Timesizing® Associates

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

4/15/2000 glimmers of hope -

1. Putin wins vote in Parliament on treaty to cut nuclear arms, by Michael Gordon, NYT, front page.
   MOSCOW - Vladimir V. Putin, in his first legislative initiative as Russia's elected president, [yester]day won approval of the long-delayed nuclear arms reduction treaty known as Start II from the lower house of Parliament. The landmark agreement, which was negotiated 7 years ago, calls for cutting the American and Russian nuclear arsenals by half.
   [Good news, not diluted by the rusting deterioration of Russia's nuclear arsenal but rather rendered urgent by it.]
   The passage was seen as a sign that Mr. Putin seeks a constructive relationship with the West...
   [Good news.]
   ...but also that he intends to resist the United States program to develop and deploy antimissile defenses....
   [Skip the "but" - this too is good news. The US "Star Wars" program is dumb from start to finish, and it's sooo hard to "finish" off. "Ochin horosho!" ("very good" in Russian.)]

2. Nader runs again, this time with feeling, by James Dao, NYT, front page.
   ...The man who became famous by killing off a sporty but unstable little car called the Corvair is...running for president on the Green Party [ticket]. But unlike his previous previous presidential run in 1996 when he...spent less than $5000 and attracted barely 1% of the vote, this time he is...going to campaign.... The goal of Mr. Nader's run is not to win, of course, but to get more than 5% of the vote, the number that would qualify him for millions in federal campaign matching funds that...he would use to build the Green Party. "If the Green Party breaks 5%, the Democratic Party won't be the same again," Mr. Nader...said in reflecting on the prospect of undercutting the centrist [make that "rightist"] Democratic Leadership Council and its president Al From. "If you think Al From and the Democratic Leadership Council has a grip on the Democratic Party, wait and see what a significant and growing progressive third party can do."
   [And we know there are plenty of frustrated progressive Republicans just waiting for this development as well, not to mention Reform Party adherents.]
   ...A recent poll by the Zogby Group showed Mr. Nader receiving more support than Patrick J. Buchanan, the likely Reform Party nominee, 5% to 3%. The poll indicated that the vast majority of Mr. Nader's support came from Democrats and that he was doing particularly well in California, considered a vital state for Mr. Gore....
   [Gore is slimed with Clinton, and his misfired vote pandering on Elian has overshadowed his erstwhile environmentalism. Many contrarian Republicans (and Democrats!) are adrift since the defeat of McCain (and Bradley) and would welcome the towering integrity of a man like Nader in American politics at the dawn of the new millennium. No one else in the race holds a candle to him, despite the Times' graceless attempts to slur him as "irrepressibly dour and hauntingly hungry-looking." We met him at the Massachusetts Green Convention several weeks ago and found him Lincolnesque. He is craggy, not as tall or high-voiced as Lincoln, but certainly as articulate, courageous, inspiring, and in control of the broadest perspective and the contrarian data. He is the only candidate worth a tinker's damn in this Y2000 race. Here's hoping enough Americans UNdumb-down to do him - and America - proud at the dawn of the Third Millennium. The other candidates are nothing short of humiliating. Here's a reader's rating of Bush and the once-progressive GOP -]
   Log Cabin Republicans, letter to the editor by Paul Whiteley of Louisville, NYT, A28.
   Re "Bush talks to gays and calls it beneficial" (news article, April 14): If [gay] Republicans really want to get...Bush's undivided attention, they should form Log Cabin Republicans for Al Gore.
   The Republican Party is so out of touch with most Americans that it is on the verge of becoming a permanent minority party. Like Mr. Bush's so-called compassionate conservatism, the pary's claim of wanting to be a more inclusive "big tent" party is just rhetoric. It makes little or no effort to win the African-American vote, gay and lesbian vote or labor vote, and offends large numbers of voters who are turned off by its religious right core....

3. [UNtakeover #1]
   German utility mergers stymied [for stifling competition, eg: by EU antitrust regulators, Veba's $14B merger with Viag], by Edmund Andrews, NYT, B2.

4. [UNtakeover #2]
   German utility mergers stymied [for stifling competition, eg: by German antitrust regulators, RWE's $4B buy of VEW], by Edmund Andrews, NYT, B2.

5. [UNtakeover #3]
   Internet services concern MarchFirst spins off unit, Dow Jones via NYT, B3.
   ...MarchFirst Inc. [a provider of] consulting services to help business set up and run Internet operations..\..said yesterday that it was spinning off a company it founded called MarketsWork, a maker of Web-based business software...intended to help businesses track ancillary expenses like transportation and phone service.... It said it would keep a minority stake in MarketsWork.

