Timesizing® Associates

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Good News, July 21-31, 2000
[Commentary] ©2000 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA (617) 623-8080

7/30/2000 weekend glimmers -

1. Campaigners' finances, by Dolores Kong, Boston Globe, G1.
   [4 photos, 4 presidential candidates - Gore, Bush, Buchanan, Nader.
   Family net worth in same order: $1.1-2.5m, $11.1-29.4m, $5.2-18.1m, $4.09-4.96m - so Nader beats Gore.
   Estimated YTD performance of their stock portfolios +/- mutual funds in same order: -11.3%, +3.5%, -1.6%, +18.1% - so Nader beats all the rest on that one. The country would have Teddy Roosevelt-level excitement and hope if this foretold the election results.]

2. France - Fighting McDonald's in land of [legendary chefs], Reuters via Boston Globe, A13.
   Several dozen members of the Greens Party munched on regional specialties washed down with organic wine yesterday at a picnic protest against fast food on the site of a future McDonald's restaurant. A Greens Party spokesman, Yves Cochet, said the protest in southeastern Paris aimed to promote small neighborhood restaurants offering traditional French food, rather than the same burgers and fries offered by McDonald's from Stockholm to Tokyo....

1. [2 UPsizings, 900 + unspecified new jobs -]
   
   1. French unemployment falls, by John Tagliabue, NYT, B2.
      ..."The improving economy is pushing us to hire," said Serge Weinberg, chief executive of Pinault-Printemps-Redoute, Europe's largest specialty retailer. The company will create 800 to 1,000 new jobs in France for a third year, he said.
      [So let's split the diff and say 900 new jobs.]
   2. LG&E Energy Corp., NYT, B3.
      ...Louisville, which owns the two biggest utilities in Kentucky, said it planned to build as many as 10 natural-gas-fired turbines in Kentucky and Georgia.

2. [1 UNtakeover]
   Welch Allyn halts [purchase of PSC,] data collection company, AP via NYT, B3.
   ...because it was unable to get the financing for the $103m deal [forged] in June.
   [See 6th takeover headline on 6/07/00.]

3. An inn on the green - Adopting a custom widespread in Europe and Asia, US hotels want their guests to reuse linen and save water, other costs, by Kathryn Tong, Boston Globe, C1.
   [Or as the U.S. itself did 50+ years ago. Today's rediscoverers are -]
   
   • ...Lenox Hotel, Boston
   • ...Copley Square Hotel, Boston
   • ...Boston Park Plaza Hotel
   [And altogether...]
   59 hotels in New England participate in linen reuse programs, said Patricia Skozelas, marketing representative for Project Planet, a Georgia-based provider of environmental products for the hospitality industry. The company's clients include Bass Hotels & Resorts, the owner of Holiday Inn hotels, and Choice Hotels, which owns Comfort Inn. An average-sized hotel with 150 rooms and 66% guest participation can save about $32,000 a year by implementing a linen- and towel-reuse program, said Skozelas. Savings come not only from reducing water use, but also from reducing linen purchases and the labor cost of doing laundry, she said....
   [Who says environmentalism hurts business?!]
   Many hotels contract with companies like Project Planet and the "Green" Hotels Assoc., a Houston-based, for-profit organization promoting ecological consciousness, to supply the cards requesting reuse of linen and towels.... The savings far outweigh the cost of buying the cards: Project Planet sells a pack of 100 cards for $60.
   The water conservation benefits are significant. Project Planet estimates that 72m gals. of water would be saved if 11,000 hotels out of the 45,000 hotels in the U.S. participated in a linen-reuse program....
   In 1998, 40% of hotels with 250 rooms or more participated in the program, according to the American Hotel & Motel Assoc., based in Washington, DC.... "We've had a wonderful response from guests," said Tedd Saunders, executive VP of the Saunders Hotel Group, which includes the Lenox Hotel and the Copley Square Hotel in Boston [and] has had a linen-reuse program in place since 1993. Saunders, also president of EcoLogical Solutions, a Boston-based consulting firm to hotels, says that 40% of guests staying at his hotels reuse their towels. The "Green" Hotels Assoc...says that business travelers are most enthusiastic about recycling their towels.... The Boston Park Plaza Hotel has found that older guests prefer to have their towels cleaned every day, while younger guests reuse their towels..\.. "As long as the hotel changes the sheets in between guests, that is the important thing,"...said..\..Eric Mars, a computer trainer for CompuMasters in Kansas [who] travels on business twice a month....
   Some hotels, like the Lenox and Copley Square hotels, have implemented other environmental programs, including "climate-neutral room," which use renewable energy so that none of the rooms have a negative impact of global warming, Saunders said.... Resort hotels have a higher percentage of guests that reuse towels and linen because they stay for longer periods of time, said Saunders....

