A Last Look at 'The Gates'

For us-- we were too busy to get the park this weekend. And today, it is snowing... So I want to get there again once more while they are taking the Gates dowe. I will enjoy the memory.. the attached NY Times' slide show is worth the time... what follows is from the Times:

Contrary to some reports, Jeanne-Claude's hair is actually a few shades darker than the Sunkist orange - er, saffron - of the million square feet of fabric hanging from "The Gates" in Central Park. It's more the color of carrot cake.

Still, she is unmistakable in a crowd. On a Sunday morning stroll through the art project in the park that she and her husband, Christo, designed, she could barely walk a few feet without attracting a horde of jacket-swaddled tourists.

"Why are you taking pictures of me?" Jeanne-Claude barked. "Turn around; look at the gates! I see only coats! I want to see gates!"

Art is long, and life is short, and city contracts are even shorter. The dismantling of the 7,500 gates was to start first thing today, and, Jeanne-Claude said, in keeping with her and Christo's agreement with the city, it all has to be gone by March 15. That schedule is fine with her. February was the only month the project would work, she said, when the trees are leafless and row upon row of color can be seen in every direction.

The dismantling will be easier than the installation because there will not be any need to be careful. The 5,290 tons of steel will be melted down and recycled - "The aluminum is going to become cans of soda," Jeanne-Claude says - and the fabric will be shredded and turned into carpet padding. Then all that will be left of "The Gates" will be the memories, and the T-shirts, coffee mugs, posters, watches and baseball caps.

There will also be the coffee table book, as there is for most of their projects. Christo spent yesterday morning with Wolfgang Volz, the photographer, gathering pictures for the book.

Jeanne-Claude laughed, imitating her husband's orders to Mr. Volz: " 'I want that tree and that tree, but not that one,' " she said.

It was a bright sunny morning, but cold, and the park was crowded, considering the weather. There were the usual joggers, cyclists and Chinese wedding ceremonies, but also, of course, the New Yorkers and tourists coming for a first or last look.

Everywhere she walked, Jeanne-Claude was followed by a constant stream of thank yous and butchered mercis. She smiled back, but would not sign autographs and stopped for photographs only grudgingly. In a whisper, she explained that the gratitude was misplaced. The whole project, all $21 million of it, was of, by and for themselves, Jeanne-Claude and Christo. If the public happened to like it, well, that was a bonus. Any artist would tell you the same, she said.

So there is no weeping on her part for the end of "The Gates." It was a project that took the couple 26 years, sure, but as of Feb. 12, the day the gates were unfurled, the creativity was over. Then their days were filled with maintenance problems, sanitation issues, tours through the park with out-of-town visitors. Every day was packed, from 5 a.m., when they woke up, to that glass of Scotch before bed 20 hours later.

Now it is on to the next project: a plan to suspend several miles of fabric panels across the Arkansas River in Colorado. She began explaining, but broke off after a couple of sentences.

"Look at that over there," she said, pointing to a place where the fabric had turned peach in the glow of the afternoon sunshine, "and look over there," she said, pointing to a panel veined with the shadows of a tree. "They are two completely different colors." Out came her camera.

After a brief stroll on the edge of the Sheep Meadow, Jeanne-Claude returned to the car, a Mercedes Maybach on loan for a few weeks from DaimlerChrysler. She said she originally laughed at the idea of the Maybach - "We don't even own a bicycle" - but she clearly cannot get enough of the car.

Out of a side-door compartment, she fished a saffron-colored Band-Aid tin, and from the tin snatched a cigarette. An assistant came to the window with a report: Someone had cut hearts out of the fabric in four gates. It's always something; a few minutes earlier she pointed out a brand new gate, a replacement for the one that was hit by a taxicab. Was there much vandalism?

"Vandalism?" she repeated. "Cutting out hearts? It annoys us, but I can't call that vandalism."

Suddenly the door opened, and Christo tumbled into the back seat. Before the door closed, he was debating whether they had time to eat lunch, since it was the last day Mr. Volz could take pictures and had much more to do.

"We always eat in 12 minutes," Jeanne-Claude said.

"To the boathouse, quick, quick," Christo said to the driver.

During the ride to the boathouse, Christo and Jeanne-Claude constantly talked over each other, pointing in a hundred different directions: look at the colors over there, look how the shadows of the branches fall here, look how the wind plays with the fabric.

Like his wife, Christo said he was not bothered by the closing of "The Gates." That's what creating is all about, he said. You want to move on to the next thing.

10 Things College Financial Aid Offices Won't Tell You

1. "You waited until April? Sorry, we gave your money away."At first glance, the amount of financial aid available to students seems like a gold mine. According to education testing and information organization The College Board, students received over $105 billion in aid last year for undergraduate and graduate study; more than $70 billion came from the federal government alone. Problem is, you'll need a treasure map to find your share. The bewildering aid-application process stumps thousands of families each year, leaving many to pay more tuition than they have to.

Lots of students miss out on aid because of the confusing deadlines for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (Fafsa), which everybody must complete to be considered for government grants and subsidized loans. The forms, which are available from colleges and at www.fafsa.ed.gov, are reviewed first by the government and then by your student's prospective school. While the deadline on the form is June 30, many schools' individual aid deadlines — listed in the colleges' materials but not on the Fafsa forms — are as early as February.

If you're the parent of a high school senior, keep a list of all the schools' different deadlines. To play it safe, though, apply for aid as soon as any admissions applications are in the mail — as in now. "Families need to submit their financial aid info as soon as they can after Jan. 1 preceding the student's freshman year," says Barry Simmons, aid director at Virginia Tech. While the forms typically ask for the previous year's tax information — a common reason parents postpone applying until April — it's completely legit to estimate tax figures based on last year's return and update them later.

2. "Your error, your problem."If you fail to fill in some key parts of your Fafsa, the central processor will reject your form, sending it back to you and not to the prospective schools, resulting in a potentially costly delay. One error that parents make: putting their income and tax information in the student section or vice versa, which can't be fixed by the machine scanning the form. As a safeguard, Ohio State aid director Tally Hart recommends using the online form at fafsa.ed.gov; it will alert you if you leave questions blank and can even recognize some obvious errors, such as household income of $50,000 combined with a $5 million mortgage. Of course, there are many circumstances that can't be fully explained on a Fafsa form — say, if a family member was recently laid off. In that case, officers recommend writing a letter to the aid office stating your family's financial situation and mailing it at the same time as your Fafsa. Just make sure the letter goes directly to the college. Too many people "send a letter with the Fafsa [to the government office], and it's just destroyed," says Mark Lindenmeyer, aid director at Loyola College in Maryland.

3. "Our low tuition rate means less financial aid."Many parents who haven't saved enough for college tell their gifted high school seniors not to consider pricey private schools. Ironically, those colleges may actually be the more affordable alternative. "The more expensive and prestigious the school," says Bedford, Mass., financial planner Tom Brooks, "the more likely it is well endowed and can meet 100% of need," thanks to alumni donation campaigns. "You might be sending your kid to a state school that [for you] costs more than a Harvard or an MIT or a Stanford."

To estimate how likely it is that your preferred schools will give you substantial aid, check a few statistics with the colleges themselves or using the annual "America's Best Colleges" survey in U.S. News & World Report, available at usnews.com for $12.95. Look for two figures: the percentage of undergraduates receiving grants meeting financial need, and the college's average discount, which is the percentage of a student's total costs — including tuition, room and board, and books — covered by grants. If they're both 50% or better, you can feel assured that your needs will be fairly met.

4. "You'll pay dearly for early decision."Early decision is a big temptation at elite colleges: Students can apply months before other applicants, as long as they promise to attend if admitted. In most cases, the college offers these applicants a better chance of acceptance. But when it comes to getting aid, early decision can backfire. Why? Your commitment to attend if accepted means you have less leverage. "If you went to an auto dealership and threw yourself across the hood of a car and told them you would do anything to have that car, you're not in a very good negotiating position," says Linda P. Taylor, a certified college planning specialist in Agoura Hills, Calif.

If aid is your top priority, you're better off skipping early decision. Especially if your kid's SAT scores and GPA are above the college median, and she excels in extracurricular activities. If she applies in the spring and gets admitted, she'll have a better shot at negotiating a rich aid package.

5. "We don't buy your pauper act."Every year parents are tempted to cheat the aid system by trying to look poorer on paper — by going on a spending spree, perhaps. There are, however, some perfectly acceptable ways to adjust your assets to maximize your aid potential. Step one is to trim any assets held in the child's name — in particular, custodial accounts (UGMAs or UTMAs), up to 35% of which the aid system will say should go toward next year's tuition. For assets in the parents' names, the rate is a much lower 5.65%. "Technically, parents can't touch UGMAs except for the benefit of the child, above and beyond food and clothing," says Tom Brooks. But "you can use the UGMA to pay for things like summer camp, tutoring, school trips or a car [for the kid], thus diminishing the account."

But if you're looking to sock away some free-floating cash in your name, you could give up to $11,000 each — any more will trigger the gift tax — to grandparents or other relatives outside your household, who could then help pay tuition bills; aid officers can't touch their assets. If your kid is a few years from college, be sure to contribute the maximum to 401(k)s or IRAs. Colleges won't expect you to tap retirement savings to pay your share of tuition.

