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Good News, September 21-30, 2001
[Commentary] ©2001 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA (617) 623-8080

9/30/2001  the 'good word' this weekend -

  1. [1 weekend upsizing report, with unspecified new German jobs -]
    Zeppelin flies again, and the lines are forming, by Corinee LaBalme, NYT, Sec. 5, p. 4.
    The New Technology Zeppelin, or Zeppelin NT, floats peacefully over Lake Constance. [photo caption]
    The zeppelin, which fell out of favor after the 1937 Hindenburg crash [when it was unwittingly coated with the same ingredients as jet fuel], is flying again. Last August, Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei [DZR] launched its safer new-model zeppelin over Lake Constance in southern Germany, where Count von Zeppelin pioneered the first flights...in1900..\.. The New Technology Zeppelin...is filled with nonflammable helium instead of hydrogen [and presumably covered with a nonflammable coating this time!]..\..
    All 3,500 available seats for the German air company's debut season, lasting through Oct. 31, sold out within the first four weeks of the initial announcement. Waiting lists for the spring season, starting in April, are already filling up, and the company is thinking of adding flights in new cities next year....
    [Meaning unspecified new German jobs.]
    At 246 feet in length, the new zeppelin, named Bodensee...the German name for Lake Constance, is...smaller than the Hindenburg, which measured 796 feet [and] carried close to 100 passengers.... The...nearly silent Bodensee carries 12 passengers and a crew of two.... Its top speed is 78 mph, but it cruises at 30-37 mph on its sightseeing trips.
    The hourlong flights cost $278 on weekdays and $305 on weekends.... For further information and tickets, contact DZR at (49-700) 9377-2001 or *www.zeppelin-nt.com.

  2. [a glimmer of balance]
    Escaping to the office - Logging overtime to cope with tragedy can backfire, by Maggie Jackson, Boston Globe, F1.
    [Logging overtime anytime can backfire!]
    NEW YORK - ...In the minutes after the terrorist attacks, work has proved an anchor and a lifeline for many shaken Americans.... In doing their job, people feel useful at an overwhelming time. [For some people,] the workplace [is] one of their strongest sources of community....
    Some people [however] are choosing to bury themselves in work to forget - a coping mechanism that may backfire.... A Toronto firm, FGI [Inc.] dispatched 50 counselors to New York and New England companies after the attacks. "But I'm seeing some people who are over-functioning," McNaughton says. "They have blinders on." In a country known for its work ethic [or obsession?], such a response is not surprising. A study published this summer by the Families and Work Institute revealed that one in three workers feel[s] overworked or overwhelmed by how much they have to do, partly due to job insecurity as well as to the technologies that connect us to work day and night. In such a climate, the current crisis will add to some employees' already strained efforts to balance work and family....
    Signs of post-trauma stress may not be immediately apparent, but will show up in workers in highly individual ways, say psychologists and trauma counselors. Employees who work extra hard but ignore the emotions may become more emotionally depleted. Episodes of anger, tardiness, and absenteeism often follow....
    Still, as people try to balance work and private lives in an uncertain time, some are being helped by a new desire to reassess their priorities in the wake of the emotional terrors that have surfaced since Sept. 11. "I think I'm coming at things a little bit differently," says Jeff Richman, VP of operations for Agency.com. ...He's trying to have dinner more often with friends. "I'm worrying more about the human element that I probably have before," he says....

  3. Click here for today's TIMEsizing stories - 9/30/2001.

9/29/2001  the 'good word' today -
  1. 2 UPsizings, with unspecified new US jobs -

    1. Marsh & McLennan, insurance broker, forms new firm, Reuters via NYT, C4.
      ...to deal with industry cutbacks in coverage that have occurred since the Sept. 11 attacks. The new firm, to be called Axis-Specialty Ltd., is being created to capitalize on the shortage of services as insurance companies are hit by losses.... The attacks are expected to be the most expensive disaster for the insurance industry with costs expected to exceed the record $20B payout from Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
      [Unspecified new jobs.]

    2. T.J. Maxx enters the city [of Boston], by Chris Reidy, Boston Globe, C1.
      ...A retail [clothing] chain with roots in the suburbs west of Boston formally opened its first store in downtown Boston yesterday.... Corporate parent TJX Cos. of Framingham MA operates roughly 660 T.J. Maxx stores, but only a few are in big-city downtowns. Boston's Downtown Crossing store was set to open last week, but after seven TJX associates were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, the opening was delayed.
      [Unspecified new jobs.]