1. For young Wall Street, what's the limit?, letter to editor by Elizabeth Winthrop of New York, NYT, A30.
   Re "At a Wall Street firm, juniors' voices roar" (front page, April 8): Although these 20-somethings threaten to jump to Internet companies, and many of them already have, they will find the hours in the new economy equally punishing [as the 80-hour workweeks in the "old economy" of Wall Street firms]. The real revolution will come when these workers stand up and roar: "Enough. Give me reasonable work hours, and you can keep your concierge services. I'll pick up my own dry cleaning."
   [The references are to the following parts of the Patrick McGeehan article cited - "In response to a list of demands compiled by a 23-year-old junior investment banker, executives of Salomon Smith Barney are piling on the perks to stem the flow of young employees defecting to Internet companies. Salomon...is offering them more meal money, better laptop computers and access to the company gym on weekends. The firm is also installing a coffee bar and considering providing concierge service to handle chores like picking up laundry.... The concessions were spurred by a blunt memo sent last month to the investment bank's managers by Paul Leung, a 1st-year employee who said he was presenting the collective views of his co-workers. The memo, which Salomon executives say they solicited, contained a list of 36 suggested ways the firm could retain its bankers-in-training, a pool of 500 or so people who are commonly known as analysts. Not to be confused with research analysts who rate stocks, these analysts put in as many as 80 hours a week doing much of the basic research and number-crunching on mergers and other deals that the more experienced investment bankers are handling. At major firms like Salomon, analysts fresh out of college earn about $70,000 a year...."]
   Sadly, the junior analysts did not dare ask for the one thing they need more than all the money in the world: time to live a balanced life.
   [Junior analysts and labor in general will "not dare to ask for the one thing they need more than all the money in the world, time to live a balanced life" until they realize that it is the one thing that will bring them all the money in the world, because it will enable them to control their own supply and demand, and thence their own bargaining power. After 150 years of using this lever and reducing the workweek, labor forgot it under the pressure of FDR's blandishments 65 years ago and they have neglected it to their loss ever since. The workweek has not budged below 40 hours since 1940, and its enforcement even at that outdated level soon became lax, and recently it has been creeping right back up to levels not seen since the early 1800s - all labor's gains lost. And with some 20-something's in Silicon "heaven" working 120-hour weeks, we might just as well repeal the Emancipation Proclamation.]
   When will companies learn that more hours do not necessarily mean greater or more meaningful productivity?
   [They won't learn this until their employees learn it. These kids asked for all kinds of stupid little things, - they asked for everything but the most basic freedom, free time. Truly, "the slaves love their chains." This is exactly what FDR counted on in 1933 when he induced American labor to give up on the 30-hour workweek bill and sell its birthright, namely control of its own supply and demand, for a mess of pottage including social "security", workmen's comp, minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and a whole alphabet soup of makework programs including the WPA, CCC, NRA, NIRA, TVA... - none of which cured even half the Depression until the nation geared up for war in 1942. And companies will not learn anything about working hard (ie: long hours) vs. working smart until a few more companies than just Volkswagen and nations than just France start demonstrating it and the efficiency and creativity it unleashes.]
   As John Rolfe and Peter Troob say in their new book, "Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle," "In the end, the banker's greatest enemies are those people whose souls are not for sale, and those who realize that time is a non-renewable commodity."
   [The reference here is to Jesus' memorable words, "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?" Mark 8:36. The Rolfe and Troob quotation makes a very good point - that time is linear, non-reversible, non-renewable. Our friend Rob is in Silicon Valley today frying his brains out 20 hours a day on somebody else's dream. This is a life?]

2. [And another angle on stirring time awareness -]
   Compensate the customers of banks that merge, letter to editor by Prof. Jack Beerman of Boston University School of Law, Boston Globe, A20.
   When one bank acquires another, as Fleet is in the process of doing to BankBoston and as Citizens recently did to US Trust, bank customers are forced to spend time and energy figuring out whether the new bank's fee structure suits their needs.
   If they decide it doesn't, they must spend the time to find a bank more suited to their needs, and then they must spend time and energy to open accounts in a new bank and close accounts in an old one....
   As a condition of bank acquisitions [banking regulators should] require the acquiring bank to pay a fee to customers of the bank being acquired to compensate them for the time and effort involved in forming a new banking relationship. I suggest $50 for customers who stay with the new entity and $100 for any customers sent to a wholly unconnected entity like the Fleet customers who were sent to Sovereign. This would force the acquiring bank to bear a cost of their acquisition that now falls on customers who were happy with the status quo ante.
   [Wouldn't it be easier just to throw out the antitrust "regulators" who are just passing everything and get some regulators who can just say "NO"?!!]

3. [UNtakeover #1]
   Ford planning to spin off auto parts division, by Keith Bradsher, NYT, C4.
   The Ford Motor Co...today...is filing...with the SEC [to] spin off Visteon Automotive Systems, its sprawling auto parts division. Ford plans to distribute 100% of Visteon's shares to Ford shareholders in a long-expected deal that is likely to be completed by midsummer.... Peter J. Pestillo, a vice chairman for Ford, will run Visteon as its chairman and CEO.

4. [UNtakeover #2]
   Alcan [Aluminum of Canada] revises blueprint for 3-way aluminum deal - Will acquire [Swiss-based] Algroup only, not [French-based] Pechiney, by John Tagliabue, NYT, C4.
   ...The failure of the proposed $17B 3-way deal to create the world's leading aluminum company came after the European Union's antitrust regulators objected to the dominance that the planned combination would have exerted in Europe's aluminum industry.... Algroup [was] formerly known as Alusuisse Lonza....

1. IMF and debt relief, letter to editor by Steve Valk of Atlanta, NYT, A26.
   ...The UN sec. general's [Kofi Annan's] call to combat poverty...correctly suggests that dropping the debts of the poor countries is one of the keys to addressing the problem. [However, this] would be a hollow gesture unless the IMF were removed from the process of granting debt "relief" [our quotes - ed.]. For nearly a generation, the fund has devastated the world's poorest nations through its "structural adjustment programs." To meet the programs' requirements, poorer countries have had to cut budgets for health and education and lift subsidies for food and fuel. If debt relief remains conditional on taking the IMF's bitter - and ineffective - medicine, little or no progress will be gained.
   [IMF: "Here, third world, take this nice hemlock pill."]

2. [UPsizing #1 - unspecified new jobs -]
   Staples plans to add 170 stores this year, Bloomberg via Boston Globe, C14.
   ...The [Framingham, Mass.-based] number two [after Fla.-based Office Depot] US office-supplies retailer plans to open at least 170 stores this year and ultimately could double the size of its chain, even as Internet sales accelerate. Store sales continue to rise despite competition from the Web.... Staples operated 1,129 stores worldwide as of its fiscal year-end on Jan. 29.... It expects the Staples.com Web business to lose $150m this year [but] the losses [to] decrease over time.... "We're not going to be Amazon-like...," siad CFO John Mahoney...referring to the Web retailer Amazon.com Inc., which lost $720m last year on sales of $1.64B....

3. [UPsizing #2]
   Filene's Basement to reopen 3 stores, by Chris Reidy, Boston Globe, C9.
   Filene's Basement, now a division of Ohio-based Value City Dept. Stores Inc., said it plans to reopen three stores in Washington, DC, today that it was forced to close [in Nov. - see story 11/13] after filing for bankruptcy protection. "We are delighted to be back in the District," said Basement chairman Sam Gerson. Based in Wellesley [Mass.] the Basement is now a 17-store chain.

