2004 March

2004-03-01

2004-03-01
_Dice_
Dice Report: 36,502 job ads

2004-03-01 05:23PST (08:23EST) (13:23GMT)
_AP_/_San Diego Union-Tribune_
Lundberg Survey: San Diego gasoline prices highest in nation
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20040301-0523-gasprices.html
"San Diego has the highest gas prices in the nation, according to the Lundberg Report.   A gallon of self-serve regular costs $2.19 ñ which is 27 cents higher than just 2 weeks ago.   During the past 2 weeks, many California cities saw increases of 20 cents or more, according to analyst Trilby Lundberg.   California has strict environmental regulations and places sales tax on gas pumps, which amounts to an extra 3.5 cents a gallon, Lundberg said.   'We have the most clean and costly gas in the world.', added Lundberg.   Across the nation, prices for all grades of gasoline rose 6.9 cents in the past 2 weeks to a national average of $1.75 a gallon, according to a study released.   But even with the boost, the cost was a penny below what it was a year ago...   The average price of gasoline in 2003 March was $1.76, Lundberg said..."

2004-03-01 05:56PST (08:56EST) (13:56GMT)
Rex Nutting _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
January incomes, spending inched higher
Bureau of Economic Analysis report
http://www.bea.gov/bea/newsrelarchive/2004/pi0104.htm
"U.S. real consumer spending rose a seasonally adjusted 0.1% in January as real disposable incomes increased 0.5%, the Commerce Department estimated Monday.   Excluding several one-time factors, including a reduction in taxes and cost-of-living adjustments, real disposable incomes rose 0.1% in January...   November and December figures were revised slightly higher...   With nominal incomes increasing faster than nominal spending, the personal savings rate rose from 1.4% to 1.8% in January, or $154.6G, the highest level since August.   Over the past 12 months, real disposable incomes and spending have both increased 3.7%.   In January, per-capita incomes rose to a $28,761 annual rate."

2004-03-01 06:09PST (09:09EST) (14:09GMT)
_Dow Jones_/_CNN_/_Money_
Coalition Battles For Off-Shore Out-Sourcing
http://money.cnn.com/2004/03/01/news/international/business_coalition.dj/index.htm
"big business is quietly mounting an offensive against state and federal efforts to keep jobs at home and otherwise restrain globalization, Monday's Wall Street Journal reported.   Some of the best-financed trade groups in the U.S. have formed a coalition to beat back federal legislation that would restrict foreign out-sourcing by government contractors and limit visas for non-American workers with technology skills.   Calling itself the Coalition for Economic Growth and American Jobs, the new entity comprises about 200 trade groups -- including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the American Bankers Association, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Information Technology Association of America -- as well as individual companies.   While U.S. manufacturing jobs have been going abroad for decades, the more recent and highly publicized out-flow of white-collar jobs -- from call centers to software engineering -- is causing anxiety among skilled white-collar workers at a time when the growing U.S. economy hasn't produced many new jobs.   Dozens of bills to protect U.S. jobs have been introduced in state legislatures and in Congress.   Business is alarmed by a provision in the federal government's omnibus fiscal 2004 spending bill that bars companies that bid for certain work done by government employees from moving work off-shore, said William Sweeney, vice president of global government affairs at Electronic Data Systems Corp.   EDS, of Plano, Texas, does government out-sourcing work."

2004-03-01 07:35PST (10:35EST) (15:35GMT)
Kristen Gerencher _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
The big picture on movie theater chains
"Much of the business is driven by the top 2 national chains -- Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment, said John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners, also known as NATO, a trade group that represents movie theater-operators with 26K U.S. screens.   Regal operates 6,124 screens while AMC runs 3,280 of the nation's more than 35,700 screens, he said.   Cinemark, which plans an initial public offering with a proposed ticker symbol of CNK, is the third largest, with 2,265 screens.   Carmike Cinemas another publicly traded company, operates 2,051 while Marcus Theater Corporation runs 488.   Loews Cineplex Entertainment is another chain with a potential IPO...   In fact, theaters took in $9.5G in ticket sales in 2002, when the number of people going to the movies was the biggest it's been in decades, Fithian said.   Two years ago, there were 1.64G tickets sold in U.S.   The last time ticket sales exceeded 1.5G was in 1957, Fithian said.   Though the final results are still being tabulated, ticket sales are on track to top 1.5G again for 2003.   Ticket sales are theater companies' largest source of revenue, comprising about 70% of sales, he said.   Concessions are generally 20% of revenue.   At Regal Entertainment, the revenue mix is about two-thirds from admissions, 26% from concessions and much of the remainder coming from pre-movie ads run in the 20 minutes before the film -- known as the 'digital pre-show', DiClemente said."

