Timesizing® Associates

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

5/14-15/2000 glimmers of hope -

1. [1UNtakeover]
   5/15 Intel to spin off company of customized technology [Developonline.com, in Tempe, Ariz.], by David Barboza, NYT, C10.

2. 5/15 Mothers rally to assail gun violence - Marches across U.S. demand strict laws, by Robin Toner, NYT, front page.
   WASHINGTON - With a rallying cry of "enough is enough"...the Million Mom March crowded the grassy expanse of the National Mall....
   [Just as long as it wasn't the infamous "grassy knoll" in Dallas, scene of another case of firearm abuse in 1963.]
   Many of the demonstrators wept at the stories of mothers who had lost their children, listening transfixed to the families shattered by shootings from Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., where 15 died last year, to the Michigan elementary school where a 6-year-old girl was killed by a classmate on Feb. 29....
   [Plus, see the editorial on A24, "The power of mothers marching."]

3. 5/15 Judge allows challenge to logging in US forests, AP via Boston Globe, C11.
   BURLINGTON, Vt. - ...Last week US District Court Judge William Sessions ruled that the Forest Service must address the question of whether it fails to..\..consider the full costs of logging on national forests - including the effect on tourism, watershed protection, and wildlife. \This] has cleared the way for environmentalists...led by Friends of the Earth..\..to proceed with a lawsuit that challenges the conventional [near-sighted] economics of harvesting timber in federal forests....
   [There are a lot of other industries that may be damaged because we taxpayers have been dragged into subsidizing lumbering. The lumber industries whining about potential job losses are yet another reason we need to cut the workweek and share the vanishing human work, as robots, computers, automation, cybernetics, and good old mechanization take it over.]

4. 5/15 The eFILES - Julie Palen...founder, president and CEO of InterNoded Inc., Cambridge, MA-based Lotus consulting and hosting firm, Boston Globe, C1.
   [Any relation to Michael Palen of Monty Python and PBS travelogs?]
   ...We make our decisions every day based on three things:
   1. What is the best thing for our customers?
   2. What is the best thing for our employees?
   3. And what's the best thing for the business long term?...
   [Nice to hear there's still some of this type of firm around.]

1. Severance package for Mattel chief is called excessive, Reuters via NYT, B3.
   A New York state official is contending that a $50m severance package for Jill Barad, the former CEO of Mattel Inc. [the world's largest toymaker], is excessive in light of the poor performance of the company's stock during her 3 years at the helm. H. Carl McCall, the NY State Comptroller, made the assertion in a letter urging board members to reconsider the severance package....
   [So what business is it of his, you ask?]
   Mr. McCall stated that the state's Common Retirement Fund, for which he is sole trustee, holds more than 1.2m Mattel shares. He said that during Ms. Barad's tenure as CEO, Mattel shares fell more than 55%, while the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index doubled....
   [Yeah, but Mattel's only the world's largest toymaker, Carl, not a dot-com. And stay tuned, the dot-coms will all be coming down, cuz like the rest of our brilliant industries, they're laying off their own markets.]

2. Quotes of note, Boston Globe, A19.
   "The American people are going to fall asleep watching the drab debate the dreary."
   Green Party candidate RALPH NADER on what to expect if third-party candidates are not involved in the presidential debates.
   [Yeah, who wants to watch Gore the Bore debate Bush the Wh*re (or vice versa).]

5/12/2000 glimmers of hope -

1. [1 UPsizing - ?? new jobs]
   Southern Co., NYT, C4.
   ...Atlanta, a power producer, said it planned to build a natural-gas-fired power plant in southwestern Michigan....

2. [1 UNtakeover]
   Failed bid [to co-acquire, with Air Liquide, the BOC Group of Britain] costs Air Products [& Chemicals of Pa.] $450m, Bridge News via NYT, C4.

3. [Music-copyright busting on the Web! - not.]
   Napster closes 300,000 music accounts, AP via NYT, C6.
   ...in response to objections from the heavy-metal band Metallica, which sued Napster to halt the [copyright infringing] trading of its songs over the Internet....
   [Sounded like a good idea - in the short run until the band can no longer support themselves, disbands, and the music stops.]

