Timesizing® Associates

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Good News, April 16-30, 2000
[Commentary] ©2000 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA (617) 623-8080

4/30/2000 glimmers of intelligence -

1. Young investors don't know a thing about surviving hard times, by Alan Lupo, Boston Globe, City 2.
   ...Now, wherever you go, you have to listen to other people yak endlessly about startups, dot.coms, the Nasdaq, the Dow, margins, bulls, bears, and whatnot. Everybody who isn't homeless has a broker down on State Street and its environs. Why do I keep thinking that this is maybe what life was like in the 1920s, maybe even as late as 1929?...

2. A call to ban lobbyists, letter to editor by George A. Parsons of Allston MA, Boston Globe, City 2.
   The average taxpayer has no idea of how much we are governed and taxed, not by our elected representatives, but by lobbyists. These people prowl the State House [and halls of Congress] day and night and have unlimited funds to wine and dine our elected reps to pass or defeat any legislation that affect their employers. Every business, utility, and profession has its own lobbyist to push its own agenda.
   If the legislative leaders were serious about campaign finance reform and other clean government issues, which they are not, the most effective measure would be to ban all lobbyists from the State House [and Congress]....

3. Tech patriarch sees need to keep genies bottled, by Charles Piller, Boston Globe, F3.
   Is the pursuit of knowledge sacrosanct? Or should technological developments that promise...benefits, yet may someday cause catastrophes, be halted?
   Such questions have traditionally been the province of academics. So when Bill Joy, chief scientist at Sun Microsystems adn one of the most revered figures in high tech recently suggested that scientists step back from genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology, eyes popped open.
   ...Joy's lengthy polemic [appeared] in Wired magazine....

4. The limits to globalism [and commercial mush], op ed by Robert Kuttner, Boston Globe, A19.
   ...In most of Europe, the national government mandates a consistent set of road signs for the motorist. France may have 800 different cheeses, but Paris mandates a uniform system of highway signs. Wherever you are, you can find your way to the next town by following the signs....
   In America, by contrast, the only consistent road signs are those on the interstate highway system, which are mandated by our national government. Local signs are a patchwork mess. In Boston, the signs might as well read: "If you're not from here, the hell with you." They are a jumble of sizes, shapes, and criteria. Sometimes street corners have signs, sometimes not. Sometimes they bother to direct you to major arteries, often not....
   Our national government doesn't mandate consistent rules for something as basic as road signs because that would violate national sovereignty, something Americans think they zealously guard. Yet..\..which makes more sense: 800 cheeses and a coherent set of highway signs, or 800 kinds of road signs and Velveeta?... More than any other nation in the world, regional [differences] in America [are] giving way to an indistinguishable commercial mush. Wake up groggy in the local Motel Six, flanked by Burger King and the Gap, and you won't know whether you're on the outskirts of Tampa, Minneapolis, or Pocatello. We think we value local autonomy, but we have it backwards. Only a handful of localities, such as Portland, Ore., and Cape Cod, have faced down developers and insisted on stringent planning and zoning....
   Americans would have more liberty and autonomy if we [provided] localities with better tools to...housebreak national and international corporations \and\ had national policies for much of what is [now] considered local - [and not only road signs but] health care and public school funding come to mind....
   [We seem to recall that curbing the big corporations was the focus of Ralph Nader's presidential platform when he visited Cambridge, Mass. a few weeks ago.]
5. [1 weekend UNtakeover]
   Dime, Hudson United cancel their $1.5B merger, Reuters via Boston Globe, F9.
   ...and Dime said it would begin exploring strategic alternatives. The [Sept/99] deal, which initially had not been well-received by Dime shareholders, came under intense pressure last month when North Fork Bancorp launched a $1.89B...bid for Dime [which] Dime said...was financially inadequate and would result in massive layoffs and branch closings....
   [Hey, here's a bank that's at least talkin' the talk of avoiding layoffs when targeted for takeover by a bigger bank, but what would have been the layoff backwash of their just-scuttled takeover of Hudson United?]

• [1 UPsizing - 1000 new jobs]
  NCR says it will add around 1,000 employees this year, Bloomberg via NYT, B3.
  ...A computer and software company and the No. 1 maker of automated teller machines [ATMs] said yesterday that it would add about 1,000 employees in 2000, expanding its work force 3%.
  [Great, but for those of you who still think "technology creates more jobs than it destroys," this additional thousand jobs hardly compares with the 95,000 layoffs annually since 1995 in the banking industry, where ATMs are the major distinctive innovation. In fact, they don't even offset the 1500 jobs NCR cut in October 10/26/1999.]
  NCR, which has 32,000 employees, plans to hire a total of about 4,000 people [over how many years? - ed.], accounting for normal attrition. Most of the new employees will install and run large databases and maintain ATMs. The rest will aid NCR in marketing and selling products. NCR is shedding its money-losing personal computer [PC] business to focus more on ATMs and so-called data warehouses, which collect information on a company's customers. The hirings come after NCR cut 1,500 jobs in October as it began phasing out [its] PC business.