2004-03-01 07:48PST (10:48EST) (15:48GMT)
William L. Watts _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Off-Shore Out-Sourcing Raises Workers' Dander
"After a string of law-suits and growing worries about government regulation, Silicon Valley executives in the late 1990s realized they had to become players in the political arena.   'When you're working 50 to 60 hours a week, [politics] doesn't usually become a priority for you.', said Natasha Humphries, who lost her position as a senior software quality assurance testing engineer with Palm (now known as PalmOne) last year."

2004-03-01 07:53PST (10:53EST) (15:53GMT)
Rex Nutting _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Tech Industy Groups Open Wallets, Work Harder at Lobbying Politicians

"The tech industry no longer lobbies on issues that only an electrical engineer could understand, like encryption policy.   In the past year, the industry worked hard for lower taxes, helping to win a reduction in the capital gains tax and tax breaks for investments in equipment.   And the industry has fought a defensive struggle -- successful so far -- against accounting rules that would require the expensing of stock options on corporate books.   In the post-Enron era, expensing of stock options is about the only corporate governance and accounting reform that business groups have managed to block...   White's group [Technology Network] spent $145K lobbying in the first 6 months of 2003, the most recent data available.   Four years ago, the group spent $265K for the entire year.   Heeson's group [National Venture Capital Association] spent $460K lobbying in the first 6 months of the year, up from $220K in all of 2000.   In the first half of 2003, the American Electronics Association [now AeA] was the industry's most active lobbying group, spending $1M.   According to filings with the U.S. Senate, other big spenders were the Business Software Alliance ($534,155), the Computer Systems Policy Project ($440K), the Semiconductor Industry Association ($310K), the Information Technology Industry Council ($260K) and the Software & Information Industry Association ($250K)."

2004-03-01 12:03PST (15:03EST) (20:03GMT)
Mark Gongloff _CNN_/_Money_
Off-Shore Out-Sourcing: What to do? (with graph)
http://money.cnn.com/2004/03/01/news/economy/outsourcing_solutions/index.htm
"a growing number of jobs are, and many of them are higher-skilled jobs that once seemed immune to [off-shore] out-sourcing.   U.S. companies moving jobs off-shore has helped keep the job market in its most painful slump since World War II, creating tremendous worry for millions of workers and triggering a vigorous national debate about how best to respond...   'I find it rather ironic that people who claim to wear the free market mantle would turn around and support government meddling in the market-place of labor -- right now we have the government encouraging people to dump their cheap labor here.', said Scott Kirwin, founder of the Information Technology Professionals Association of America (ITPAA), a worker's rights group...   In January, for example, there were more unemployed workers 25 or older with college degrees than there were unemployed workers without high school diplomas, according to the latest Labor Department data."

2004-03-01 15:00PST (18:00EST) (23:00GMT)
Lou Dobbs & Jamie McIntyre & Lisa Sylvester & Kitty Pilgrim & Bill Tucker _CNN_
Aristide exiled, trade groups conspire to promote off-shoring, illegal aliens
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/01/ldt.00.html
"Patrick McDonough, Maryland state delegate: 'America does not exist to give everybody else in the world a job.'...   Tonight, hundreds of U.S. Marines are in Haiti.   Hundreds more are on the way.   The Marines are securing key points in the capital city of Port-au-Prince after a three-week uprising against the government of President Aristide.   The Marines landed after President Aristide resigned and agreed to go into exile...   Altogether, the Pentagon has 2K Marines on standby...   Angela Morales: 'If you are illegal, you do not belong here.   You do not have the right to jump the line.   You do not have the right to take jobs away from people.'...   On Maryland's Eastern Shore, day laborers show up to shuck oysters, no questions asked, no documents needed.   An estimated 130K illegal aliens are estimated to have moved to the state between 1990 and 1999, according to the Census Bureau.   But as their numbers have swelled, so has resentment.   More than 200 people attended a rally this weekend to protest illegal immigration...   In Arizona, the statehouse is considering a measure that would pull the state license of any company that hires illegal workers.   And last year, Colorado became the first state to ban the acceptance of matricula cards and foreign driver's licenses...   The meat in a U.S. super-market says 'USDA inspected'.   But that doesn't mean it was looked at by U.S. meat inspectors...   only about 7% of [imported] meat is reinspected by U.S. inspectors...   The USDA just suspended meat imports from France.   But violations had gone on for years.   And during that time, meat was still imported from France.   In 2002, the USDA began to notice problems with three French plants.   In 2003, it was four plants.   But it wasn't until this February the USDA said there was enough of a problem to ban all meat products from France.   The same ban also was put on meat products from Hungary last month and is still in effect...   And, of course, they're fighting like the dickens to keep that country of origin label off.   They've just pushed it back another 2 years...   The Coalition For Economic Growth and American Jobs.   An organization made up of some of the most influential business organizations in the country.   And their chief concern -- protecting their right to ship your job over-seas...   It includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, and others.   It has some very deep pockets and is dedicated to defeating anti-out-sourcing bills at the state level...   At the federal level, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd has introduced legislation to ban federal tax dollars for off-shore work...   Dodd knows [unemployments for] computer programming jobs are running 6.5% and 7% [for] computer hardware engineers...   Hollywood is making more and more films outside this country, taking advantage of foreign tax incentives and cheaper labor.   And many Americans who depend on the movie business are suffering as a result.   The film industry calls it runaway productions...   We are losing $10G a year to runaway production.   U.S. market share of movie production has fallen 22% in the past 6 years.   Benefiting from that drop, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Eastern Europe...   Brent Swift, Film & Television Action Committee: 'We're losing approximately 20K jobs per year.'...   Last year, of the 88 movies made for television, only 5 were made in this country."