  2. [1 UNtakeover]
    France: Rejection seen for merger, Bloomberg via NYT, C2.
    A leading maker of electrical fittings, Schneider Electric SA, said that European antitrust regulators were recommending that the European Commission reject its $6B purchase of Legrand SA [1/16/2001, #2]....
    [Ah, Euro antitrust - the only one in the world with any guts or functionality.]
    Now, Schneider may have to sell Legrand, or parts of it, at a loss as economic growth slows and stocks slide....
    [Good. Better a breakup at a loss - with more jobs and markets, than a merger involving megadebt - with fewer jobs and smaller markets.]

  3. [never mind just NATO, now -]
    U.N. requires members to act against terror, by Serge Schmemann, NYT, front page.
    The UN Security Council unanimously adopted an American-sponsored resolution [last] evening that would oblige all 189 member states to crack down on the financing, training and movement of terrorists, and to cooperate in any campaign against them, including one that involves the use of force.
    [Great! Does that include a crackdown against the stream of terrorist training films that has been spewing out of Hollywood the last few decades?]
    The resolution was passed on the day after it was introduced, demonstrating the new spirit of cooperation against terror in the United Nations....

  4. Northwest and American to pay severance benefits, by Steven Greenhouse, NYT, C3.
    American Airlines and Northwest Airlines, facing the anger of their employees, have dropped plans to deny severance benefits to thousands of workers that they plan to lay off in their post-Sept. 11 slump.
    [Good. Hopefully all the rest will follow suit. A couple of million dollars is nothing to the big boys in trouble, and they're sooo nearsighted, they seem to have no clue of how important it is to their own near-future markets if it is centrifuged among their employees rather than remaining tightly compacted in their own few sweaty hands.]
    The two airlines originally invoked an emergency clause in their union contracts in refusing to pay severance benefits.
    [How patriotic - not.]
    After their labor unions protested that other airlines were making such payments - and threatened to lobby Congress to deny bailout funds to any airline that failed to - American and Northwest changed course.
    ["Sometimes the magic works...."]
    Northwest said it would provide 1-6 weeks' pay to laid-off workers, while American did not spell [anything] out....
    ["One week" severance? - that's not going to do much for economic (and airline) recovery and it's not much of change of course on Northwest's part. However, Northwest is practicing some longterm timesizing - see our timesizing page today (9/29/2001).]

  5. [paycuts better than layoffs, paycuts+stockops better than just paycuts -]
    United Airline[s] to cut capacity by 26%, Bloomberg via BG, C2.
    ...Mesa Air Group Inc., which last week cut pay 10%, said it will offer each affected employee 150 stock options that vest over three years, and established a bonus program that kicks in when the carrier returns to profitability....
    [paycuts better than layoffs, hours&paycuts better than just paycuts, but we're not told here whether Mesa's 10% paycut was accompanied by a 10% hourscut, which would put them all the way up there on our Timesizing page today. A paycut alone weakens the wage and the economy's $centrifuging force, and does nothing about the big background surplus of manhours in the automation-eroded human-employment market.]

  6. [And speaking of paycuts, here are some very targeted paycuts - targeted toward the unspendably huge income at the top - which help even more to centrifuge income and spur spending and economic recovery -]
    Northwest and American to pay severance benefits, by Steven Greenhouse, NYT, C3.
    ...Airline executives have sought to share some of the pain by taking pay cuts, and yesterday the top officials of United Airlines and US Airways said they would join top officials at American, Delta and Continental in forgoing pay for the rest of the year. [Now that's patriotism.]

9/28/2001  the 'good word' today -
  1. 2 UPsizings, with 2000 +?? new US jobs -

    1. Nissan to create 2,000 jobs in Tennessee expansion, AP via NYT, C4.
      The Nissan Motor Co. will move its Maxima production line to Tennessee from Japan, part of an expansion that will create 2,000 jobs in the state. A redesigned model of the Maxima, Nissan's top-of-the-line car, is set to roll off the assembly line in January 2003.... The move is part of a strategy to produce cars close to the markets where they are sold.... Nissan [will] add 1,000 workers each to its parts plant in Decherd, Tenn., and its manufacturing plant in Smyrna, Tenn.
      [Good for Tennessee, but bad for Japan (and Japan is deeper in the tank than us - see our downsizings today, 9/28, #2 - net global job gain, zilch), but good for the environment in terms of using less energy to get the cars to where they're going to be sold.]