1. [Great Idea dept. -]
   All our daughters, letter to editor by Lorraine Dittko of Manorville NY, NYT, A20.
   Re "Take Your Feminism to Work Day," by Lisa Belkin (Life's Work column, April 26):
   Taking our daughters to work sounds wonderful, but our daughters are well aware of the benefits of women's participation in the work force since they have us as role models [our italics - ed.].
   I think a more effective idea would be to take...to work...the daughters of women who do not work and are on public assistance because of physical abuse, drug abuse or because their mothers never joined the work force.
   [...probably because we do not make it real easy to acquire marketable skills.]
   We could show these young girls that through education, planned parenthood and effort, they can escape generations of poverty and despair....
   [...especially if we use our rising levels of high - and still rising - technology to cut working hours instead of downsizing. If our technology is so great - and our economy so booming - how come we still have a 1940-era standard workweek? And since that's been unenforced for the last 30 years, many of us are now working megahours that haven't been seen since the 1800s. Our parents and grandparents gave us the weekend. They fought for the 40-hour week and now we're throwing it away. We've got the longest workweek in the developed world, even longer than Japan, who invented the term "karoshi" (death by overwork). And meanwhile we've got record homelessness and incarceration because nobody wants to train any more - they just want more visas to bring pretrained people in from India. We should have finished passing the 30-hour workweek bill in 1933 when we'd got it through the Senate. It was hardly a nice flexible gradual market-oriented overtime-to-training-converting underemployment-tied approach like Timesizing, but at least we could have been tinkering in the right garage for the last 60 years instead of totally wasting our time on individual welfare, corporate welfare, makework and workfare bandaids.]

2. National Park Service bans snowmobile use in most national parks, Wall St. Journal, B4.

3. [1 UPsizing]
   Corning to add 300 jobs, double production at Bedford [Mass.] plant, by Jerry Ackerman, Boston Globe, E3.
   Corning Inc., which paid $1.8B [on 11/15/99] to buy Massachusetts-based Oak Industries Inc. [and assigned it to its photonic technologies division], yesterday said it plans to double production and add more than 300 jobs at Oak's Lasertron plant in Bedford....
   [Here's an unusual case where a takeover has been followed by an upsizing rather than a downsizing.]
   Worldwide demand for photonic devices is expected to grow 50% annually through 2002. "This expansion will allow us to better meet the needs of our customers as they strive to keep up with demand for additional bandwidth," [said the general mgr of Corning's photonic devices div.].... Acknowledging the tight Mass. labor market, Corning hopes to lure many new workers from competitors.
   [That's tight skills market, not labor market. Like everywhere else in the world, we've got lots of surplus labor in terms of unskilled, mis-skilled, and skilled but over-50 job candidates, not to mention our high homeless and incarcerated population. And notice that nobody is yet mentioning training. It's still "Let somebody else do it."]
   ..\..Corning, based in upstate New York, said it will spend $45m on new production lines to build pump lasers, used in optical amplifiers that increase the amount of light that can be pushed through fiber-optic communications lines. Fiber optics form the backbone of the growing worldwide network for carrying voice and video transmissions as well as rapidly escalating volumes of Internet data.
   Lasertron was...the first of more than $5B worth of recent [Corning] telecomms-related acquisitions. The largest of these would be the $2.1B takeover of NetOptix Corp. of Sturbridge [Mass.] which makes filters that divide light into multiple beams, increasing the number of transmissions that can move through each fiber.... Corning [on 4/25/2000] said it will pay $150m...to [expand from 20 to 100%] control of NZ Applied Technologies Corp. of Woburn [Mass.], which makes components for computers that monitor fiber-optic network operations.... Corning [expanded the percentage] of its $4.7B...1999 revenue [derived] from telecomms-related sales [from 62 to] 66% during 1Q00. Corning shares rose $9.19 to close at $189.93 yesterday...up 83% this year and 324% since 1/1/99.

4. [UNtakeover #1]
   Coachmen [Industries] rejects $289m bid by Thor Industries, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   ...The maker of recreational vehicles and modular homes said yesterday that its directors had unanimously rejected an unsolicited $289.6m takeover bid by a competitor, Thor.... Coachmen said the $18-a-share offer from Thor was "inadequate and does not reflect the inherent value of Coachmen nor the significant growth potential of the company's core RV and modular housing business."
   [Absolutely, especially as more and more people can only afford a trailer to live in.]

5. [UNtakeover #2]
   Landry's Seafood [Restaurants] ends plan to buy [Minn.-based] Rainforest Cafe, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...The No. 2 operator of casual seafood restaurants said...it had ended [$125m purchase] plans...after Rainforest shareholders did not approve the sale.... The majority of Rainforest's voting shareholders supported the sale, but Minnesota law requires a majority of all shareholders. The State of Wisconsin Investment Board, which Rainforest previously described as a "dissident shareholder," opposed the acquisition.... Landry's shares rose 56.25 cents yesterday to $8.50 on the NYSE.
   [Don't tell us shareholders are starting to get smart?! Another story recently that suggests the same surprising development is yesterday's (4/27) "Raytheon leadership rebuffed - Votes on measures seen reflecting ire of shareholders," by Ross Kerber, Boston Globe, C1. That case, however, was in the takeover, not untakeover, direction, as shareholders moved to get rid of dumb & downsizing Raytheon executives & directors: "Shareholders [passed] nonbinding resolutions to soften antitakeover provisions and elect all directors annually. The measures, opposed by the Lexington [Mass.] defense contractor's board, underscored the frustration of many Raytheon stock owners after several quarters of diminished profits and sinking share prices.... Resolution sponsors said [CEO Daniel] Burnham and other top executives must be held more accountable following thousands of layoffs and other cost-cutting steps the company has taken in recent years...." So here's a case where a takeover may actually reduce layoffs, not increase them, especially if the new management team takes a few lessons from profitable survivors like Nucor Steel, Lincoln Electric and VW. And considering the way the clowns at Raytheon have been steering - despite state taxbreaks for not downsizing - they could hardly have had more layoffs if Chainsaw Dunlap himself had come out of dis-grace to deliver the coups de grace.]

6. [UNtakeover #3]
   Staffmark Inc., NYT, C4.
   ...Fayetteville, Ark., a staffing and consulting company, said it planned to spin off Robert Walters, London, an accounting and financial consulting unit.

