3000 nonunion jobs (2%) cut as Petroleos Mexicanos aka Pemex cuts costs - & mkts (5/17 j.B8)
    2. 27% of area workforce cut (1300 jobs lost) as Timken Co. shuts down 3 ball-bearing plants in Canton OH, instead of just trimming 27% of its workweek (down to five 5hr, 50min days for whole firm, including top execs), re-investing overtime savings in overtime-targeted training&hiring and keeping everyone together working, earning & buying at least 73% as much stuff with ball bearings as before (5/15 t.B4)
    3. 200 jobcuts as US Airways Group targets airport customer-service personnel in Sept. (5/15 t.B4)
  • DOWNsizing overviews noted in (j) WSJ or (t) NYT or (g) Boston Globe (archives):
    1. NEC: software outsourcing from Japan to China to be increased to cut costs (5/17 j.B8) - & mkts
    2. Forrester Research revises loss estimates to overseas jobs upward - occurring faster than said in 2002 report - from 3.3m to 3.4m white-collar jobs by 2015 (5/17 j.A8)
    3. which jobs today have a future? only those that require physical proximity to locations or face-to-face contact with customers: Lance Visser of Dallas - need national apprenticeship program: Prof. Gary Chaison of Clark U., or constant retraining: Cox Alm & Holmes, but impossible for middle-aged white-collar professionals: Julian Friedland of St.Cloud MN (5/17 t.A24) = narrowing down to automatic overtime-to-training conversion
  • DOWNsizing results = dysfunctional executive pay:
    1. one family, two tax rates - last year Teresa Heinz paid 11% = only half the taxrate on $5m income from dividends, interest & tax-exempt bonds that husband John Kerry paid on $400k mostly from Senate pay & book royalties - Cheney's paid only 13% on income of $2m incl. $800k from divs & tx-ex's - Bush's paid closer to what most people pay, 28%, on their $800k total income - John Edwards asked why working families pay higher rate than unearned income (5/16 t.A19) - no surprise that USA is turning into nation of parasites, rich & poor, because 'you get more of what you tax less, & v.v.': Milton Friedman, & as we encourage slower-circulating concentrated income, economic recovery gets slower & slower
    2. largest Massachusetts firms reward CEOs with huge pay packages - only 2 yrs after Enron scandal, they got total $118m in 2003 'compensation', up 34% from $88m in 2002 (5/16 g.A1)
    3. Nortel execs got $millions in unusual cash, not stock, bonuses before selloff triggered by Mar.10 warning of 2d restatement of earnings (5/17 j.A3) - so slime has spread to Canada
  • DOWNsizing results = eroding-retirement noted in (j) WSJ or (t) NYT or (g) Boston Globe (archives):
    1. 'Medicare can't be used as inheritance insurance by the well-off': Richard A. Schafer of Minneapolis (5/17 j.A21) - but IS being so used
    2. city of Houston exempts own pension from from keeping all promises (5/17 t.C1>2) = more betrayal of employees & seniors, more distrust & poverty, smaller markets, phonier recovery = affluent Americans (90% luck &/or fraud) are refusing to spread the wealth & thereby undermining their own support system
    3. Air Canada wangled a deadline extension from Canadian regulators for funding its C$1.2B pension deficit (5/17 j.B8)
    4. Japan's Koizumi likely to survive pension scandal (5/17 j.A19) - too bad; Koizumi is 'nice house, nobody home'
  • prison news (archives):
    1. pressure mounts on White House to expand Iraq prison abuse inquiry (5/17 j.A1>4)
    2. the dark side of America - sick pics from Iraq lead to questions re prisons at home, which have grown tenfold over last 30 years (5/17 t.A24) - case in point...