    2. Penney says it will add 14 stores with new features, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
      J. C. Penney...plans to spend $100m to add 14 stores by the end of the year [that] have...wider aisles for baby strollers, improved lighting and signs to help shoppers find brand-name products.... The first of the new sites will open on Oct. 5...in Wellington, Fla. Penney, based in Plano, Tex., operates about 1,080 J. C. Penney stores and 2,650 Eckerd drugstores.
      [Unspecified new US jobs.]

  2. [good advice from an old airforce colonel, who should know -]
    How to win a war of ideas, letter to editor by Col. Harvey Greenberg of the USAF (ret.), Boston Globe, A20.
    The war on terrorism is a war of ideas. There will never be enough bombs, missiles, planes, or commandos to root out the few thousands murderers spread over half the planet who make up this cancer.
    We should jam and otherwise disrupt all lines of communication within Afghanistan and use our B-52s and B-1s to drop leaflets. Lots of leaflets. We can start with a piece on why America was founded, follow it with information about how our society works, and show the Afghan people the humanity behind what they are being told is the Great Satan.
    Neither the Taliban, clerics, nor bin Laden would be able to do a thing about this, and they would be fit to be tied. By the way, dropping off some food, medicine, and clothing wouldn't hurt either.
    [Amen. And the following letter is creative too, "Let's bomb them with phones" and instructions on how to call us for a chat so we can take over the country from the inside out, starting with the hearts and minds of the people, by Reinhard Schumann of Stow MA. And then there's the previous letter, which is a bit of a gag - "Send the SUV battalion to Kabul" - with their bad driving and their callous disregard for air quality and energy conservation, by C. Casella of Needham MA.

9/27/2001  the 'good word' today -
  1. 3 UPsizings, totaling at least 300 +?? new US jobs, + ?? new Chinese jobs

    1. Chipmaker to lease site in Danvers, by Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe, C1.
      In a significant boost for [Massachusetts'] high-tech economy, the world's leading producer of microchip-making equipment will set up a major manufacturing operation in the former Osram Sylvania light bulb plant in Danvers [Mass.]. ...Applied Materials Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif...will lease the entire 280,000-sq-ft site, which Sylvania closed three years ago [see 9/27/1998], to produce a line of ion implantation machines...named Swift [that] can cost several million dollars each [which] add vital chemicals called "dopants" to the silicon wafers used to make microchips.
      ...The new plant will employ "several hundred" workers over the next several years.
      [Well, "several" is more than "a couple of" = 200, so we're going to conservatively estimate this at 300 new jobs. We hope it's more because the closure of the Osram Sylvania plant announced exactly three years ago to the day cost 690 Mass. jobs. The other thing we have to bring up here is, wasn't it Applied Materials that just chopped two thousand jobs six days ago?! - See 9/21/2001, #3. So bottom line. Don't get too excited about these "several hundred" replacements. Applied Materials is a one-company demonstration of our statement over the past three years, "Sure we're creating new jobs - by the hundreds - but we're destroying jobs - by the thousands." Sort of like our wealth&income situation - our policies are creating millionaires by the hundreds but that process is expanding poverty and our prison population by the tens of thousands.]

    2. Norsk Hydro, NYT, C7.
      ...Oslo, Norway's second-largest publicly traded company, [will] build a plant for melting aluminum scrap to make new aluminum in Commerce, Tex. The 90,000-metric-ton-a-year factory is expected to cost $37m.
      [Unspecified new Texas jobs.]

    3. Cargill Inc., NYT, C7.
      ...Wayzata, Minn., the largest agricultural producer, [will] build a plant to produce corn syrup in Shanghai in an equal joint venture with Global Bio-Chem Technology Group, Hong Kong, a corn processor. The 100,000-metric-ton-a-year factory is expected to cost $10.3m.
      [Unspecified new Chinese jobs.]

