Timesizing® Associates

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Good News, February 1-15, 2000
[Commentary] ©2000 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA (617) 623-8080

2/15/2k  glimmers of hope -

1. [US sends a valentine to Eros!]
   In a first, a spacecraft is orbiting an asteroid, by Warren Leary, NYT, A16.
   Feb. 14 [Valentine's Day] - With a nudge from its small rockets, the spacecraft NEAR gently "embraced" [ed. our quotes] the asteroid Eros today to become the first man-made object to orbit such a space rock....
   [Eros is the Greek god of carnal love. Asteroids (biggest is Ceres) are the fragmented or yet uncoagulated 5th planet between the inner small planets and the outer giant planets (except Pluto). There is a harmonic relationship (called the (Titius-)Bode Law) in the distances between the planetary orbits around the Sun - 1,1,1,2,4,8,16,32,32,32 = Sun-1-Mercury-1-Venus-1-Earth-2-Mars-4-asteroidbelt-8-Jupiter-16-Saturn-32-Uranus-32-Neptune-32-Pluto. In other words, it's roughly the same distance Sun-Mercury (orbit). Mercury-Venus, Venus-Earth, and then that distance repeatedly doubled gives you the other intervening distances up to the third-last when we again "seal" the system with three rough equalities. Wouldn't it be curious if we eventually discovered that these represented the most sustainable income multiples, so that the worker-CEO pay ratio should max out at 1:32 instead of U.S. current 1:419.]

2. The wages of negativity, NYT, A21.
   Negative advertisements seem to be effective [only] in helping the candidate being attacked. In a Los Angeles Times poll released on Sunday 70% of the Republicans surveyed said they had seen negative campaign advertisements. But 64% of that group said the advertisements made them react more negatively to the sponsor.
   [As Psychology Today said back in 1975, the most powerful thing in the world is positive reinforcement (a good definition for "love"?). Negative advertising is negative reinforcement, and negative reinforcement is self-contradictory because it's still reinforcement. To really kill something off, you have to just ignore it and let it languish, as happened to the "little people" (fairies) of old in the British Isles.]

3. [Mireille Leroy gets her home back!]
   For $58, she lost a home; now, she'll get it back, by Julian Barnes, NYT, A27.
   [This was one of those huge screwups between changed mortgage companies that were supposed to pay taxes or at least inform the homeowner of taxes due, and government (in this case, county) tax authorities. A lurking unpaid $58 tax bill multiplied for years without telling the homeowner and the house was foreclosed upon and sold to someone else, who proceeded to send an eviction notice out of the blue to the otherwise totally uninformed and totally-in-shock homeowner. Suffice it to say that the rightfully embarrassed county (Rockland, NY) and mortgage company (Norwest) and the cooperative new buyer (Carlo Jean Pierre) worked out a deal to restore Mireille Leroy's home without costing her any money - just huge mental pain and anguish - which she could well sue about.]

4. Surge in sales far outpaces rise in business inventories, AP via NYT, C26.
   ...Sales grew 1.1% in December, to $868.8 billion [bringing] the inventory-to-sales ratio to a record low of 1.32, meaning it would take 1.32 months to exhaust inventories at the December sales pace..\..
   [Where is the rest of the picture? Where's the discussion of the unsustainable nature of seasonal holiday sales and our record-breaking consumer debt?]
   American companies bolstered their inventories by a modest 0.5% in Dec....

5. [UNtakeover #1]
   Hostile takeover bid in Japan ends on educational note - Trying to open a national debate on shareholder value, by Stephanie Strom, NYT, C6.
   A deal described as Japan's first indigenous hostile takeover attempt ended in what Americans would call a failure [yester]day. But here, the effort by Yoshiaki Murakami, a bureaucrat who had made a bid to take over the Shoei Co...is seen as the most striking effort so far to challenge longstanding practices.... Murakami said..."I created a debate about shareholder value and management's responsibility for creating [it] and that was what I wanted to achieve"....
   [This guy invokes "shareholder value" in a depression-inducing period of astronomical global stock speculation? Yeah right.]
   Mr. Murakami's bid for Shoei exposed the impediments that Japan's [keiretsu] system of cross-shareholding among banks and corporations pose for investors....
   [In other words, American and other speculators can't waltz in, commoditize and suck dry the goodwill in Japanese banking and business as they can and have almost everywhere else, so traitor Murakami is out to teach them little lessons about how "backward" they are.]

