Timesizing® Associates

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Good News, Oct. 1-10, 2000
[Commentary] ©2000 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA (617) 623-8080

10/10/2000  glimmers of intelligence -

1. 2 UPsizings, totalling unspecified new jobs -
   1. Royal Ahold N.V., NYT, C4.
      ...the Netherlands, [will] open 300 stores this year, including 50 outlets in the U.S., and plans a similar expansion in 2001 to lift sales and earnings.
      [So, total of 600 stores, 100 in USA by end of 2001? Sounds like overcapacity to us. How many groceries do we need? "If you build it, they will come"? Don't think so, not unless you centrifuge some of that tightly concentrated income and reinvest in your markets. ]
   2. House of Blues Entertainment Inc., NYT, C4.
      ...Hollywood, will open nine new amphitheaters and clubs in Dallas and seven other U.S. cities by next year, expanding the number of its outlets by about a third.

2. [The usual conservative hypocrisy, either side of the Atlantic, but at least they're lightening up "over there" -]
   Conservative reversal on drugs [in Britain], pointer summary (to A14), NYT, A2.
   The Conservative Party leader, William Hague, abandoned a new hardline policy on first-time drug offenders after seven leadership associates said they had smoked marijuana in their youth. The proposal, put forward at the party's conference last week, called for $150 minimum fines and criminal records for people caught with small amounts of soft drugs in their possession or in their blood stream. It was the centerpiece of a "zero tolerance" law-and-order approach that the party adopted for the election expected in the spring.
   [Too bad these guys don't have something worthwhile to exercise their Clint Eastwood fantasies on. At the risk of Boring You, "we should have learned from the failure of Prohibition in the '20s and the success of the battle vs. nicotene in the '90s that criminalization of drugs doesn't work. Just tax them for their costs and cut the big moral posturing."]

1. [1 UNtakeover]
   10/09 AAR/Bob Wolf to be dissolved, by Stuart Elliott, NYT, C14.
   A consulting company that helps advertisers and agencies with account reviews is dissolving as the partners reopen the two businesses that merged to form the company in 1998. The company being dissolved is AAR/Bob Wolf Partners, which was formed by the merger of AAR Partners in New York and Bob Wolf Partners & Co. in Los Angeles.
   • AAR Partners is reopening under that name....
   • Wolf is reopening under the name Bob Wolf Partners/TPG....

2. 10/09 Patents - An early move by Congress to limit the protection of business methods to what is truly original, by Sabra Chartrand, NYT, C2.
   ...Last week..\..Rep. Howard L. Berman (D, Los Angeles)...along with Rep. Rick Boucher (D, Virginia), announced legislation to "provide that where an invention is new only in that it uses a computer to implement the business practice," the Patent and Trademark Office "will presume the invention to be obvious, and thus, not patentable.... It calls as well for giving opponents of an awarded patent a means for challenging it without having to resort to a lawsuit.
   The two Congressmen said they were concerned that business-method patents were being issued without enough evidence [that] an idea was [not] already in the public domain....
   [Good. Hopefully this will apply to "one-click ordering," an obvious idea that various paranoiacs and greedsters have been trying to "own" and get royalties from for months now.]

3. 10/09 Signs of market saturation in PC world - Does everyone who wants a computer already own one? - by Matt Richtel, NYT, C8.
   [A satisfied market - you don't often see the concept of "enough" in business today, since we started the Gospel of Consumption back in the 1920s and went in for big advertising instead of just shortening the workweek faster and preferably automatically. So this is a Good Thing, but...]
   ...In recent weeks Intel, Apple and Dell have seen their stocks tumble after warning that demand for computers is lighter than anticipated.
   [So this is another Good Thing which, however, coming in the historic market-doom month of October, could set up a cascade.]