  2. [subtle shift from war focus -]
    Military called just one element in war on terror - Briefing for NATO - Skepticism among allies - Some want to see bin Laden evidence, by James Dao with Patrick Tyler, NYT, front page.
    BRUSSELS - ...The Bush administration said today that military operations would not be the "primary piece" of its campaign. ...Administration officials are still debating how much information to make public since much of its rests on secret communications intercepts....

  3. [and a 'glimmer of intelligence' -]
    Hollywood, cut the excuses, by Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe, A15, via Kate Jurow.
    [which answers the question, why was there so much appetite for violence in the first place? -]
    ...I've had trouble working up a lot of sympathy for the current plight of the entertainment industry. Terrorism?! Oh no, there goes the new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie!!
    Fortunately, no one has had the nerve to ask for a federal bailout of "Collateral Damage." Nor for "Big Trouble," a laugh-riot of a movie built around a suitcase bomb on an airplane.
    [Or any of the other virtual terrorist-training films that Hollywood has been churning out.]
    Reality pulled the rug out from under fantasy. The heads of various entertainment companies used almost the same words to describe their decision to pull back on disaster and violence: "It would be insensitve." As if, somehow, [the day before the terrorist attacks] it was "sensitive."
    Indeed, what struck me is precisely how many movies and TV series and specials were being held up, altered, or dumped because of this new "sensitivity." How many projects, in short, had hinged on violence.... [Did we mention "Hollywood's terrorist training films"?]
    The list does not include... [And did we mention "Hollywood's terrorist training films"?]
    Remember after the Columbine shootings when senators and citizens called on the industry to put some lid on the violence? Their worries were met with a blanket defense of the industry, the "oeuvre," the creative freedom.
    Then the twin towers were hit and "it looked just like a movie."
    ...Jeanine Basinger, who heads the film department at Wesleyan University says it woke us up "to the [influence] behind the images we've been thinking of as entertainment without consequences...."
    When reality trumped fantasy, the industry finally "got it." It took this tragedy to activate a long dormant V-chip in Hollywood's own internal thought process. But [is] violence [only] temporarily out of fashion[?  Or] will those telethon stars \who\ netted $150m in pledges [from an emotional] 2-hour TV show...who have also starred in dramas full of gratuitous violence - from Tom Cruise to Sylvester Stallone, from Will Smith to Clint Eastwood - [really] become more "sensitive"?
    I am not suggesting that the dream factory be turned into a propaganda mill. I am suggesting that it has been a propaganda mill.... It has encouraged our own children to be amused, even thrilled, by blow-up, knock-down mayhem..\.. The entertainment industry has made violence a favorite product.... It has exported an image of the United States as an overwhelmingly, casually violent country. This is our place in the global economy.
    [So is it any wonder so much of the rest of the world regards us as the primary global problem?]
    We need comedies and tragedies. We need artists to tell stories that make us understand our world. Eventually, even stories of Sept. 11. But do we finally understand that the images of violence as entertainment have, if you will forgive the expression, blown up in our faces?
    The thrill is gone. So are the excuses.
    [Amen. We love to take simplistic absolutist positions like Absolutely No Censorship! But there's no such thing as Absolute, only specifiably extended Relative. If you think there's absolute freedom of speech now, just try saying something like that German composer who called the terrorist acts a "great work of art" or that US-Midwest college professor who exclaimed, "Anyone who can blow up Wall Street and the Pentagon gets my vote," and see how fast your career is history. As Ellen Goodman points out though, the way we were drifting along, with Hollywood getting more and more violent and disgusting was also a very naive form of Absolute Freedom of Speech or Artistic Freedom, because it turned Hollywood into a propaganda mill for violence, a virtual factory for terrorist training films. Consider the many non-violent films they must have turned down - until they had violence grafted, however crudely, into them. Our solution? Goodman gives the clue "when senators and citizens called on the industry to put some lid on the violence." Let's make the decision more conscious, open and inclusive. Let's have regular referendums every year or two to put the question of how much freedom of speech and how much diversity-promoting censorship. Hopefully faced with the conscious decision, people will tone it down and block Hollywood from certain avenues of "overkill." If Hollywood can't continue its simplistic and narrowing formulas for selling films, e.g., mounting violence, it will have to come up with something else, hopefully many and diverse something else's, as we used to have in the earlier decades of film-making and as we still have in the film-making of many other parts of the world. Note related problem in today's "The media - Talk of chemical war grows louder on TV - When to reports of potential threats go overboard?" We believe we can actually draw something into existence by dwelling on it. Sort of like prayer. Negative prayer. We didn't like it when Mass. Sen. John Kerry tried to impress everybody with how imaginative he was by immediately warning about poisoned water supplies. Then everybody took up the theme. Mark our words, if we keep this up, some collection of insane clowns is gonna do it. We believe that every sane person occasionally starts along a line of thought or imagining that leads directly to great darkness and evil - and says to themselves, "Don't go there." And stops. Impugn it as "self-censorship" if you will, but it is necessary for survival and sanity. Maybe we now need such a reflex on the societal level. Maybe now we've finished proving to ourselves how wonderfully "free" we are, we can rein back on "creativity," "artistry," dba prayers and plunging, toward World War III. That way lies the abyss, tempting and seductive tho' it may be, luridly (al)luring and even exhilarating - for perfectionists - Total Annihilation. Whereas our job, like that of the horta in the original Star Trek series, is "to continue."]