4. [And a tip on privacy protection vs. identity stealing -]
   Sorry, wrong number, letter to editor by James Hyatt of Princeton, NYT, A30.
   ...William Safire is quite right to worry about inappropriate requests for Social Security numbers [in "Defend your identity" column, May 11]. A new video store chain in my hometown requests a Social Security number to open a video rental account. When confronted with such demands, I usually tell the clerk, "Sure, so long as you give me your number." The clerk doesn't, and I walk away.

5. [Rejection of technological "always on call" -]
   Tired of being wired, letter to editor by Arnold Ahlert of Boca Raton, NYT, A30.
   Alan Ehrenhalt ("Are we as happy as we think?", op ed, May 7) offers the assumption that being "extremely connected" with regard to the electronic revolution is inherently desirable.
   What if it's not? Isn't it possible that people will get tired of being "wired in" all the time? We are already beginning to see social sanctions regarding the use of cell phones [eg: against carphoning without pulling over & stopping - ed.]. It might take a few years, but maybe someday in the near future, those who consider themselves to be trend-setters might rediscover the virtues of a little peace and quiet.

1. [1 UPsizing - 250 new jobs]
   Kopin to spend $20m on new transistor plant, by Peter Howe, Boston Globe, C13.
   ...[A maker of] components for Internet, wireless and fiber-optic telecomms said it will build a...plant to produce so-called HBT transistors to meet strong demand. The 60,000-sq-ft plant, a renovation of an existing building, will be located in the Myles Standish Industrial Park near Kopin's [Taunton MA-based] headquarters and existing HBT plant and is expected to begin production by October. As part of the expansion, Kopin expects to double its work force to 500 from 250 by year-end...primarily by adding jobs at sites in Taunton and Westborough....

2. [1 UNdownsizing - 1745 saved jobs]
   Reprieve for Titanic shipyard, by Alan Cowell, NYT, C4.
   The Northern Ireland [Harland & Wolff] shipyard that launched the Titanic in 1912 and seemed in danger of closing just 2 months ago won a surprising reprieve with a $480m order [from Bahamas-based Seamasters International] to build 4 passenger ships [for delivery 2002-2004]....
   [What's this? Salvation out of the Bermuda Triangle for a change?! Three cheers for Seamasters! We had already counted Harland's 1745 jobs as lost back on 3/11/00.]

3. [Plus 2 "no downsizings" assurances]
   No layoffs, GM promises Daewoo, by Samuel Len, NYT, C4.
   Vowing there would be no layoffs at the Daewoo Motor Co., Jack Smith, the chairman of General Motors, tried to win support for its bid to acquire the ailing South Korean carmaker. The rival bidder Ford Motor has made similar promises.
   ["Methinks the ladies do protest too much." And is Jack Smith of GM any different from Michael Moore's nemesis, Roger Smith of GM, who decimated with 74,000 downsizings GM's headquarters town of Flint, Mich. in the early 1990s, in stark contrast to timesizing Volkswagen who saved 30,000 jobs and its hometown of Wolfsburg, Germany by trimming from 35 to 28.8 working hours/week in 1994 but reducing pay only down to the 32-hr/wk level?]

4. [1 UNtakeover]
   Little plans spinoff of tech units - Cambridge firm hopes to raise up to $150m in IPO, by Jerry Ackerman, Boston Globe, C8.
   Arthur D. Little Inc., the 114-year-old Cambridge management consulting pioneer, stepped squarely into [or out of? - this is a spinoff, not a takeover] the Internet age yesterday as it announced plans to spin off its technology-based divisions into a publicly traded company. Named C-Quential Inc. [ooo, bad pun], the new firm consists of Arthur D. Little's telecomms, information technology, media and electronics units, which the parent company refers to as its TIME group....
   [So, a perfect venue for TIMEsizing when the time comes.]
   C-Quential's HQ will remain in Cambridge, but about 90% of its more than 250 employees work in offices in 21 countries. With this move, Little joins scores of other companies that have spun off technology-based units of their organizations in recent months.... Sixty percent of the TIME group's revenues last year were from European clients. Arthur D. Little was founded in 1886 and...has been privately held since 1988 following an aborted hostile takeover bid.
   [Ah, an anti-takeover culture, for once!]