6. [UNtakeover #2]
   Motion is filed opposing Iridium takeover, Bloomberg via NYT, C15.
   Bondholders of [bankrupt] Iridium have filed a motion opposing Craig McCaw's plan to take control of the company, which is involved in satellite telephones, and asked a bankruptcy court for permission to sue Motorola Inc. for more than $2B [because it] "has dominated and controlled the debtors and caused great harm to the creditors...." Iridium owes about $1.45B to bondholders.

1. Birth-control model, letter to editor by Serena Josel of NYC, NYT, A26.
   Re "France provides morning-after pill to schoolgirls" (front page, Feb. 8):
   France's efforts to dispense emergency contraception to teenage girls should be applauded. As a recent graduate of a public high school on Long Island, I was provided with little sex education and was not offered any form of contraception through my school's health office, an experience shared by many other young Americans.
   Teenagers who give birth are more likely to drop out of high school and rely on public assistance. Schools in this country need to follow France's example to reduce teenage pregnancy.

2. Term limits bring wholesale change into legislatures - 18 states to feel effects
   - As seasoned [ie: corrupted? -ed.] leaders depart, newcomers rise to power at an accelerated pace, by Francis Clines, NYT, front page.
   [The NY Times is clearly ambivalent about this. We think it's great. More participation in the governing process. More chance to get some real feedback into the decision-making arena. More disruption for PACs, lobbyists and other big-money factors to adjust to. More chance to get single-issue legislation enacted without porkbarrel add-ons - cleanly and simply and expeditiously for the accelerating pace of the new Millennium. Less "incumbent headstart" to fight. Fresh blood, fresh ideas, fresh air.]

3. [Colleague Kate's "15 mins. of fame" -]
   The incredible shrinking type irks Globe readers, op ed by Boston Globe ombudsman Jack Thomas, A15.
   [Kate's "shrinking font" letter to the editor (not the ombudsman, as caption claims) is featured in fotocopy front¢er amidst this spread-across-the-top op ed -]
   

   Dear Sir/Madam:
   Your goal of shrinking the size of this publication and saving paper is admirable, but if you continue to shrink the size of the type you will lose the better part of your readership over age [it's getting hard to make out the periodically shrinking letters - we think it's] 45. Are you conducting some kind of experiment to see how far you can try the patience and eyesight of your readers? As irritating, or possibly more irritating, is your habit of shrinking typeface within an article. If this keeps up I will [too small to read]....
   How about shrinking the ads instead of the news typefaces?
   Sincerely,
   Kate Jurow

   
   [After noticing this coup, Kate & Phil jumped up & performed "Rockies" all around the kitchen, barely avoiding collision. (A "Rockie" is where Sylvester Stallone walked up the steps and started raising and lowering his arms with closed fists in a prizefighter's victory gesture. Done with proper Dave Barry/Drew Carey-style nerd embellishment, you also have to step around the kitchen at the same time, being careful not to synchronize arm and leg action.)

1. US pregnancy rate lowest in 20 years, Reuters via Boston Globe, A9.
   ...with the sharpest drop among teenagers.... Increased use of condoms, injectable contraceptives, and implants, as well as a leveling off of teenage sexual activity, are all responsible, the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention [in Washington, DC] said in a report.

2. New mission for DNA: preservation - Using genetic matchmaking to help save endangered species, by Alexander Stille, NYT, A17.
   [Good idea. Just keep it out of our food!]