1. The deals are off, pointer blowout (to C19), Boston Globe, C1.
   After brisk deal-making in the first quarter, buying and selling of companies has all but come to a halt, say SG Cowen Securities' chief of mergers and acquisitions [Benjamin Howe].
   Nasdaq's nose dive slowing pace of mergers, by Beth Healy, Boston Globe, C19.
   ...People are nervous, [Howe] says. Many buyers have seen their stocks wither in a month's time, and potential sellers worry they won't fetch top dollar in a volatile market. Howe, a veteran of high-tech IPO underwriting at Montgomery Securities [says] "The fundamentals are a problem at a lot of these companies, and the market has allowed that.... I think we're coming back to a more reasonable level"....

2. $69 billion illusion, letter to editor by Howard Tomb of Brooklyn, NYT, A30.
   Even if the U.S. built a defense system that could identify and shoot down missiles (front page, April 26), our adversaries could work around it by delivering bombs by plane, boat or truck. Our borders are porous. Putting bars on our windows won't reduce the probability of intruders if our doors are wide open. Surely we can think of a better way to spend $60B.
   [Well, we disagree that when you're in a conventional war your borders are porous. But a lot of the rationalization for this wacky "just won't stay dead" Star Wars missile defense boondoggle is protection against threats from rogue states, and we won't necessarily know who or where they are or when the threat is worst. So we'll probably be cruising along with open borders just as Howard visualizes (the story a few days ago about quality marijuana from Canada is a case in point) and his argument stands. As for a better way to spend $60B, how about paying down the national debt or refunding Medicare?! If this is such a riproarin' "economic boom," why are ordinary people's lives deteriorating?]

3. Good causes make bad law - The problem with laws protecting women and gays, op ed by Charles Fried (Harvard law prof and former Solicitor General), NYT, A31.
   ...The federal government can "tax and spend for the general welfare," regulate interstate commerce and enforce constitutional amendments, but is has no power to regulate just because something seems to need regulating. That is the job of the states.
   The [federal] Violence Against Women Act, then, is plainly unconstitutional [since it's a] contest...about states' sovereignty..\.. The act's [supporters] however...resort to [the argument] that the law is a regulation of interstate commerce [because] violence against women lowers their earning power, discourages them from traveling between states and subtracts them from the national labor force....
   If that argument were accepted, then almost any activity would also be susceptible to federal regulation. A street-corner mugging, for example, could become grounds for a federal lawsuit [regardless of states' sovereignty].
   The Boy Scouts case \re\ whether the scouts can ban gay troop leaders... is also about the basic structure of our government...but [it's] about the sovereignty of the individual [and the federal] First Amendment's freedom...of association.... \So when the state-level\ New Jersey Supreme Court ruled last year that the state law forbidding discrimination against homosexuals prevents the Boy Scouts from denying a leadership position to an openly gay man [it too is unconstitutional. The scouts' argument clarifies this. They] argue that the state and federal governments cannot coerce their choice of leaders.... [A] fundamental principle of individual liberty [is] the right to join with others in associations, expressing personal values.... [This is] as much a part of individual liberty as the right to abortion. It cannot be up to government, at any level, to decide which values individuals may choose to join together to express. Just as the Nazis were rightly allowed to march in Skokie, Ill., and just as the organizers of the St. Patrick's Day parade in Boston were allowed to exclude marchers carrying gay-pride banners, so the scouts should be allowed to inculcate their values, however much we may disapprove.
   There are 2 arguments being used against the Boy Scouts.... [They -]
   1. are being compared to a Junior Chamber of Commerce [that's a stretch - ed.], which the Supreme Court has said is a commercial association and there forbidden from excluding women
   2. are said not to be really a private group, but, because of their numbers, a state actor and susceptible to regulation as such
   Both arguments are unacceptable. By this logic, any large organization could be characterized as commercial and as involved with government in some way or another. Indeed, these same claims could easily be made on behalf of gay or women candidates for the priesthood. Or for that matter, for male leaders in the National Organization for Women.
   Our legal principles might lead us to outcomes that we don't always desire. But we must trust that our society is [diverse] enough that we need not sacrifice our constitutional principles, which [encourage our harmonious diversification,] for the sake of gratifying pronouncements that may come back to [homogenize] us.
   [Some groups are always going to be exclusive. In a way, that's the nature of groups. So gays, why not start your own scouts? And women, if violence against you needs special reinforcement over and above violence against anybody, why not target states with the biggest incidence? (These questions are not just rhetorical and here is our email address for answers.)]

4. [1 UNtakeover]
   Eaton [Corp., an industrial equipment maker,] plans spinoff of semiconductor equipment unit, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   ...by year-end.... Eaton said an [IPO] of a minority stake of Eaton Semiconductor Equipment Inc., based in Beverly, Mass., would occur in late June.... An analyst at Sanford C. Berstein & Co....expects [it] to have a market capitalization of $2.5-3B. At yesterday's close...the entire company is worth more than $6.1B..\.. It said it would evaluate alternatives for disposing of its remaining [majority] stake [in the spinoff]....

1. ["good, but..."]
   New rules to require truckers get more rest, AP via Boston Globe, D2.
   Truck drivers would have to rest longer between shifts under new rules being developed to reduce the number of accidents caused by exhaustion.... There were 5,302 people killed in truck-related accidents in 1998, a slight drop from 1997. The National Highway Safety Administration estimated that tired truckers accounted for about 3% of the fatalities, or 159 deaths..\..
   But a Transportation Dept. proposal also was expected to allow work shifts to last longer than now permitted, establishing periods of 12 hours on and 12 hours off. Current rules permit 10-hour shifts with 8 hours off in between. Safety advocates expressed concern that longer work periods would increase the danger of drowsy drivers. And industry promptly opposed the...rules, contending that they would require thousands of additional trucks and drivers to meet transportation needs....
   [So their point would be...?  We thought the obvious point of long-distance trucking was private-sector makework.  Have they forgotten T-R-A-I-N-S? ]

2. Germany: autobahn slowdown, by Victor Homola, NYT, A8.
   Environmental Minister Jurgin Trittin called for stricter enforcement of speed limits on autobahns to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions. He also wants a speed limit imposed on the 25% of the network not now subject to any limit at all. Mr. Trittin's Green Party has long demanded a 60-mph limit, saying it was one way of meeting pollution goals set in the 1997 Kyoto accord on global warming.