4. [Again -]
   French unemployment falls, by John Tagliabue, NYT, B2.
   As strong business confidence promoted hiring, unemployment in France, the second-biggest European economy behind Germany, edged down [= more accurate than "falls"] further in June...from 9.8% in May to 9.6%...its lowest level in almost nine years....
   [And again, no mention of France's futuristic work&skill sharing policies, such as their 35-hour national workweek maximum and their 1½% payroll tax with an exemption for training. Now is the time for France to flex up the design of these two futuristic strategies -
   1. make the payroll tax an unmistakably disincentivizing tax on overtime - with a complete exemption for setting up overtime-targeted on-the-job training and/or hiring. Convert from an absolute and repressive "absolutely No Working above this line" to "you can work as long as you want - if and only if you're reinvesting in OT-targeted training and hiring." You don't want to stop the people with deflationary (non-monetary) incentive, or the "little toymaker" who "never worked a day in his life."
   2. make the maximum workweek flexible, so it adjusts slowly against under-employment in France, including traditional unemployment plus welfare, disability, homelessness and incarceration. In short, now's the time they should be shifting to full-fledged and flexible Timesizing.]

1. 2 UPsizings, totaling 13 new jobs -
   1. Frierson Mee [& Kraft in NYC] opening Paris office, by David Stout, NYT, C6.
      ...with six employees and two accounts with combined billings estimated at $45m....
   2. Artustry executive forms new agency, by David Stout, NYT, C6.
      Bill Perna has left the Artustry Partnership in New York to form an agency named Dcode, part of Intelefilm. Dcode, also based in New York, has seven employees working for clients like the VHI cable television network....

2. 1 UNtakeover -
   1. Reliant Energy files plan to divide into 2 companies, Dow Jones via NYT, C4.
      ...with the Texas Public Utility Commission...as part of an effort to be more competitive....
      [Here's a switch. Usually they're merging to be more competitive.]
      The reorganization will separate the regulated and unregulated businesses of Reliant, based in Houston.... The regulated businesses will include Reliant's electricity and natural gas companies, domestic interstate pipelines and interests in Latin America..\.. The unregulated company will own a part of Reliant's power generation and related energy trading and marketing operations....

3. How can the Web help democracy?, letter to editor by Taylor Boas of Washington, NYT, A24.
   The opinions of Thomas L. Friedman (column, July 25) and James C. Luh (op-ed, July 25) exemplify the optimistic and pessimistic views of the Internet's democratic potential. However, both miss a larger point.
   Democracy is not simply some natural state of affairs that a few brave dissidents can achieve by maneuvering around government censors. Even if China, Jordan and Egypt lifted their press and Internet controls tomorrow, democratization would not necessarily follow. Democracy must be crafted through concerted effort; the Internet may help this process, but it does not guarantee an easy ride.
   [In other words, like computer technology, social technology has to be researched, designed and implemented.]
   As Mr. Friedman argues, the Internet empowers Arab democrats with new tools; the same can safely be said about China. The question is: How, exactly, will democrats use these tools to develop democracy where authoritarianism has long persisted?
   [In other words, in many societies, it's still at the machine-language stage. And it's nasty work, but somebody has to do it. It can no more be just assumed than the solution to Chesterton's pan-utopian flaw. And with our representative democracy no longer representing anything but big money, it's time for us to move on to direct democracy and fulfil Buckminster Fuller's dream of 24-hour telephone (and now e-mail) referendums. We have the computer technology. It's time to research, design and implement the social technology.]

4. [And speaking of money-drowned "representative" democracy -]
   Soft-money inquiry sought, pointer summary (to A16), NYT, A2.
   Common Cause and Democracy 21 urged the Justice Dept. to investigate whether the two major parties were violating federal election laws by using large unregulated political donations to pay for television commercials promoting the Gore and Bush campaigns.