2004-03-01
_Business Week_
Software: Programming jobs are heading over-seas by the thousands
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_09/b3872001_mz001.htm
"In the past 3 years, off-shore programming jobs have nearly tripled, from 27K to an estimated 80K, according to Forrester Research Inc.   And Gartner Inc. figures that by year-end, 1 of every 10 jobs in U.S. tech companies will move to emerging markets...   For many of America's 3M software programmers... Now, these veterans of Silicon Valley and Boston's Route 128 exchange heart-rending job-loss stories on Web sites...   Suddenly, the programmers share the fate of millions of industrial workers, in textiles, autos, and steel, whose jobs have marched to Mexico and [Red China]."

2004-03-01
Jason McLure, Barney Gimbel & Joan Raymond _NewSpeak_
Help Not Wanted: Where did the jobs go?
"Many of them have nothing to do with cheap Asian labor; instead, the phenomenon is largely the result of companies' finding new ways to coax more work from existing employees.   Still, off-shoring is already affecting enough workers -- and threatening the livelihoods of millions more -- that it's likely to remain a battle cry on the campaign trail...   'Businesses are rolling in cash.', says Mark Zandi of Economy.com.   'But they've yet to step up and expand their hiring.'...   it's hard to say exactly how many off-shoring victims really exist.   Guesstimates put the exodus at anywhere from 300K to 600K jobs annually...   Some of them -- radiologists, accountants, engineers -- have invested in years of schooling, so they feel especially burned...   For now, worker anxiety seems destined to remain high -- and the demographic that Wired magazine has dubbed 'pissed-off tech workers' seems likely to grow more vocal.   'You have people who did exactly what these economists said to do -- their parents saved and sent them to school... and now their high-tech jobs are moving off-shore.', says Marcus Courtney, president of WashTech, a Seattle-based worker-advocacy group."

2004-03-01
Dexter Filkins _NY Times_
Iraqi Leadership Gains Agreement on Constitution
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/01/international/middleeast/01IRAQ.html
"Iraqi leaders agreed to an interim constitution that would serve as the framework for the government through next year."

2004-03-01
Laura M. Holson _NY Times_
Disney Board Is Expected to Go Slowly on Eisner
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/01/business/media/01disney.html
"As Disney's annual meeting draws near, board members are bracing for disgruntled share-holders to make their presence felt."

2004-03-01
Steve Lohr _NY Times_
Gates tries to maintain glut of computer workers
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/01/technology/01bill.html
"Bill Gates went on a campaign tour last week to convince wary students to pursue computer science."

2004-03-01
Robert Weisman _Boston Globe_/_Miami Herald_
Miami Herald
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/8058348.htm
"M$ is spending $6.8G on research and development this year, more than any other US company.   And it is stepping up its recruiting, with plans to boost its hiring of college graduates by 11% over last year..."

2004-03-01
_NY Times_
Keeping Seeds Safe
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/01/opinion/01MON4.html
"Alarming findings indicate that the reservoir of traditional seeds is being threatened by genetically modified varieties."