4. 10/08 If Nader had been [at the presidential debate] - Here's what he (probably) would have said [drawn from the pubic record], by Scot Lehigh, Boston Globe, D1.
   It was a disheartening spectacle indeed! Ralph Nader, who for 35 years has personified conscientious public citizenship in America, shut out of the first presidential debate, both as participant and observer.
   Nader made his name, after all, as a national consumer crusader back when Al Gore and George W. Bush were still partying in college. And whatever one makes of their campaign-trail populism, it's indisputable that Nader has taken up his citizen's cudgel more often, at longer odds, for more causes, and with greater dedication than either the Democratic or Republican candidate.
   The decision to exclude Nader, the Green Party nominee (and Pat Buchanan, the Reform Party nominee) certainly dulled down the proceedings Tuesday night. Once portrayed as a pivotal political event, the debate at the University of Massachusetts is seen - at least in post-mortem - as an arcane exchange, the differences between the candidates dwelling in hard-to-follow details of oft-repeated exchanges.
   What would Nader have added? With his wide-ranging policy knowledge and his deep-seated convictions, he certainly would have enlightened and enlivened the discussion. Herewithi, a look (drawn from the public record) [at] what he probably would have said had he been on the stage with Bush and Gore.
   [Here are the first two examples to give the flavor - and very good writing, by the way, on the part of Scott Lehigh -]
   Debate commentator Jim Lehrer queried Bush and Gore about experience and leadership qualities. As it happens, on the June 30 edition of "The Newshour," that show's mild-mannered host posed essentially the same question to Nader.
   Nader: "Well, I've been a full-time citizen for 40 years. I think the auto industry knows what I can do in terms of safer cars.... We're almost experts at how to make government and corporations accountable."
   Lehrer: "Do you believe you have the experience and background to run the vast...agencies and bureaus and department[s] of the United States government?"
   Nader: "Well...I don't know anybody who has sued more of them.... I don't know anybody who has participated for over three decades in the process." ...
   [Lordy, this man is Lincolnesque. If he doesn't beat Perot's 19% in 1992, this country deserves - and will get - a faster slide into the 3rd World. Accompanying this article is a great photo of the Nadester with Northeastern U. student Todd Tavares, who gave his debate ticket to Ralph, reminding us that the only thing engaging young people in this Turn of the MILLENNIUM presidential campaign is Ralph Nader and the Green Party. Look at the newsreels. Old fogeys in the audiences at the GOP, Dem and even Reform Party meetings. Young people in the audiences at Nader's Green meetings. Ah, we gotta feature one more -]
   ...[Nader] calls for a domestic "Marshall Plan to abolish poverty and the class/race system";...
   [Amen to that.]
   ...a public works project to rebuild America's cities; a big affordable housing program,...
   [We'd do this Marshall Plan just by giving all Americans more time and more money, via Timesizing, to get the housing and cities they want and deserve in this age of technological miracles.]
   ...and an effort to expand mass transit.
   [Amen again.]
   He would end the so-called war on drugs and instead focus on treatment and rehabilitation.
   [Amen.]
   How to pay for all that? Eliminate "hundreds of billions" in corporate welfare would be a start, says Nader, who would also cut the military budget by $100B, or about a third.
   [Amen, amen - but this will definitely require Timesizing to spread the vanishing work.]
   He would also change the tax system. "I'd really put meat in the process of progressive taxation," he says. "The richer people are, the more the percentage you pay." ...
   [Until the portable 5-phase balancing program of Timesizing is humming in the employment dimension and we can start thinking about applying it to the incomes dimension, we are going to need the centrifuge action that only a steeply progressive income tax can provide, to counter the "trickle down, FLOOD up" concentration of wealth that suctions the markets away from its own investments and threatens itself evermore acutely with "collapse" (actually, more like a cascade). "The more concentration, the less circulation" past a certain point, and we're well past that point of diminishing returns to concentrated wealth.]
   How might Nader have summed up? Perhaps by arguing, as he did at the FleetCenter, that his views, seen by some as radical, are actually squarely in the tradition of mainstream American values - and in opposition to an extreme status quo....