4. [1 UNtakeover]
   Blackstone terminates agreement to buy Kroll-O'Gara, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   ...A private detective firm and maker of armored cars and security systems said yesterday that the private investment bank...Blackstone Group had terminated its $422m agreement to buy the company.... Shares of Kroll-O'Gara have lost 40% of their value since Nov., when Blackstone agreed to buy Kroll. Blackstone originally said it would pay...about $475m, for about 90% of Kroll....

• Greenspan: Job growth tied to skilled workers, AP via Boston Globe, E2.
  US policy makers and educators must respond to a rising demand for skilled workers by expanding training programs, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said....
  [Greenspan thinks this is going to happen by preaching about it? - Historically, the only way this has happened on an adequate scale is by removing so many labor hours from the job market that the private-sector employers snap out of their usual spoiled bratty attitude and implement on-the-job training on a massive and pervasive scale, as during World Wars I and II. The intelligent way to remove that many labor hours from the market is simply to cut the maximum workweek per person AND ENFORCE IT. And the flexible market-oriented way to do that is Timesizing.]

1. Washington braces for flood of globalization protesters, by Francis Clines, NYT, A5.
   ...Organizers [are trying] to extend the protest against global economics.... Seven demonstrators were arrested today. Among them were John Passacantando, the executive director of Ozone Action, and Brent Blackwelder, the president of *Friends of the Earth, who were arrested by Metropolitan Police officers when they refused to climb down from a truck near the World Bank HQ on Pennsylvania Avenue.... Using the truck as a makeshift stage, the heads of the two national environmental groups, along with about 50 people, gathered to protest the World Bank's financing of oil, gas and mining projects.
   [Since when is it illegal to speak from the top of a truck???]
   Under the umbrella title Mobilization for Global Justice, organizers are promising that thousands of protesters will come to Washington intent on a raft of causes with global economic implications, from famine to deforestation, political corruption to global warming. A planned week of teach-ins, legal rallies and street entertainment is to culminate April 16 and 17 when protesters vow to block..\..meetings of the World Bank and IMF.... In planning bus caravans, mass feeding operations and lessons in street protest, organizers are disavowing violence abut emphasizing their intention to build on the Seattle experience.... "The finance ministers and international bureaucrats who shape the world economy to make the rich richer and the poor poorer need to know that Seattle was not just a bump on their road to global [polarization]," the mobilization group is emphasizing on its Web site (*www.a16.org).

2. World Bank critics launch bond boycott, AP via Boston Globe, E2.
   ...hoping to deliver a potent economic punch to force changes in the Bank's treatment of poor nations.... The World Bank and IMF...argue that belt-tightening programs are needed to help stabilize their economies..\..
   [The poor nations should tighten their belts??? This is ridiculous on the face of it! The Bank doesn't want to mention diversion of loans to the 3rd-world rich (critics call this "3rd-world corruption") because that might bring up the grotesque income and wealth disparities in the 1st-world. It's the Chesterton "pan-utopian flaw."]
   Protesters believe that the Bank imposes a crushing debt on poor nations, making it impossible to spend money on social programs.
   [Protesters are still pretty fuzzy in their analyses. Spokesman Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard thinks the corruption objection to canceling 3rd-world debt is outweighed by the relief it would bring to ordinary people in the 3rd world. We think that there will be no substantial or sustainable relief for ordinary people anywhere in the world until they face the fact that the problem is at the top - the lack of a definition of fair share per person in terms not just of a lower limit but an upper limit. The lower limit is set by harsh reality - poverty and starvation. It is absolutely no challenge. The challenge is designing a dynamic and fair upper limit. Timesizing.com prototypes the upper limit in terms of employment and skills per person in the middle 3 phases ( Phase 2, Phase 3, Phase 4) of its 5-phase program.]

3. [UPsizing #1 - 1000 new jobs]
   IBM to hire 1,000 for database unit, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...this year and next to develop and sell database software, as the company, the world's No. 1 computer maker, tries to grab sales from the Oracle Corp. IBM will add more than 500 employees - more than 300 software engineers and 200 salespeople - for its database unit this year. It will recruit at least 500 more database workers in 2001.... IBM, based in Armonk [NY] now employs about 2,500 people in sales, marketing and development of database products..\..
   The hiring plans are part of a 5-year, $1B initiative the company began in mid-1998 and hopes will steal market share from No. 1 database-software maker Oracle.... Oracle, based in Redwood City, Calif., holds about 40% of the $9.7B database market, according to the most recent figures from IDC. IBM's share is less than half that size, about 18%....

4. [UPsizing #2 - unspecified new jobs]
   Office Depot, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...Delray Beach, Fla., the office supply chain, said it would slow its expansion in the U.S. [from ??] to about 100 stores a year for the next 5 years.

5. [UPsizing #3 - unspecified new jobs]
   Honda plans plant in England, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   Only weeks after BMW sold its Rover unit in Britain, causing thousands of layoffs, the Honda Motor Co. said it intended to build its new CR-V - compact recreational vehicle - 4-wheel-drive car at its plant in Swindon, England. The Japanese company said it planned to build 20,000 cars this fiscal year and hire a significant number of new employees.

• The Invisible Poor, letters to the editor, NY Times Magazine, 20.
  [Readers pan Fallows' shallow text but praise accompanying photos -]
  1. by Jessica Pitt of Oakland.
     When I saw the cover of your magazine, I looked forward to a discussion of poverty and inequality in this time of great affluence. However, I was disappointed. James Fallows gives a lengthy description of the rarified life of today's high-tech elite. His discussion of poverty reads like an afterthought. I wish he had given equal space to the varied routes into poverty and the political, economic and cultural barriers to moving out of it.