3. High oil prices aren't a bad thing, 3 letters to the editor, NYT, A28.
   [All three basically say the same thing - higher prices will encourage conservation of a nonrenewable resource and the development of renewable substitutes. This should have been happening in the wake of the energy crisis of the 1970s but there's been a LOT of slippage in terms of bigger cars and higher speed limits.]

4. Clinton imposes tariffs on steel imports that exceed quota - Pleas of steel makers are answered with measures that risk trade tension, by Joseph Kahn, NYT, B2.
   ...with South Korea, Brazil, Germany, Japan and other major trading partners....
   [Big deal. If any economy could go it completely alone, it's the world's largest. Other economies have a lot more to lose in cheating on us than we have in calling them on it. In short, the U.S. is finally doing what it should have been doing all along. Free trade is a naive and simplistic obsession. Unless everyone is playing by the same internal rules, unilaterally abolishing external rules simply hangs a "Rob me" sign on your own back.]

5. Marriage-tax quick fix, letter to the editor by Abraham Shapiro of Staten Is., NYT, A28.
   [Someone has finally come up with the simple, obvious, and inexpensive solution to our stupid and expensive vacillation between marriage tax and singles tax -]
   ...Just allow married couples to figure their tax three ways -
   1. married, filing jointly
   2. married, filing separately
   3. single (filing separately)
   and pay the lowest of the three taxes.
   [Abraham, you're a true genius - the kind who can see the simple and obvious when everybody else is running around generating heat, not light. If we can only get to that point in our economic design, we'll be happy campers.]

6. National anthem should be played, not performed, letter to the editor by Judith Eiffel of Jamaica Plain, Mass., Boston Globe, A14.
   [Boy, here's someone who has finally brought to the surface something that has been bothering us for a looong time -]
   In response to the Feb. 7 letter, "Play it again, with less emotion":
   The annoying practice of of the one-man/woman performance of our national anthem should be abolished. Nowhere else in the world is the dignity of this anthem so strained, or the patriotic sentiments of the listener so debased, by this practice.
   But in the land of the free, one is forced to endure the show and encouraged to keep silent in respect for the performer rather than for the work being performed. Surely the national anthem is for everybody, and hence should be played and/or sung - not "performed."
   Despite protests to Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart and to those in charge at Fenway Park and other arenas, the beat goes on, sadly.
   [Let's get some of those American Legion posts that are protesting the burning of the flag to couple it with the massacre of the national anthem by teeth-gritting hyped-up "performance."]

1. House passes bill to reduce taxes on some [married] couples - White House opposes it - Cuts of $182 B to aid all married, even the ones not hit by marriage penalty, by Richard Stevenson, NYT, front page.
   [Oh oh, not as purely a Good Thing as appeared at first glance. And there's always the possibility that there will now be a "singles tax" that we'll then have to correct. Folks, here we are on the dawn of another millennium with a world population rushing towards seven BILLION and all kinds of ecological distress. Ain't it about time we starting removing all mention of marriage from our tax code?! Simplify, simplify - especially when our social unit is shifting from the reproductive pair to the productive person, and from the procreative couple to the creative individual....]

2. [Clinton] Administration takes a bow in final economic report - A mix of politics and analysis of prosperity - Defining a record expansion that continues to defy gravity, by Joseph Kahn, NYT, C8.
   [...so let's just keep loading on the weight of the top-heavy super-rich income brackets regardless of the thinning of the middle class and the swelling of the poor, homeless and incarcerated - gravity will cut it sooner or later as sure as death and taxes. Clinton, like Coolidge in early 1929, may be able to finish his term in time and sidestep the whole thing.]

3. Service economy exploding - Study: High-skill jobs in [Massachusetts] offer good pay, by Kimberly Blanton, Boston Globe, E1.
   [Good pay but no training. And how good is the pay when you have to give your employer a blank check on your life and work 50-60-70 hours a week on a 40-hour salary?! Divide that out and the wages don't look so good.]