5. [And speaking of disclosure -]
   Home Depot is told to comply with order, by Bruce Mohl, Boston Globe, C7.
   Home Depot will have to mark prices on nearly all the items in its Quncy store by Aug. 16 in the wake of a ruling yesterday by a state judge. Charlotte Perretta, an associate justice of the state appeals court, rejected a bid by Home Depot to stay an earlier compliance order by a Quincy District Court judge. In its appeal, Home Depot is seeking to avoid compliance with a state regulation requiring retailers to mark individual items in their stores with prices....
   When...the attorney general's office..\..initially declined to enforce its own regulation, Colman Herman of Dorchester brought the original suit forcing Home Depot to comply. The AG's office supported Herman yesterday at the appeals court.
   [Thank you, Colman Herman. We hate going into stores and finding unpriced items. Thank you, Colman, for goading AG Tom Reilly into doing his job. This should not be necessary.]

1. 2 UNtakeovers -
   1. Cabot to sell stake in microelectronics unit, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
      ...A Boston-based maker of chemicals used in tires, polishes and oil-drilling fluids..\..said yesterday that it would spin off its remaining 80.5% stake in the Cabot Microelectronics Corp., a producer of chemicals used in making computer chips, 3 months after it first sold shares to the public.... Cabot...said the spinoff would be distributed as a dividend to Cabot Microelectronics shareholders....
   2. Its management divided, Kroll-O'Gara plans separation, Bridge News via NYT, C4.
      The Kroll-O'Gara Co. said yesterday that it had formed a preliminary plan to split its two main operations - security products and investigations - into independent publicly held corporations...to resolve differences among top management. Under the proposed realignment, the two operating segments will be the Security Products and Services Group, which be run by Thomas and Bill O'Gara, and the Investigations and Intelligence Group, under Jules B. Kroll.
      [Thus ending one of the most distinctive names in corporate history. (We always thought it was named after a leprechaun.)]
      Both companies will continue to hold a stake in Kroll-O'Gara's Internet security subsidiary, Securify Inc., which will be spun off as a private company.

2. Ford appears set to raise mileage of sport utilities - Environmental stance
   - Company hopes gain in sales will offset increased costs of sharp strategy turn,
   by Keith Bradsher, NYT, front page.
   The Ford Motor Co. has decided to increase the fuel economy of its sport utility vehicles [SUVs] by 25% over the next 5 years.... The increase, amounting to roughly 5 miles a gallon, would be the first significant change in the fuel economy of any class of passenger vehicle in almost two decades.
   Ford is convinced that Americans want to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles and will steer their purchases to companies they perceive as environmentally responsible....
   [What convinced them? Because "for years, automakers insisted that the technology did not exist to improve the fuel economy of SUVs and that Americans were not especially interested in gas mileage." (This is from tomorrow's article, "Ford says research inspired new push for fuel economy," by Keith Bradsher, NYT, C3.) Now Ford says "that the technology already exists and that customers actually want better fuel mileage" instead of continuing to cite "research showing that fuel economy was near the bottom of 25 criteria considered by buyers of SUVs. But Jacques A. Nasser, Ford's chief executive, said [7/27] that fuel economyo was among the top 10 criteria for buyers of the vehicles. Ford's market research, rather than the gut instinct of executives, prompted the company's decision to make changes, he said." Funny what a little spike in gas prices will do. Thank you, OPEC.]
   The company's new stance is also a response to environmental concerns about the automobile's role in global warming....
   Automakers are currently required to sell cars with an average fuel economy of 27.5 mpg and so-called light trucks with...20.7 mpg. Sports utilities, vans and pickup trucks are all counted as light trucks and now represent half of the American auto market.... Pres. Clinton raised the fuel-economy standard for sport utilities, minivans and pickup trucks by two-tenths of a mile per gallon (mpg) in 1993 and 1994, to [the aforesaid] 20.7 mpg....
   A variety of recent studies have found that vehicles weighing 3000-3500 pounds - the weight of a mid-sized or large car - tend to be very safe; further weight provides only a little additional safety for the occupants, while tremendously increasing the risk to other motorists during collisions. Ford's current sports utilities weigh from 3700 pounds for a 2-wheel-drive Explorer to 7200 pounds for an Excursion with 4-wheel drive....
   [And from the Globe's version, "Ford plans boost in SUV efficiency," Reuters via Boston Globe, A3 -]
   ...Ford sells 800,000 SUVs a year.