• Future presidential debates? - letter to editor by scifi writer Joe Haldeman of Cambridge MA, NYT, A18.
  I teach a class at MIT called modern science fiction. When we met last week, I asked the students to think of the Bush-Gore debate as the scenario for a story in the book we had just finished studying, which was full of short science fiction stories from the '40s and '50s.
  Seat belts fastened? This is what the future might look like.
  There's going to be only one party, actually run by faceless and unaccountable industrialists. They preserve the ritual of two-party government by serving up two fairly lifelike automatons programmed to give rote responses to questions humans might ask.
  As an amusing public entertainment, these automatons are set up to respond, at seemingly random moments, to each other. To keep the results from being too predictable, one of them is given slightly more artificial intelligence, and the other has more realistic makeup.
  After an "election" (in which, of course, merely human candidates are excluded), one of the automatons goes to the White House, where it will serve as a conduit between the "electorate" and the monolith that has replaced the two-party system. Approximating a solution to the Turing Problem, it will be programmed to make idiosyncratic statements relating to certain hot-button issues (the actual button is hidden in the latest models).
  Those statements will have minimal effects on everyday life because of the American system of checks and balances. Those are banking terms.
  [Hey wait a minit. This ain't sci fi. This is what already we got. Duh.]

1. [2 UNtakeovers]
   
   1. Warner, EMI call off deal - Music venture encounters stiff Europe opposition, AP via Boston Globe, C2.
      LONDON - EMI Group and Time Warner Inc. called off a proposed joint venture [i.e., merger of parts of each] after European regulators opposed the deal, which would have created a massive music company....
   2. Shares of BSB Bancorp fall after merger is scrapped, Bloomberg via NYT, C3.
      BSB Bancorp shares fell 23% yesterday after NBT Bancorp called off its proposed $251m purchase of BSB...after BSB said it had significantly increased its provisions for loan losses.
      [We covered this takeover on 4/21/2000.]

2. Yugoslavs claim Belgrade for new leader - Police join crowd...- State TV is 'liberated', by Steven Erlanger, NYT, front page.

3. Curbs sought on abusive tax shelters - Roth and Moynihan call for tough fines, by David Johnston, NYT, C6.
   ...The proposal would [recognize] a new class of tax shelters, called highly abusive devices, in which a strict penalty of 40% of the tax evaded would be imposed....
   [Presumably after charging the full tax evaded.]

4. Tax benefit for all, letter to editor by John Giese of Lyndeborough NH, NYT, A30.
   Re "Rewarding the wealthiest" (editorial, Oct. 5): The whole discussion of who benefits from which tax cuts ignores the fact that we are all economically interconnected.
   [Boy, you don't hear this blinding glimpse of the obvious articulated too often these days!]
   Our future wealth cannot be tabulated by the number of tax cuts we get as individuals. Corporate owners cannot make money if all of their potential customers are poor.
   [And that is exactly what they are making them by sloughing off more and more of the tax burdens onto them.]
   We would all be better off if the government gave a tax deduction for all educational expenses.
   [Ah, don't you want to narrow that to TRAINING expenses, John? There are some pretty job-market irrelevant "educational" programs out there, and puh-lenty of them. And if you're looking for targeted skills, "education" doesn't target, training does.]
   My company of 4,000 employees has openings for 400 skilled high-tech workers. We are having difficulty finding qualified workers to fill these openings.
   [The usual story from high-tech CEOs. But France has long given a tax break to companies for training programs. We could easily do that. And at least this reader is asking for something a little smarter than more visas for pretrained meghour youngsters from India.]
   I believe that the "rich" stockholders of my company would consider themselves economically better off if those 400 jobs could be filled than if they paid lower federal income taxes.
   [Only if they're real investors (long-term interest), John - not if they're only speculators (short-term interest). And so many of them are just speculators these days.]
   Targeted tax cuts make sense for all of us.
   [Quite correct - in the long term. At any rate, John's idea for tax deductions for training is an integral part of the Timesizing program - which makes the training more oriented and proactive by targeting it by the incidence of overtime - even if we have to set up a new tax on overtime to "deduct" from - and we're talking the 100% deduction of complete exemption - for setting up overtime-targeted (and tax-exemption funded) training programs. The continuous training this system elicits will be the backbone of all future economies.]