4. Internet's fortune makers giving it away, their way, by Sara Verhovek, NYT, front page.
   [Unfortunately, this never occurs fast enough, pervasive enough, or on a massive enough scale to compensate for the dismantling of the centrifuge mechanisms implemented during and after the previous big removal of labor hours from the job market, in our current case, that would be World War II and our subsequent gutting of the graduated income tax, welfare, Medicare... and the long-ago end of the GI bill and the federal highways program. Thus we slouch toward Depression yet again, still without a flexible, market-oriented centrifuge mechanism such as Timesizing.]

5. U.S. releases money to help the poor pay rising heating bills, by David Stout, NYT, A25.
   [Instead of micromanaging everything with myriads of little damage-control bandaids like this - housing, food stamps, child care, health care, no tolerance crime enforcement, enterprise zones, block grants, taxbreaks for jobs, taxbreaks for married couples, now fuel oil money for the poor, on and on and on AND ON - why not just enforce overtime and cut the workweek gradually so the private sector raises pay, initiates pervasive training, and generally takes care of its own mess and cleans up after itself for a change, instead of pushing it all on government and taxpayers?!]

1. Campaign caps and stifled speech, letters to editor, NYT, A30.
   "Money is property; it is not speech," you quote approvingly from the concurring opinion of Justice John Paul Stevens in last month's campaign finance case from Missouri ("The flaw in Buckley v. Valeo," editorial, Feb. 8).
   [So far so good. In fact, great!]
   But that statement wrongly likens spending devoted to political objectives to ordinary commerce.... - Bruce Fein, McLean, Va.
   [This reader must be very very naive. And he's a former associate deputy attorney general??! Lordy, with simpletons like this rolling through government, we're doomed. There are two more equally naive (or narrowly self-interested) letters from readers, but nausea forfends.... The whole value of "one person one vote" is the wealth centrifuge mechanism it provides, however indirectly. Now we've overridden it with big money, we will proceed inexorably to the kind of topheavy income distribution that leads directly to the high/low production/consumption imbalance of depression. "No wealth is an island."]

2. [UNtakeover #1]
   Trucking company's stock falls with buyout deal off, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...USFreightways Corp. scapped a plan to buy [Transport Corp. of America] for $132.7m in stock \because its\ Q4 profit declined more than forecast....

3. [UNtakeover #2]
   Cambior rejects takeover bid, by Timothy Pritchard, NYT, C4.
   A Montreal-based gold-mining company, Cambior Inc., has rejected a hostile bid from Aur Resources Inc. of Toronto...worth about $117m [as] inadequate. It also said that a change of control could accelerate Cambior's obligations to creditors. The company is heavily in debt after losing $33m in a gold-hedging program last fall.
   [In short, Aur Resources - get a life! - your own life.]

4. Find me a find, cache me a catch - Matchmaking robots cruise the Net to spot people you should know, by Anne Eisenberg, NYT, E1.
   ...Leonard Foner of MIT created matchmaking software name Yenta....
   [Ah, the fantasy of every adolescent comes true - robotically scientific perfection in mate selection. Somehow we still sense there will be a huge place for the Kate-Phil 2-point prescription for marital longevity: (1) Always introduce your spouse as "my constant friend and occasional spouse" - i.e., the friendship's the thing, not the duty-laden state of matrimony. Start thinking about the latter too much and you're bound to get claustrophobic and antsy. "Permanent" relationships just last 3 months anyway. Daily renewed friendships, plus or minus the sex (oops, we mean) biodrugs option, last indefinitely. (2) Every morning, glare at each other across the breakfast table and irritably repeat this credo in unison, "You are NOT my type!" - It gives you boundless tolerance for each other's foibles the rest of the day, and bottom line, the secret to longevitous togetherness is tolerance = nudging yourself &/or your partner back onto an even keel with grudgingly wacky or wry or eye-rolling or totally resigned humor. And remember, if romance rears its seductive and extremely dangerous head, vigorously push it back down below the surface to the level of Shared Secret. You know what happened when the shoemaker thanked the elves (they quit). Follow Smokey the Bear's lead from that highschool joke ("Why didn't Smokey's wife ever get pregnant? Because every time she got hot, he stamped her out"). Romance lends itself all too easily to the myth of perfection, just like this new Yenta, the matchmaking software. And the myth of perfection leads to divorce, while boundless tolerance and mutually granted freedom (i.e., no jealously, a daily renewable lease, and a minimal web of expectations) lead to togetheroidal longevity. If you have skyhigh perfectionistic expectations, you're always getting disappointed. If you have minimal expectations, you're always getting pleasantly surprised. We checked Box B & we've been hangin' out for 26 years, ruefully, suspiciously circling one another (and occasionally, OK frequently, experiencing intense happiness - but you'll NEVER get us to admit it!).]