5. Canada revamps grain transport, by Timothy Pritchard, NYT, C4.
   Hoping to eliminate late rail deliveries of...$4B worth of [western] wheat and barley exports..\..the Canadian government [reduced] the role of the Canadian Wheat Board, which now oversees exports...and the CNR and CPR will charge 18% less.
   [At last, the Canucksters are getting smart about oversized government. Too bad Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and columnist Jeff Madrick aren't, in today's "Economic scene" column, NYT, C2 - "Government's role in the new economy is not a cheap or easy one. But it is crucial...." No, it isn't - bad idea! Putting "those Treasury surpluses" (if they exist) into government-led education and research in ideas and innovation - in technology - is just more corporate welfare, "taking coals to Newcastle," and subsidizing the Internet bubble. Instead, use any extra money to pay down the debt and reduce taxes for the poor and the vanishing middle class - the people who actually spend their money and support the effective demand for all this new stuff. And we don't need more tenuously relevant education. We need continuous training right in the workplace, and an economic design that arranges for the private sector to "do it themselves" - such as the Timesizing program's 2nd and 3rd phases - with government intervention only as a very last resort.]

1. [UPsizing #1]
   Cisco [Systems] to open [Salem,] N.H. plant - Equipment facility would employ 2,500, by Alex Pham, Boston Globe, D1.
   ...within 5 years....

2. [UPsizing #2]
   Texas Instruments Inc., NYT, C4.
   ...said it would...expand its plant in Freising, Germany, which would add about 300 jobs and double the manufacturing capacity at the factory.
   [And these are "uncompetitive" quality jobs that have loooong vacation time in the range of 4 weeks a year, and a shorter-than-40 workweek.]

3. [UPsizing #3]
   2 agency companies to form ventures [e.g., WPP Group & Deloitte Consulting to open Roundarch with 150 employees in Chicago, LA, SF & NY], by Allison Fass, NYT, C7.

4. [UPsizing #4]
   2 agency companies to form ventures [e.g., Grey Advertising & Brightware to open BrightTouch in NY with ?? employees], by Allison Fass, NYT, C7.

5. Volkswagen profit rises, Agence France-Presse via NYT, C4.
   The biggest car maker in Europe...had a sharp rise [36.3% more than 1Q99 to $222m] in its net income in [1Q00] thanks in part to higher sales and a lower tax bill....
   [VW saved their HQ town of Wolfsburg in 1994 by cutting their workweek from 35 to 28.8 hrs instead of their workforce by 30,000 jobs (featured along with other examples on our case studies page). Contrast with GM's suicidal behavior in HQ-town of Flint, Mich. as chronicled by Michael Moore in film "Roger & Me."]

6. [This probably took guts -]
   Sony warning to Mexico, by Francisco Hoyos, NYT, C4.
   The president of Sony in Mexico, Shin Tagaki, told Pres. Ernesto Zedillo that the company could cut back its investments or leave the country because of crime.... In April, the 8-yr old daughter of a Japanese executive was kidnapped [and released for an estimated $2m ransom].
   [= the cost-added effects of lame law enforcement. Here's hoping Tagaki doesn't get targeted now.]

7. Perot may miss convention, news summary (of A19), NYT, A2.
   Ross Perot...will not attend the [Reform Party] convention if Patrick J. Buchanan is its nominee, an aide said.
   [Good. For g*wd's sake, Ross, be big enough to let that party develop from your own personal fiefdom into a real 3rd party!]

1. [1 UPsizing - 31 new jobs]
   3 from FCB open Dirty Water, by Stuart Elliott, NYT, C10.
   Three executives who recently left the New York office of FCB Worldwide...are opening Dirty Water in New York, an interactive [advertising] agency with 31 employees and billings estimated at $37.5m....

2. The immigrant question - Canada's point system gives preference to better-educated immigrants - It's an issue candidates in search of votes won't touch, by Robert J. Samuelson, Boston Globe, D4.
   [So it's perfect for an issue-oriented referendum of citizens voting on secret ballots. No one on a public vote will take the tough decision - too contrary to our American identity as an immigrant nation devoted to our patron saint, Miss Liberty. Call it The Identity Trap.]

3. Drive launched to ensure equal pay - Women at hearing urged to help eliminate gender-based wage gap, by Diane Lewis, Boston Globe, D5.
   ...public hearing at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel [yesterday] aimed at increasing women's awareness of state and federal measures to end gender bias....