1. [1 UNtakeover]
   Millipore will spin off its microelectronics unit, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   ...[A maker of products used to analyze and purify liquids and gases \plans\ to split into 2 separate companies by spinning off its microelectronics business in an IPO. Millipore [plans] to offer up to 20% of the new microelectronics company in the stock offering [in 2Q01] and to spin off the remaining shares to Millipore shareholders through dividend distribution [in 3Q01].

2. [C'moooon, Serbs! - toss out the Milosevic 'clot in your cream crock']
   Serbian strikers, joined by 20,000, face down police - Encounter at coal mine - Opposition leader, in a visit, says miners are defending the will of the people, by Steven Erlanger, NYT, front page. [Lookit this linguistic 'coincidence' - Serbia's new President Vojislav Kostunica is getting frontpage of the New York Times and he's getting covered by a guy whose German name 'erlanger' means 'reacher; obtainer, getter' - and whose first name means 'crown' (Greek, Stephanos) - not too shabby! With this kind of linguistic harmony - which the Times didn't plan - the fates are a'musterin' on the side of a Milosevic-free Serbia.]
   ...The police ordered the workers, who have been on strike since Friday demanding Mr. Kostunica's inauguration as president, to leave. But the strikers refused, calling for help. Confronted with 20,000 people pouring into the mine...the police...stood aside. One police commander said, "I'm fed up with this. After this, I'm throwing my hat away and going home. The police in Serbia are more democratic than you think."
   [Hear, hear!]
   The police watched as Mr. Kostunica himself arrived [last] evening.... "I will be with you until we defend what we won on Sept. 24....," Mr. Kostunica said. "Is there anything more honest than the miners of Kolubara rising to defend their votes? Some miners began to shout, some to cry....
   [Sleazebag genocidal maniac Milosevic's latest dodge is to jerk his handpicked puppet 'court' to declare the election invalid but looks like the Serbs are going to pull the same miracle of progress that the Russians did - the police and army are going over to the true winner of the election, Pres. Vojislav Kostunica. Consider this website a prayerwheel to that end.]

3. [1 country, Spain, gets smart & cuts the exhorbitant gas tax during this gas price crisis -]
   Spanish truckers end 3 days of blockades, NYT, A14.
   MADRID...- After a 3-day strike aimed at forcing concessions from the government and shippers, Spanish truckers reached an agreement [yester]day on higher rates and a tax break to offset rising fuel prices, and began dismantling their blockades of border crossing points....