2004-03-01
Susan Knight _Cincinnati Enquirer_
Here's to a truly optimistic America
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/03/01/editorial_ed1v.html
"Obviously, the good news about cheap shoes has not reached much of Ohio.   We should tell the worker in Ohio who was working in steel, and when those jobs left, began crafting lint brushes, and when those jobs left, began collecting unemployment, not to worry, because the price of shoes has dropped.   Who needs job stability, a living wage and health care when you have got cheap shoes?...   According to a 2003 report by the Economic Policy Institute, people in Ohio who have lost their jobs to NAFTA face a 29% drop in wages."

2004-03-01
Dean Calbreath & David Washburn _San Diego Union-Tribune_
Grocery workers approve deal in land-slide
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20040301-9999-news_1n1strike.html
"Southern California grocery workers voted by a ratio of nearly 8-to-1 during the weekend to approve a new contract...   Although current employees preserved their health benefits -- a major bone of contention with the super-markets -- future employees will have to pay more under a 2-tier system that provides lesser wages and benefits to any workers hired after October 5."

2004-03-01
Michael Kirschner _Electronic Business_
The wrong way to innovate: Sparking innovation & competitiveness isn't the government's responsibility
http://www.reed-electronics.com/eb-mag/article/CA386094
"But consultant Pamela Gordon, president of Technology Forecasters, points out in a recent article that U.S. job losses -- fostered in part by out-sourcing -- are actually a big contributor to reported productivity gains: 'As a company out-sources functions previously performed in-house, the number of employees (the denominator in the equation) shrinks.   Even if that company's revenue remains the same, decreases or increases slightly, the productivity ratio still can dramatically increase.', Gordon writes.   Further, out-sourcing engineering jobs, in which the engineers need intimate knowledge of manufacturing capability to take advantage of it, or improve it, further negatively affects innovation...   Hiring people over-seas, or worse, replacing U.S. jobs with off-shore ones, trains foreign workers with no allegiance to the U.S. and little ability, desire or reason to create U.S. jobs...   Intel now hires engineers in [Red China]; U.S. hiring is on an exception-only basis.   Did CSPP member Motorola consider hiring U.S. engineers before it announced the decision to hire 1,500 in India last summer?   Depending on past trends to predict the future, when the future is clearly not going to be the same as the past, and presenting them as a validation of your agenda is misleading...   I would love to see data on how many engineers have been hired over-seas, directly or indirectly, by the CSPP companies (Dell, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Motorola, NCR, Unisys) versus how many have been hired in the U.S. over the past 3 years and the plans for the next 3 to 5 years...   What I would like to see is a win-win model in which, for example, these companies and all others that choose to take advantage of the proposed government tax breaks would use a substantial part of that money to hire U.S. R&D workers and contribute to education."

2004-03-01
Kristen Kazarian _M$ Certified Professional Magazine_
Training Leads to Promotion, Employee Retention: There's a bright future ahead for those taking training courses
http://mcpmag.com/news/rss.asp?editorialsid=663
"Investing in training could be a good step toward a promotion, according to a survey by The Training Camp [an organization with a vested interest in having more people take training].   The 2003 November survey showed that of the more than 500 IT employees polled (including contract workers), 87% were promoted after taking a training course or certification program.   In addition, 82% of survey takers returned to their current job after participating in a training course or certification program.   Over half of those polled were lucky enough to have company-sponsored training."

2004-03-01
Sumner Lemon & Patrick Thibodeau _Computer World_
R&D Has Moved Off-Shore: Out-Sourcing Went Beyond Low-Wage Jobs Years Ago
http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/outsourcing/story/0,10801,90599,00.html
"As corporate America becomes increasingly comfortable with off-shore development, it's sending substantially more sophisticated IT work over-seas...   Silicon Valley venture capital firms are encouraging start-ups to send their product development work over-seas, said Marc Hebert, a vice president at Sierra Atlantic Inc., a Fremont, CA-based out-sourcing firm that specializes in R&D."
 

2004-03-02

2004-03-02 07:18PST (10:18EST) (15:18GMT)
Rex Nutting _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Lay-off announcements fell 34% to 5-month low
"Lay-off announcements by U.S. corporations fell back in February after spiking higher in January, according to out-placement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas.   Planned job reductions dropped by 34% to a 5-month low of 77,250, the firm said Tuesday.   So far in 2004, companies have announced 194,806 reductions, down 28% from the pace set in 2003.   In all of 2003, 1.24M job cuts were announced compared with 1.47M in 2002...   Lay-offs had soared 26% in January to 117,556..."