3. Multinationals sign U.N. pact on rights and environment, by Joseph Kahn, NYT, front page.
   ...The United Nations [yesterday] recruited many well-known multinational companies \(MNCs), such as\ DaimlerChrysler, Nike and Royal Dutch Shell...to help protect workers and the environment in places where governments do not. Sec. Gen. Kofi Annan organized the session to encourage companies that operate across borders to spread Western-style human and environmental values or risk seeing the erosion of the consensus that favors open trade and investment.
   [We're going to have a hard time promoting these values as long as we keep market forces against us with our current triangularly interlocked stupidity - injecting work-saving technology, using it for downsizing instead of timesizing, thus keeping the workforce redundant and marginalized. "For our balking, backfiring profits economy can - by injecting one planned adjustment - be made to work in socially desirable ways, and even be made to satisfy high-grade engineering standards of efficiency, with even less involved governmental interference and industrial control than we already have." Arthur Dahlberg, Jobs, Machines and Capitalism (1932).]
   Some 50 multinationals joined 12 labor associations and watchdog groups to sign a "global compact" that commits them to support human rights, eliminate child labor, allow free trade unions and refrain from polluting the environment wherever they do business....
   [These high aspirations are going to be mere rhetoric - like pushing on a string - unless we implement a mechanism to automatically and smoothly prevent workforce marginalization as incessant waves of efficient technology sweep into the global economy. "Pulling on a string" and harnessing market forces to help us achieve our quality-of-life goals would involve Timesizing].

4. Clinton orders disabled hirings - Sets goal of 100,000 for US..., by Arshad Mohammed, Boston Globe, A3.
   Pres. Clinton marked the 10th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act yesterday by directing the federal government to hire 100,000 disabled people over the next five years.
   [Easy for him to say.]
   The Act provides a foundation for non-discrimination against people with disabilities in employment, public accommodations such as hotels, state and local government, and telecomms....
   [Again, this is just rhetoric = "pushing on a string," unless we reduce the surplus of employees relative to the constantly technology-diminished tasks that people are needed to do. As long as we tolerate mass downsizings by corporations, instead of corporate timesizings in the sense of hours cuts that allow the continued employment of every employee without major life crisis, we will just be mouthing fine words about hiring the disabled - or seniors, or people on welfare, or ex-cons = "whistlin' Dixie." We need to timesize, not downsize.]
   A Harris survey found that people with disabilities are more likely to be poor and unemployed....

1. [1 UNtakeover]
   Qualcomm to spin off manufacturing unit, AP via Boston Globe, C2.
   ...San Diego-based..\..wireless technology developer...plans to spin off its business that manufactures semiconductors and software for cellular telephones. The move will allow the new company to design and develop cell phone chips that can operate using both Qualcomm's technology and those of competitors....

2. Turkey: Nuclear plant canceled, by Douglas Frantz, NYT, A6.
   [Good. Nuclear power, like Frankenfoods, is just too full of unknown and unknowable risks for too long into the future.]
   PM Bulent Ecevit canceled plans for Turkey's first nuclear plant, saying the $5B facility would have imposed a heavy economic burden at a time when the government is fighting a deficit.
   [Ecevit has done his country a big favor by keeping it out of this looooooooong-term polluting, carcinogenic technology.]
   Environmental groups had warned that the proposed location of the plant, on the southern Mediterranean coast near Mersin, was near an earthquake fault.
   [It's a technology where there just isn't enough margin for human error and stupidity, of which we have p-l-e-n-t-y. Some of the stories from insiders about the glaring design faults in certain American nukes, and the sloppiness and drug use of the operators, would make your hair curl (or fall out?). We don't need moremoremore electricity badly enough in the present to jeopardize our very long-term species survival in the future, and we should decommission and dismantle every nuclear plant on the planet as soon and as fast as we safely can. Timesizing can provide good jobs for the casualties.]