4. TV audience for ['presidential'] debate is fairly low, by Jim Rutenberg, NYT, A24.
   Voter impressions - In Albuquerque, highly touted debate fails to impress, by Peter Marks, NYT, A25.
   [We tooold you so. If Gore&Bush Inc. want viewers, if they want to impress, they've got to include relevant third-party candidates, starting with Nader. And Buchanan, Hagelin, & Brown wouldn't hurt either. In the 8th Congressional race to replace Joe Kennedy 2 yrs ago, we had our best debates with 13 candidates on the stage - 10 Dems, 1 progressive Republican (Phil Hyde), 1 independent (Tony Schinella) and 1 Socialist Worker (Andrea Morell). Phil didn't bother with it last night at all. Kate watched for 5 minutes before rolling her eyes and getting something better to do. Stepmom Joan got thru a full 15 minutes before reaching for the remote. This is the dawn of the 3rd millinnium for God's sake, and Americans just won't be straitjacketed by two irrelevant moneymoneymoney parties. As Michael Moore pointed out at the huge Nader rally on Sunday, none of the 4 great presidents on Mt. Rushmore believed in a mere two-party system: Washington didn't believe in parties at all, Jefferson won a close three-way race as parties were just aborning, Lincoln won a close three-way race as a third party candidate, and his new Republican Party ousted one of the previous top-2 parties, the Whigs. (Lincoln would be infureated by today's "Republicans.") And Teddy Roosevelt, disgusted by what the Republicans had done to themselves almost as soon as he left office, started his own 3rd party, the "Bullmoose" Progressives.]
   Nader wants apology from debate panel for turning him away, by Carey Goldberg, NYT, A25.
   Ralph Nader saw it as bad enough that he was barred from participating in Tuesday night's presidential debate. But
   • to be barred from even attending it?
   • Even in a secondary hall separate from the actual debate?
   • When he even had a ticket, albeit one passed on to him by a supporter?
   Mr. Nader, the Green Party presidential candidate, said today that he was calling for a full apology from the Commission on Presidential Debates, which runs [ie.e, strangles] the debates, and wanted the commission to contribute $25,000 to a project on electoral reform at Harvard Law School. Otherwise, he [plans] to bring a civil rights lawsuit accusing the commission of wrongfully excluding him from the hall at UMass. "I just think I have to do that because of possible future misbehavior by the debate commission," Mr. Nader said.... "They are obviously drunk with their own power."
   [Janet H. Brown, the braindead executive director of hte commission tried to counter that the tickets weren't transferable (were any names on them???) and that -]
   "It's a private event, we're a private sponsor," Ms. Brown said....
   [In which case all public moneys and support should be withdrawn from it. What treason in a democracy! Neither Bush nor Gore are worth a tinker's damn if they accept this kind of support.]

1. 2 UPsizings -
   1. Spanish utility expands in Mexico, by Benjamin Jones, NYT, W1.
      Spain's 3rd-largest power company, Union Electrica Fenosa SA is to invest $600m to build and operate a 3rd power station in Mexico...making it Mexico's leading private supplier of power....
   2. Affymetrix forms unit to focus on genetic variations, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
      ...A maker of DNA chip technology used by medical researchers...formed a unit to identify and analyze genetic variations in humans for developing and testing drugs. The unit, Perlegen Sciences Inc., plans to use about $100m in financing from an unidentified source to hire scientists and begin processing DNA samples. Perlegen will buy [Santa Clara-based] Affymetrix's DNA chips, or glass slides with millions of genetic fragments attached, to analyze genetic variations and build a database of 50 human genetic profiles. It then plans to offer the information to companies interested in developing drugs by studying how genetic variation and the interaction of genes play a role in disease....

2. [1 UNtakeover]
   Cintra breakup ordered, by Graham Gori, NYT, W1.
   Mexican antitrust authorities announced that theyu would order the breakup of Cintra, the nation's airline monopoly and the holding company of its two largest carriers, Mexicana and Aeromexico....

3. Takeover [bid for] Johns Manville fails to generate enthusiasm, or cash [good! -ed.] - Will a predicted wave of leveraged buyouts turn into a few ripples?, by Riva Atlas, NYT, C1.
   [We certainly hope so.]

4. Panel proposes revisions on railroad merger rules - Benefits to users would have to be shown, by Matthew Wald, NYT, C2.
   WASHINGTON...- A government panel that regulates railroads proposed rules [yester]day that would end a bias toward approving mergers and would made applicants show that a combined railroad would enhance competition and function smoothly.
   [That should slow things down - how they gonna show that a merger "enhances competition"?!]
   The rule "represents a major shift in basis from the promerger approach that has guided agency [what 'agency'??] merger decisions for the last 20 years," said the Surface Transportation Board in a statement, as the plan was issued for public comment.
   [A pretty stupid bias in the light of -]
   The merger of Union Pacific and Southern Pacific in 1996 created havoc for some shippers.
   ["Some" nothin'! It created havoc for ALL shippers!]
   ..\..In March, the board imposed a 15-month moratorium on mergers, blocking a proposed merger between Canadian National and Burlington Northern.... Without naming which merger it was referring to, the board said the "recent consolidations have brought significant transitional service problems that have harmed rail customers."
   [But what do CEOs care about customers when they're tripping on the manic illusion of power "that develops in the vortex of the high-priced deal"? See our Why mergers? page.]
   The board said that because so many mergers have already been approved, "there is no longer the pressing need that the nation's largest railroads once had to consolidate their operations to reduce excess capacity"....
   [What "pressing need"??? This "pressing need" only materialized after the board failed to perform its antitrust role and allowed smaller competing railroads to merge into monopolies. And the only "need" in the case is the "need" felt by a few fat men to each have $55m dollars in their accounts instead of just $50m. Some "need." Some "pressing." And where has it got the nation?]
   Rail experts said the proposal was not surprising, especially as the number of players dwindled to two big railroads in the East and two in the West....
   [This is competition? This is about as "competitive" as our from-hunger two-party "democracy."]
   The board gave the public until Nov. 17 to comment, and said that it would issue final rules by next June. The proposal is available at *stb.dot.gov.