9/26/2001  the 'good word' today - 9/25/2001  the 'good word' today -
  1. British companies challenge Microsoft, by Suzanne Kapner, NYT, C9.
    A consortium of British companies have complained to regulators about a Microsoft pricing policy, which they say will cost business an additional $1.3 billion. The group, called the Infrastructure Forum, which includes GlaxoSmithKline, Prudential and Cadbury Schweppes, as well as the BBC and Inland ["the IRS"] Revenue, wrote last week to Patricia ["Princess Margaret meets Prince Charles"] Hewitt, the secretary of trade, to protest the new structure. Instead of allowing companies to upgrade existing software, Microsoft is asking [or telling?] customers to sign up for a three-year-subscription, in which they would pay an initial sum and then purchase new software as it is released....
    [Ah, everyone's looking for an annuity in this world of CEO-driven inrushing robots and employee-"chosen" rising workweeks. A mix of job desperation on the part of the rank-and-file and omnipotent omnivorous grasping on the part of top executives, in this case beyond-super-rich Bill Gates, who clearly has learned nothing from the hubris of the twin towers or the two custard pies-in-the-face in Belgium. 'Twill be interesting to see what fate has in store as he continues pushing the envelope beyond all recognition and giving - to the wealthiest charities.]

  2. Market place - The percentage of stock in 401(k) accounts has been falling - Even yielding 3%, money market funds appeal to many, by Danny Hakim, NYT, C11.
    [At last, a "correction" - in investors' rose-colored expectations of the stock market.]

  3. ["good but" -]
    With fear in the skies, Americans are taking to the rails -
    [Primary headline is good - we like trains. But both secondary headlines are "ohoh's".]

    1. - Newly popular in disaster's wake, Amtrak seeks U.S. aid, by Anthony DiPalma, NYT, C1.
      [Hooboy, more begging for charity from taxpayers. Why don't we just squeeze the extra manhours out of the job market by workweek reduction and thereby harness market forces to raise wages so everyone can afford to travel as much as they'd like to without subsidizing every last transportation device. In the meantime, we have to bear in mind that although the government keeps trying to get out of subsidizing trains, it subsidizes buses and trucks because the highways are all paid for, and it subsidizes planes because the airports and air traffic control are all paid for. So why the big squawk about trains all the time? So let's not get the idea that subsidizing trains is cruel and unusual punishment.]

    2. - Airlines are reluctant to lower fares, by Zuckerman and Sharkey, NYT, C1.
      ..."Emotions are so high today that even a $99 coast-to-coast fare wouldn't do anything," said one executive at a major carrier....
      [Don't be so sure. Cut the damn fares and fill up every plane. "Break in" thousands of new air passengers and then slowly raise the prices so you can break even and make a little. Meanwhile, cut your executive pay. You've got far more money than you spend anyway because that's how you graspers were crafting recession already before Sept. 11.]