3. Cohen says missile defense system requires support of allies, by Christopher Marquis, NYT, A3.
   [And they'll never give it, so cancel the G.D. thing and let's get on with important stuff, like reversing our wealth polarization. We don't need the jobs if we're really such a hot economy, and if we do, Timesizing can provide them by easily sharing the vanishing work instead of straining to maintain an outdated workweek and succeeding only in marginalizing our workforce so much that they're anxiously staying later and later each workday to hopefully be passed over in the next downsizing. Passed over. Passover. Cohen -]
   The proposed national missile defense system [i.e., "Star Wars"] cannot succeed unless the United States persuades its NATO allies to drop their opposition, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said [yester]day....
   [Smart man. Now let's add some ancient Chinese smarts - "Good words are not persuasive, and persuasive words are not good." Lao Tzu, by tradition mentor of Confucius. Our allies should not drop their opposition to this "system" that can't even hit a dummy when it knows it's coming. On the contrary, we should drop our obsession with it and "lighten the h*ll up." Sometimes you just gotta have faith.]

4. New U.S. guards promised against steel import surges, by Joseph Kahn, NYT, C2.
   The Clinton administration plans to take aggressive new steps to protect domestic steel producers from import surges, speeding up its use of anti-dumping measures and providing faster relief for companies and workers, according to a [240-page] report the administration [released yesterday].... Some union leaders [had] expressed disappointment that the administration has not done more to guard against sudden increases in low-price steel imports....
   [The good news is, maybe this will help one of our major American timesizing companies, Nucor Steel. The bad news is, this should not be done as yet another special-case exercise in government micromanagement and brushfire fighting. It should be done as part of a simple, overall, fair trade strategy, in place of our currently intended "free trade" naivete - with hosts of flyswatting fixes.]

1. 2 UPsizings, totaling 1800 + unspecified new jobs -
   1. Nortel set for Mass. expansion - Optical networking leader to add 1,800 jobs at 2 new facilities, by Hiawatha Bray & Ross Kerber, Boston Globe, D1.
      The world leader in the red-hot optical networking market is investing $1.9B.... Canada's Nortel Networks Corp. said yesterday it will build two major facilities in Wilmington and Billerica [as part of] a massive worldwide expansion...aimed at locking down its lead in the market for systems that use pulses of light to transmit information much faster than traditional copper wires....
   2. Ralcorp to close a plant, Bloomberg via NYT, C25.
      ...[However,] Ralcorp expects to add an unspecified number of jobs at Dunkirk [NY] and at a Kansas City, Kan. plant....

2. 2 UNtakeovers -
   1. Williams [Companies] board approves plan for 2 companies, Reuters via NYT, C4.
      ...- one for its energy division and the other for its communications businesses. Williams said it expected the process to take no more than 18 months.... Williams sold part of the Williams Communications Group, but retains about an 85% stake....
   2. Ziff-Davis discloses terms of spinoff ...The technology information publisher being purchased by Cnet Networks Inc. for about $1.6B in stock [see 7/20/00], said it plans to complete the spinoff of its trade show unit...the Key3Media Group events business..\..before the Cnet accord closes.... Ziff-Davis, majority-owned by Japan's Softbank Corp., has sold off education, publishing, and television assets since September in an effort to focus on its Internet properties.
      [Ah, the increasingly empty Siren lure of hot new technologies, each one more of a luxury than the one before, and less urgently and sustainably demanded, and more strainedly and expensively promoted.]
      The spinoff...probably will be completed in August, with the Cnet purchase probably closing in November....