1. U.S. productivity rose at 5% rate in 2nd half of '99... - Output surges even as workers see virtually no rise in their paychecks, by Louis Uchitelle, NYT, A1, C2.

2. [1 UPsizing]
   CVS to open up to 450 stores nationwide this year, Dow Jones via NYT, C4.
   ...As of Jan. 1, CVS operated 4,098 stores in 26 states and the District of Columbia. The company said it opened 49 stores and relocated 75 others in Q4/99. It finished the year ahead of its real estate goal by opening a record 445 new or relocated stores....
   [We've got "McJobs" for McDonald's and Burger King. Now we need a name for low-wage CVS jobs.]

3. [1 UNtakeover]
   AMR to spin off [its 83%] stake in Sabre Holdings next month, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...to AMR stockholders as of March 1, at a rate of about 7/10's of a Sabre share for each AMR share...giving the travel company more freedom to negotiate with rival airlines and expand its Internet services.

1. France provides morning-after pill to schoolgirls, by Suzanne Daley, NYT, front page.
   ...Last month, France became the first country in the world to give its school nurses the right to dispense emergency contraception pills. The pills are available in both high schools and junior high schools, where students are as young as 12. Although the nurses are advised to make efforts to inform the child's parents, they do not have to. French health and education officials hope that the policy will help reduce unwanted pregnancies among teenagers and lower the country's abortion rate, among the highest in the European Union, and stubbornly so, because it has not dropped despite the easier availability of contraception in the last decade.
   While the measure does face opposition from some parents and family rights groups around the country, it has found wide support here....
   [Waal we'll be durned. The French may be among the persnicketiest people in the world, but they have leapt into the vanguard on the two major issues of the 3rd Millennium - (1) sharing the vanishing work by cutting the workweek and (2) controlling over-population and unwanted births. They have found their new niche at last, and a dramatically valuable one it is for all humanity - they are at this moment leading the world into the future with these two substantial and futuristic policies. God bless'em and vive la France! And if you don't think the work is vanishing, read this next one -]

2. ["Good but..."]
   Robot population rising, by Elizabeth Olson, NYT, C4.
   Worldwide orders for industrial robots rose 20% last year, according to United Nations figures.... In the United States and Canada...orders rose 60% in 1999 over the previous year. In Europe, orders were up 12%.
   [Henry Ford - "Let's see you unionize these robots!"  Walter Reuther - "Let's see you sell them cars." This is a nutshell is the mechanism of depression. The iron law of technology - make the workweek fall as robots rise or you get the time savings in training famine, underemployment, flat wages, split population and inadequate markets, instead of more and better-funded leisure.]

3. For politicians, tax cut pandering has lost its magic, op ed by Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe, A23.
   ...Voters show signs of demanding some old-fashioned arithmetic: numbers that add up.... McCain not only beat Bush in last week's NH primary; he also beat the notion that today's voters are so fixated on tax cuts that they don't remember simple math....
   [That's good, considering the U.S. has one of the lowest taxrates in the developed world, and our public property - libraries, bridges... - are falling apart.]