  2. by David Goldstein and Katherine O'Brien of San Francisco.
     The poor are invisible only to those who refuse to think about them, as any resident of San Francisco, with its conspicuous populations of dot-com professionals and homeless people, can well attest. The answer is not an article that ogles the wealth of the very rich but one that, like the haunting photographs that accompanied Fallows's text [March 19], demands that we open our eyes to individual human beings and take action.

  3. by Cheryl Sheinman of Golden Beach, Fla.
     Thanks to James Fallows for his article...and to Taryn Simon, Jeff Reidel, Brenda Ann Kenneally and Lauren Greenfield for the portraits titled "In the Shadow of Wealth." This "unusual social...separation between prosperous American and those still left out"...has created a...lack of community at both the local and national levels. The incentives to forge ahead with self-promotion at the expense of community has resulted in isolationism as well as violence, most disturbingly among our youth.

  4. by Andrea Elovson of Brooklyn.
     Your article manages to reinforce the invisibility of the poor by spending time psychoanalyzing those who are too busy and too rich to care about other people....
     [Again, America's split into those with money and no time, and those with time and no money.]

  5. by Marianne Schneider of Decatur, Ga.
     Did anyone else see the irony of your cover story and the placement of the advertisement on the inside front cover?... The expensively dressed man...next to the portrait of the [ill dressed] little girl...serves to underscore the headline "In the Shadow of Wealth."

  6. by Stacia Brown of Atlanta.
     While flipping through "The Invisible Poor," I found myself face to face with a full-page advertisement for "luxuriously comfortable" pashmina mattresses. My guess is that Carolyln Bieber, the pregnant homeless woman who died of a seizure two days after The Times took her photograph for its exposition of modern poverty, sure could have used that mattress.

  [Educational observation: 6 letters on this topic, and 6 women letter writers and only one male co-writer. Assuming that this is not merely a function of the Times' selectivity, women are definitely carrying the ball here in calling for action on the income gap and the splitting of America.  Phil Hyde's day-after-day experience on the campaign trail getting nomination signatures indicates that women are also doing more than their share in supporting democracy, in terms of getting more choices onto the ballot in Massachusetts.]

1. Executive to leave Millennium by midyear, by Ronald Rosenberg, Boston Globe, C1.
   Christopher K. Mirabelli, who formed two biotechnology companies, acquired a pair of struggling firms, and then sold his biggest company, LeukoSite Inc., to Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc. for $550.4m in stock, yesterday said he is stepping down to take some time off.
   "It's time for Chris Mirabelli to sit down and think what he wants to do for the next 10-20 years," said the 45-year-old Mirabelli, who plans to leave his current position as Millennium's president of pharmaceutical research and development by midyear....
   [Here's one guy who has felt the tug of mortality and had the chutzpa to hold up his hands and say, "Stop the hustle, I want some time."]

2. ["good, but..."]
   Job growth sets 4-year peak despite higher interest rates, by Richard Stevenson, NYT, B1.
   WASHINGTON - Despite 5 interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve in less than a year and the promise of more to come, the economy continued to barrel along in March...
   [If this is "barreling," how come we've got 4 downsizings today? How come wages are still flat? How come we're cutting Medicare and turning the mentally ill out onto the streets? How come we've got record incarceration? This may be "barreling" for the top brackets, but they're not the challenge.]
   ...generating more new jobs than it has in any month for more than four years, the government reported [yester]day....
   ["Good news, but..."
   • "But" #1: In the early 1990s, the government changed the way they counted employment so that the distinction between part-time and full-time was ignored and part-time jobs counted as the equivalent of full-time.
   • "But" #2: With inrushing cost-cutting work-saving technology and increasing numbers of human would-be workers continually changing the job market, new "productivity" (and accompanying jobs) is generally less urgently and more reluctantly demanded than older productivity and requires a harder sell (which elicits greater public irritation with advertising - as in the current e-commerce shake-out - greater hiring and firing swings, more uncertainty). Thus newer jobs are generally paid less than older jobs unless maximum worktime per person is reduced to keep the more urgently demanded jobs (and skills) spread across the whole increasing population (i.e., need-to-be work force).
   • "But" #3 - by announcing unspecified jobcuts, as in 3 cases today, employers keep employees insecure and diminish employees' bargaining power, wages - and their own (employers') markets.
   • "But" #4 - in Feb. only 8,617 upsizings were individually reported in the NY Times & Boston Globe - and included in our Year-To-Date (YTD) count of NYT&BG-traceable upsizings.]

3. Gtech, lottery systems maker, halts On-Point bid, Bloomberg via NYT, B3.
   The Gtech Holdings Corp., the No. 1 maker of lottery systems, yesterday called off its [January-agreed] $48.6m purchase of On-Point Technology Systems Inc. after On-Point said it would restate its 1997 and 1998 earnings....

1. Too many hours, editorial, Boston Globe, A18.
   At a time when American hospitals are struggling to reduce the toll of up to 100,000 accidental deaths that occur in their wards each year, it is a step backward for a hospital to require nurses to work 16-hour shifts. But that is exactly what is at issue in the nurses' strike at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester [Mass.].
   ...16-hour shifts take a toll on nurses caring for the more seriously ill patients that fill hospital beds these days. In its report late last year on the epidemic of medical errors in hospitals, the prestigious Institute of Medicine specifically recommends designing hospital jobs with attention to the effect that long hours and [heavy] work loads have on alertness.
   ...It is difficult to meet..\..the high professional standard that..\..the state Board of Registration in Nursing...believes nurses must maintain...and protect the safety of patients while working to exhaustion. Sixteen hours is too much.
   [No kidding. Is this really the year 2000, or are we reading a misplaced editorial from 1900? Regardless of having the most work-saving technology in the world and getting more of it every day, we Americans now work the longest hours in the world, longer even than workoholic Japan. We rush around trying to find childcare and nannies to bring up the children we no longer have time for. We agitate for government childcare facilities and subsidies so strangers can bring up our kids and foot the bill. Why are we having kids in the first place? On the whole worktime issue, we have turned ourselves into sado-masochists - American employers have become short-sighted quality-bashing sadists and American employees have become accommodating, self-duping, cheerleading, workoholic masochists, resentful that "sleep isn't optional." Why don't we just cut to the chase and repeal the Emancipation Proclamation? We clearly haven't a clue what technology is for - to make life easier for everyone.
   [Note that the strike was settled on 5/12/00, "Pact reached in strike of Worcester nurses," by Diane Lewis, Boston Globe, front page: "...The contract, hailed by the Mass. Nurses Assoc. as a 'huge victory,' limits mandatory overtime...to no more than 4 hours twice every 3 months or 8 times a year. The agreement also gives union members the right to refuse specific overtime assignments...."]