6. "We'll judge you by your house . . . and your car."Fortunately for homeowners, the value of your house doesn't get considered in most aid formulas. On the flip side, if you're paying a fat mortgage or sky-high property taxes to live in an elite suburb, colleges likely won't be too sympathetic.

Here's why: To determine aid, colleges calculate your expected family contribution from your adjusted gross income and assets. They usually don't consider what your real disposable income is or how cash-strapped you might be after paying your stack of bills. "A moderately high-earning family spending most of its income on housing and other necessities may find that their expected family contribution is difficult or impossible to meet," says Roger Dooley, co-owner of Web site CollegeConfidential.com2.

All is not lost, however. While most colleges do not automatically factor in regional cost-of-living discrepancies, some may if you ask. When writing or speaking to an aid officer during the application process, emphasize "involuntary" costs like taxes over voluntary ones like your mortgage, Dooley suggests. Your car is normally considered an involuntary expense, but elite schools sometimes ask what cars you own and when you bought them. If they're too new and too swank, they may be considered voluntary expenses.

7. "We'll let you borrow more than you can afford."Vickie Hampton, an associate professor of financial planning at Texas Tech University, knows that being well educated can make you poor. A colleague of hers, she says, racked up more than $100,000 in debt while earning a Ph.D. in English. "There's very little probability of her paying that off in her lifetime!" Hampton says.
The predicament isn't unique, as more students take on excessive debt to finance degrees that lead to jobs in relatively low-paying fields. Unfortunately, college financial aid offices rarely discourage these decisions. While there are statutory limits on certain government loans — based on lifetime borrowing caps — there are fewer limits on loans from private lenders such as Sallie Mae, KeyBank or Citibank, three of the biggest players.

If your student must borrow, exhaust federal programs first. Perkins loans or subsidized Stafford loans — both of which you may be offered after filing a Fafsa — are best; their 5 and 3.42% rates, respectively, blow others out of the water, and interest doesn't accrue until the borrower leaves school. The Perkins, which you pay back directly to your school, is the slightly more flexible of the two, offering longer grace periods. Beware of unsubsidized Stafford loans, which your college may offer if your family doesn't qualify for subsidized loans. Although these loans have similar low rates, interest will accrue from the moment the loan is made, even though payments aren't yet required. While parents may also consider a federal Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students (PLUS) — which currently carries a 4.22% rate and has a rate ceiling of 9% — a home equity line may be a better bet, as it offers more generous tax benefits. Find more information on government loans at www.studentaid.ed.gov3.

8. "Outside scholarships help us, not you."Sure, you're proud of the five scholarships your high school senior won from community groups such as the Lions Club and a local church, but don't be relieved. Unless you weren't counting on any financial aid at all, those scholarships won't make a dent in how much you have to pay. "Many parents mistakenly think their cost will be diminished and then are disappointed to learn that it will actually be the grant [from the school] that is diminished, thus saving the college money and not the family," says Anne Macleod Weeks, director of college guidance at the Oldfields School in Glencoe, Md. Federal guidelines mandate that outside scholarship money be considered a resource in meeting financial need. This means you can't use the scholarship dollars toward your expected family contribution, and the college gets to reduce the amount of aid coming your way.

Even so, applying for outside awards can help you, especially if you're looking at an aid package that features more loans than grants. Ask your college if it can reduce the loans first, says Jim Eddy, aid director at Willamette University in Salem, Ore. "Secondly, it [can] reduce work-study." In that case, a few scholarships could still save thousands of dollars in interest and let your student study more and flip burgers less.

9. "We won't 'negotiate,' but we will 'review.'"College financial aid guides have long urged parents to negotiate with aid offices, often suggesting you bring a better aid offer from a "competing" school to shame them into giving you more money. Tread lightly. Many aid directors hate this tactic. Some schools have strict no-negotiation policies, while others are only a little more approachable. "There's certainly no harm in asking a college to review an aid decision," says Loyola's Lindenmeyer. But "we do not negotiate, and we do not match other colleges."

So how do you request a "review"? When contacting your aid office to discuss your child's aid package, start by avoiding such words as "negotiate" or "bargain," says Virginia Tech's Simmons, and don't throw another school's aid award in an officer's face. Instead, thank the officer for his hard work and the school's generosity, then follow up by expressing doubt at being able to meet your family's contribution. If you haven't already done so in writing, explain any special circumstances you have, such as recent unemployment, a death in the family or medical bills. Then, directly but politely, ask if there's anything the aid office can do to help.
Once you've established a rapport with the officer, try casually mentioning that you have a competing offer and where else your student has been admitted. At the very least, aid officers may refer you to outside borrowing opportunities or payment plans. Whatever the response, don't push it. Remember, you'll be relying on this person's award decisions for the next three years.

10. "Thought freshman year was expensive? Wait till senior year."Your kid just got her award letter and scored a fat four-year grant covering most of her tuition, with a small loan for the rest. You're set, right?

Not necessarily. Two problems get in the way. First, the amount of federally subsidized loans a student can borrow increases slightly each year; as a result, your college may expand the loans it offers in subsequent years and downsize grants. Second, many parents and students assume that four-year merit-based awards will keep pace with tuition hikes. "Very few schools are that generous," warns Willamette's Eddy. Nationwide, the average private school price tag jumped 6% from last year, with the average cost for resident students now just over $29,500. Assuming a steady 6% annual price increase and a constant $25,000 in aid each year, the $4,500 contribution you made toward your student's freshman year could grow to $10,135 by senior year.

If your child receives merit-based aid, ask whether the college can adjust it for tuition inflation. Regardless, make sure your scholar keeps hitting the books. A mediocre GPA can end a merit scholarship faster than roommates can devour a midnight pizza.

10 Things Your Accountant Won't Tell You

1. "I don't need some silly old certificate to set up shop."As you search for an accountant to sort through your capital gains or make the most of your itemized deductions, you'll find no shortage of candidates. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there are over 900,000 accountants, auditors and tax preparers in the U.S. But according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), only 450,000 are CPAs, who must pass state exams and, in some states, meet continuing-education requirements.

While some of the rest hold IRS certification or trade association membership, many are merrily filing Form 1040s free of any oversight whatsoever. In California, where tax preparers are required to register with a state agency, unregistered preparer Winston Halal filed returns for 27 clients over five years before the IRS caught up with him in 2000. The agency claimed Halal had bilked the government of more than $100,000 in unpaid taxes, and he was sentenced to 15 months in prison, leaving his clients to fend for themselves. If there's a problem with a return, says Greg Newington, chief of enforcement at the California Board of Accountancy, the taxpayer "has some culpability. They sign it under penalty of perjury."

You don't necessarily need a CPA to file a simple tax return, but some level of credentials — whether it's an Enrolled Agent certification or at least registration with a state agency — is a must.

2. "So I'm a convicted felon. Why should that hurt my career?"Think a criminal conviction might end your career? Not if you're a CPA in Ohio. Timothy Bourke's CPA certificate was revoked by the Accountancy Board of Ohio in August 1996 after he was convicted of theft. But by April of 1997, his certification was reinstated. California CPA Jeannie Johnson received only a slap on the wrist when she was convicted of defrauding her former employer, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority, of more than $80,000. Johnson was sentenced to two years in a federal prison, but her CPA license was suspended for only four months.

Luckily, even CPAs in good standing can't completely hide a shady past. To check out any blemishes in your CPA's disciplinary history, go to www.aicpa.org, which provides links to individual states' accountancy boards.

3. "That 'rapid refund' will cost you." In the first few months of each year, tax-preparation services inundate consumers with ads for speedy refunds, promising cash in as little as 24 hours. But such transactions aren't exactly "refunds." They're refund anticipation loans (RALs), which, like any loan, carry interest and substantial fees: one for a loan application, one for preparation and another for electronic filing.

The total interest and fees can result in an annual percentage rate topping 200%. H&R Block has faced legal action in several states relating to its RAL program. Last year New York City's Department of Consumer Affairs found that company representatives provided misleading information on "rapid refunds" during 86% of phone calls from investigators. But as long as fees are disclosed somewhere in the fine print, firms aren't breaking the law.

4. "I play fast and loose with the tax code..."Most people who hire an accountant to do their taxes are motivated in part by a mortal fear of coming face-to-face with an IRS auditor. But they might be better off on their own. Ironically, some accountants are just glorified tax protesters whose methods all but guarantee the unwanted attention of the IRS. Atlanta accountant Harold Hearn filed returns for clients in 11 states based on the "Section 861 argument," a point in the tax code that, by one interpretation, exempts all domestic income from taxation. IRS examiners have heard this one before, and they don't think it's funny. The Justice Department filed a suit against Hearn last November, claiming he "preyed on uninformed taxpayers." Hearn insists that the IRS has issued "dozens of refunds" based on the 861 argument.

Others are less creative. Overland Park, Kan., tax preparer Alfred Reece managed to claim almost $3 million in refunds for clients in the 1990s simply by inflating deductions such as medical expenses and charitable contributions. He was sentenced to five years in prison. To help ensure your accountant isn't a criminal prosecution waiting to happen, avoid preparers who guarantee refunds or base fees on a piece of the refund.