3. Environmentalists applaud a W.T.O. ruling on asbestos, by Elizabeth Olson, NYT, C4.
   ...that upholds France's ban on Canadian asbestos imports.... Environmentalists and labor rights activists say it indicates the global trade group may be growing more sensitive to their concerns. The ruling, which affirmed the validity of a French law prohibiting imports of hazardous materials, is also another blow to the global asbestos industry.
   [Lord knows France has enough hazardous materials of its own, because although it leads the world with its 35-hour workweek, healthcare, and intermediate marriage, it lags the world in its reliance on nuclear power and consequent production of looooooooong-term pollutants.]
   Other W.T.O. members might now use the ruling as a precedent to justify similar bans. Asbestos...once widely used as insulation in buildings...causes cancer and other diseases.... The ruling by a three-person W.T.O. dispute panel is the first time the Geneva-based trade group has upheld a member nation's trade restriction to protect human health.
   [The first time? Pathetic. They should be making a religion of human and environmental health, not world-wealth-concentrating "free trade."]
   "It's about time that they supported common sense, not narrow-minded, short-term corporate interests," said Remi Parmentier, a spokesman for Greenpeace....
   [And not actually corporation-wide, but merely top-executive short-term interests.]
   The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions has also welcomed the WTO asbesetos ruling as a victory for worker safety. Both groups...share concerns with a broad alliance of activists who disrupted the WTO's meeting last December in Seattle....
   Canada had sent nearly 30,000 metric tons of asbestos yearly ..\..most of it mined in Quebec...to France before the 1996 ban..\.. The asbestos case was filed two years ago by Canada on behalf of its mining and export industry against France....
   [Shame on Canada for pushing a dangerous industry. Or was it part of a plan to get back at France for sending DeGaulle over here to shout "Vive Québec libre" in 1967?]
   ...The Canadians [argued that] newer, safer forms of asbestos did not release fibers into the air as older products did.
   [Like "safer" nuclear pollutants have a radioactive half-life of only 10,000 years instead of 30,000?]

4. Beyond petroleum, full double-page ads in both the NYT, C16-17 and the Boston Globe, D6-7.
   BP, Amoco, ARCO, Castrol. What does it all add up to? It means a new company able to offer global energy solutions.... It means the world's leading producer of solar power....
   [At last an unsustainable fossil-fuel company generalizes from oil to energy and redefines itself in terms of sustainable energy sources. (As long as they don't get stupid and start trying to monopolize, e.g., solar power - and stifle development.)]

5. Two more votes for Nader -
   1. Nader's challenge to corporate America Inc. - I, letter to editor by Pauline Alama of Lyndhurst NJ, NYT, A28.
      Paul Krugman (column, July 23) wonders whether Ralph Nader's supporters are aware of the intensity of his "hostility to corporations."
      Mr. Nader's appeal lies in his challenge to the undemocratic power of corporations and big money in our society. While Wall Street booms, one in five American children live in poverty. But both major parties have agreed to slash the safety net. The only presidential candidate who confronts these issues is Mr. Nader.
      Surely not the "moderate" Al Gore. When Mr. Gore was asked in a primary debate whether the shift in power from Washington to Wall Street was good or bad for America, he called it a "natural development in a country that's free." No one who calls a power shift from a democracy to an unelected plutocracy a sign of freedom can be trusted to protect the average citizen from the moneyed special interests.
   2. Nader's challenge to corporate America Inc. - II, letter to editor by Joseph Luft of Brooklyn, NYT, A28.
      Paul Krugman's attempt to discredit Ralph Nader's presidential candidacy...actually serves to bolster the case for voting for the Green Party candidate. Mr. Nader's "opposition to global trade agreements" is an intelligent and persuasive case for protecting the rights of workers and the environment over corporate excess [and parasitic corporate welfare - ed.]
      Mr. Nader's supporters are not much "anti-corporate" as they are in favor of holding corporations accountable for their actions.
      [Hear, hear. Wasn't it Michael Moore who recently came up with, "Bush and Gore make me wanna Ralph [Nader]"? You can tell when a progressive agent has somehow miraculously managed to break through the massive obstacle-field protecting the status quo when the big guns of "some but not too much" progress (with which we've all been losing ground), like Barney Frank and Paul Krugman, start launching discouraging salvos. But then it is the Year 2000, and if not now, when?!!?]

• From [Silicon] Valley - Building a career as a computer contrarian, pointer blowout (to C2), Boston Globe, C1.
  Clifford Stoll, author of 'High Tech Heretic'... thinks the Internet is a vast sinkhole for time better spent elsewhere.
  A lone voice crying in the high-tech wilderness, by Alex Pham, Boston Globe, C2.
  OAKLAND - Every group needs a gadfly. For the Silicon Valley, it's Clifford Stoll...to [whom] computers are little better than television, and they certainly don't belong in the classroom. [He] writes that computers "dull questioning minds with graphical games where quick answers take the place of understanding." [He] skewers calculators, laptops, desktops, and cell phones as gizmos that do nothing to provoke critical thinking. Instead, they swallow up time and waste money that should be spent on books and teachers....