    3. New Mexico: 4 guards at Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque were charged in Feb.24 beating of 3 shackled inmates as recorded on prison's videotaping system - up to 20 jail personnel were involved - 8 have already resigned or been fired, said Sheriff Darren White (5/15 t.A12) - what about the sheriff himself? wasn't this on his watch?
    4. Iraq prison guard Pfc. Lynndie England calls abuse routine & sometimes amusing - 'I was told we were doing a good job' (5/16 t.A12) - Rumsfeld & aide backed harsh tactics, says article by Seymour Hersh in New Yorker (5/16 t.A12) - photo of prison boss, US Brig.Gen. Janis Karpinski, looking like Frankenstein (5/16 t.4:4) - matchup with Michael Jackson looking like The Joker?
  • headlines from hell (tm) from (j) Wall Street Journal or (t) NY Times or (g) Boston Globe (archives):
    1. payroll gains don't reach some Americans (5/17 j.A2) - don't they mean 'most Americans'?!
    2. stock indexes decline as oil prices heat up (5/16 t.3:13) - but good news for Bush's defeat
    3. as oil prices hit record level, strategic reserves keep rising (5/17 j.A2) = Bushies scrambling for independence from pre-election Saudi save? - they've exhausted our credit & goodwill reserves, why wouldn't they exhaust our oil reserves?
    4. impeachment process proceeds in Connecticutt vs. Gov. John Rowland for gifts he received from state contractors & employees (5/15 t.A14) - a state can impeach a governor for taking a few bribes and the nation can't impeach a pResident for pulling out of testban treaty, dissing Kyoto Accords & Int'l Court, mocking up a phony war, wasting $87B + $25B +++ of our money, encroaching on our freedoms, replacing Saddam's sadistic torture & murder with US sadistic torture & murder, outing a CIA agent to her jeopardy, barring 1000s of black voters in Florida, covering up energy-taskforce interest conflicts, turning 9/11 world sympathy into worldwide hatred of Americans, resisting 9/11 investigation, resisting any and all investigations, stirring up worldwide terrorism vs. Americans, enriching his buddies with war profiteering, backing Sharon's daily military strikes against demilitarized Palestinians with $4.5B more this year than usual $3.5B of our money... - memory fails ... or revolts in nausea... and all this sold to a bunch of patsies who claim to like small gov't and low taxes?! ha!
    5. what's wrong with torturing a Qaeda higher-up? Alan Dershowitz says torture worked in 1995 Philippines on Abdul Hakim Murad - Darius Rejali says it didn't work there cuz took too long (over a month) to stop imminent threat, didn't work for French in 1950s Algeria, nor for Nazis - Diederik Lohman says didn't work for Russian police in 90s - produces much false info: say anything to stop pain (5/10 j.A1)
    6. Europeans appear ready to approve a biotech corn, ending a 6-year moratorium on approvals for frankencrops (5/15 t.B1) = greed overcomes common sense?
    weekend roll-up -
    5 issues/wk - wk's avg homepage hits/issue: 72
    hope of the weektm from the WSJ & the NYT:
    • 17 TIMEsizing items  • 2 UPsizings (450+ new jobs)  + bogus hope: • 7 makework items
    vs. doom of the weektm from the WSJ & the NYT:
    • 7 DOWNsizings, 13,100 jobcuts   • 1 bankruptcy   • 9 eroding-retirement stories   • 6 prison stories  
    {{ ytd: 352 timsizngs (636+ new or sav'd jobs) + 60 upsizngs (84196+ new jobs) + 154 makwrk (36803+ 'jobs') =
    total: 121635 = 53% of cuts, VS. 204 dnsz (227702+ cuts) + 77 bnkrp ($350m+) +18 homlss +58 jail +12 deth }}