5. "...or just make the same goofs that you would yourself."A missing Social Security number. An incorrect credit claim. A little bad subtraction in determining a refund. The IRS says these are the most common errors made by regular folks doing their own taxes. Turns out those are the same mistakes made by the pros, too.

Granted, a missing Social Security number isn't a huge deal, but some basic errors are more costly. When California CPA Christopher Thomas prepared 1996 estate-tax returns for one client, he included as income more than $10,000 of nontaxable bond interest, failed to file the proper state tax return and didn't bother to claim a $59,000 state tax credit. The state accountancy board found Thomas "grossly negligent" and put him on three years' probation. Thomas did not return calls seeking comment.

And some accountants simply don't specialize in tax services. A good safeguard: Hire an Enrolled Agent (EA). These preparers specialize in taxation and achieve their certification by either working at the IRS or passing a thorough exam. (A CPA may or may not specialize in taxation, and will probably charge more than an Enrolled Agent.) See www.naea.org to locate an EA in your area.

6. "I don't have time for you."More than 69 million people hired paid preparers to file their federal returns in 1999, according to the IRS — that's 77 returns for each accountant in the U.S. Since not all accountants offer tax services, the workload for the average preparer is likely even higher.

Still, that doesn't mean your accountant has chained himself to his desk to get your return done. A 1999 survey sponsored by the Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants found that only 60% of hours worked at accounting firms were "billed" hours, or time spent working for clients. The rest, says Raymond Zimmermann, an associate accounting professor at the University of Texas at El Paso and co-author of the study, are "administrative hours," which often means "drumming up new business." So how do you secure your accountant's attention? Newington suggests "you get a clearly articulated engagement letter" spelling out all services, fees and deadlines.

7. "I'll hold your records hostage." In 1994 california engineer Natalie daCosta hired an accountant to oversee her financial affairs because she expected to be out of the country for several years. She gave San Diego CPA James Haynes limited access to her bank account and authorization to take care of certain expenses. But when daCosta asked to see her bank statements six months later, Haynes refused. When daCosta was able to obtain the records directly from her bank, she found that Haynes had withdrawn thousands of dollars without permission. Haynes repaid the money, but the state board revoked his license.

DaCosta's story isn't unique. Several states list retention of records as a top consumer complaint about accountants. And if your accountant kidnaps a year's worth of business receipts, you'll be hard pressed to document your deductions for the IRS. While accountants "have the ability to withhold [work] for payment," says Johanna Bravo, executive director of Nevada's accountancy board, "their ethics rules [say] they can't retain original documentation." Again, a clear engagement letter will help avoid a tug of war over financial documents, but Newington adds this: "Always keep a copy of everything you give to a CPA."

8. "Good luck pursuing a complaint against me."If you suspect your accountant of fuzzy math, you might settle the matter with a quick call to your state accountancy board. But don't hold your breath.

The Missouri accountancy board gets an average of 140 complaints a year, many relating to improper filing or sloppy audits, says the board's executive director. But in a typical year, only eight complaints result in formal discipline, such as license revocation or an order to attend an ethics class. Meanwhile, in 1999 the Arizona Auditor General's office found that half the complaints received by the state's accountancy board in 1998 took more than six months to resolve, and some took more than a year.

If your state accountancy board can't or won't handle your complaint, file a grievance with the Better Business Bureau and hire a lawyer, advises Bravo. If your conflict involves a tax preparer, contact your local IRS office. The IRS investigates and prosecutes abusive tax preparers.

9. "I hustle software on the side." The AICPA is a nonprofit organization, but that hasn't stopped the group from trying to make a little money. In 2000 the group launched CPA2Biz, a Web venture that sells accountants business-related products and services. A group of outside investors ponied up about $70 million for an equity interest, and AICPA doled out equity stakes — to the tune of nearly 5,000 shares of common stock — to its senior management.

Those shares don't sit well with some members. "It makes you wonder if they're pulling an Enron," says Kentucky CPA M. Dean Owen. "Our profession is supposed to have a higher degree of ethics than that. At a minimum, there's an appearance of impropriety." (AICPA spokesman Joel Allegretti says the share allocations are valid because the executives paid for them.)

That's not the only problem with CPA2Biz. Thanks to agreements with the AICPA and its investors, the portal sells CPAs many products, including books, technical publications and e-mail systems, some of which accountants can mark up for clients.

Of course, your CPA should offer sound advice, not push products. If he suddenly decides that a state-of-the-art e-mail system is a must for your small business, ask how he discovered the product and why he thinks it's right for you. Then do some comparison shopping to be sure you're getting a fair deal.

10. "Welcome to financial planning amateur hour." Hoping to provide one-stop shopping for financial services, the AICPA has created a "personal financial specialist" (PFS) designation for CPAs who want to enter the lucrative planning field. To qualify, AICPA members must pass an exam and meet continuing-education requirements. The idea is catching on fast: The AICPA reports that about a third of the group's members offer financial-planning services.

But Sunrise, Fla., certified financial planner Barry Katz says that "all too often accountants give out investment advice without training or...[knowing] whether the investments are appropriate." Plus, according to a 2001 study co-sponsored by Tiburon Strategic Advisors, accountants who offer financial-planning services receive 61% of their planning revenue from product commissions, offering them a strong incentive to sell you certain investment products.
In short, walk away. The best way to sidestep possible conflicts of interest is to hire a true financial planner, and one who isn't commission-driven. Check out the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors' directory of fee-only planners at www.napfa.org3.

Originally published on March 12, 2002.

Accountants Wear Enron Black Eye

Feb. 21, 2002 (THE OMAHA WORLD-HERALD) — Did'ja hear the joke about the Arthur Andersen accounting firm and its audit of Enron Corp.?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, probably not.

Despite Andersen's involvement in the Enron mess, amid accusations that debt was hidden and profits were exaggerated, the accounting firm has largely been ignored by late-night comedians.

There are barbs for President Bush and Kenneth Lay:

"Enron CEO Kenneth Lay has sold all of his Enron stock. I guess we all knew that. In fact, the only thing he owns now is the Bush administration." - David Letterman

And Vice President Dick Cheney hasn't escaped.

"It was cold today. I was rubbing my hands together more than Dick Cheney at an Enron payday." - Jay Leno

But while these and other public figures were having their comic images shaped for America nightly over the Enron affair, the Andersen company and the accounting profession itself seem to have flown under the humorists' radar.

Maybe the generic jokes about accountants are on target after all.

Q."When does a person decide to become an accountant?"

A. "When he realizes he doesn't have the charisma to succeed as an undertaker."

Actually, jokeproof or not, the Enron scandal has succeeded in tainting the image of the professional bean counter in the eyes of many people, including some of those in the accounting profession.

And some in the profession think that the scandal may even dissuade some students from entering a career that they otherwise may have pursued. That would hit especially hard at a profession already experiencing declines in the number of young people graduating with an accounting degree.

At the same time, some people in the business are also hoping that both the public and the policy-makers hold off making judgments about their profession until all the evidence is in. And they most fervently hope that no ill-conceived regulations emerge from the rubble of Enron.

"I certainly think some damage has been done (by the Enron scandal)," said Jack Armitage, chairman of the department of accounting at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

"On the other hand, I would hope that people and prospective students will see that the accounting profession will react in a positive way. If we react in a positive way I think it will certainly lessen the damage."

The accounting profession already was up to its ledger sheets in what one expert called a "people crisis."

In a speech in October to the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, Robert J. Sack, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, said that for years universities annually turned out 60,000 students with accounting degrees.

In 1999, he said, that number fell to about 48,000, a 20 percent decline. And data suggest the downward trend is continuing, Sack said.

"The scratching sound you hear is the sound that bright people are making as they scramble to avoid the 'accounting trap,'" he said. Instead, Sack said, students were becoming "finance professionals" or "information providers."

Annette Harmon, executive director of the Nebraska State Board of Public Accountancy, said the number of people taking the exam to become certified public accountants has declined over the last four years, although "we have seen our numbers increase just in the last couple of exams."

"I think people will see that it's a steady income, a good career," she said.

Armitage acknowledged that the number of accounting graduates is declining, "and it started before Enron." The primary reason for the decline is that, after Jan. 1, 1998, people had to have accumulated 150 credit hours at a university -- more than enough for a bachelor's degree at most schools -- in order to take the examination to become certified public accountants.

Before that, no college degree was required to take the exam.

Andersen's role in the Enron scandal hasn't escaped the attention of students like Ryan Burke, a 22-year-old Creighton University senior majoring in accounting.

"It brings to the forefront how important ethics are in the accounting profession," he said. "There are definitely more instructors lately who have been incorporating the Andersen and Enron case into some classroom discussions."

The discussions, he said, focus mainly on "what this is going to do to the accounting profession as a whole."

While the scandal hasn't soured Burke on the profession he has chosen ("I think accounting provides a great base of knowledge in business," he said.), he worries that reforms will be accompanied by too much government involvement.

One thing Burke said he is sure of: "They (the profession) can't allow something like this to happen again."

Tom Purcell, associate professor of accounting and professor of law at Creighton, urged people to keep the Enron scandal in perspective.

"There are over 240,000 members of the American Institute of CPAs," he said. "If someone did something wrong (at Enron), that's a small number of people compared to all the honest CPAs that continue to practice." [SmartPros Editor's Note: The AICPA reports 340,000 members]

Purcell said he was concerned "about the congressional rush to judgment in trying to make the whole problem just an accountant's problem. I'm hoping that the reform that comes out is done in a reasoned fashion, rather than a witch-hunting fashion."