1. [1 UNtakeover]
   British deal called off, AP via NYT, B2.
   Ending a deal that would have created one of Britain's most powerful television companies, Carlton Communications and United News & Media terminated plans to merge. The companies cited a report last week from the British Competition Commission stipulating that United...would have to sell its prized Meridian ITV license for south England as part of any merger. ITV, Britain's oldest commercial network, was set up as a rival to the BBC in the form of 15 regional franchises [such as the south England franchise].

2. Track-sharing pact, by Timothy Pritchard, NYT, B2.
   Rivals for most of the last century [i.e., the 20th, the] Canadian Pacific Railway [CPR] and Canadian National Railway [CNR] agreed to share tracks to the Midwest and Northeast of the U.S. as well as in southern Ontario, Canada's industrial heartland.
   [Sounds efficient.]
   The agreements come a day after a proposed merger of [the] CNR and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. was canceled because of a moratorium on rail mergers imposed by regulators in the U.S.
   [And a good moratorium it was, considering the way top execs botched the Burlington Northern merger with the Santa Fe - another prominent case of "testosterone poisoning."]

3. A dent in Cuban embargo, pointer blowout (to A3), NYT, front page.
   Votes in Congress to ease limits on American travel to Cuba and on certain sales show a gradual but seismic change toward closer ties....
   [How we could offer our jugular to China and not lighten up with Cuba was incomprehensible. Elian has had a positive influence here. Let's hope it didn't permanently wreck his life.]

1. 3 upsizings - unspecified new jobs -
   1. Wal-Mart to expand in Germany, AP via NYT, C3.
      The world's largest retailer...said it would open 50 stores in Germany in the next 3 years.... Wal-Mart has expanded to 95 hypermarkets since entering the German market in 1998 - mostly by buying competitors. A spokeswoman said the company would [now] expand by opening new stores, not by taking over existing ones.
   2. G.M. opens Brazil plant, by Jennifer Rich, NYT, C3.
      Betting on improved demand for cars in Brazil, the General Motors Corp. inaugurated a $600m subcompact car plant in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul.... G.M. plans to invest $1.5B in Brazil by 2003.
   3. Basketball Hall of Fame project set to add hotel, AP via Boston Globe, C5.
      Developers agreed to build a 120-room Hilton hotel as part of the expansion project for the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield [Mass.]... The $103m project will include restaurants, stores, and other facilities.... Owners of a local Pizzeria Uno franchise also announced plans to build a 350-seat restaurant as part of the project.
   [Two of these projects pay low wages (retail & hotel). All will require customers, and at some point we're going to have to stop marginalizing the workforce with downsizings and outsourcings and start paying them at levels that will enable them buy their own overall output. That will never happen as long as there's a global labor glut, and that labor glut will never vanish unless we have another Mother of All Wars, or get intelligent for a change and implement Timesizing.]

2. 7 [Massachusetts] congressmen support writers in Globe suit, by Mark Jurkowitz, Boston Globe, C5.
   ...Freelancers [are] challenging the paper's new license agreement...which gives the Globe the right to reproduce their past and future work in other forms (including online) without additional compensation.... Citing concerns that those contributors weren't being fairly compensated, a June 7 letter from Barney Frank..., a July 12 letter from John Olver...and a July 13 letter signed by Joseph Moakley..., James McGovern...John Tierney...Michael Capuano...and William Delahunt asked Globe publisher Richard Gilman to consider amending the agreement.... Gilman's July 19 letter...reiterated the paper's position that the contract was intended to allow the "Globe to produce online products equal in quality to the newspaper."
   [...As if fair compensation would do anything but facilitate that goal.]

3. Canada: Indian candidates, by James Brooke, NYT, A6.
   Indians are planning to run candidates in parliamentary elections, expected next spring. The move, either with a new First Nations Party or with existing parties, comes after the rise of Stockwell Day, leader of the right-wing Canadian Alliance, and after the election of Matthew Coon Come, a confrontational Cree leader, as national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. Indians are believed to hold swing votes in 10% of the 301 parliamentary districts.