4. [Grow up, you kids at Lycos!]
   Ad agency turns down Lycos after leaked pitch, by Chris Reidy, Boston Globe, D9.
   After the substance of its business pitch to win the ad account of Internet portal company Lycos Inc. was leaked to a rival, the Deutsch advertising agency of New York refused to take on Waltham's Lycos as a client, even after Lycos supposedly awarded Deutsch a piece of business estimated to be worth $25m in annual billings. According to Adweek New England, rival Hill Holliday Connors Cosmopulos of Boston got a peek at Deutsch's pitch and a second chance to make a presentation to Lycos. Adweek noted that Hill Holliday chief executive Jack Connors sits on the Lycos board of directors....
   [Guess Deutsch figured, if they're gonna treat us like this on the doorstep, how they gonna treat us inside?]

5. US unveils Web site to report Net fraud - Center a new tool for law enforcement, AP via Boston Globe, D16.
   ...Internet Fraud Complaint Center [FBI] ... www.ifccfbi.gov ....

6. ["Good, but..."]
   Administration plans road ban in a quarter of national forests, by Douglas Jehl, NYT, front page.
   WASHINGTON...- A draft proposal from the Clinton administration to safeguard national forests from development would bar road building across nearly one-quarter of those lands but would not immediately rule out future logging or off-road vehicle activity....
   [Great, so we lose the roads but we keep something almost as bad, ORVs = 2 steps forward & 1 step back.]

1. 5/07 The simple life, pointer blowout (to G4), Boston Globe, G1.
   ...[There's] a growing trend toward "voluntary simplicity," a lifestyle movement in which people choose to live on less money in order to become financially independent and be able to spend their time doing the things they love....
   [Why is this all or nothing? Why do we have to be completely financially independent before we start doing the things we love? What's the use of our waves and waves of robots and time-saving technology if we can't have a 4-hour workday and a 3-day weekend now and support ourselves perfectly comfortably?]
   Saying no to stuff - Despite boom times, some are choosing to spend less and really take charge of their lives, by Dolores Kong, Boston Globe, G4.
   [Is this "despite" boom times or is this what boom times should really be for? What good are boom times if we don't have a life? Why are we waiting for a payoff in the future when the future will belong to the children we didn't have time for in the present? Or to put it another way, maybe the "future" we're sacrificing so much for, here and now, will be a kind of payoff we're not at all expecting. Check out the last 30 years in Lebanon, Iran, Yugoslavia - and Columbine. "NOW is the accepted time. NOW is the day for healthy balance ('shalom')," saith the Lord. (2 Cor.6:2). And in the realest sense, here & now is all we have.]

2. 5/07 Saving our water - Can we keep the sources clean?, by Jeff McLaughlin, Boston Globe, City 1, 8.
   ...Massachusetts ranked first among the 50 states for its initiatives to protect watersheds.... Mass. earned a score of 89; runnerup Oregon came in at 78..\.. [Mass.] was one of 6 states given a "B" grade, the highest [grade given out this time by the National Wildlife Assoc.]..\..
   "What people do on the surface of the earth eventually will affect the water they drink. Cause and effect. It's as simple as that...," Wayne Southworth, Easton water superintendent and chairman of the 5-town Canoe River Aquifer Advisory Committee....

3. ["Good, but..." #1]
   5/08 Challenges lure new workers, NYT, C12.
   ...In a survey to be released today by WetFeet.com....869...students from more than 50 colleges and universities...were asked to rank their priorities in making career decisions.
   [The good news - training came near the top.]
   
   1. challenging work...
   2. solid "training for future work"...
   3. good colleagues/boss...
   4. salary
   5. stock options
   6. ability to dress casually
   7. no weekend work
   [The bad news, - free time, the most basic freedom of all, fell to the bottom. Their grandparents and greatgrandparents fought to give them "the weekend" - and they're throwing it away.]

4. ["Good, but..." #2]
   5/08 Serious crimes fall for 8th consecutive year, AP via NYT, A21.
   ...down 7% from the year before and the longest running crime decline of record, the FBI reported [yester]day....
   [But could that be because we have so many people locked up, a world record 2,000,000 in fact? - at a cost to us of $25-30K per inmate per year. 300 years ago London had a low crime rate too because it executed thieves.]
   Legislation backed by Republicans has provided $700m a year for prison construction, Mr. [Orrin] Hatch said.
   [Oh that's really great, Mr. Hatch. We can really boast about that, can't we.]