2. [UPsizing #1]
   Best Buy to open stores in Watertown, Dedham [Mass.], by Chris Reidy, Boston Globe, C7.
   ...A Minneapolis-based chain of consumer-electronics stores...has signed leases for 2 new stores in the Boston area.... Each store will employ about 100 workers....
   [- For a total of 200 new jobs.]

3. [UPsizing #2]
   Enron Corp., NYT, C4.
   ...Houston, the world's largest energy trading company, and Peoples Energy Corp., Chicago, said they planned to spend about $360m to build power plants in the Chicago area.
   [- With unspecified new jobs.]

4. [UPsizing #3]
   Nevada power plant set, NYT, C17.
   The Southern Co.'s Southern Energy Inc. unit said [yester]day that it planned to build a plant that will generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity in southern Nevada.... Southern Energy said it had entered an alliance with Apex Industrial Park Inc. to develop a 10,000-acre site north of Las Vegas, including the power generation plant and the recruiting of new industries to the site....
   [- With unspecified new jobs. Too bad this is all in the desert and we in the Northeast are being forced to subsidize cheap water for this ecological nightmare, including all the casino fountains of Vegas.]

5. [UPsizing #4]
   Tribe wins federal approval for Catskills casino, by Charles Bagli, NYT, A21.
   The federal Interior Dept. approved plans yesterday for a $500m casino to be operated by the St. Regis Mohawk Indian tribe in the Catskills, where local officials, hotel owners and many residents have long hoped that gambling might bring an economic revival to the depressed resort area once known as the Borscht belt. Under the proposal, 30 acres of land next to the Monticello Raceway in Sullivan County would be put in trust for the Mohawks for a casino complex....
   [- With unspecified new jobs. Great for the Mohawks, who sure deserve a payback for all the grief us Euros put them to, but we still applaud the Hopis for staying clear of this whole money-for-nothing gambling business.]

6. [UNtakeover #1]
   Mitchell Energy offers plan to stay independent, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...Mitchell, based in Woodlands, Tex., hired investment bankers in October to explore a possible sale or merger. The company now plans to combine its Class A and Class B stock into a single class in late June and buy back as many as 2.5m shares, or about 5% of the total outstanding [to discourage takeover and stay independent]....

7. [UNtakeover #2]
   Pixelpark abandons deal, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   The multimedia unit of the German media company Bertelsmann AG...abandoned an all-stock offer to acquire 2 Swedish companies - Cell Network and Mandator - after a drop in Pixelpark shares [forced its offer down] by almost $1B. On March 22, Pixelpark offered stock worth...$2.3B at the time for the 2 Internet consulting companies....

1. Human rights and corporate risk, pointer blowout (to article, C4), NYT, C1.
   *Amnesty International has issued a report [titled "Human Rights - Is It Any of Your Business?"] that describes the risk that multinational corporations face when they operate without regard for human rights.
   [Good, let's throw a quantitative lassoo around this and get it built into "business as usual." Here's the main article -]
   A call to put social issues on corporate agendas - Human rights group says companies are under greater scrutiny, by Alan Cowell, NYT, C4.
   ...Far more than in the past, the report argues, a multinational company's stance on human rights will be considered part of its performance.
   [Guess the spread of the "ethical investing" movement led to this.]
   And, it says, companies must be prepared to confront the governments that play host to them about issues ranging from political repression to child labor....
   [Great, but this can work the other way too, as the protests at the Seattle WTO meeting last fall indicated - companies can pressure governments to lower standards - labor standards, wage standards, etc. How do we ratchet this upwards and strengthen whichever side has the higher standards??  Meanwhile, we've got some classy clout into this initiative -]
   "To go without a policy on human rights is to go naked into a dangerous world"..\..said Sir Geoffrey Chandler of Amnesty International, the London-based human rights monitoring group that wrote the report along with the Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum, an advocacy organization supported by Prince Charles of Britain to promote socially responsible business practices....

2. [1 UPsizing]
   GTE Net division to hire 500 in state, change its name, by Ross Kerber, Boston Globe, E6.
   GTE Networking plans to hire 500 e-commerce consultants and engineers in Massachusetts this year to help develop its high-speed data network and offer services as part of a proposed spinout from GTE Corp. The division, with HQ in Burlington [Mass.] also plans to...change its name to Genuity Inc. as it becomes a publicly traded company.
   ["Good, but..."]
   The plan is part of a controversial bid by GTE and Bell Atlantic to gain government approvals for their $84B merger plan, which would create the country's biggest local phone company.
   Currently, the GTE unit employs about 2,000 people in Massachusetts and 3,500 in all. It includes most of the assets of the former Bolt Baranek & Newman ("BB&N") in Cambridge [Mass.] which GTE bought in 1997 for $616m....

3. [1 UNtakeover]
   2 big German banks call off $29B merger - A critical dispute [with Deutsche] over the sale of Dresdner's investment banking unit, by Edmund Andrews, NYT, C1.
   ...only a month after they had announced the deal.
   [Whatever. At least sanity has prevailed - for the moment.]