4. After Seattle, [WTO] scales back its agenda, by Elizabeth Olson, NYT, C4.
   [Good!]

5. Gasoline prices climb, Reuters via NYT, C11.
   [Also good - will slow down the exhaustion of fossil fuels.]

6. [A new woman top executive to compensate for the loss of Ms. Mattelle -]
   PBS names Turner Broadcasting executive as its new president, by Bill Carter, NYT, A16.
   ...Ms. [Pat] Mitchell....

7. [1 UPsizing]
   [NY] City to get 450 high-tech jobs, by Eric Lipton, NYT, A27.
   ...Yesterday...PSINet, an ISP, announced that it would open a $250m sales and service center in Long Island City that would create 450 new jobs.... The city is offering PSINet the equivalent of $60m worth of incentives over the next 15 years, city officials said.
   [Here we go again - business desperate to cut jobs, government desperate to create them. Somebody's getting bamboozled and it's probably taxpayers.]

1. 2/07 Moscow takes step to ease U.S. fears on plutonium use - In step toward arms control, Russia says it will stop processing plutonium - A condition that ends sales of nuclear technology to Iran, by Judith Miller, NYT, front page.

2. [1 UPsizing]
   2/06 McDonald's to open 9 restaurants in Russia, Bloomberg via Bos Globe, F2.
   [Unspecified new McJobs.]

1. [Good, but...]
   387,000 new jobs put on payrolls in U.S. last month...
   [Great, but how do the wages compare to the jobs we lost?]
   - Biggest jump since 1997...
   [We don't recall 1997 being anything to write home about.]
   Debate over whether it's a sign of inflation or stability or a warm-weather fluke, by Louis Uchitelle, NYT, front page.
   [We'll go with the "warm-weather." "Stability" it ain't. In a global labor glut when technology-multiplied productivity is rising by leaps and bounds, our national 3.5% wage rise in the last-reported year (1998) is barely noticeable as wealth continues its exponential concentration à la "trickle down, POUR UP." No way can we purchase all our productivity - that's why there are so many desperate CEOs seeking new acquisitions, having given up on new markets. There's just sooo much money pouring into the top income brackets - the people who already have more than they could spend in hundreds of lifetimes, and "the more concentration, the less circulation" by the under-researched economic principle of "the diminishing marginal utility of (concentrated) wealth." The Globe's headline -]
   January jobless rate falls to 30-year low of 4%, by Jeannine Aversa, AP via Boston Globe, C1.
   ["4%" is double what Americans viewed as alarming during World War II, when we were centrifuging wealth at a sufficient rate to indefinitely sustain jobs for everyone at the 40-hrs/wk/mostly-male-adult level barring further levels of robotization, imports, immigrants & births plus mass entry of females into the job market, and "30 years ago" was when stagflation began to signal serious labor glut and the consequent weakening of our middle class.]

2. [For all you auction addicts miffed at eBay -]
   EBay is under U.S. antitrust investigation, AP via NYT, B2.
   WASHINGTON - The Justice Dept. is investigating whether eBay Inc...violated federal antitrust laws in its actions toward smaller Internet rivals....

3. Delta to help employees get on the Internet, Reuters via NYT, B3.,
   ...A day after Ford Motor announced a similar program..\..Delta Air Lines said yesterday that it would offer subsidized personal computers and Internet access to all of its [72,000] employees [i.e.,] PC's for $12/mo. over 36 mos. Each PC will include a monitor, kybd, mouse, software and Web access...
   [But Ford offered all that yesterday for $5/mo.]
   ...and will provide direct access to Delta's internal corporate computer network.

4. White knights loom for Ben & Jerry's - 'Socially conscious' investors muster, AP via Boston Globe, C2.
   ...to save one of [their] own, the quirky ice cream manufacturer famous for such flavors as Bovinity Divinity and Phish Food. In the face of a takeover bid by more traditional companies [Unilever and Dreyer's], some of Ben & Jerry's socially responsible brethren don't want to lose what many of them consider their patron saint, the independent ice cream company that over the years carved out its place in the business world by being known as much for its social consciousness [e.g., trying to save rain forests] as the taste of its product....