Donald Kluthe, chairman of the 2,500-member Nebraska Society of Certified Public Accountants, said that the "misdeeds of a few" have stained the entire profession. "There has been some damage done, no question about that," he said.

"But the profession will survive. I just hope that when people look at this they don't paint everybody with that same brush."

-- By John Taylor

© (C) 2002 THE OMAHA WORLD-HERALD. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved

Hidden costs of Israel's occupation policies

Israelis are paying a high but rarely acknowledged economic and social cost for nearly 40 years of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, says a new report commissioned by Oxfam.

This is Amy Cooper (Our Federation Gifts Director) and Moshe Katzav (President of Israel) in Cleveland at a resturant at UJC's GA in October. The President's duties are mostly ceremonial and formal. The President symbolizes the unity and sovereignty of the state.

FW: past life...

This is what I was told about my Past Lives... If I could remember my past lives -- would it help me now?

Your Sun is in Libra (Tropical zodiac).

You may remember in your deeper meditations and dreams, experiences from long ago when you were among great artists, sculptors, poets, and craftsmen of ancient India as well as the more recent leaders of prosperous, classical Greece.

Venus is the planet of love, beauty and art, so it is very appropriate to convey the symbolic essence of the sign Libra, which it rules. Venus' influence through Libra also makes that which is crass and primitive quite unnatural for you to accept gracefully, or to participate in willingly.

You may also have been among many who reincarnated in the American South just before the Civil War. In the present you may have to learn the lesson of providing for your own needs, luxury and comfort rather than having others do provide these things for you.

In fact, one of the challenges of Libra lies in being too liberal or indulgent with oneself. With prayerful application of your will, this too can be overcome.

Don't get me started on The Gates. I went to Central Park on Saturday, on the day it opened-- and the park was packed. Truth be told, it was a beautiful day. So many people were hanging around, taking pictures, walking with their dogs, their kids, etc.

Great to see so many visitors in February in the park -- all of the carriages were taking rides, and it was a lovely day. They say it will bring in over $80 million of tourist dollars so you can't complain about that. I can believe that.

For the artists to spend $21 million, and so many years, and hang orange shower curtains all around the park is just crazy. Why? I could think of much better use of the money, but then again, modern art is modern art and most of the time is does not make sense. If I can figure out how to attach a few of my pictures, they will be attached. You’ll get the idea.

Last Friday, I made Bob leave the office early (about 4:30, in busy season) and we went to one his clients office to look at the park from above.. It is crazy. People (including us) were out walking around and taking pictures until about 6:30.

I love art so I will try to see it one more time before they take it down-- and that my friend is the unique part. For me, to walk into Central Park in February for a few hours is unique.

The feeling of urgency by every one I know in NJ to see it. Also a part of it is to be seen there. Also something about fact that they (The Gates) will not last. There is no particular special vantage point to experience and enjoy walking under The Gates, on 23 miles of walkways. The succession of 7,500 gates moving capriciously in the wind, projecting on one another at different levels, sometimes hiding the buildings around the park, some times making the a certain tree jump into view...

Overall thought: I went to the park on Saturday.. I was surprised to see thousands of people... I took pictures, I climbed on the benches, I climbed on the rocks, I enjoyed watching the people watching the fabric. It was a lovely day and I said I want to come back and watch the fabric again. I came back on Friday at dusk and it was another crazy experience. It was a sight to see -- the orange color looked nice against the green grass and brown and white colors of winter. I also walked around to see the white snowy sections as well. Amazing... Something I will remember for the rest of my life.

This is another shot of The Gates. See my comments  

The Gates. Not one of my pictures. I was at opening day but not near the mayor. I arrived in the afternoon. The picture shows the artists with some fans...

The Accountants for the 2005 Academy Awards: "These three men will know who won all the big awards 48 hours before anybody else -- though of course they'd never tell. But the Academy's accountants are willing to spill a few beans about the hush-hush process "

Nice to see a human interst story about PWC instead of some fraud, or whatever...

This is Sasha, the springer. She loves to pose and hang near the couch. She is funny, loves to talk, loves to be pet, but really loves to hunt, especially for rabbits, squirels, birds. Yes, the Princess is a hunter.

This is Amanda, the setter. She is a senior citizen-- 18 years old. We adopted her when she was just 6. She is The Queen of Westfield. Her sister (see Sasha above) is a princess.

This is a picture of Glen (left) and Bob (my husband) at Larry's 50th Birthday party. It is my first posted picture and I promise to post a few more...

Ex-Employees Say HSBC Oversold Annuities:

This is a case of you sell what you have...

"in a typical brokerage, equities--such as stocks--are the overwhelming favorite and typically make up 60% to 70% of all customer sales. That HSBC, or any firm, would be so highly concentrated in just annuities could lead to suitability concerns for HSBC's clients from either securities regulators, such as the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), or state insurance departments. 'Suitability' is the legal term for whether an investment professional has made the right, most suitable investment for each client.

The NYSE hearing panel said the firm violated numerous exchange rules regarding electronic communication including failing to preserve e-communications for three years, failing to reasonably supervise and control its operations activities, and not promptly reporting to the NYSE that it had failed to retain these communications, as required. The firm neither admitted nor denied guilt in the settlement. " Ouch!

Major Gifts - Ten Steps for Obtaining Major Gifts

I would think that these major gift fundraising questions can also be applied to any direct solicitation of funds. The questions are listed in chronological order as fundraising action steps for each prospect.

What you put into a major gift or direct solicitation effort will translate directly into funds raised.

Most people can attain a level of comfort asking for money and this type of solicitation is fundraising in its most effective form...

You need to read the entire article and weep-- this is a true story and... The authors won a prize for writing the article.

This story is why we must be weary of what the companies are doing... this is why we must know that we have been saving for our retirement. Can count on that, period.

CRS: Home Page: "FINANCIAL SURGERY
How Cuts in Retiree Benefits Fatten Companies' Bottom Lines.
Trimming a Health-Care Plan Creates Accounting Gains, Under Some Arcane Rules.
__________________

A Shield Against Rising Costs

By ELLEN E. SCHULTZ and THEO FRANCIS
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The loud message comes from one company after another: Surging health-care costs for retired workers are creating a giant burden. So companies have been cutting health benefits for their retirees or requiring them to contribute more of the cost.

Time for a reality check: In fact, no matter how high health-care costs go, well over half of large American corporations face only limited impact from the increases when it comes to their retirees. They have established ceilings on how much they will ever spend per retiree for health care. If health costs go above the caps, it's the retiree, not the company, who's responsible.

Yet numerous companies are cutting retirees' health benefits anyway. One possible factor: When companies cut these benefits, they create instant income. This isn't just the savings that come from not spending as much. Rather, thanks to complex accounting rules, the very act of cutting retirees' future health-care benefits lets companies reduce a liability and generate an immediate accounting gain.

In some cases it flows straight to the bottom line. More often it sits on the books like a cookie jar, from which a company takes a piece each year that helps it meet its earnings targets.

The art of minimizing retiree-benefit costs while creating income is arcane and poorly understood by the public -- and by the retirees. Here's a field guide to seven techniques.

Hitting the Ceiling

Big companies began in the early 1990s to set ceilings on how much they would ever spend for retiree health care, regardless of what happened to medical costs in general. ConocoPhillips , Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. are among the many that did so. A cap can be a fixed annual amount per retiree, a per-retiree average or, less commonly, a fixed sum for a group. In any case, once it's reached, a company is largely insulated from future medical-cost increases for those retirees.

The fate of retirees can be very different. When Robert Eggleston retired from International Business Machines Corp. 12 years ago, he was paying $40 a month toward health-care premiums for himself and his wife, LaRue, with IBM paying the rest. In 1993, IBM set ceilings on its own health-care spending for retirees. For those on Medicare, which provides basic hospital and doctor-visit coverage, the cap was $3,000 or $3,500, depending on when they retired. For those younger than 65, the cap was $7,000 or $7,500. Spending hit the caps for the older retirees in 2001, the company says, pushing future health-cost increases onto retirees' shoulders.

Mr. Eggleston, 66 years old, has seen his premiums jump more to $365 a month for the couple. Deductibles and copayments for drugs and doctor visits added $663 a month last year. "It just eats up all the pension," which is $850 a month, Mrs. Eggleston says. Her husband has brain cancer. Though he gets free supplies of a tumor-fighting drug through a program for low-income families, he has cashed in his 401(k) account, and he and LaRue have taken out a second mortgage on their Lake Dallas, Texas, home.

IBM retirees as a group saw their health-care premiums rise nearly 29% in 2003, on the heels of a 67%-plus increase in 2002. For IBM, with its caps in place, spending on retiree health care declined nearly 5%, after a drop of 18% the year before.

IBM confirms that retirees' spending has risen as its own has fallen. It describes the retirees' increased cost in 2003 as not very dramatic, averaging $158 a year, or $13.15 a month, for each of the 190,000 retirees and dependents who participate in the plan. IBM says its costs are down because more retirees are older and eligible for Medicare, so the company's contribution is lower. It says that this year it established a "zero premium" plan for retirees, although this plan carries deductibles double those of other plans.