3. Council backs law that pets from stores be neutered, by Thomas Lueck, NYT, A24.
   The [NY] City Council yesterday approved new requirements that all dogs and cats adopted from shelters or purchased from pet stores be spayed or neutered, saying the measure was needed to reduce the number of strays.... Advocates say the requirements...are directed mainly at pet shops, because all the city's major shelters and adoption agencies have established policies of sterilizing the animals that they take in..\.. "Our shelters are overwhelmed," said Peter F. Vallone, the City Council speaker, who is one of the bill's sponsors. "This is necessary, humane legislation"....

1. U.S. said to want Microsoft broken into 2 companies - A plan in antitrust case - One unit would take Windows, while competing[?] concern would get what's left, by Brinkley and Lohr, A1.
   The Justice Dept. intends to ask a federal judge this week to break Microsoft into two companies to bring about competition in the software industry, officials and others aware of the government's deliberations said today....
   [Now, Windows vs. Linux would be competition. Windows vs. "what's left" is still complementation.]

2. Justices enter debate on primary format - California's system shifts control away from the political parties - Allowing voters to choose from the full range of candidates, by Linda Greenhouse, NYT, A19.
   WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court wrestled [yester]day with a civics question of constitutional [proportions] and major practical implications: do the political parties or the electorate as a whole control the nominating process? At issue was California's so-called blanket primary, in which voters of all party affiliations receive the same ballot on which they can make any set of choices, without regard to party.... The system was adopted as a voter initiative, Prop. 198, in 1996 over the official opposition of the political parties in California but with support at the polls from a majority of Democratic, Republican, and independent voters....
   [Fuller power to the people creeps ahead, despite squeals of incumbent "representatives." And so does referendum democracy.]

3. [University or Oregon willing to sacrifice for its principles -]
   Nike's chief cancels a gift over monitor of sweatshops, by Steven Greenhouse [nepotism with Linda Greenhouse, above??], NYT, A12.
   The chairman of Nike, Phil Knight, will not make a planned $30m contribution to help his alma mater, the University of Oregon, renovate its athletic stadium because of the university's decision to join an anti-sweatshop group...the Workers Rights Consortium, a student-backed monitoring group....
   ["You can take this 'gift' and shove it!" A letter to the editor on 5/22/00 "Protesting sweatshops..." by Scott Clair of Chicago, Boston Globe, A22, puts the case succinctly: "The ensuing withdrawal by Phil Knight, Nike's CEO, of a $30m contribution was an I'll-take-my-ball-and-go-home" reaction to an important issue."]

4. A northern border menace [or convenience] - Boom in marijuana trafficking mars [or spices] Canada's image, by Colin Nickerson, Boston Globe, front page.

1. 4/24 Pope notes 'cries of pain' and calls for justice, by Alessandra Stanley, NYT, A8.
   ROME - Asking for a "more just and mutually supportive" world, Pope John Paul II celebrated Easter Mass [yester]day in St. Peter's Square before close to 150,000 people.... He said that the "blind egoism of the few" should not be allowed to prevail over "the cries of pain of the many, reducing entire peoples to conditions of degrading misery"....
   [In economic design terms, the "blind egoism of the few" is really the blindness of all to the necessary role of upper limits in human progress. Human progress can be seen as a series of increasingly flexible and enforceable definitions of "fair share per person." It is a series of improving answers to Chesterton's pan-utopian flaw - the assumption that no one will want more than his share (and that everyone will know what it is in the first place). We've had monogamy (one man, one woman), universal suffrage (one adult, one vote), traffic lights (one direction, one turn at right-of-way) and countless other cases of sharing in the modern world - all of which we choose to ignore in our current "nobody's gonna tell ME when to stop!" attitude. In the past, we've always shared on a point value (one-one).
   [Now we, the self-proclaimed "intelligent" life-forms in this solar system, are groping toward sharing on a range of values. A range is now necessary for greater flexibility. A range of values needs both a lower and an upper limit. We've defined a lower limit on income per person (the federal poverty rate) but we don't link it to any upper limit and we don't enforce it. As the Pope points out, this means that human progress has essentially stopped. We have the cosmetic progress of increasing technological whizbang but real progress not at all. Bill Gates has $70-100B and wants to give charity, but charity is discretionary, which means unsystematic, unreliable and, the watchword for the ecological age, unsustainable.
   [To get an enforceable definition of share per person, we need to completely define it. To completely define a share range per person, we need an upper limit as well as a lower one. The lower limit is not the challenge - the poor are always so close to zero, starvation and death. The challenge is defining the upper limit.
   [There are numerous competing candidate-dimensions for our first serious attempt at defining an agreeable and enforceable upper limit or cap on the concentration of value per person. We've mentioned one, income. There's also wealth. There's also credit and debt, and payments per week or per month.
   [But all these money-based dimensions suffer from the same problem as an initial area of cap-setting. If you take money away from someone, it's not obvious what, if anything, you're giving back. There is, however, a candidate-dimension that does not have this problem. It is employment. If you set a cap on employment per person, and take some away from someone, you're necessarily giving back leisure or free time.
   [That's why Timesizing.com focuses on employment as the dimensions for initiating serious cap-setting and sharing. If we can't share work, we can't sustainably share any of the money dimensions - income, payments, wealth, debt, or credit. [Sharing work is the easiest place to start. We can set up a system in that dimension, debug it, and extend it to the other dimensions one by one as our expectations, sensitivities, and self-respect as human beings rise. We at Timesizing.com challenge anyone to come up with a more flexible, market-oriented, enforceable employment-sharing design than we have. Check it out. It's the start of the 3rd millennium. Isn't it time we humanoids solved the most basic of our ongoing problems?]