  4. [one airline is laughin' - the one that most loves its employees and is based at Dallas' Love Field?]
    Southwest meets challenge again, pointer digest (to C6), NYT, C1.
    Southwest is seen by analysts as the only airline with a chance to post a profit this year after the terrorist attacks in the United States.... Investors clearly think..\..Southwest and its chairman, Herb Kelleher, can negotiate the recent changes in how airlines operate in the aftermath of the attacks...and [investors] believe the Southwest franchise to be as valuable as the rest of the industry combined.
    [Holy Toledo! All this from hubbing your airline at "Love Field"? Let's see if the main article has any mention of Southwest's dramatic employee-friendly policies, a direction in which United apparently didn't go far enough -]
    The competitor - Southwest manages to keep its balance - Reaping the benefits of a strategy that favors the use of smaller airports, by Richard Oppel, NYT, C6.
    ...Unlike other major airlines, Southwest has not announced layoffs or schedule cutbacks, though flights will be eliminated if business does not pick up.
    In an effort to put travelers back in the sky, Southwest could begin a national broadcasting ad campaign as soon as this week. It will include new fare sales [does he mean "scales"?] on some flights, according to industry officials....
    Though the seventh-largest airline by such measures as revenue and total miles its passengers travel, Southwest's total stock market value, $10.5B, is roughly the same as that of the nation's other major carriers added together. Since the attacks, Southwest's stock has fallen 20%, far less than other airlines'....
    [Secrets? -]
    Mr. Kelly said...that layoffs were unlikely; before the attacks the airline was actually short of employees and had been paying a lot of overtime.
    [Doesn't sound efficient on overtime.]
    ...Cutting back its schedules...if passenger loads do not improve...will not mean ending service to any markets, but instead, reducing the number of flights. Perhaps instead of every half-hour, he said, they would be every hour.
    "We don't want to do things in the short term that hurt in the long term," he said.
    [Another secret - focus on the long term, plenty rare in American business the last 10-20 years.]
    "But at the same time, if we can't get through the short term, we won't have a long term."
    [Clearly Southwest could use the goodnews of the accordion workweek practiced by Nucor Steel and Lincoln Electric to flex up at this time. And alas, no big mention in this article of Southwest's legendary friendliness to employees beyond their eschewal of layoffs (tho' that's pretty big in itself!). We'll have to go back to 11/05-06/2000, #1 for that.]

  5. [At last! -]
    House approves $582m for back dues owed to U.N. - Ending a long squabble at a time when America needs world cooperation, by Lizette Alvarez, NYT, A8.
    [But only because our brilliant "intelligence" agencies don't have anyone who can speak Arabic.]
    ...The bill was passed by a voice vote, with no hint of the bitter disagreements that had colored the issue of dues...payment in the past. The Senate passed a nearly identical bill in February, after a decade-long standoff that strained diplomatic relations and cast the United States in the role of a wealthy deadbeat....

9/23-24/2001  'the good word of the day' -
  1. [at last they're admitting it -]
    9/23  The 'R' word - The American economy was hurting even before the terrorist attacks, and now economists believe a recession is here..., by Charles Stein and Steve Syre, Boston Globe, E1.
    [And people have to admit something's wrong before they'll start looking at solutions. As they used to say at the fundamentalists' camp meetings, unless someone admits he's a sinner, there's no point in offering him salvation.]
    ...Virtually every forecaster now expects the economy to shrink in the third quarter, which ends this month, and again in the fourth, a two-quarter contraction that would meet the textbook definition of a recession....

  2. 9/24  Pay cut saves 'Kiss Me, Kate', NYT, E5.
    In a show of solidarity, the cast and crew of "Kiss Me, Kate" voluntarily agreed over the weekend to cut their salaries in half to keep their Broadway production open for at least two more weeks. "Kate," at the Martin Beck Theater, was to have closed yesterday because of plummeting ticket sales in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
    The agreement, which was approved by all the theatrical unions, came at the urging of two members of the production, Dominic Derasse, a musician, and Joe Maher, the house carpenter, who devised a plan whereby every member of the cast and crew would accept a 25% reduction and would contribute an additional 25% to buy tickets to the production.
    They got unanimous support for the plan. The tickets are to be donated to American Red Cross volunteers, the Fire Department's Family Crisis Center and several other disaster relief organizations.... Before yesterday's matinee, which was to have been the final performance..\..the show's producer, Roger Berlind...tore up the closing notice onstage..\..
    (The unions have agreed to 25% reductions on five other musicals.)...