    5/14/2004 friday - ‘hope is not a plan’, but we do have a plan
    - want the Timesizing ‘take’ on some issue or event? email us -
    - we have 705 textfiles: # visitors yesterday 5/13/thu: 771 excl.spiders (5/15/2003/thu: 944 also excl.spiders)
    TIMEsizing awareness = strategic sharework, not makework in yesterday's GoogleNews:

    1. South Korean high court dismisses frivolous impeachment of Pres. Roh & reinstates him immediately, so his workweek reduction from 5½ to 5 days/week is back on track
    2. meanwhile in 'advanced' USA, workweek in eastern Virginia creeps back up to 6 days a week
    3. another Israeli dares to question the prevailing wisdom that economic growth automatically solves unemployment - workweek reduction unneeded
    4. objections to shorter hours in northern English agriculture, same as heard when workweek reduction was back around the 80-hour level
           •     Phil Hyde to speak at *shorter-hours conference, Jun.10-13, Chicago: all welcome

    + random glimmers of hope prioritizing today's (j) WSJ or (t) NYT or (g) Boston Globe (archives):
    1. UPsizings with unspecified new jobs: - Dunkin' Donuts will open 10 shops in Wal-Marts (t.C3)
      - Blimpie Int'l will open 100 sandwich shops in Wal-Marts (t.C3)
      - Kia Motors Corp. plans to build a 2d car plant, costing $645m, in China's Jiangsu Prov. (j.B4)
    2. polls show Bush's job-approval ratings sinking - Bush "stands firm" on his Iraq strategy, but the ground shifts - Gallup: 54% said not worth going to war in Iraq, 58% disapproved of Bush's handling of situation (t.A16)
    3. war crimes complaint filed by French lawyer Jacques Verges against Britain in Int'l Criminal Court (t.A12)
    + clouded hope: PUFFsizings = makework rampant, creating ?? new ‘jobs’ (archives):
      experts criticize $15B airlines bailout approved by Congress after 9/11 for not accomplishing its intended purpose of ensuring their survival - low-cost competition and high fuel prices are hurting carriers (t.C1>2) - compare bailout of Chrysler which is now part of German Daimler

    vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t) -

  • CEOs are constantly UPsizing their own pay, perks & pensions, to economy-strangling levels:
      Eisner gets to keep salary of $1m as CEO of Disney, tho no longer serves as board chair (j.A8)
  • CEOs implement UPsizing by fake growth thru takeovers on diversity-choking scale (archives):
    1. Germany and France agreed to cooperate in creating European business "champions," potentially spurring more mergers (j.A1>3)
    2. UNtakeover - German bank deal off, despite government effort and not before raising questions about the German gov't meddling in industry (t.W1) - Schroeder, like Bush & Blair, has sold out
  • CEOs end up DOWNsizing their own consumer markets - overviews (archives):
    1. outsourcing spooks the CIA, which examines whether it could threaten US counterintelligence and computer security as more programs and data are handled abroad (j.A4)
    2. governors of at least 4 states (IA, MO, PA, MN) rescind agreement to comply with trade pacts that would bar giving preferences to local businesses or restricting outsourcing (j.A6)
  • DOWNsizing results = prison news (archives):
      at Iraqi prison, Rumsfeld vows to punish abuse [sure sure] - 'no cover-up,' he pledges - on surprise visit, he says misdeeds don't reflect American values (t.A1)
  • headlines from hell, noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) & g Boston Globe (archives):
    1. now TWO of them aren't reading newspapers: the wrong direction - Rumsfeld announced his approach to the prison scandal: "I've stopped reading newspapers" (t.A26) - compare Bush himself = US governed by ostriches, heads buried in sand = no feedback, no sustainability
    2. a crude (oil) shock - this isn't the 1970s (with its cushioning oil reserves) and that's bad - an oil-driven recession does not look at all far-fetched: Krugman (t.A27) - compare: as prices rise, Russia alters oil politics toward U.S. - flexing of energy muscle from a country that has oil to export - Russian producers are raking in profits, so the gov't no longer feels compelled to sell oil to America (t.W1) - maybe this will help defeat weird anti-Christ messiah pRez Bush & all his little demons
    3. discounters grow as 'cheap' makes a comeback [just cuz mainstream media lost interest for awhile doesn't mean 'cheap' ever went away] - Wal-Mart & Target improve earnings [= merely shows spread of poverty in America], but gas prices could spoil the party (t.C3) - or make bigger party, more likely


    5/13/2004 thursday - ‘hope is not a plan’, but we do have a plan
    - want the Timesizing ‘take’ on some issue or event? email us -
    - we have 705 textfiles: # visitors yesterday 5/12/wed: 877 excl.spiders (5/14/2003/wed: 1038 also excl.spiders)
    TIMEsizing awareness = strategic glimmers of hope in yesterday's GoogleNews:

    1. France leads the world again - shortest nationwide workweek (35 hrs) maximizes consumer base & makes nation independent of exports & foreign investment
    2. big US companies like GE, IBM, McDonald's, Sears Roebuck, pool bargaining power to get health coverage for up to 4m part-timers among the 43-50m uninsured Americans
    3. House GOP blocks Dems' attempt to make them come clean about GOP''s looming disqualification of many workers who currently qualify for overtime pay
    4. 67% of Belgians regularly work overtime = dumb as Yanks, Brits & Japanese
           •     Phil Hyde to speak at *shorter-hours conference, Jun.10-13, Chicago: all welcome

    + random glimmers of hope indexing today's (j) WSJ or (t) NYT or (g) Boston Globe (archives):
    1. Nader was endorsed by Perot's old Reform Party [which backed Pat Buchanan last time], giving him a potential ballot line in 7 states, like Fla., Mich., & maybe Wisc. (j.A1, t.A21) - guess Dems really are flattering themselves in thinking Nader takes away voters only from them
    2. Canada's PM Paul Martin came under intense pressure from his Liberals to call elections on June 28, before a patronage scandal does more damage (j.A1) - Martin is the moron who weakened Chretien's stand against Iraq invasion - he & Blair should be dumped
    3. breaking into Gitmo's 'law-free zone' - counsellor Thomas Wilmer must get Supreme Court to bar Bush from holding Guantanamo detainees without proper panel review (j.A1>A12)
    + clouded hope: PUFFsizings = makework rampant, creating ?? new ‘jobs’ (archives):
    1. Cray Inc. to supply hardware for supercomputer record-setting bid [gotta beat them Japanese!] at Oak Ridge National Lab with $25m from US taxpayers via Dept. of Energy (j.B8) - will the hubris never end? = taxation without representation
    2. Defence Science Board report on air tankers puts $20B deal in doubt - a blow to Boeing - no dire need to replace tanker fleet (t.C1>4) = makework temporarily blocked?

    vs. doom du jour tm for lack of timesizing - in WSJ (j) and NYT (t) -

  • CEOs implement UPsizing by fake growth thru takeovers on diversity-choking scale (archives):
    1. mega - Siemens' water operations "expanded" with acquisition of Veolia Environnement SA of France for $1B (j.B6)
    2. banking - United Overseas Bank, Singapore's #2 lender, will pay S$945m ($543.1m) to acquire ABN Amro's 80.77% control of Bank of Asia, #9 (j.A1>C5)
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s job - today's total, 100 jobcuts that made it into j (WSJ) or t (NYT):
      100 people laid off as Dow Chemical closes mfg plants in Piscataway & Somerset NJ (t.C4)
  • DOWNsizing everyone else’s retirement (archives):
    1. healthcare costs & savings needs are often underestimated by factor of five by people planning retirement because they're counting on Medicare or their employers to pay their bills (j.A1>D1>2) = Wall Street softening us up for a complete betrayal?
    2. deal reached on Enron pensions - some former directors have agreed to pay up to $86.5m to settle part of $3B in employee pension claims related to Enron's collapse in 2001 - top executives sold Enron stock while encouraging employees to buy, for their 401Ks (t.C4)
  • headlines from hell, noted in j (Wall St. Journal) & t (New York Times) & g Boston Globe (archives):
    1. globe grows darker as sunshine diminishes 10-37% from late 1950s to early 90s, 2-3% per decade, steeper in US, Europe & Asia, 37% in Hong Kong - sun as bright as ever, but less & less sunlight is making it thru pollution particles in atmosphere to the ground - noticed by a few scientists 20 yrs ago but dismissed then as unbelievable - US-Canada geological conference next week in Montreal (t.A21) - on positive side: gasoline settles at record high, $1.3735 for June delivery on NY Mercantile (j.C2)
    2. World Wildlife Fund warned world cod stocks are falling precipitously and could be wiped out in 15 years if the current rate of overfishing continues, not to mention illegal catches and oil exploration - North American catch has declined 90% since early 1980s (j.A1, t.A14) - but have we lea