2. 4/23 Academe meets the current realities of shrinking bargaining power -
   • Just another job?, by David Warsh, Boston Globe, G1.
     The drive to unionize higher education is coming to a boil. The United Auto Workers [UAW] last week called a daylong strike at 8 campuses in Calif. despite ongoing contract negotiations.
     [Doctors and lawyers stooping to advertise??! Academics stooping to unionize??! "How are the mighty fallen in the midst of their..." arrogance!]
     And on Tuesday an election at New York University [NYU] will determine whether the UAW will represent graduate assistants there.
     [David could also have mentioned the graduate teaching assistants at Yale, who are featured in David Abel's "Yale teaching assistants see hope in NLRB ruling," on page B1 in today's Globe (see story below).]
     It will be the first-ever union election [among graduate student assistants] at a private university - and perhaps the starting gun for many more organizing attempts. Union representation of graduate [assistants] has become common enough at public universities in the U.S. It exists in at least 10 state systems, including Calif., N.Y., and Mass., but state statutes considerably limit the scope of collective bargaining.
     The NYU election is the first to proceed under federal law, which could insert the UAW as a 3rd party into every potential issue of academic judgment that exists between students and their professors - from grades to assignments to recommendations.
     [How so? Graduate assistantships are one thing. Graduate studies are quite another.]
     Whatever happens next, the NYU episode will be a big testing point for the US system of higher education. Research universities are not just powerful engines of growth, as competitive as any American industry. They are an important source of domestic values and self-imagery as well.
     [Hey, maybe that's where our "haves and have-nots" social split has come from. Professors now routinely use graduate assistants for research, steal their ideas, and credit them not at all or maybe in a preface - if they're lucky. Let's get some democracy into our supposedly enlightened universities and maybe it will spread into our corporations and our economy at large. Here's another story today about this issue -]

   • Yale teaching assistants see hope in NLRB ruling, by David Abel, Boston Globe, B1.
     NEW HAVEN - For a decade, Yale University administrators have..resisted graduate teaching assistants' campaign to form a union, arguing their long hours for low pay is an integral part of their education....
     [So we're conditioning our young people to compliantly take their places in the "new" economy dba Sweatshop America?]
     Until 3 weeks ago, Yale seemed destined to by the test case for whether teaching assistants [TAs] at private institutions could organize themselves into a union. But then the National Labor Relations Board ruled that graduate teaching assistants at New York University are employees and should be allowed to negotiate contracts with the school's administration. Now...Yale graduate students...are plotting to turn the NYU decision to their advantage....
     To the graduate students at Yale, there are countless reasons why they are seeking a union.... In early Feb...two graduate students teaching part of a course called "Women in America" noticed they were paid significantly less than they had agreed on with the class's professor. When they confronted university officials, they were told: "That's the way it goes. Sorry." ...The university later reimbursed the TAs and officials shrugged it off as a bureaucratic error. Graduate student leaders believe it was...a simply change in payment policy that left the assistants out of the decision loop....
     Many [TAs] at Yale argue that [many] of their duties have little to do with an apprentice-style education.... "...We are doing things that we didn't come here to do," \said\ Marco Roth...a graduate student in comparative literature.... "It's not part of our training. What we are doing is filling holes for the university"..\.. [TAs] believe growing university endowments such as Yale's $7 billion could be used to offset their paltry compensation, which leaves many of them hovering close to or below the poverty line....
     Graduate students...point to a 1999 study of 299 professors at 5 universities with TA union contracts. The joint Tufts University-University of Wisconsin survey found that 90% of faculty felt the collective bargaining process had no influence on their relationship with graduate students \at\ public universities, which unlike private institutions...have long \had TA\ unions....
     The only reason Yale's grad students recently won health benefits [says Amy Ciaschini, a grad student in psychology and cochairwoman of the graduate employees organization] was because of the organization's constant pressure on the administration. "It comes down to this: Students need a way to voice their opinions and set their conditions.... It's only as a legitimate union that we have enough power and credibility to set down and negotiate a contract."
     [Certainly the power gradient between professors and students is steep, and unhealthy. Professors are such high and mighty know-it-all's, while students are usually young, impressionable and so, sooo vulnerable and powerless. Very unmutual and unhealthy. And this model, constantly injecting young humans into the job market whose concept of reality has been colored by their "higher education" into an almost master-slave power gradient, may be one of the really big obstacles to the emergence of economic democracy.]

1. French output rises, Bloomberg via NYT, B3.
   French industrial production rebounded in Feb. after 2 months of decline as companies geared up to meet rising sales at home and abroad. Production rose 1.1%, after falling a revised 0.2 in January....
   [Note the subtle attempt to belittle the French achievement here. This last sentence should read, "Production leaped 1.1% after slipping a revised 0.2% in January." After all, 1.1% is a lot more than 0.2%.]
   Economists had expected an increase of just 0.6%. Output for the 3 months ended Feb. [was up] 3.8% from the year-earlier period.
   [France may be starting to experience the bump in output that often follows a cut in working hours due to better-rested employees applying more strategic prioritization to their work.]