1. [Mexican rainforest champion financed -]
   Support for Mexican protester [Rodolfo Montiel], pointer blowout (to article by Sam Dillon, A4), NYT, A2.
   A Mexican who organized peasants to block roads after loggers [thankyou, Boise Cascade] began felling virgin forests around his village, and who was arrested, [tortured] and jailed [in Iguala], has been declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. The move provoked a flood of protest letters to the Mexican authorities. And a San Francisco foundation is to announce that it has awarded him a $125,000 environmental prize. [Said Rodolfo,] "The only award I've gotten from the government is prison, so I don't know quite what to think about this prize from foreigners.... Are you sure this doesn't involve some hidden punishment?" David Najera, a government spokesman, said Tuesday that Pres. Ernesto Zedillo was unaware of the details of Mr. Montiel's case. "But it worries us, and we'll focus on it now"....
   Mr. Montiel, who has only a first-grade education, sent letters to [a dozen government authorities] reporting that laws were being trampled, local rivers were drying up, and thousands of fish were dying.... Only one official ever responded, [accusing Montiel of being] "an ecological guerilla".... Shortly after [the roadblocks] in spring 1998, Boise Cascade pulled out of Mexico....
   [Mission accomplished - for the moment.]
   Soldiers...detained [Mr. Montiel and a friend] and beat them, held them for two days partly submerged in a river, forced them to hold marijuana plants and rifles as soldiers took photos, and later pressured them to sign a confession, Mr. Montiel said. [He] urinated blood for months after his torture, he said. Under cross-examination by Mr. Montiel's lawyers last fall, army officers contradicted themselves over details of his arrest. Days later, one of [his] lawyers, [Ms.] Digna Ochoa, was kidnapped and beaten by assailants in Mexico City. In October, intruders accosted Ms. Ochoa again in her home..\..
   [Sounds like Mexico has more than its share of cowardly punks who beat women and unarmed men.]
   David Najera, [the] government spokesman [added] that Mr. Zedillo's government has emphasized respect for the government....
   [Sounds like Zedillo has some cleaning-up to do in the army before he can earn "respect for the government." Meanwhile, sounds like Rodolfo Montiel is a real hero and here's hoping the 125 "Gs" will get him out of the pen and bulwark his cause.]

2. [Upsizing #1]
   Hewlett-Packard will build plant outside Nashville, AP via NYT, C4.
   [Go Carly! (Carleton Fiorina, HP's female CEO - see first goodnews story on 7/20/99).]
   The H-P Co., based in Palo Alto, Calif., said yesterday that it would build a new plant in LaVergne, Tenn. The plant is expected to bring as many as 1,600 jobs to Rutherford County outside Nashville by 2001. HP has more than 84,000 employees and operates in more than 120 countries.
   [Maybe the few big companies with lots of employees that tend to timesize their way through business bumps (like VW, Nucor & Lincoln Electric) instead of firing-hiring will preserve the only strong segments of the consumer base that survive, and will increasingly be able to force Chainsaw Dunlap & ilk to adopt employee-friendly policies in return for access to the strong consumer base that the good companies' employees represent.]

3. [Upsizing #2]
   DLJ Direct, NYT, C4.
   ...New York, the online brokerage arm of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Inc., said it would open a customer service center in Sandy City, Utah, and add 1,000 jobs.

4. [1 UNtakeover]
   Bain Capital drops plan to buy VDI MultiMedia, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   VDI MultiMedia, whose film editing and distribution services are used by Universal Studios and Disney, said Bain Capital Inc. had canceled a plan to acquire it for $200m.... VDI said Bain had canceled...because its senior lender would not finance the transaction, citing the amount of debt as too high....
   [Gee, somebody with some brains holding reining back the cowboys for a change. Whatever it takes!]

1. [Dutch do it again!]
   Cosmonauts to join Mir station today, AP via Boston Globe, A10.
   After 8 months of orbiting Earth unoccupied, the Mir is about to have some new tenants - two cosmonauts who are to blast off today on a mission to bring the troubled space station back to life.... The [Russian] government had planned to decommission Mir, but changed its plans after Amsterdam-based MirCorp agreed to pay up to $20m to lease commercial rights on the station.
   [Let's hear it for the Dutch. They gave us our first corporation (Dutch East India Co.) - tulips - windmills - and now they're saving Mir, our first space station. And they're leading the world in making "part" time work just as benefit-rich as "full" time so that we can flex up the workweek and achieve the dream of our grandparents - MORE FREE TIME and more pay and benefits. What the hey is technology for, anyway - just giving Bill Gates another $5-10B that he couldn't spend in 100 lifetimes and that he's just going to piddle away to already wealthy "charities" - taking coals to Newcastle?!
   [Additional good news on 5/09/00 in "The Mir space station is open for business again - literally; Corporations are investing millions to revive the Russian craft in a quest to "commercialize space," by Brian Whitmore, Boston Globe, E1. Additional mentions of Mir in good news for 7/02/99 and on our CEO classic page.]

2. U.S. judge says Microsoft violated antitrust laws with predatory behavior -... Discussions of remedy are to be undertaken in next few weeks, by Joel Brinkley, NYT, front page.
   [Bill Gates went from win-win, to win-lose, to win-kill capitalism. In the late 1970s, he was gracious enough to give CP/M first refusal of IBM's mega-opportunity offer but CP/M blew it. In the 1980s, he danced with IBM's open architecture while Apple closed their architecture and lost. But then in the 1990s, he tried to strangle NetScape with a chintzier, less secure browzer built right into his operating system (Windows). He took Microsoft from cooperative to competitive to anti-competitive monopolist. Time for a vacation, Bill. You're getting so mesmerized by the numbers that you're losing sight of the game. It's only a game, Bill - lighten up and get a life beyond Microsoft, - and let your Microserfs get one too, and the rest of high tech, and the rest of "full-time" America. Ninety-hour workweeks on a 40-hour salary? This is not the future. This is the past. Been there, done that. Never mind "sweatshops," this was called "slavery."]
   Judge builds legal argument aimed at surviving appeal, by Stephen Labaton, NYT, front page.
   [Microsoft lost on 23 of its 26 charges. As the front page of today's Boston Globe has it, "Microsoft placed an oppressive thumb on the scale of competitive fortune," quoting Judge Thos. Penfield Jackson.]