Caps Plus Cuts

Just because companies have shelter from retiree health-cost inflation doesn't mean they can't also cut their retirees' health benefits.

In January last year, Aetna Inc. said it would phase out health-care benefits for workers who retire starting this year. "Health-care costs have increased," says a spokesman for the company. Yet federal filings show Aetna's spending on its retirees' health benefits had not been rising substantially, thanks to ceilings Aetna imposed a decade ago. >From 1998 through 2002, its annual spending for retiree health benefits ranged between $35 million and $39 million.

Aetna says it made the January 2002 benefit cut to strengthen its business. "Wherever it makes sense, we've been trying to reduce expenses in order to be competitive," says its spokesman, adding that Aetna's overall benefits remain "very competitive." Aetna recorded losses early this decade but has turned around, reporting fourth-quarter profits double those of a year earlier.

Aetna's spending on health benefits for 12,000 retirees did rise the following year, 2003, to $44.2 million. A company spokesman said it was unclear why.

Profits From Cuts

For many big U.S. companies, cutting benefits doesn't merely relieve them of future spending. More important, though less visible, is the instant income the cuts can create. It's all because of an accounting rule adopted nearly 14 years ago.

The rule said an employer that provided a retiree health benefit had to estimate what it would cost to pay that benefit over the lives of the retirees. The total became a liability. It created a big obligation on the balance sheet. But at a time when legions of companies were taking this hit, it was generally ignored by securities analysts. There was even some advantage to putting a jaw-dropping obligation on the books: Employers could point to it as a reason that, to survive, they needed to slash benefit levels.

But when a company now changes one of the assumptions that went into that liability, it gets to reduce the liability. In accounting, reducing a liability generates a gain. Voilà: income.

As an accounting credit, this isn't money that can be spent. But it looks the same in the bottom line -- which affects the stock and often management's pay incentives.

Just setting a spending cap typically brings an accounting gain, because it reduces the amount the company expects to pay out over time for the benefits. A company that goes further and cuts the benefit structure reaps more paper gains. It may sound strange that a company can get income from cutting benefits it hasn't paid and may never pay, but that's how it works.

These sums can bump earnings up significantly. Caterpillar Inc. in 2002 added $75 million to income -- 9.4% of pretax earnings -- with the accounting gain it got from boosting the health-care premiums its retirees had to pay and making other changes to retiree benefits. The move will lift pretax earnings about $45 million a year for several more years. Caterpillar confirms the information but says it didn't cut benefits to boost earnings; rather, it did it to help retirees -- by keeping the plan more affordable for the company. "The best way to protect the health care for the long term was to make some of these changes now," says a spokeswoman.


TRICKLE-DOWN EFFECT

Companies often reap accounting gains, and therefore earnings, when they cut retirees' health-care benefits or cap their own spending on these benefits. Here are the steps as taken at International Paper Co.

1991
Records $405 million balance-sheet liability at year-end for then-current program of health coverage for retirees.

1992
Caps what company will pay per retiree per year in the future. This step reduces the obligation and creates a $133 million pool of accounting gains that will trickle into income over time. Company adds $18 million of this to 1992 income.

1993-1999
Adds $17.7 million from this pool of gains to earnings each year, exhausting the pool.

2000-2002
Makes various benefit changes, including imposing caps for plans at newly acquired companies, thus reducing liability again and replenishing pool of accounting gains.

2000-2003
Adds $65 million to earnings from new pool.


Whirlpool Corp. picked up $13.5 million in earnings, or 19 cents a share, in last year's second quarter from accounting gains, after imposing both caps and cuts in health care for its retirees. This gain more than offset charges of 16 cents a share primarily for a recall of microwave-oven products. Whirlpool then just beat consensus estimates of $1.31 in second-quarter earnings. Whirlpool confirms the information but says it didn't cut retiree benefits to help it meet earnings targets. Cuts Redux

Gradually, the pools of accounting gains generated by early rounds of benefit cuts and caps run out. When that happens, companies sometimes cut further, replenishing the pool.

International Paper Co. capped its spending soon after it adopted the retiree health-care liability required by the accounting rule, Financial Accounting Standard 106, in 1991. This cap reversed much of the liability. It generated a pool of accounting gains that trickled into the company's financial statements -- to the tune of $17.7 million a year -- until 2000.

Then the stockpile was used up. International Paper again cut benefits in 2000, 2001 and 2002, primarily by capping the benefits of retirees of newly acquired companies. This generated a new batch of accounting gains. They have added a total of $65 million to International Paper's income so far.

A company spokeswoman confirms the figures, noting that they reflect standard accounting practices. She says the company "simply made plan design changes as part of our focus on controlling our costs while maintaining a competitive benefits program."

New Formulas

When a company's liability for retiree health care soars, it's usually just because of some change in the assumptions that went into the liability formula -- a change the company itself made.

Most commonly, it involves interest rates. Liability calculations assume a particular rate at which the assets used to pay benefits will grow. A lower rate leads to a higher liability. Think of it this way: If the return on the money you set aside for an obligation is going to be lower, you have to set more money aside.

For instance, UAL Corp.'s liability for retirees' health care surged more than $1 billion in 2002. Reason: The airline had lowered the rate used in its liability calculation -- known as the discount rate -- to 6.75% from 7.50%. Companies have considerable latitude in picking the interest rate they use and deciding when to make a change, though rates were certainly declining when UAL made its change.

A shift could be in store. If interest rates rise from current historic lows, billions of dollars in corporate liabilities for retiree health care will vanish.

Also feeding into this murky mix is a company's estimate of health-cost inflation. As with the interest rate, companies have wide leeway to change their assumptions about health-cost trends -- giving their liability figure either a bump up or a push down. For example, in 2002, Motorola Inc. boosted its assumption of annual health-care inflation to 12% from 6%. This was a key reason its liability for retiree health care jumped by $122 million.

Rather than focusing on health-care liability, which companies have so much latitude to adjust, shareholders might want to look at what a company actually spends year-to-year for retiree medical benefits. At Bank of America Corp., for example, the liability for retiree health benefits rose by $69 million, to $1.1 billion, in 2003. But federal filings show that what the bank actually spent for these benefits in 2003 declined to $63 million from $84 million the year before, a 25% drop. Retirees' portion rose 27% to $62 million.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it isn't uncommon for companies to report declines in their actual spending on retiree health care. Those whose filings reveal lower "benefits paid" last year include Altria Group Inc. (down 5%, to $246 million); R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc. (down 11%, to $63 million); Clorox Co. (a 33% fall, to $4 million); Ball Corp. (down 21%, to $8 million), and Black & Decker Corp. (down 28%, to $13 million).

This "benefits paid" figure still doesn't tell whether a company is spending more or less per retiree. The total might be up simply because there were more retirees, perhaps because the company had layoffs or did an acquisition.

But it's still a better measure of the burden of health care than one other number that companies report: their "expense" for retirees' health care. This is essentially an accounting measure of how much a benefit plan pushes corporate income up or down, driven largely by changes in liability.

Dropout Roulette

When employers cap or cut retiree medical programs, the companies don't benefit just by spending less and reaping accounting gains. They also can benefit from a spiral of dropouts.

As retirees see their out-of-pocket costs rising, some of the healthier retirees quit the company program. Their good health lets them buy cheaper coverage elsewhere. But their departures concentrate the remaining pool with sicker people, costs go up, more dropouts ensue, and the pool gets more concentrated again, in what the industry sometimes calls a death spiral.

Each dropout reduces a company's immediate outlays, since it no longer has to pay even a capped benefit for that person. Dropouts also generate accounting gains for the company, since the concern gets to reverse the liability it had booked for covering those retirees for life.

A company in this situation -- with its own expenses capped -- has little incentive to negotiate the lowest possible prices with medical providers. In fact, it has an incentive not to: Rising expenses not only won't hurt the company but will tend to drive more retirees from the program.

At Sears Roebuck & Co., thousands of retirees have dropped out of a retiree health-benefit plan in recent years, at a time when retirees' share of costs was going up. While no one is saying Sears sought this dropout spiral, the dropouts follow a series of caps Sears established in the 1990s to limit its own expenses. The number of retirees taking part in its health plan has fallen 18% since 2000, to 51,500. Sears has 115,000 retirees in all. It can't say how many are eligible.

Sears says that while cost may prompt some retirees to drop out of the health plan, a more significant factor is that older retirees are dying and fewer people are eligible. Benefits Vice President Liz Rossman says Sears works hard to keep its plan affordable for retirees.

Sears has fed $383 million into earnings since 1997 from accounting gains that arose when the company capped its spending and retirees dropped the increasingly costly coverage.

In January, Sears announced it was further tightening the cap on its spending on retirees' health care, and also eliminating future retiree health benefits for most current employees. Sears says the steps will make it more competitive but declines to say how much they will generate in accounting gains.

What makes such moves different from other accounting quirks is that retirees end up paying the price. In Jeannette, Pa., in early January, about 100 retirees of GenCorp Inc., formerly called General Tire & Rubber, met in a union hall to discuss the latest rise in their health-care premiums. The new cost of coverage for a couple was $568 a month. For most, this exceeded their company pensions. Because of the higher cost, many of the retirees at the meeting, whose ages hovered around 80, said they were dropping their employer's coverage.