2. The Earth Day challenge, editorial, NYT, A26.
   ...On...the first Earth Day...in 1970,
   • some American rivers were so polluted with chemicals that they were fire hazards.
   • Big cities were choked in smog, toxic wastes leached freely into the land, and
   • bird and fish species were disappearing..\..
   Today, on the 30th anniversary of the first Earth Day...with the creation of
   • the National Environmental Policy Act,
   • the Clean Air Act,
   • the Endangered Species Act and
   • the Environmental Protection Agency,
   a great deal has been achieved to reverse decades of environmental degradation. \Now\ the world must begin tackling the less visible threat of global warming, an issue largely unknown 30 years ago....
   [Not to mention the even more threatening and less visible issue of the global technological employment gap - technological displacement disincentivizing training on one hand and technological employment concentration and megahours on the other hand - all the more threatening and less visible because TPTB (the powers that be) always have short-term self-interest in overlooking such things - though their long-term self-interest is overwhelmingly in acknowledging them and solving them - through some form of "timesizing."]

3. Russia is putting pressure on U.S. over arms pacts - Ratifies test ban treaty - Recent moves by Putin leave Clinton in political squeeze on antimissile defense, by Patrick Tyler, NYT, front page.
   MOSCOW - In an unusual display of political unity, the Russian Parliament [yester]day handed President-elect Vladimir V. Putin his 3rd overwhelming vote in a week ratifying a major arms control accord. The vote set the stage for a diplomatic campaign to put the United States on the defensive in nuclear disarmament talks. By a vote of 298 to 74, the lower house of Parliament ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that the United States Senate rejected last October....
   [Shame, shame. Clean out the U.S. Senate!  Maybe now that Putin, portraying himself as a regional war hawk in Chechnya, has pushed through all these global peace measures, he can lighten up on Chechnya.]

4. [1 UNtakeover]
   Baan to split off unit, Dow Jones via NYT, B3.
   A troubled Dutch software maker...expects to complete plans for a separate stock listing of its Aurum unit by the end of Q2.... Baan is planning to list Aurum, its customer relation management software unit, as part of its effort to restructure and generate cash....

1. The protest in a global village, letter to editor by Prof. Joseph Persky of U-Ill/Chicago, NYT, A24.
   ...The struggle has always been about the extension of democracy from the political sphere to the economic sphere.
   [Now who was it that was always talking about economic democracy? Wasn't it Jane Fonda's first hubby, Tom Hayden? Anyway, we just (7/23/2004 at Lorem Ipsum Books, Inman Sq, Cambridge MA) found a book of that title by Martin Carnoy & Derek Shearer, "Economic Democracy: The Challenge of the 1980s" (M.E. Sharpe: White Plains NY, 1980).]
   For starters, economic democracy means effective representation at the workplace. More broadly, it requires a system of world government that can enforce democratically arrived-at principles of human rights, workers' rights and social security....
   [Review: What good is democracy? It's about feedback and diversity, both key ingredients in variability and adaptibility, dba long-term survivability. And it's been hard throughout history to get economic democracy when ordinary people are a surplus commodity in the job market. It's been easy to get economic democracy when ordinary people are in short supply in the job market. This unusual situation only happens during and after plagues (e.g., Black Death, 1348) and wars (e.g., World Wars I and II) - and cuts in the workweek (e.g., every US cut 1776-1940 and France's recent cut from 39 to 35 hrs/wk). This last method is the intelligent one. We call it Timesizing.]

2. The protest in a global village, letter to editor by William Kessler of Seattle, NYT, A24.
   Though Paul Krugman (column, April 19) lauds the World Bank, the pre-eminent fact about global capitalism today is the growth of inequality: a few new millionaires but also many new millions crowding into the slums of Sao Paulo, Cairo, Jakarta and Mexico City, driven off their land by bank-financed export agriculture schemes.
   And [vs.] David Frum (Op-Ed, April 19)..., socialized medicine is alive and much healthier in Canada and much of Europe than our insurance-company-run system.
   [Suffice it to say neither system is perfect, but while we work on the problems, millions of us are uninsured and while Canada and Europe work on the problems, every Canadian and European is insured. Question - Who's going to better survive a rogue epidemic?]
   Mr. Krugman's "Seattle Man" may not have a complete blueprint for a better society...
   [You can always quibble that a blueprint is not "complete" - but Timesizing.com has a core blueprint that in its five phases, deals dynamically with every major variable from unemployment, inflation and market forces, to continuous training, incentive, interest rates, imports, immigration and births.]
   ...but the evident changes in emphasis at the World Bank-IMF meeting are already a victory that would not have happened without the protests. 4/20/2000 glimmers of hope -
   1. Senate passes measure shielding Colorado land, AP via NYT, A15.
      [We're starting to notice that a lot of these progressive stories seem to be carried on AP.  Hm.  Maybe they deserve a medal or something.]
      DENVER - The U.S. Senate has approved protected status for about 18,000 acres in the Spanish Peaks area of southern Colorado. "This is a tremendous victory," said Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Col., who sponsored the legislation, approved late last week. He called it "the final hurdle" to getting legislation passed this year. The House passed a similar measure sponsored by Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Col....
      The protected area, in San Isabel National Forest, would surround East and West Spanish Peaks, which are 13,626 and 12,683 ft high respectively. The area includes more than 250 free-standing volcanic dikes that extend as much as 14 miles from the mountains....