  3. 9/24  Changes called likely in policy on immigration - Analysts predict sharp decrease in visas, by Susan Sachs, NYT, A16.
    [Thank God! Does this country ever need a "time out" on immigration!]
    As the nation takes a closer look at who crosses its borders and why, immigration policy could change in subtle but lasting ways, analysts say....
    [Canada, however, is still being stupid -]
    9/24  Ottawa signals it will resist US on tighter border controls, by David Ljunggren, Reuters via BG, A14.
    ...John Manley, the Canadian foreign minister, said Ottawa would not bow to pressure to curb its liberal immigration policies and urged US politicians to abandon thoughts about increasing controls along the nations' undefended 3,100-mile border....
    [This should be a matter of public referendum. If it were, Manley would get straightened out fast. If he and the fatuous Liberals keep this up, they're going to have the longest defended border instead of undefended.]

  4. [an American Jew sounds a wakeup call to Israelis -]
    9/24  Caught in the anguish, op ed by Dr. Alice Rothchild of Harvard Vanguard Medical Assocs., Boston Globe, A19.
    This year many American Jews have been numbed by the escalating Intifada and the tensions in Israel and stung by [terrorist] events in New York and Washington. At the same time, some American Jews have approached the New Year [Rosh haShana] with a growing sense of anguish and uncertainty around a central core of Jewish identity - our relationship to the state of Israel and in particular the policies of the Israeli government.... Jews who have a long history of struggling against oppression, of fighting for the displaced and dispossessed, find themselves in the uncomfortable position of supporting policies that many of us disagree with [and] many American Jews are asking painful...questions: Will American Jews take the lessons of social justice and human rights that are grounded in the Torah and in a long and powerful history and choose justice over the assumption that Israel is always correct and that military power can resolve this conflict?...
    [Thank God for Alice Rothchild. She has more courage in speaking out like this than the next 99 men. But her points are underlined by a letter from that 100th man - an Irishman - right across on the preceding page -]
    Canada is safer, letter to editor by Mike Donovan of Newton MA, BG, A18.
    Why does Canada not have the terrorist problems the United States has? Do US politicians really find it surprising that people want to kill Americans after we supply Israel with training and arms to kill, torture, and maim men, women, and children?
    [Here's a first step from the other, the "evil" side -]
    9/24  Hamas signals suspension of suicide bombings, by Joel Greenberg, NYT, A12.
    JERUSALEM...- There have been no Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel since the attacks on the United States, and the militant group Hamas has signaled that it has suspended the bombings....

  5. [glimmer of insight -]
    9/24  Unsavory idea, letter to editor by Hank Drought of Boston MA, BG, A18.
    VP Cheney wants the CIA to be allowed more "unsavory characters" on its payroll. The last time the CIA was allowed unsavory characters on their payroll, they hired, trained, and financed Manuel Noriega, Moammar Khadafy, Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden. Can we survive the creation of more of these characters?
    [Anyone get the impression the great US of A is basically at war with itself? Here's another doozy this weekend -]
    9/23  US may confront its own arms, experts say, by Charles Sennot, BG, A21.
    ...Defined as US-made weapons and military expertise that are turned against US troops, "blowback" is a distinct possibility - perhaps an inevitability - in Afghanistan, according to US intelligence sources, military analysts and weapons specialists. During the Cold War in the 1980s, billions in weaponry and military training was funneled by the CIA, through Pakistan, to the Afghans fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Out of that CIA-backed resistance emerged the Taliban...and the sprawling terrorist enterprise controlled by Osama bin Laden, whom the Taliban is believed to be harboring....

  6. [just a snippet from Bob Kuttner's otherwise boring list of failed liberal nostrums -]
    9/24  How to rescue the economy, by Robert Kuttner, BG, A19.
    ...One heartening side effect of the Sept. 11 attack is a sudden moratorium on [complaining about the public sector.] Those magnificent New York police, firefighters, and EMT heroes are all public employees. It was the privatized and contracted-out airline security system on the cheap that failed America....
    [The only thing that's going to rescue the economy is something that centrifuges income on a market-determined basis. Historically, that leaves us with three options -
    1. war
    2. plague
    3. or cutting the workweek.]