Mabel Kramer began working at the company in 1944 making gas masks for World War II soldiers, and met her husband there. Now a widow, she collects a pension of $179 a month based on his 34 years with the company. Her GenCorp retiree medical benefits cost her $284 a month, consuming the pension and part of her $810 Social Security check. "If they raise it any more, I'll drop it," says Mrs. Kramer, 78. "It's enough to make you sick."

Others don't dare drop it. Edward Peksa, who spent 24 years in GenCorp's tennis-ball department, said he needs the coverage to help pay for five drugs his wife, Anna, takes for arthritis, hypertension and thyroid and cholesterol problems. The couple's premium more than erases his GenCorp pension of $320 a month. To make ends meet, Mr. Peksa, 75, works 30 hours a week as a greeter at Wal-Mart Stores.

These retirees were paying nothing for their health-care coverage until 2000, when the company began charging them. Their premiums have risen steadily since then. GenCorp says the reason is the ceilings it placed in 1995 and 1997 on its own spending on retirees' health care.

GenCorp's spending on the retiree health-care benefit has fallen over the past six years, its filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission show. It paid $30 million for the benefit in 1997 but just $25 million in 2003, according to its annual report. The liability on its books for retiree health care is down 40% since 1995.

Among the reasons is that no one hired since the mid-1990s will get the retiree benefit, GenCorp says. It adds that the liability also shrinks as retirees die or drop out of the health-care plan because they have "other options or coverage available, or possibly because they can't afford it any more."

Medicare Checks

Medicare's new prescription-drug benefit is giving companies a whole new source of accounting-generated income that boosts their earnings.

And some employers may get federal subsidies even after transferring costs to their retirees.

Congress was worried that if Medicare paid for prescription drugs, companies would cut retiree health-care benefits even faster than they already were. So when it passed a Medicare drug benefit last year, Congress added subsidies for companies that retain retiree drug coverage. The U.S. will reimburse employers for 28% of the cost of retiree prescription-drug spending over $250, up to a subsidy of $1,330 per retiree per year.

This means companies can reduce the liability they're carrying on their books for drug coverage. They won't get the subsidy until 2006. But accounting rules let them estimate how big a subsidy they'll get over the lives of current and future retirees and deduct this figure from their liability right now -- and start dropping immediate accounting gains to their bottom lines.

General Motors Corp. estimates the Medicare prescription-drug plan will cut $4 billion from its liability for retiree health care. Other companies' estimated cuts include $1.3 billion at Verizon Communications Inc., $572 million at BellSouth Corp., $415 million at AMR Corp., $450 million at U.S. Steel Corp., and $280 million at UAL. All of these will boost the companies' income.

The new Medicare law means some companies can get federal subsidies (and thus fresh accounting gains and earnings) even if they shift part of the cost of their retiree drug coverage to the retirees themselves. That's because the way the law is written, the subsidy is based on the whole cost of a company's retiree drug program -- including the part retirees have to pay for."

Christmas Eve with Dave Letterman entertaining troops in Iraq

Letterman, Paul Shaffer and Biff Henderson brought their late night television show to the Marines, sailors and soldiers currently stationed at Camp Taqaddum, Iraq, Dec. 24, 2004.

With the help of cue cards held by an Army soldier, Letterman delivered his opening monologue written specifically for the troops:

* "Anybody here from out of town?"

* "I see many of you brought your own truck."

* Regarding being in a combat zone: "I haven't seen anything like this since the last Pistons-Pacers game."

* "If I wanted to face insurgents I would've spent Christmas with my relatives."

* "Iraqi elections are in January. Hurry up and pick somebody so we can get the hell out of here."

* "Iran is developing a nuclear bomb; good news is that they're dropping it from a camel."

Arthur Miller: Can't make people see unless they feel

Arthur Miller was one of the leading playrights of our time. He died on Feb 10 and I just watched an hour PBS program -- it was Charlie Rose's past interviews with him.

His line about what do you want people to say about you after your gone: "He wrote a few good characters." Fitting, so fitting.

I heard Hoenlein -- He told us about MEMRI

I moved this from another blog I started, it was on the Middle East.. I was thinking I would have to blogs, but one is enough, thank you very much.

The lecture of Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations....was on March 28, 2004. He mentioned the MEMRI web site, so I took a quick look and found so much informaton. You could spend a few hours on the site. One day I'll have time to do that.

MH is a WOW. He told us that we are dealing with new issues, they are the same old anti-Israel United Nations and same old, same old, same music, same lyrics, but in new costumes.

In December, the pro-Palestinian majority in the UN General Assembly passed a resolution that asked the court to examine the legal consequences of Israel's security fence. The UN Secretariat then sent "all documents likely to throw light upon the question" to the court.

Not one document mentions the 20,000 terrorist attacks against Israel over the past three years or the 126 suicide bombings that a completed fence might have prevented.

The General Assembly did not ask the judges to consider the factual context of the security fence nor the option that it is legal and justified.

The assembly had already voted to declare the fence illegal, but that was hardly unexpected.

This same body earlier voted for a resolution to protect Palestinian children - but would not pass the same resolution when "Israeli children" was substituted.

The selective injustice applies to other disputed territories as well. The UN has never challenged security fences in what Pakistan terms Indian-occupied Kashmir or what Greek Cypriots call occupied Cyprus.

Only the fence in the so-called occupied Palestinian territory seems to merit attention.

He told us not to sit and not act... FIRST-- We must get to know the story, write letters and speak up. If the press does tell the right story and they don't we must say we tell them the facts.

The Radio is vital -- and his is active on talk radio.

Re: Is Israel developing Oil Alternatives? MH no, it costs too much to do that. My comment on his comments: our national security and foreign policy cannot be held hostage to sheiks, kings and generals supported by anti-capitalist, anti-U.S., etc. We need to be aware of the dangers ahead if the President fails to enact a new energy policy... There are those who think we have no oil crisis because the worldwide supplies are adequate, but no family in America will escape the consequences of the current and coming energy crisis.

We simply have to become aware of how vulnerable we are...

This is true: it is a Virtual war -- This contains intersting web sites...

Hannah Brown, The Jerusalem Post, 27 September 2003

It's been two years now since the current violence started. Although some prefer to count it by the Hebrew calendar, the date usually given for the outbreak of the hostilities is September 29, several days after Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, where riots took place. It's worth taking a look at some Web sites that focus on this intifada from various points of view, some of which are new, some of which we visited last year. (Please note: separate columns during the year have focused on memorial sites and sites devoted to fallen and missing Israeli soldiers.)

The Palestinian Authority's Web site at http: / www.pna.org is under construction. Supposedly you can click on several Web pages that are currently available on such topics as its Education Ministry, Labor Ministry, etc. but most were not in working order the two times I tried the site (what a surprise; it would be interesting to know who was accountable for the budget for Web site design and maintenance). The only two sections I saw were the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, which you can also check out directly at http: / www.pcbs.org, and the Bethlehem 2000 project, the details of which are still posted. The Bureau of Statistics has the results of a recent study on employment, which was done according to what is referred to as a "relaxed definition." This definition, unfortunately, is not given. The overall gist is that unemployment in the West Bank is on the high side. There is also a section listing employees of the bureau and their relatives who have been killed in the violence.

What a difference a year can make. Last year, Fatah.net at http: / www.fatah.net was barely more than a logo of swords bared. Now, it takes you to Ummah.com, the "Muslim Online Directory." This is a big, jazzy site, filled with advertising for matchmaking services and products (CDs of the Koran at Simply Islam), with all kinds of sections: politics and news, of course, but also religion, social life, science, chat and business. The site's main story on a recent day, "Who's afraid of Iraq?" was not a hysterical attack on Israel but a well-written (whether you agree with it or not) defense of Iraq by a Tufts University professor, who pointed out that even if Saddam Hussein were to be replaced by a democratically elected government, there might still be nuclear weapons in Iraq. While the focus of this site is very much against Israel, it is much milder in tone than you might expect.

The Hizbullah site in English at http: / www.hizbollah.org/english/frames/ index_eg.htm takes forever to load. If you decide you're up for the wait, you'll get more of a typical political propaganda site - logos and slogans and photos of funerals and bloody corpses and fighters waving guns. If you expect to learn something new here about Hizbullah, you'll be disappointed.

There are many sites out there that give a Palestinian perspective of the news, but one of the most elaborate is the Electronic Intifada at http: / electronicintifada. net/introduction/index.shtml#top. Many other URLs for Web sites that no longer exist, such as the Palestinian Authority's old Web site at http: / www.pna.net, now take you directly to this site. EI, as it calls itself, is very professional, user-friendly and well written. It is mainly a compilation of news from publications all over the Internet, aimed at combating the pro-Israeli, pro-American spin the EI creators feel is generally found in press accounts. (While many of The Jerusalem Post readers may feel that the American and international media tend to display a pro-Palestinian bias, apparently Palestinians are also alarmed by what they read.) It does collect news from a wide variety of sources, including (although not usually) the Post. It is adorned by photos, such as a picture of a lone, small Palestinian boy aiming a stone at an Israeli tank.