   2. [1 UPsizing - unspecified new jobs]
      Smarterkids.com to open shipping center, by Stephanie Stoughton, Boston Globe, C10.
      ...a 140,000-sq-ft distribution center this summer in Mansfield [Mass.] The online retailer of educational toys had been using J.L. Hammett Co., a 136-year-old school supplies firm, to pack and ship its orders. But as business picked up...orders exceeded Hammett's warehouse capacity....
   4/19/2000 glimmers of hope -
   1. [Nemesis is achieved.]
      Stock-trading cheerleader now faces $45m debt, by Gretchen Morgenson, NYT, front page.
      ...In a remarkable twist..\..Baruch Israel Hertz [head of] Track Data Corp..\..with its constant advertisements on CNBC..has become the most public victim yet of the kind of investing he was promoting.... [cut to pointer blowout on C1:] [His] company promises to make investing a cinch even for novices. But when stocks plunged on Friday, many investors who had borrowed heavily to play the market had to put up more money to cover their losses.
      [Boy, there's a design for radical instability - the ability to borrow money to gamble. The Fed is nuts to allow any margin of debt for market "players," let alone the reduced margin requirements they currently tolerate.]
      And one of the biggest losers was Mr. Hertz, who [now] owes $45m to 4 brokerage firms.
      [Ain't it funny how some of the smartest people do the dumbest things. Like borrowing money to gamble. With stocks yo-yoing like this, brokerage firms must be laffin' all the way to the bank. They're the only real winners here. They make their money no matter what happens, as long as there's churning, cuz they get their fees whether the market's going up or down, with no loss of stomach lining. The "house" (as in "gambling house") always wins.]
      To meet the margin call, he pledged 25m shares of his own company's stock.
      [...which, in turn, will drive his company's stock down. Quick, everyone, sell short on Track Data Corp. - it's a sure thing!]

   2. New York acts to open ballot to Republican...presidential contenders..., by Richard Pérez-Peña, NYT, front page.
      ALBANY - The State Senate approved a plan today that would knock down New York's notorious barriers to putting candidates on the Republican presidential ballot.... The Senate's action makes it very likely that the bill will become law.... "The bottom line is to create clarity, to bring a fair election and to avoid some of what's been going on," said..\..the Republican leader of the Senate, Joseph L. Bruno...who last month called the existing [GOP] primary system "absolute nonsense"....

   3. [1 UNtakeover]
      Designer Calvin Klein decides to remain independent, Reuters via NYT, C4.
      ...quelling speculation that the fashion powerhouse was considering a merger with...other fashion designers, including the clothing designer Tommy Hilfiger Corp. and women's intimate apparel make Warnaco Group....
   4/18/2000 glimmers of hope -
   1. ["good news, but..." - our italics in each case - ed.]
      [front page:] U.S. stocks rally after prices slide in global markets...- Investors' fears are eased, but recovery shows volatility of technology shares, by Norris and Fuerbringer, New York Times, front page.
      [front biz page:] Nasdaq clocks 6.6% advance, but the result proves mixed - The market's eerie resemblance to the 1980's oil mania, by Gretchen Morgenson, NYT, C1.
      [Boston Globe front page:] The markets recover, but doubts linger - Gains are narrow in volatile day, by Aaron Zitner, Boston Globe, front page.
      [Boston Globe front biz page:] Despite stock rebound, tech seen vulnerable, by Kimberly Blanton, Bos Globe, G1.

   2. [On and on goes the obsession with stamping out Nature's Wealth Centrifuge = controlled inflation -]
      [In the USA:] Going down, by David Warsh, Boston Globe, G1.
      The news that knocked the market for a loop on Friday was a government report that showed the underlying inflation in the consumer price index [CPI] rising in March at its fastest rate in five years....
      [And what was that terrifying rate?]
      Consumer prices jumped 0.7% last month....
      [Let's see, that's an annual rate of 8.4%. And by what percentage has top executive pay been rising over the last few years? Bet it's at least twice that - but TPTB (the powers that be) don't worry about that, of course. By what percentage have tech stocks been rising over the last few years? Bet it's at least twice that - but TPTB don't worry about that, of course. Until TPTB worry about long-term balance, the financial markets and the economy at large will be on a rocky road. And now, a little perspective -]
      [In Canada:] Little concern over Canadian inflation, by Timothy Pritchard, NYT, C4.
      Rising energy prices pushed Canada's inflation rate to 3% in March, up from 2.7% in February, the largest increase in the CPI since May 1995.
      [Annualized, that's double-digit 36% = out-of-control hyperinflation like Germany's in the early '20s.]
      But Statistics Canada said [that] excluding..\..higher prices for fuel oil and gasoline...the inflation rate was only 1.4%, a small drop from February.
      [Annualized, that's still double digit = 16.8%.]
      "Even with the economy operating at virtually full capacity, there still appears to be little cause for concern on Canada's inflation front," said Marc Lévesque, an economist at Toronto Dominion Bank.
      [Now there's an economy that's using Nature's Centrifuge!]