5. ["Good, but..." #3]
   5/08 Public remains unworried about inflation's threat, by Silverstein and Sur, LA Times via Boston Globe, G13.
   [But then why is the Federal Reserve obsessing about it, and paying no attention to the huge and growing problem of under-employment, including the working poor and the record homeless and incarcerated? The Fed's original mandate from Congress was to pay equal attention to inflation and unemployment, and they have failed to update their concept of unemployment to its current virulent form, like how come wages have been stagnant for 30 years and corporate training has all but dried up - but "just give us more visas for more already-trained people from India."]

6. ["Good, but..." #4]
   5/08 Unchecked greed will be our downfall, Janice Burnett of Millis MA, Boston Globe, A18.
   Greed. Corporate greed, political greed. The list goes on.... I am convinced that unchecked greed will prove the undoing of us all. The presidential campaign is managing to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, some of which is soft money from corporations.
   Meanwhile, the 40-hour work week for nonunionized employees is a thing of the past.
   [And unionized employees are down below 14% of the workforce.]
   Nurses and others are forced to work mandatory overtime [like the St. Vincent Hospital nurses in Worcester MA] and the concept of 10 paid holidays per year is once again [only] the American dream.
   While I agree that in a capitalistic economy corporate greed is all but impossible to control, I would argue that political greed is not - it's called campaign finance reform.
   [Don't get your hopes up, Janice. Check out the latest scam for bypassing what little reform we've got - on our miscellaneous Bad News page today, 5/08 "The latest fund raising battle." That's why we at Timesizing.com have moved on to direct electronic democracy as a way to do an "end run" around the whole corrupt, logjammed swamp in Washington, where every "representative" is spray-painted with PACs and lobbyists.
   [As for corporate greed, it's only impossible to control while we fail to define it. At least you, Janice, are falling into Part B (failure to define) of the Chesterton pan-utopian trap instead of Part A (assumption it's automatic). The Timesizing.com approach to this is to admit we can't healthily share the money without first sharing the work. Then we design a flexible market-oriented system for sharing the work (such as overtime-to-training conversion), that can later be applied to sharing the money in various forms (such as income, wealth...). If we apply a fraction of our computer software design smarts to our social software design challenge, we'll all be living in the heaven we should all be living in with the volume and level of our technology being what it is at the dawn of the Third Millennium.]

1. The e-mail virus is telling us things, letter to editor by Richard Lanza of Cambridge MA, NYT, A26.
   ...The latest virus invasion, particularly through the Microsoft Outlook program, illustrates yet another aspect of the problems of monopoly. In effect, the Windows monopoly is a computer monoculture with all the same problems of other monocultures.
   In agriculture, one of the worries of the widespread planting of monoculture crops is higher susceptibility to insects and disease, since specialized bugs can rapidly increase their numbers. We might well want to encourage diversity in our computer software not just for economic reasons but to avoid future outbreaks of disease and bug infestation.
   [And as another article today has it, "Copycat viruses emerge," by Ross Kerber, Boston Globe, C1.]

2. Coming soon to a car dealer near you: the beginning of a new era, op ed by Jim Motavalli, author of "Forward, Drive! - The Race to Build Clean Cars for the Future," Boston Globe, A15.
   Last month the first few dozen American customers took delivery of a new small car called the Honda Insight, a lightweight 2-seater with a revolutionary powertrain and impressive 70 MPG fuel economy.
   The $19,000 Insight's tiny 1-liter gasoline engine weighs just 124 pounds, but that's not the whole story. Also under the hood of this hybrid car is a very thin electric motor that acts like a supercharger to give the car better acceleration and cruising ability. Unlike battery-powered electric cars, which run out of juice after 60 miles, the Insight has a range of 600 to 700 miles and never needs to be recharged. Stop at a light and the Insight just shuts off, with the electric motor starting it again for takeoff in a fraction of a second. The Honda is the first hybrid on the US market, but Toyota has been selling a 4-door competitor, the Prius, in Japan for 2 years, and more than 30,000 are on the road. The Corolla-like Prius, which goes on sale here [this month], can operate solely on gas or electric power or with both working together. The company claims that the car can achieve 66 miles per gallon, though some tests have shown less spectacular results in US highway driving conditions. Both the Insight and the Prius are ultra-low-emission vehicles as defined by the EPA....
   [Much more efficient, electric cars was one of the dreams of Buckminster Fuller 50 years ago. It didn't happen in the oil crisis of the 1970s but for some reason, it's finally really happening now. This is an unqualified Good Thing.]