For a more straightforward Palestinian version of the news, try the WAFA site at http: / www.wafa.pna.net. If the Electronic Intifada is the Palestinian CNN, then this is their AP. You can read the news here in Hebrew, Arabic, English or French. It has a section devoted to what the Israelis have done in the past 24 hours, even cataloging trees burned and vendors' food destroyed.

THIS SITE doesn't really relate directly to the current situation, but did you know that the city of Ramallah has a Web site, at http: / www.ramallah-city.org? It rather optimistically characterizes the city as a harmonious and lovely place to live and work, but then, I suppose, it's just as easy to make fun of our own tourism- targeted Web sites that don't mention any of our recent dangers or difficulties. Still, it's hard to read the lines "The late Mr. E Grant who lived in Ramallah from 1901 to 1904 says in his book that the people of Ramallah are energetic, organized and intelligent and quickly put a stranger at ease" with an entirely straight face.

ONE OF the best Israeli sites is still the Women in Green site at http: / www. womeningreen.org. Its liveliest features are galleries of recent posters and signs from Women in Green demonstrations.

The most comprehensive site from the peace camp remains the B'Tselem site at http: / www.btselem.org. B'Tselem, the Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, once had a section on the current intifada, but now devotes essentially its entire site to the current situation, and the site is now in three languages, English, Hebrew and Arabic. There are articles and tallies of deaths by statistics: Israelis killed by Palestinians, Palestinians killed by Israelis, where the killings occurred, etc.

The Israeli government's official site, http: / www.israel.org or http: / www. mfa.gov.il/mfa/home.asp, is a frequently updated news site and good for checking out the chronology of the current intifada. It also has an informative section on the trial of Marwan Barghouti.

Right now, one of my fondest wishes for this new year is that next year I won't be revisiting these sites and searching for new ones on this topic for a third time.

// posted by Phyllis @ 11:36 AM

Two Intersting Websites...

the arab association of human rights

The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

Women step up hunt for financial advice

Women and finance: sizing up the hurdles

Although taking charge of finances is important for both sexes, women often face greater challenges than men. On average, women:

• Live seven years longer than men.

• Earn 76 cents for each dollar men earn.

• Spend 11 years out of the workforce to care for children or elderly parents.

• Qualify for lower Social Security benefits than men do, and have lower retirement-account balances.

• Are more likely to work for a company that does not offer retirement-savings benefits.

• Have higher healthcare expenses.

• Often have more difficulty establishing credit than men do.

An article about investors who lost retirement money in the stock market misidentified the arbitration forum in which two of them, Norman and Wilma Huff of Dalton, Ohio, brought a case against their broker. The New York Stock Exchange, not the NASD, oversaw the case.

ABSTRACT - Case of Norman Huff, who won arbitration case against Prudential Securities and broker Michael G Dobbins, who convinced him to accept early retirement deal, for improperly investing his pension funds noted; some securities lawyers say circumstances surrounding his losses are becoming disturbingly common as brokers find people considering retirement to be receptive and trusting targets; brokers have incentive to recommend that workers accept early retirement offers to gain access to pension money; photos (M)

Jeff Gannon's web site says: "The voice goes silent.

Because of the attention being paid to me I find it is no longer possible to effectively be a reporter for Talon News. In consideration of the welfare of me and my family I have decided to return to private life.
Thank you to all those who supported me."

How sad. How amazing. I did not know the guy. I don't believe it what is happening and how does something like this happen? and Who is Jeff Gannon? Why are some White House reporters saying terrible things about him, and why did the group that handles credentials for Capitol Hill correspondents give him credential after they turn down his request last summer?

Gannon, the White House correspondent for Talon News, a pro-conservative Web site linked to GOPUSA.com, has drawn attention recently among those who cover the president for what many consider to be an especially partisan approach. He is known for inserting blatantly pro-Bush statements in his inquiries at televised press briefings.

White House reporters say Gannon has regularly attended daily press briefings for more than a year. Then, during President Bush's televised press conference on Jan. 26, the president called on him for a question, bypassing dozens of far more experienced reporters.

Christo's Gates: A Little Creaky: "Christo's Gates: A Little Creaky

By Blake Gopnik
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 13, 2005; Page D01

NEW YORK, Feb. 12 -- They're way, way better than the pandas, pigs, cows and other fiberglass tchotchkes that have 'decorated' our cities over the past decade.

But it's only a difference of quality, not kind.
The 7,500 fabric 'gates' unfurled Saturday in Central Park, courtesy of local artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, are charming bits of civic ornament. They're drawing New Yorkers out in crowds to stroll among and under them, and should continue to do so for the two weeks that they're up. But as a work of outdoor art, in competition with the best of Bernini or even Henry Moore -- and especially compared with some of the couple's earlier projects -- they're unusually slight. It's amazing how small the artistic return can be on a piece that fills 850 acres in the middle of one of the world's great cities and looks set to cost $21 million before it's done. (But then, that's only one-fifth what has been paid for a mediocre Picasso, so maybe that return is about right.)

'The Gates: Central Park, New York, 1979-2005,' as the project is called, consists of thousands of orange PVC arches, like giant cricket wickets, that reach about 16 feet up. They span 23 miles of pathways, filling nearly every corner of the park from the Plaza Hotel right up to Harlem. One gate springs up every dozen feet or so, and a panel of pleated orange nylon hangs down from its crossbar to just above head height."

"It's very pleasant to walk through the park and watch as the sun bounces off the sparkling fabric or shines through it. The wind sometimes stirs up impressive nautical effects. A field of orange specks processing to the far horizon makes for some grand, intensely photogenic vistas. On the morning of the unfurling, the vibe was great as well, as families came out to take the air and take in the latest oddity on show in their town.

Overall, the event reminded me of a festive parade of flags, such as towns put on to mark important civic holidays. Or of a tall ships' day, or a kite festival, or some newfangled kind of daytime fireworks display. Or, best of all, it reminded me of how nice it feels at Christmastime when lighted garlands stretch out across downtown streets. What it didn't remind me of, much, is the kind of puzzling, complex, probing experience we're supposed to get from significant art.

From what I can tell, older projects by Christo and Jeanne-Claude -- they've jettisoned last names -- had more of those profound effects.

Their "Running Fence" from 1976 consisted of a white fabric wall, 18 feet high, that crossed 24 miles of rolling California landscape. It seemed to talk about the fencing of the West; about the American Dream's obsession with open space; about competition between man and nature. Set where very few would ever get to see it, the "Fence" had the grandeur of a splendid folly, on the order of Mount Rushmore or of Land Art projects such as Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" in Great Salt Lake or Michael Heizer's bulldozed landscapes in remote Nevada.

In "Wrapped Reichstag," completed in Berlin in 1995, Christo and Jeanne-Claude took a vexed symbol of the German state and obscured it inside a cocoon of silvered polypropylene. There was, obviously, a muffling of the past involved. But also the anticipation of a butterfly moment when the parliament building -- and by extension the newly unified nation -- would come out of its shell again.

I haven't been able to find any similar leverage that the gates might have on the site or times they inhabit.

There's not much tension between nature and man-made in this project, since Central Park is about as unnatural a bit of landscape as you could ever come across. The artists' gates just add an extra bit of decorative artifice to spaces that are pretty artificial, and decorative, anyway.

The project encourages New Yorkers to come out and socialize -- but so does any decently sunny Sunday.

I can't see any lack that the gates fill in Central Park. They just turn up the volume a bit. (As though that's something New York needs.)

The truth is, by New York standards the gates are even a touch dull. Watching families promenade, you realized that after a minute or two of oohs and aahs, they switched back to their previous, more compelling subjects of conversation. ("Chloe, I've had about enough of your attitude." "I don't haaaaave an aaaattiTUDE.") After decades living in New York, Christo and Jeanne-Claude should know how much it takes to get a rise out of Manhattanites. It takes more than an orange schmatte or two.

(Oddly, this time the bland finished project looks like a 3-D illustration of the piles of equally genteel drawings that Christo made to pay for it. In the past, it was the drawings that seemed like watered-down versions of the more complex, finished projects.)

As for the idea that the gates might speak to the times we live in -- you can just about make that notion work, but it's a stretch.

The gates are often said to be a classic "saffron" color, but to my eyes that's a much warmer, more flamboyant hue than what's now hanging in Central Park -- "saffron" ought to be the color of paella at midnight in Valencia or of the robes on an Eastern divine. Central Park's PVC archways, it seems to me, are an almost perfect, very modern, slightly pinkish "hazard orange."

(I had the chance to match a gate against a nearby piece of public-works equipment, and the tints were uncannily close.)

If these gates evoke current affairs, an "orange alert" is the only thing that springs to mind. (The news helicopters hovering above the project on its opening day contributed to the post 9/11 feel, which may dissipate once they are gone.) But overall, "The Gates: Central Park" is so clearly about lighthearted civic celebration that, as I said, it's quite a stretch to give it topicality in our troubled times.

There is an era in which the gates seem to belong, but that's three decades back. They remind me of a certain kind of celebratory public sculpture that you could see in the 1970s, and that represented a kind of last-gasp moment in grand modernist abstraction. Imagine huge sheets and beams of brightly enameled steel, set down in public plazas everywhere, and you'll get the feel I mean. Postwar optimism still hung on in this art, mingled with a bit of flower-power energy: It was the Mary Quant moment in public sculpture, and it didn't last. Of course, as the full title of the Central Park project indicates, that's about when the gates were first conceived. The only reason they're up now is that it took 30 more years of lobbying to get them approved.