5. Ethiopia: Selassie reburial, Reuters via NYT, A5.
   The late Emperor Haile Selassie will be reburied on Nov.5 in a ceremony aimed at restoring the dignity of a monarch who died 25 years ago. The body of the emperor, who was deposed by military officers in 1974 and was either murdered or simply allowed to die of neglect a year later, will be buried in a tomb in the Orthodox Trinity Cathedral in the capital, Addis Ababa. His body was exhumed from beneath a toilet in 1992...
   [Did the Rastafarians, who practically worship him, know about that?!]
   ...a year after the Marxist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam was overthrown.
   [Cry the beloved country! We think of Ethiopia (alias Abyssinia) and Thailand (alias Siam) as the two most exotic countries in the eastern hemisphere, not least because of their florid scripts and vivid art. How sad that they share the same kind of troubled political history as the western hemisphere's darkest unswept corner, Haiti.]
   It has lain in a mausoleum in Addis Ababa since then.
   [Haile Selassie (meaning "Power of the Trinity") was the tiny man who stood alone in the League of Nations in the mid-30s and pleaded for help as Mussolini's fascist war machine rolled across his country crying vengeance for their defeat by an army of primitive spearmen at Adowa in 1898. (Canadians are often confused by the story because the cry "Remember Adowa" sounds like "Remember Ottawa.") Phil Hyde saw Haile Selassie with his own eyes, when, as a teen in 1959, he visited Ethiopia for the two summer months and saw the diminutive Emperor returning from the Addis airport after a European tour, in the back seat of a huge convertible limousine with the top down, his large Empress by his side, and followed, in the topdown limo behind, by one of "The Emperor's Lions," a lioness, lolling up on the side of the back seat, placid as can be.]

6. [A reader has a smarter idea than columnist Anthony Lewis -]
   Our role in the world, letter to editor by Brad Taylor of Keyser WV, NYT, A30.
   To solve the world's ever-present humanitarian crises, Anthony Lewis proposes again that the United States adopt an aggressive interventionist foreign policy (Op-Ed, Sept. 30). But he greatly overestimates the capacity of the American people to sustain such nonstrategic entanglements. As we have seen before, our commitment and sense of responsibility dissipate quickly when we're confronted with the inevitable outcomes of combat.
   Instead, the United States should strengthen the United Nations [which after all, was, like the League of Nations, a U.S. idea -ed.] to be the world's policeman, so that confronting evil could be a shared, global responsibility and not one resting on the shoulders of our young people alone.
   [Or perhaps "foist on the shoulders of our young people" by our "I'll just set here in this easychair & tell you what to do" old people like Anthony Lewis. As our captains of industry further trash the living standards of ordinary Americans with their current "globalization" fad = free trade and more immigrant visas, and call anyone who disagrees with them "isolationist" - while backing the GOP in their petty withholding of our UN dues - it is interesting to remember the attitude of our founding fathers, who, to a man, wished to avoid 'foreign entanglements,' and would therefore be branded "isolationist" by our current crop of easychair meddlers and globalizing wealth skimmers-&-compactors.]