3. Term limits lead states' big fish to try for the big pond, Congress, by David Rosenbaum, NYT, front page.
   ...Why would [a nearly 2-decade long fixture in the Florida House] relinquish a position of stature...for a long shot at a seat on a back bench in Washington...? Two words: term limits. Like 17 other states, Florida placed a limit in the early 1990's on the number of years that legislators and many other state officials could serve. This year, in dozens of places from coast to coast, politicians...who are prohibited from running for re-election are campaigning instead for higher office against prominent incumbents. It is a consequence that few of the advocates foresaw when the term-limit measures were enacted. And it has created many compelling races for Congress....
   [And it is a Good Thing, because it's opening up access and participation and likely reducing voter cynicism and apathy, maybe not as much as campaign finance reform or issue-oriented referendums, but some, anyway.]

4. [1 UNtakeover]
   Shares fall as Staff Leasing drops sale option, Dow Jones via NYT, C4.
   ...The company said it planned to remain independent after evaluating buyout options and other alternatives.... Its board concluded that the company should remain independent and publicly traded.

1. Massachusetts to enforce strict gun safety laws, by Fox Butterfield, NYT, A12.
   The Mass. attorney general is to announce [today] that he will begin carrying out the strictest and most comprehensive handgun safety laws in the nation, banning all gun makers and dealers doing business in the state from selling handguns that do not have tamper-proof serial numbers, trigger locks and safety devices enabling a user to know whether the gun is loaded. The regulations, issued under Massachusetts's consumer protection laws, will also prohibit sale of all so-called Saturday night specials, cheap handguns favored by criminals. And they will require new devices that make it impossible for handguns to be fired by children under age 6....
   [None of which has any impact whatsoever on sportsmen/hunters.]

2. Americans have, and have not [stupid header], 4 letters to the editor, NYT, A24.
   • By Bill Eville of NYC - I found Paul Krugman's March 29 column, "Pursuing happiness"...shortsighted.... Krugman argues that although he is not totally enamored of the American system, it "still takes the prize." Yet I can't imagine what prize he is talking about. The gap between rich and poor continues to widen, and more people than ever are counted as part of the working poor, the unemployed and the imprisoned....

   • By Dan Solomon of Poughkeepsie - In "Pursuing happiness"..., there is an ingenious argument against the "living wage" movement's call for a higher minimum wage.... The unhappiness of people laid off as a result would outweigh the tiny increase in happiness gained by those still [employed at the higher minimum wage].
     [Actually the best argument against the living wage movement is that it only exists because of the failure of the minimum wage approach - and why should a higher minimum wage (ie: a "living wage") succeed where a lower minimum wage has failed? The front door (minimum wage approach) is the back door (ineffectual). But the side door (rationing labor access to the job market by enforcing overtime and cutting the workweek) has proven to effective wherever it has been tried (e.g., America 1790-1940, France 1996-2000, Lincoln Electric 1959-2000, Nucor Steel c.1985-2000, Volkswagen 1994....see our working models page) and has matched the terrific economic results of our default method of withdrawing labor hours from the job market, war (1917-18, 1941-45). Of course, there is a "slight" problem with the way war actually withdraws those labor hours (killing people).]

   • By Elliot Weininger of NYC - Before we [assume] that the hesitation of the French before the prospect of [savage capitalism] - and the associated willingness to tolerate a high unemployment rate - is simple irrationality..., we might note that the rate of child poverty in the United States, at about one in five, is...three times higher than that of France, at 1 in 15. [Perhaps] before we hand out any prizes to various countries' economies, we might wish to examine a wider selection of indicators.
     [Hear, hear. Krugman has strangely transformed from an interesting MIT badboy economist to a stooge of the status quo. Perhaps as may have happened to erstwhile-environmentalist Newt Gingrich, he tripped over an envelope of cash in large denominations while touring the plant of a big industrial polluter. At any rate, Paul Krugman has turned into Freddy Kruger, a nightmare in the main stream of cheerleading economics - both shortsighted and near-sighted. He became a columnist for the NYT and suddenly had nothing insightful to say.]

   • By Aaron Meislin of NYC - Paul Krugman overlooks the obvious when he observes that affluence does not correspond with happiness.
     [A rather old observation anyway - didn't Jesus remark that 'twas easier for a camel to go thru a needle's eye than for a rich man to (presumably achieve maximum happiness and) enter God's kingdom?]
     Many who achieve affluence are unhappy by nature and remain morose when the monetary goals are grasped.
     [And can we assume they have hard and fast monetary goals in the first place, or are these just sliding and asymptotic, so there's never really a payoff or celebration?]
     The acquisitive and the greedy often have underlying problems that relate both to generating wealth and to remaining dissatisfied and unhappy....
     [One suspects that Bill Gates, for example, can never let down his guard and "lighten up." Gotta keep competitive, gotta keep culling the winner's rewards, however superfluous, and overseeing the losers' punishments, however many the losers and regardless of the consideration that they could all be Windows customers - except they have no money. Bill's campaign against sharing started in the 1970s against the idea and innovation sharers in the HomeBrew computer club (i.e., everyone but him - he just took) as he dubbed them all thieves, never mind he would never have got to Square One without them and their idea sharing. Now his patent-everything, share-nothing approach (except for occasional showy, but small-percentage charity) has spread throughout the culture - full-page ads in both the NYT and the Boston Globe last week slammed socialism for "sharing too much." Socialism has a lot of problems but that isn't one of them. Once again, are we going to have to learn the hard way (depression and war) about the necessity of balancing the centripetal and centrifugal (ie: sharing) forces on the wealth of the nation?]