3. ["Good, but..."]
   U.S. jobless rate declines to 3.9%; lowest since 1970 - [10,000s of] Census jobs are a factor..., by Louis Uchitelle, NYT, front page.
   The nation's unemployment rate fell below 4% in April for the first time in 30 years, the Labor Dept. announced yesterday....
   Indeed, there was little evidence in the employment numbers - a total of 340,000 new jobs last month...- that the 9-year-old expansion, the longest period of uniterrupted growth in America's history, might be weakening [same kind of boast you heard frequently during the Roaring '20s -ed.] in response to the Federal Reserve's attempt to slow the economy by raising interest rates [cosmetic at best - ed.]....
   [But -
   
   • What about under-employment - that's the real problem today - people who are working and are still not self-supporting because they need food stamps, subsidized housing and childcare, etc. etc. Counting unemployment in the current US definition is counting an anachronism, especially when we now count part-time as equivalent to full-time (started in the early 1990s) instead of counting true equivalence.
   • What about, not only the working poor (above), but the disabled, homeless, incarcerated...? These people are not self-supporting.
   • 2% was regarded as alarmingly high during World War II when we really had a good economy - without today's widening skills-, work- and income-gap.
   [Sooner or later as work-saving technology continues to pour in, we're going to have to share the vanishing human work and the still-marketable skills. Timesizing provides the only complete economic-core design for doing this that is yet "on the market" - and it is market-oriented, gradual, ecological, and paycut-outputcut-inflation resistant.]

4. [UNtakeover #1 - $??]
   Eaton [autoparts] plans to spin off Axcelis [Technologies], its chip-making unit, Bridge News via NYT, B3.

5. [UNtakeover #2 - $??]
   Ryder System Inc. [shareholders voted down proposed auction of company], NYT, B3.
   [Lord God, if your top execs are that bored, get rid of them! - with no "golden parachutes!]

6. [UNtakeover #3 - $??]
   Phone merger talks end [between Royal KPN of Holland & Telefonica of Spain, Bloomberg via NYT, B2.

1. Same-day outcry in both NY Times & Boston Globe against incentivating CEOs to fail -
   
   • C.E.O.'s profit on failure, letter to editor by Alan Steinberg of Great Neck NY, NYT, A26.
     You outline the severance package, worth more than $37m, that Jill E. Barad got from Mattel (Business Day, May 1) when she resigned as chief executive after putting Mattel on the financial brink.... When a chief executive blunders, why must the employees and shareholders be the only ones who are hurt?
     [Why must employees and shareholders be hurt at all? - Why aren't chief executives the only ones who are hurt - forced to give up millions already wasted on their "performance"?]
   • CEOs got more even if they didn't earn it, Boston Capital column by Steven Syre & Charles Stein, Boston Globe, C1.
     [Remember when capitalism boasted over communism that it had a better incentive system? Now it's capitalism that is incentivating its own demise.]

2. [UPsizing #1 - 1400 new jobs]
   Cathay Pacific expanding, AP via NYT, C4.
   Hoping to profit from an upturn in Asia's aviation market, Cathay Pacific Airways said...it would create more than 1,400 jobs - employing another 1,000 cabin crew, 220 pilots and more than 200 ground workers - most of them based in Hong Kong.

3. [UPsizing #2 - 200 new jobs]
   Corning Inc., NYT, C4.
   ...Corning, NY, plans to hire 200 more people at its Photonics Technology plant, in Erwin, NY, which produces optical fiber equipment.
   [Corning is hoppin' - it created 300 new Mass. jobs below on 4/28/2000.]

4. [UPsizing #3 - unspecified new jobs]
   7-Eleven targets N.E., by Chris Reidy, Boston Globe, C6.
   A week after taking over 7-Eleven Inc., Grafton [Mass.] native James W. Keyes unveiled plans to open 100 new convenience stores in New England over the next 3 years, most of them in Greater Boston. Currently, 7-Eleven...has about 150 stores in Me, Ma, NH, RI and Vt. The chain had only a small presence in the region until its 1998 acquisition of 132 Christy's stores....