1. [1 UPsizing]
   N.H. Cisco plant seen employing 2,500, by Peter Howe, Boston Globe, C6.
   Cisco Systems, the Silicon Valley networking giant, plans to formally open a new plant in Salem, New Hampshire, today that by 2005 is expected to employ 2,500 people who will make, test, and assemble optical networking equipment....

2. [1 UNtakeover]
   Equifax, a credit reporting concern, to split in two, AP via NYT, C4.
   ...One of the nation's three largest consumer-credit reporting companies will split itself into two independent companies, aiming to make its operations easier to understand and its stock more attractive to investors. ...It [will] spin its payment services division off from information services by next summer.... Each company will be based in Atlanta.

3. Mass. taking steps to stem water waste, by Beth Daley, Boston Globe, front page.
   ...Now, after decades of building Levittown-like suburban landscapes that are designed to get rid of water, Massachusetts is taking steps to stem the flow. Overtaxed reservoirs and growing populations are forcing communities to try to save much of the water they once treated as waste....

4. Switzerland: Legalizing marijuana, by Elizabeth Olson, NYT, A7.
   The Swiss cabinet has proposed making it legal to smoke marijuana, but said other drugs should remain illegal for now.... In 1998 the Swiss [by referendum] voted down legalizing all drug consumption, but cannabis is widely used in the country..\.. The proposed revisions of the country's drug laws must now be submitted to Parliament....
   [We should have learned from the failure of Prohibition 75 years ago, the success of the recent nicotine war and the huge taxpayer bill for our current bloated prison-industrial complex that criminalizing drugs is stupid. They should be decriminalized and each charged with their true social costs, as we've done so successfully with nicotine. Here's one issue on which Timesizing.com Senate candidate Phil Hyde is in complete agreement with Libertarian candidate Carla Howell - except Carla wouldn't then turn around and make each drug pay for its own social costs, instead of taxpayers.]

1. 10/02 Nader rally draws 12,000 to FleetCenter, by Yvonne Abraham, Boston Globe, front page.
   ...That's bigger than either major party candidate usually attracts....
   [And betcha it's younger too, speaking of "The country's great challenge: enticing the young to the voting booth," op ed by Robert Putnam and David Campbell, 8/10/00 Boston Globe, A19.]
   Yesterday's appearance was only the latest in a string of Nader rallies that have drawn huge crowds:
   • 10,000 in Portland, Ore.,
   • 12,000 in Minneapolis, and
   • 10,000 in Seattle...
   Those are huge turnouts for a candidate \who is only polling\ about 3% nationally, according to a Zogby International tracking poll.... [However,] "national polling numbers don't reflect grass-roots third party support because they only target likely voters," said Nader press secretary Laura Jones. "They don't reflect the young voters who are pouring into these events and voters who sat out the last elections because they're alienated from and disenchanted with the corporate parties."
   [We like that - the "corporate parties" - quits giving them more credit than they're worth. They have no ideas. Neither of them represents the majority of voters any more, 51% of whom stayed home in the 1996 presidential election - the lowest voter turnout since 1924. They're nothing but the corporate parties, and not even the parties of the most corporations, just the parties of the top 1-5% of the richest Americans, too near-sighted to lighten up and "let it be."]
   ...In a one- or two-point race, [even] 3% could loom large and hurt [the two corporate parties] anyway. Either way, Nader has struck a chord with tens of thousands of activists in liberal states like Massachusetts. At yesterday's rally, as at most of the recent ones, the audience heard speeches by fervent Nader supporters like former talk show host Phil Donahue, who said that voters would never allow the major parties to exclude third party candidates again. "For this bit of arrogance, for this usurpation of the people's power, millions of people will vote for Nader this campaign season," he said, to loud applause..\..
   "The keys to the [debates] are being held by the two parties we're [challenging]," Nader said, referring to the Commission on Presidential Debates, composed of Democratic and Republican officials....
   [The greatest disaster for democracy occurred when the slightly more independent League of Women Voters abdicated their responsibility for hosting the debates and surrendered it to the Demublican Republicrats - henceforth the foxes would be guarding the henhouse, not the hens themselves. However, even before the conventions, Nader was wielding influence -]
   The vice president tacked to the "left" [our quotes -ed.] somewhat [and] his speech at the Democratic Convention [was] full of populist appeals....