1. Ford offers its workers PC's and Internet for $5 a month, by Keith Bradsher, NYT, front page.
   ...a high-speed desktop computer made by Hewlett-Packard, a color printer, and unlimited Internet access....

2. Congress gets bill to continue ban on new state taxes on Internet commerce, AP via NYT, A17.

3. Bonds' rise sends traders into turmoil - U.S. plan to cut [national] debt has market scrambling, by Morgenson and McGeehan, NYT, C1.
   ...reminding many participants of the crisis created by the near collapse of the Long-Term Capital Mgmt Hedge Fund that gripped the market in September 1998....
   [Dear, dear, how SENSITIVE!]

4. McCain on ballot across New York as Pataki gives in - Governor and Bush feared fight aided Senator's candidacy, by Clifford Levy, NYT, front page.
   [So Pataki was behind the McCain ballot blockade. What a blockhead. Just as dumb as Salooch&Swift in Massatunies but with added Nasty.]

5. [1 UNtakeover -]
   Cruise company spinoff, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   The British shipping company Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation said it would spin off its cruise division.... The new company, which will include the Princess cruise line in the U.S., will list its stock...by the end of 2000.

1. Clinton's $2b plan targets 'digital divide', AP via Boston Globe, A23.
   [Sounds good, but it's the business sector that should be doing this = cleaning up their own mess - not taxpayers via the government.]
   ...to expand access to computers and the Internet. He warned that a failure to bridge the "digital divide" between rich and poor could exacerbate inequality in the U.S....
   [So what, Bill? - he has no idea - inequality just sounds like a bad thing. Never mind that it's unactionable in that form. "Wealth concentration" is actionable. "Inequality" is not, in any effective way.]
   A Commerce Dept. report in July found that black and Hispanic households are only 40% as likely to have Internet access as white families. Households with incomes of $75,000 and above in urban areas are more than 20 times as likely to have Internet access as households at the lowest income levels..\..
   [The concentration of skills and access, and natural market-demanded employment, follows the concentration of income and wealth. And Clinton's direct and simple-minded approach is going to worsen the whole problem -]
   The president outlined his plan for $2 billion in tax incentives over 10 years, as well as $380m in expanded federal grants, to encourage companies to donate computers, sponsor community technology centers, and train workers....
   [More corporate welfare, more welfare for the rich, more imbalance. Bill, just enforce overtime and shorten the workweek, and the private sector will clean up its own messes without you running around micromanaging and dragging us taxpayers along after you.]

2. Party officials may abandon fight to keep McCain off ballot, by Richard Pérez-Peña, NYT, A27.
   [They damn well better! This is supposed to be a "democracy," however cosmetic.]
   ALBANY - Worrying that the state Republican Party's attempts to knock Senator John McCain off the presidential ballot have backfired, Republican and Bush campaign officials said today that they might abandon their court fight with Mr. McCain....
   [They damn well better, those slimy fat-brained smoke-filled back room lizards! If they don't grok that democracy means people power, let's deport them to tents in Tyenamen Square till they develop some extended self-interest. But let's not err in the other direction either, as in -]
   Bush removed from ballot in a Bronx district, by Clifford Levy, NYT, A27.
   The NY Republican State Committee...made a surprising concession yesterday: its workers fraudulently assembled petitions for Gov. Geo. W. Bush in a congressional district in the South Bronx. As a result, a state judge removed Mr. Bush from the primary ballot in the district....
   [So they also want to sign everybody's signature themselves do they? That makes them lazy slimy fat-brained smoke-filled back room lizards.]