It strikes me as passing strange than any artist would imagine that a piece that might have been a good idea at one moment would still matter just as much half a career later. When the "Gates" project was first proposed, New York was near bankruptcy, the middle class had fled and the filthy walkways of Central Park were where you went for a good mugging. The idea of using cheery orange fabric to lure strollers up to Harlem Meer had all the ludicrous energy of a bedsheet strung up across the West. Now, with Meer-view condos going for a few million bucks, the artists' gates just seem like the latest thing in bourgeois beautification. (Crate & Barrel must be due to launch a home-and-garden version any day.)

Actually, there's one other era that the gates brought to mind. In one of those strange eureka moments that sometimes comes when you're looking at art, I realized that all that deeply pleated orange fabric, coming partway down its two supporting poles, reminded me of the deeply pleated, below-the-knee skirts the well-dressed woman wore in 1950s middle America. Images of Julianne Moore in "Far From Heaven" came pouring in, and I found myself feeling a bit sheepish as I walked between some of those 15,000 legs and under all those flicking hems. Needless to say, I stopped looking up. I did, however, think back to the day before, to a stroll along Lexington Avenue and to the revival of just those same pleated styles in women's stores along the way.

Somehow, despite seemingly unending war and nuclear-armed tyrants and gaping social safety nets, we've decided that it's time to revive the look and feel of America at its most buttoned-down. And Christo and Jeanne-Claude have managed to channel our complacent retrospection.

Or maybe it does not have much to do with them at all. After all, it was New York's corporate mayor, and the gentry that he leads, who decided that the time at last had come to fill the park with elegant day wear."

Don't get me started on The Gates. I went to Central Park on Saturday, on the day it opened-- and the park was packed. Truth be told, it was a beautiful day. So many people were hanging around, taking pictures, walking with their dogs, their kids, etc.

Great to see so many visitors in February in the park -- all of the carriages were taking rides, and it was a lovely day. They say it will bring in over $80 million of tourist dollars so you can't complain about that. I can believe that.

For the artists to spend $21 million, and so many years, and hang orange shower curtains all around the park is just crazy. Why? I could think of much better use of the money, but then again, modern art is modern art and most of the time is does not make sense. If I can figure out how to attach a few of my pictures, they will be attached. You’ll get the idea.

Yesterday, I made bob leave the office early (about 4:30, in busy season) and we went to one his clients office to look at the park from above.. It is crazy. People (including us) were out walking around and taking pictures until about 6:30.

I love art so I will try to see it one more time before they take it down-- and that my friend is the unique part. For me, to walk into Central Park in February for a few hours is unique.

The feeling of urgency by every one I know in NJ to see it. Also a part of it is to be seen there. Also something about fact that they (the gates) will not last. There is no particular special vantage point to experience and enjoy walking under The Gates, on 23 miles of walkways. The succession of 7,500 gates moving capriciously in the wind, projecting on one another at different levels, sometimes hiding the buildings around the park, some times making the a certain tree jump into view...

Overall thought: I went to the park on Saturday.. I was surprised to see thousands of people... I took pictures, I climbed on the benches, I climbed on the rocks, I enjoyed watching the people watching the fabric. It was a lovely day and I said I want to come back and watch the fabric again. I came back on Friday at dusk and it was another crazy experience. It was a sight to see -- the orange color looked nice against the green grass and brown and white colors of winter. I also walked around to see the white snowy sections as well. Amazing... Something I will remember for the rest of my life.

JTA NEWS:

"Many Americans join us in wanting to help the Palestinian people, but we can't want to help them more than the Arabs themselves do," said Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the International Relations Committee. "That is why I intend to pursue an initiative that will condition our aid on the demonstrated performance of oil-rich Arab states in providing assistance to the Palestinians. "

I wish more of his colleagues in the House would feel this same way.

Separating the Political Myths From the Facts in Israel Studies

This is from the NY Times... Even Middle Eastern Studies students can't get the truth.

"RIGHT on time at 1:30 on a brisk February afternoon, a graduate student, Jonathan Gribetz, strode with his bomber jacket and baseball cap into a seminar room at New York University. There, amid shelves lined with reference books in Hebrew, dictionaries of Aramaic and translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls, waited Ronald Zweig, his professor in a seminar on the mandate system in the Middle East. This day they would discuss the effect of British policy in Palestine on the empire's restive Indian subjects, just the sort of thing to engage a doctoral candidate's capacious brain.

It was both coincidence and symbol that Mr. Gribetz had come downtown for the class from Columbia University, where he is enrolled - coincidence because he had no motive other than taking an interesting course, symbol because these two Manhattan universities some 110 blocks apart represent divergent approaches to the contentious issue of teaching about the Middle East.

While Columbia has attracted international attention in the last several months for allegations by Jewish and Israeli students that they were intimidated by several Middle East studies professors, N.Y.U. with rather less limelight hired Professor Zweig to hold a newly endowed chair in Israel studies.

A handful of other universities nationally have established similar positions, at least in part to bring a broader range of academic opinion about the Middle East to their campuses. Even Columbia itself is now conducting a search for an Israel studies professor. (By way of full disclosure, I am a faculty member in the Columbia Journalism School, which is not involved in the current dispute.)

The conflict over Middle East studies programs was building well before the recent controversy at Columbia. The House of Representatives in early 2003 passed a bill that would place an advisory board - critics say a political censorship board - over foreign-language and area-studies programs that receive federal money to make certain they "reflect diverse perspectives and the full range of views."

University leaders across the country, among them N.Y.U.'s president, John Sexton, have denounced the legislation. Yet in a recent essay, President Sexton warned of the "danger that ideologically driven actors within the university will attempt to stifle conversation, or will attempt to create a climate in which it is difficult to advance certain positions."

With a similar concern in mind, one of the university's largest philanthropists, Henry Taub, donated more than $2 million in 2002 to endow a chair, a program and several graduate-student fellowships in Israel studies. "Our agenda was someone who would be effective, who would be a good communicator and who was a knowledgeable scholar about modern Israel," said Fred Lafer, the president of the Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation. "This was not a political statement in the sense we wanted someone who believed in Likud or Labor or Sharon or Peres. It just could not be someone who said, 'Drive all the Jews into the sea.' "

The search committee, however, could find no available American scholar who met all those criteria. The few qualified experts, like as Prof. Kenneth Stein, already held comparable chairs, in his case at Emory University in Atlanta. The dearth of Israel studies programs in the United States, even as Jewish studies departments have flourished, meant there was virtually no pool of senior academics. As for Middle East studies programs, even putting aside the question of prevailing attitudes toward Israel, most professors specialized in Arab and Muslim countries.

Meanwhile, though, Professor Zweig happened to take a sabbatical from his usual post at Tel Aviv University in the spring term of 2003. In coming to N.Y.U., he had no designs on competing for the Israel studies chairs; rather, he wanted to be close to a son in graduate school in the United States, near several archives valuable to his research and available for speeches on his recent book, "The Gold Train: The Destruction of the Jews and the Looting of Hungary."

Still, his N.Y.U. students revered him. In confidential evaluations of his class on "Israel and American Jewry," they rated him 4.22 on a 1-to-5 scale. "Ron Zweig is the MAN!" one undergraduate wrote. "I don't know why he is still teaching. He ought to run for prime minister."

Without holding that office, Professor Zweig had, in fact, experienced Israel's tumultuous political life. As the editor in the mid-1980's of a scholarly journal on Zionism, he published the first papers by the historian Benny Morris, whose accounts of Palestinian refugees during the 1948 war shattered the Israeli myth that all had left their homes willingly. So controversial was the Morris thesis that a member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, once cornered Professor Zweig to harangue him for, essentially, letting facts get in the way of ideology.

So when N.Y.U. offered Professor Zweig the chair in the late spring of 2004, he had a condition of his own. "I insisted that this job is not advocacy," he recalled. "It's about scholarship. I will not justify Israel's policy as part of my job. Neither will I criticize it as part of my job. I have made it a matter of principle to keep my personal politics out of the classroom."

INDEED, Professor Zweig assigns readings from Arab and Arab-American scholars like Rashid Khalidi, as well as dissident Israelis including Avi Shlaim, in his courses. His offerings in this academic year have ranged from an undergraduate class in Zionism to a graduate seminar on the Jewish community in Palestine before statehood to an independent study on educational policy by Jewish agencies in displaced-persons camps. Part of the purpose, he said, is to show Israel studies involves more than the conflict with the Palestinians.

When he met the other morning with the 20 students in the Israel and American Jewry class, Professor Zweig lectured without sentimentality about the illegal immigration of Holocaust survivors to British-ruled Palestine. Bribery, the black market, American friction with Britain over refugee policy - this was not exactly the romantic epic of "Exodus." Neither, though, was it the familiar narrative in Middle East studies of Western colonialism and Jewish racism.

"My goal is to make the students think, not tell them what to think," Professor Zweig said. "I'm glad when students walk away from my class feeling that I've had respect for their views. That's an obligation of professors. We have a mantle of authority and it is scandalous for us to exploit this position in order to propagate our own views.""