4/01/2000 glimmers of hope -

1. Maine is trying a donation-free campaign...Candidates try running without raising - An experiment in publicly financed political races, by Carey Goldberg, NYT, front page.
   ALFRED, Me... - Donald Gean...is a new breed of candidate, one of 115 running for the state Legislature who are taking part in a radical experiment in democracy that is making Maine look to some like a campaign finance Camelot. In exchange for Mr. Gean's agreement not to accept further donations, the state is giving him his entire war chest for his run for the state Senate here is southern Maine, at least $17,000 if he makes it to the general election.... Which means that Mr. Gean (pronounced Jean) also does not need to spend his time kowtowing to potential donors, "a bunch of folks you don't even want to talk to, let alone ask for help," he said. Now, he said, he feels free to concentrate on the 34,000 voters in his district. Mr. Gean, a Democrat, also like knowing that if he wins, no one will be able to ascribe his future decisions to the undue influence of contributors....
   One candidate, Linda Clark Howard of of Dover-Foxcroft, said she would most likely not have run without the Clean Election option, because in her poor district, "I would not have felt comfortable asking others to donate $250 that I didn't have myself." Another, Gabrielle Carboneau of West Gardiner, said she was doing much more door-to-door work in the time that would otherwise have gone to letters and calls to solicit money. A third, Glenn Cummings of Portland, said he found himself holding coffees simply for...constituents rather than [just] for potential donors.
   And a fourth candidate, Shlomit Auciello of Warren, said her family lived so financially "close to the bone" that she [too] could not have run without public financing.... "The majority of people in this country aren't wealthy," Ms. Auciello said, "and they're not the ones running for office."
   Not everyone has chosen the Clean Election option: those 115 candidates account for just under a third of the 374 candidates registered so far.... There [is] a lot of paperwork.... Candidates from major parties had to submit their "qualifying contributions" by March 16. These were a mass of $5 personal checks, 50 of them for House races and 150 for Senate races meant to show that the candidates were serious [together with] proof that the people who wrote the checks were registered voters in their districts. The candidates were also allowed to raise "seed money" totaling $500 for House races, $1,500 for Senate races....
   This is...a Beta-test election [and] an educational election. Many candidates...as they were collecting the $5 contributions...had to spend most of their time explaining the system to voters.... Maine passed its Clean Election referendum in 1996 [and] is leading the way for other states. Initiatives on this fall's ballot in Missouri and Oregon propose similar...measures; Arizona and Vermont have similar laws coming into effect this campaign season, though they still face legal challenges, and Massachusetts is scheduled to begin in 2002.... "[Maine's] is the most innovative public funding program that's ever been adopted in the United States"..\..noted Anthony Corrado, a campaign finance expert at Colby College.... "No other public funding program at the state level has ever provided full public funding in both the primaries and general election campaigns for statewide offices as well as the state Legislature." The Maine program, he said, could be applied to the federal system but it would be a question of political will....
   Perhaps most notable...are those who chose the Clean option even though they could almost surely have out-raised and outspent their opponents.... Ms. Carbonneau, a registered nurse who out-raised her opponent last time, said she went Clean because "that's what most people wanted," since 56% of them voted for it in a referendum. "I just have to be creative," she said....
   The changes may seem small at this point, concerning only campaigns for state Legislature, but ultimately, advocates say, the Clean Election program is meant to change all of political culture, taking away the special interests that wedged themselves between the voters and elected officials.... Candidates report that voters are pleased when they are reminded - or...often informed - of the system they voted in four years ago, which is getting its first test this election season. But the candidates who have chosen to run "clean" sound even more pleased, despite all the paperwork. "It was easy, it was fun, it was a walk in the park" compared with soliciting contributions, said Mr. Gean...who runs a local shelter system for the homeless. "Win or lose," he said, "I'll do this again."
   [So. Voters, fed up with "all talk" at the national level, are taking matters into their own hands at the state level via initiatives and referendums. Here is a marriage of the two main thrusts to break up the logjam in Congress and get the country into the 21st century - campaign finance reform and issue-oriented referendums. Ultimately we'll get money completely out of the political process and the media will do their job reporting even-handedly on candidates and issues, regarding them as sources of news and not reve-nues. There's a whiff of this already from North Carolina in a squib right beside the inside section of this article on Maine -]
   Free ads coming, by Kevin Sack, NYT, A8.
   Starting today and continuing through the month, a North Carolina broadcasting company will provide a total of 180 minutes of free broadcasting time on each of its 4 TV stations so candidates for governor can explain their positions on main issues....

2. [qiky]
   Farmers are scaling back genetically altered crops - Opposition abroad spurs a drop in acreage - Questions about whether farmers would be able to sell biotech crops on the foreign market, by David Barboza, NYT, A6.
   [...or on the American market if we could get them labelled!]

3. [1 UPsizing]
   U.P.S. agrees to create 4,000 full-time jobs by June 10, AP via NYT, B3.
   ...ending its dispute with the Teamsters union over a [contract which ended their] 1997 strike against UPS..\.. The contract...called for the company to create 2,000 jobs each year for 5 years. But the company said package volume was badly damaged by the strike, making the job-creation requirement invalid for 1997 and 1998. In February, an arbitrator ordered UPS to create 2000 full-time jobs for the first year of the contract. Now UPS has agreed to create another 2000 for the second year, according to papers filed Thursday. All 4,000 new jobs will be created by June 10 and offered to current part-time employees, a UPS spokesman, Norman Black, said yesterday.
   [But are jobs magically created by union contracts or court orders any better or less artificial than government makework? Far better to share and spread, on a flexible basis, the employment that arises naturally by the market forces of supply and demand, than to issue demands and expect sustainable human employment to be pulled out of a hat like a magician's rabbit.]

4. [UNtakeover #1]
   Veterinary Centers announces move to go private, Reuters via NYT, B3.
   An animal hospital network [which] runs 200 animal hospitals and 14 labs..\..said yesterday that it would go private in a $321m buyout. Under the terms of the deal...the company's stockholders will receive $15 in cash for each share owned.... Bob Antin, chairman and chief executive...and other members of management will retain a portion of their stock in the surviving company....

5. [UNtakeover #2]
   UAM sells unit to managers, Bloomberg via Boston Globe, C1.
   United Asset Management Corp. said it sold Colony Capital Management Inc., its wholly owned unit, to Colony's management [for undisclosed terms.] Atlanta-based Colony, which has about $500m under management, will remain focused on large-cap growth investing, serving institutional and high-net-worth clients....