3. [1 UNtakeover -]
   U.S. moves to halt $30B union of oil companies - Competition is concern - FTC thinks BP Amoco - ARCO deal would lift gas prices for West Coast drivers, by Stephen Labaton, NYT, front page.
   Moving to stem the trend of huge consolidation in the oil industry...by a vote of 3 to 2, the Federal Trade Commission chose to seek a preliminary injunction against the deal....
   [This kind of decision will eventually not be made by five white male millionaires, but by binding public referendums electronically offered and tabulated, via telephone or email, with a security level comparable to present-day ATMs (according to Boulder, Col.-based group, Voting By Phone).]

2/01/2000  1 glimmer of hope & 2 gleams from the past -

1. Paychecks of Mass. workers fatter in 1998, by Diane Lewis, Boston Globe, D3.
   [But still far thinner than the amount of technology-multiplied productivity they're pumping out and far thinner than needed to absorb it all on a sustainable basis and maintain market demand for their own current full-time (40-hr plus) jobs.]
   ...When adjusted for inflation, which was 1.6% in 1998, the [5.8%] gain in annual pay was approximately 3.8% in Massachusetts, higher than the nation's 3.5% (inflation-adjusted) wage gain average....

2. [A suggestion from a martyred Latino archbishop -]
   The global divide (from Davos) to the campaign in New Hampshire, by James Carroll, Bos Globe, A15.
   ...Oscar Romero, the martyred archbishop of San Salvador, refused to use the words "the poor" [los pobres] when speaking of the destitute among his people. Instead...he always insisted on the term "los empobrecidos," which means [the impoverished,] "those made poor." This shift...affirms that the state of being poor is the result not of any character flaw or genetic trait...belonging to those who suffer it but is rather tied to the actions of others, however remote. If we spoke [as Romero did] we would immediately be confronted with the questions, impoverished by whom? by what?
   [Our answers to these excellent questions are on our homelessness page under today's article 2/01. This excellent op ed continues with a few more jolts about homelessness.]
   Take, for example, the recent finding of the Mass. Housing and Shelter Alliance that the number of adults ages 18 to 24 entering homeless shelters in the state increased by 89%, from 1278 in 1998 to 2411 in 1999. This is a clear signal that most of these young people, the newest of "the poor," have in fact been impoverished" by forces beyond their control - failed school systems, to name only one....

3. [And for all you blending-in Canucks out there, don't miss..]
   Trudeaumania lingers but the policies fade fast, by James Brooke, NYT, A4.
   [It includes a great photo of our most-popular-this-century prime minister at the age of EIGHTY striding along lookin' good tho' perhaps gettin' a bit fragile, according to his friends (needs to start pumpin' iron and chuggin' milk) - he avoids all interviews to avoid being...]
   ...dragged into the public debate, into the public limelight..\..
   [Here are a couple of choice quotes from the article -]
   Saying in 1967 that "there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation," Mr. Trudeau, then justice minister, helped ease laws on abortion and homosexual acts....
   [Anybody know the French for that? Something like "L'état n'a aucune affaire dans les boudoirs de la nation"?? or "Il n'y a aucun endroit pour l'état dans...??? It's gotta be great in French! Here's another plum, from Serge Joyal, a Quebec senator and friend of Trudeau -]
   "In Trudeau's time, the cabinet would meet and we would say, 'What do we create this week?' In Chrétien cabinet meetings, we would say, 'What do we cut this week?' "....
   [And here's a tip for all you buttertart/tartelette au beurre-deprived Canucksters in the Boston area. They currently sell Canadian pecan tarts from Toronto in Johnny's FoodMaster supermarkets, e.g., at Broadway and Alewife in Somerville and on Beacon St. just northwest of Inman Square in Cambridge - haffaduz for $3.99. They have exackitally the same crust and filling as genuine Canuckian b'tarts as scarfed by Sgt. Preston of the Royal Mounties, Dudley DoRight and Constable Frazier, so buy a batch, pluck&pitch the pecahns, shove in raisins (preferably the store brand from DeMoulas MarketBasket s'mkt on Somerville Ave - cheapest but tastiest) and microwave'em. Clean the palate after each bite with a glurk of cold milk (as in "milk & cookies"). Multiple mouthgasms!]