   3. [France leads the way again -]
      French couples take plunge that falls short of marriage, by Suzanne Daley, NYT, front page.
      ...[Many heterosexual French couples] do not feel ready yet for marriage...and [may] think marriage is a burdensome institution, weighed down with religious connotations [not to mention reproductive connotations - ed.], likely to end badly and at enormous expense. But when France last year [Nov/99] created a new form of legal partnership, orginally intended for gay couples, it seemed just right for them.... a civil solidarity pact, or Pacte civil de solidarité, known [in France] as a "PACS." The event [takes] only a few minutes [and is] wildly popular. Experts predicted that perhaps 10,000 couples would be interested in such unions in the first year. But already..\..in the four months since the law went into effect...the government has recorded almost 14,000 PACS.... Some advocates have estimated that about 40% are heterosexual....
      For gay couples, who have no alternative, the PACS is celebrated like a marriage.... The heterosexual couples...tend to see the union more as a trial run for marriage [and] often don't even tell their parents.... [Said one participant,] "...It is better [than marriage] because everything is spelled out at the beginning so we would never need lawyers...."
      [Another corroboration for the Theory of the Burgeoning Borderline in long-term evolution? -]
      [Said another participant,] "I think this is an evolution [i.e., positive step forward] of our society that this exists. This is a middle ground."
      Under the law...such a union [makes] both parties...responsible for financially supporting each other. Any purchases and debts are theirs jointly, unless otherwise specified. In 3 years, they can file a joint income tax form and get the same tax break as married couples. They are usually eligible immediately for the other person's work benefits....
      Divorce in France is a lengthy process, usually taking several years...and women often complain that [it] is biased against them. In dissolving a PACS, though, if there is a dispute, one partner can give notice and the union is dissolved in 3 months [without a lawyer]. The PACS also does not speak about fidelity or inheritance....
      [This goes far toward achieving the goal of giving the same level of difficulty or easiness to both the start and end of a marriage, which in most countries subsidizes reproduction by making marriages a lot easier to on the "in" side. It is also a major step in the global adjustment toward human overpopulation, because it clearly places social sexuality on a more equal footing with reproductive sexuality. Eventually the social unit round the globe will shift from the reproductive couple to the productive person, and from the procreative pair to the creative individual. As "Big J" put it about 1,970 years ago, "For when they [conquer death], they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven." Mark 12:25.
      [So let's see. France is leading the planet
      • in shorter workweeks (35 hrs nationally) and long yearly vacations (4-5 weeks),
      • in birth control pills for young people (morning after pills for highschool students, story 2/25/2000)
      • and now reproductive pressure release via "Marriage Lite" (above story).
        [Believe it or not, Iran's Islamic Republic also has temporary marriages. The story is covered in "Love finds a way in Iran: 'Temporary marriage'," by Elaine Sciolino, 10/04/2000 NYT, A3. And as one man in this article (Muhammad Javad Larijani, a conservative Berkeley-educated former legislator) puts it, "What's wrong with temporary marriage? You've got a variation of it in California. It's called partnership...." dba 'community-property'.]

   4. [1UNtakeover]
      Thor Industries says Coachmen [Industries] rebuffs offer, Dow Jones via NYT, C4.
      ...A rival recreational vehicle maker [is] refusing to discuss a buyout offer that values [it] at...a total of $289.6m....
      [Hang tough, Coachmen!]
   4/17/2000 glimmers of hope -
   1. [After the "me decade" of the 80s and the "fee decade" of the 90s, at last the kids are waking up again -]
      Thousands in protests against finance groups - IMF, World Bank press on in D.C., by Anne Kornblut, Boston Globe, front page.
      [Or the tamer NYT version -]
      Financial leaders meet as protests clog Washington - Brief clashes in streets - A 'growing public debate' is conceded in communiqué from Monetary Fund, by Kifner and Sanger, NYT, front page.
      [Is this finally piercing the secrecy and insulation within the IMF? According to Joseph Stiglitz' article "What I learned at the world economic crisis" in the 4/17 New Republic, "It was maddening [trying to change the IMF], not just because the IMF's inertia was so hard to stop but because, with everything going on behind closed doors, it was impossible to know who was the real obstacle to change.... The IMF likes to go about its business without outsiders asking too many questions. In theory, the fund supports democratic institutions in the nations it assists. In practice, it undermines the democratic process by imposing [its own] policies.... When the IMF decides to assist a country, it dispatches a 'mission' of economists. These economists frequently lack extensive experience in the country; they are more likely to have firsthand knowledge of its five-star hotels than of the villages that dot its countryside...."
      [The front page photos? Both based on the same Reuters photo, but the Globe's has more impact because it is clipped to focus in on the policeman in a strange position with billystick against neck of an unarmed, bent-sideways demonstrator, with an anxious young woman on his opposite side holding up her arms as if to protect him, or herself. The background in the Times' version reveals protesters running in the background. Both photo captions attempt to de-dramatize - i.e., Globe -]
      An officer hitting a protester after tear gas was fired into the crowd in Washington yesterday. The violence was called isolated and relatively minor.
      [And Times -]
      Protesters clashed a few times yesterday with police officers who cordoned off downtown Washington.

   2. ["Mirabile dictu" - NYT actually mentions long term in context of Internet bubble fragmentation -]
      Drop is seen unlikely to stem long-term Internet expansion, by Steve Lohr, NYT, front page.
      ["Good news but..." - So nice to see at least lip service to the long term in the context of all this short-term speculation gone awry. But the Globe's less rosy version on 4/16 was -]
      Times of turbulence - Stock market's bumpy ride unlikely to stop soon, analysts say, by Aaron Zitner, Boston Globe, J1.

   3. Editors struggle to increase ethnic mix of newsrooms - Plans and money to reinvigorate high school journalism, by Felicity Barringer, NYT, C2.
      The Freedom Forum and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation are underwriting at least $5.5m of new efforts to increase the number of blacks, Asian-Americans, Native Americans and Latino journalists entering the profession. [From pointer blowout, NYT, C1.]

   4. [One minority newsperson demotes herself - but for the right reasons = more family time and family values -]
      Walker downshifts - The WBZ anchor discusses family life and her decision to focus on it, by Nathan Cobb, Boston Globe, C1.
      "I was always tired," Boston's best-known shift worker [Liz Walker] says.... "I've been tired for 12 years." What has fatigued [her] - and [why] she's giving up anchoring the 6 and 11 pm newscasts on WBZ-TV (Channel 4) in favor of the noon news - is what she calls the "hit and miss" weekday relationship with her 12-year-old son, Nicholas.... "I just feel time was slipping away," says Walker, a single parent....
      [Here we have another evidence (see also 4/14 below) of stirring awareness of the excessive worktime put in by the American workforce, which has the longest average workweek in the developed world and the shortest vacations. Maybe we need bumper stickers - "Time - our ultimate non-renewable resource."]

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