5. [1 UNtakeover - $160m]
   Westaff and investor group call off takeover deal, Dow Jones via NYT, C4.
   The staffing company...said yesterday that it had called off an agreement to be acquired for $160m by an investor group that included members of Westaff's management ... by mutual consent....
   [Make up your mind.]

1. [Greens ousting GOP?!]
   After a loss, GOP braces for November, by Michael Cooper, NYT, A25.
   GARDEN CITY, NY... - For Nassau [County] Republicans, the problem is not just that they failed to regain control of the County Legislature in the special election held in Port Washington on Tuesday. The problem is also how far short of the goal they fell. In a district where Republicans [=GOP] still outnumber Democrats on paper but often cross party lines in the voting booths, more than 3/4 of those who cast ballots on Tuesday [5/02] voted for non-Republicans. A Green Party candidate did nearly as well as the Republican candidate....
   [As Republican leadership sinks further and further back into the 19th century, unseparating church and state, re-arming the citizenry, forcing the pregnant to bring to birth regardless of privacy and circumstances, obsessing about drugs just as the Women's Christian Temperance Union once obsessed about alcohol, exposing our workforce to "competition" from dangerous and unecological sweatshops around the world, fighting against campaign finance reform, they become less capable of winning the votes of even their own members, whether individuals as in this story, or corporations, as in the 31 companies that opted out of the whole political-contribution shakedown game on Tues. (below 5/02). More power to the Green Party in replacing the once relevant and progressive GOP as it did the Whigs and Free Soilers 150 years ago.]

2. A nature group contracts to buy and preserve one of the last pristine Pacific atolls - Needing to raise $37m to save a wonderland - The Nature Conservancy, with government help, plans to preserve the Palmyra atoll with its large population of boobies...and the world's largest land invertebrate, the rare coconut crab, by Todd Purdum, NYT, A16.

3. [UNtakeover #1 - $5.7B]
   Blue Circle [Industries] averts [Lafarge] takeover, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.

4. [UNtakeover #2 - $45.9m]
   Brunswick Technologies rejects [Saint-Gobain] takeover offer, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.

5. [UNtakeover #3 - $??]
   Manor Care shares drop after [CEO Stewart Bainum & rival] takeover rejection, Bridge News via NYT, C4.

1. Study: Men putting family first - 20- to 39-year-olds' attitudes appear to mark shift, by Diane Lewis, Boston Globe, D2.
   ...71% [in a recent study from the Radcliffe Public Policy Center] said they would give up a portion of their pay to ensure they could have more time with their families....
   [As we've always said here at Timesizing.com, how are we going to get more family values without more family time?!]

2. [Great ad right on Times op ed page protests Times' discussion-quashing party line on globalization -]
   Four-part harmony - The New York Times globalization choir, by *TomPaine.com[mon sense, a journal of opinion], NYT, A31.
   ...The Times choir? E.M. Brown, Paul Krugman, David Frum, and Thomas L. Friedman [all uncritical pro-globalization cheerleaders].... With its perfect four-part harmony on the World Bank and the IMF, the Times has served its readers poorly..\..
   When will World Bank and IMF critics get to [speak] for themselves [in the pages of the Times]?... Among them:
   • Joseph Stiglitz, the Bank's former chief economist
   • Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs
   • Juliette Beck of Global Exchange
   • economist Mark Weisbrot
   • policy analyst Bob Naiman
   • critics from developing nations around the world

3. [UNtakeover #1 - $??]
   Public Storage says Shurgard [Storage Centers] declines [$??] takeover bid, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.

4. [UNtakeover #2 - $??]
   Genesee says deal to sell [its Genesee] Brewing Company [unit to Platinum Holdings for $??] dissolves, AP via NYT, C4.

5. [UNtakeover #3 - $18.4B]
   Bestfoods says no to merger with Unilever - $18B bid called financially inadequate, by Kenneth Gilpin, NYT, C1.

• As political gifts set a record pace, some quit giving - 31 companies drop out - Corporations find better use for funds that had gone to soft money donations, by Don Van Natta, NYT, front page.
  ...Some...want to distance themselves from...unseemly...cash and influence, while others acknowledge [they] are simply not getting much in return.... The list includes prolific past contributors like Revlon, Advanced Micro Devices, Miramax Films, and Starwood Hotels and Resorts....