2. 10/01 Internet economy boosting disabled - Facing vacancies, employers seem to be altering attitudes, by Jerry Ackerman, Boston Globe, J1.
   ...A shortage of qualified candidates to fill job vacancies - especially in high technology but in many other business sectors, too - has encouraged companies to increase their commitments to recruit from ethnic and demographic groups that were sometimes overlooked in more prosperous times, say advocacy groups and corporate personnel specialists.
   [Let's hope they stop overlooking their over-50-year-old's as well. The only attention they've been paying to them is to get them laid off before their retirement to save paying their pension.]
   "The excuses are becoming fewer, because the employers need people," said Barbara Lybarger, chief counsel for the Massachusetts Office on Disability....
   Data on employment of people with disabilities are scattered at best, and the information is often blurred by uncertainty about what constitutes a disability. Employer-supplied data are limited too because keeping such records could itself be determined to be discriminatory [under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990]. [But bear in mind, the real test of a labor shortage is wealth DEconcentration. As long as we're getting "trickle down and POUR up," we have a serious labor surplus. Notice that at least they're honest enough to call this a "shortage of qualified applicants" - in a context of severely narrowed job qualifications and discontinued training. Today's dire warnings from high-tech employers about labor shortage is just a club to beat Congress into granting more entry&work visas for highly trained, lowly paid young job candidates from India who will be willing to work 70, 80, 90 hours a week - or who can be easily pressured into doing so.]
   
   • Last week, the Mass. Rehab Commission said that 4,935 people who had been enrolled in its vocational rehab program were placed in jobs during the agency's last fiscal year, which ended June 30. That was a gain of 3.6% over the previous year, and 12% more than in 1994-95.
   • A Harris survey conducted last spring for the National Organization on Disability found that 56% of people with disabilities who said they are able to work were, in fact, doing so. That compared to [only] 46% in 1986.
   • Employer interest seems to be growing for job fairs that target people with disabilities. Between 70 and 100 companies expected to rent space to meet job candidates at one such event scheduled for Oct. 20-22 at Bayside Expo Center in Boston. A similar event last year had [only] about 50 companies taking part.
   [From chart -] Many of the estimated 27.7m Americans with disabilities have experienced some difficulty in working at a job, according to statistics gathered by the Census Bureau in 1997 for individuals aged 21 to 64 years old. Nearly 35% said they experienced employment problems related to their disability and 20.9% said they had difficulty remaining employed or finding a job.
   • 50.2% of people with any disability are employed
   • 51.5% of people with a seeing/hearing/speaking disability are employed
   • 37.8% of people with a disability in walking or using stairs are employed
   • 21.9% of people using a wheelchair are employed

3. 10/02 Ex-ally wants Yugoslav ruler out, by Kevin Cullen, Boston Globe, A6.
   ...Now the Russians..\..longtime defenders of the Yugoslav regime...of their fellow Orthodox Slavs, the Serbs..\..take on a new role [in seeking] to be the intermediaries who persuade Milosevic to step down and let the opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica take his place as the victor [in] a presidential election that just about everyone but Milosevic and his loyalists believe Kostunica won.... Since last week's election, and in the face of compelling evidence tht his regime fixed the results to force a runoff next Sunday, Milosevic has shown no sign of stepping down. But the Russians hold enormous sway..\.. Vladimir Chizov, Russia's special envoy to the Balkans, arrived in Belgrade yesterday, and is expected to try to persuade Milosevic to stop down and allow power to be transferred democratically and peacefully....
   [What a switch! The Russians pleading for democracy! "Mus' be dat dee Kingdom comin', an' dee Day of Jubeeloh!"]