  7. 9/24  Farmers in need, editorial, BG, A18.
    ...[A report] issued last week by Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman breaks new ground in criticizing subsidies for agribusiness and advocating more support for land and water conservation.... Currently, subsidies are not need-based and go overwhelmingly to large commercial farms..., according to the study. With about half of last year's $20 billion in subsidies going to just 8% of farm owners, most farmers get little or no help from the government.
    Meanwhile, the generous handouts to the big producers drive up the cost of land for smaller farmers. Many farms "have not received enough benefits to remain viable and have been absorbed along the way," the report says....
    [All this common sense from a Bush appointee? Will wonders never cease! However...]
    Few of these views are reflected in the farm bill of Republican Rep. Larry Combest of Texas, who would increase current crop subsidies and add new ones. Democratic Rep. Ron Kind of Wisconsin wants to amend the bill by shifting subsidies away from crops and toward better land stewardship....

9/22/2001  glimmers of hope? - three "good, but's" -
  1. Funds blessed, besieged by flood of cash, by Fred Kaplan, Boston Globe, front page.
    ...The sums donated dwarf contributions to any previous relief effort - and that was before the all-star telethon concert broadcast last night..\.. The piles of envelopes are so high, the volume of e-mail donations is so dense, the task of processing the checks and credit cards is so time-consuming, that little of the $200 million-plus received has been spent yet on those who need it, and probably won't be for another week....
    [But we need this colossal level of reinvestment in our consumer markets on a constant systemic basis, and dramatic one-time charity doesn't make it. You can't run a modern economy with unimaginable concentration of spending power on charity. It's just too capricious and unreliable. We need to address the central problems, a tremendous resistance to skill and work sharing - a bottleneck of market-relevant training and a statutory workweek that's been frozen for 61 years despite waves of worksaving technology. Our design entry in response to this challenge is the Timesizing program.]

  2. Spending key to economy, Swift says, by Rick Klein, BG, B3.
    Acting Governor Jane M. Swift [Republican of Massachusetts] urged Bay State [i.e., Mass.] consumers to keep spending, even as more troubling economic news rolled in and she acknowledged that the economy is in a "very perilous state."...
    [Hey, maybe some economics are getting through if a Republican is urging spending. But on the other hand, that's what Hoover urged in the early 30s without giving consumers the wherewithal, not even if they were Great War veterans who were slated to get a bonus in a few years anyway, and Swiftie doesn't seem to have much awareness that consumers would be spending if they had the money, but it's all gotten concentrated in the top brackets where doesn't get spent. Where's Swiftie getting her rudimentary economics?]
    Swift yesterday met with three economists to discuss the prospects of a recession and the impact of last week's tragedies. She said they urged her to dip into a $2B state reserve fund to help the state cope with the downturn.... "The exact quote they used with me was, 'You have a rainy day fund. It's raining,'" Swift said. "My concern is we need to make sure that families weather this storm."...
    [Wow, a Republican mouthing concern for families. The surest way to help them is to set up state-level overtime-to-skills&jobs conversion on an automatic basis, and if that isn't sufficient to turn things around statewide, start creating more convertible overtime by adjusting the workweek downward, as fast as half an hour a month if necessary. That'll get money into the hands of consumers who will actually spend it, without major government giveaways either to individuals or to corporations (à la the airlines bailout above).]

  3. Missile defense: waste of money, letter to editor by Prof. L. R. Sulak of Boston University's Physics Dept., BG, A19.
    The Sept. 11 attacks confirm that spending billions of dollars on a ballistic missile defense system is a futile waste of the nation's resources.
    Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons can be smuggled into the country with the least sophisticated of methods. In the hands of a fanatic, a commercial airliner can be turned into a weapon of mass destruction.
    We must not delude ourselves into believing that a modern-day Maginot line will protect us from determined adversaries.
    [But unfortunately, this dose of common sense takes on the look of a plaintive cry in the light of another story from today's papers -]
    Democrats in Senate back down on missile shield issue - Opposition to Bush on any defense issue dissipates, by Adam Clymer, NYT, A3.
    [As Nader says, there's no significant difference between the two major parties of the American political duopoly. Today's Democrats, like the Republicans, are concrete-coated in money from special interests, e.g., the weapons industry, and lack the intelligence, education, common sense, insight and just plain courage required for effective loyal opposition.]

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