2004-03-02 11:19PST (14:19EST) (19:19GMT)
Jon Friedman _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Why Ohio Public Employee Retirement System opposes Michael Eisner
"The corporate governance officer for the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System wants Disney to remove Michael Eisner as chairman when the company holds its annual share-holder meeting Wednesday in Philadelphia.   Cynthia Richson, who over-sees 4.7M Disney shares in her Ohio role, conceded in a telephone interview that it's up to the directors' discretion whether Eisner remains as Disney's chief executive officer even if the drive to oust him from the chairmanship succeeds.   'We would like to see the board publicly announce the split of chair and chief executive officer.', Richson said."

2004-03-02 11:21PST (14:21EST) (19:21GMT)
Jeffry Bartash & Luisa Beltran _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
MCI WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers charged with fraud: CFO Scott Sullivan pled guilty
"Sullivan was charged with fraud, conspiracy and making false statements -- the same allegations lodged against Ebbers.   In a statement, Sullivan said that he acted in concert with 'other members of WorldCom's senior management'.   Sullivan's lawyer said he's providing authorities with additional information about WorldCom's $11G accounting scandal, the largest in the nation's corporate history.   By doing so, he'll likely avoid the most severe potential penalty -- up to 25 years in jail.   Ashcroft, for his part, asserted that Ebbers and Sullivan agreed to make 'false and fraudulent adjustments' to WorldCom's records to fool investors about its perilous financial health.   Ebbers has denied wrong-doing."

2004-03-02 13:21PST (16:21EST) (21:21GMT)
Corbett B. Daly _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Greenspan says Red China could suffer high inflation
"'[Red China's] central bank purchases of dollars, unless offset, threaten an excess of so-called high-powered money expansion and a consequent over-heating of the [Red Chinese] economy.', Greenspan said in prepared remarks to the Economic Club of New York.   'Lesser dollar purchases presumably would allow the renminbi, at least temporarily, to appreciate against the dollar.', Greenspan said...   Greenspan said [Red China] had accumulated $420G in foreign exchange reserves by November of last year."

2004-03-02 14:20PST (17:20EST) (22:20GMT)
Steve Kerch _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Home prices rose at almost 18% rate: Annualized 2003 Q4 data compare with 8.4% gain year-over-year
Freddie Mac's Conventional Home Mortgage Price Index
http://www.freddiemac.com/finance/cmhpi/
OFHEO Home Price Index
http://www.ofheo.gov/media/pdf/4q03hpi.pdf
"home prices took off in the fourth quarter, jumping at an annualized rate of 17.8% nationwide, Freddie Mac said Tuesday.   The quarterly growth rates showed a marked increase from the third quarter of 2003, when the annualized growth rate was an upwardly revised 5.9%...   She said that 12-month figures, which showed home prices rising a more modest but still strong 8.4% from the fourth quarter of 2002 through the fourth quarter of 2003, 'more accurately portray changes in home value'.   That figure also better jibed with data released Monday by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, which said average U.S. home prices increased 8% from the fourth quarter of 2002 through the fourth quarter of 2003.   Still, the agency that oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said that number was 2 percentage points higher than the third-quarter figure.   OFHEO's data showed a smaller quarterly appreciation of 3.67%, or an annualized rate of 14.7%."

2004-03-02 15:00PST (18:00EST) (23:00GMT)
Lou Dobbs & Eric Philips & Bill Tucker _CNN_
Bob Taft, electronic voting, Max Baucus
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/02/ldt.00.html
"insurgents today killed an American soldier in Baghdad when they threw a grenade into a Humvee.   Another soldier was seriously injured in the attack, the soldiers members of the 1st Armored Division.   Terrorists also launched a series of coordinated suicide attacks against Iraqis today.   They killed nearly 150 people.   More than 400 others were wounded in the attacks.   The victims were pilgrims in Baghdad and Karbala celebrating the holiest Shiite day of the year...   There was also violence today against Shiites in Pakistan.   Gunmen killed about 40 people when they attacked a Shiite procession in the southwestern part of the country.   More than 100 others were wounded in that attack...   former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers indicted today on charges related to what was the biggest bankruptcy in American history.   WorldCom's chief financial officer, Scott Sullivan, today pleaded guilty on 3 counts related to the $11G scandal...   Over all, 115 corporate executives have now been charged in the 820 days since Enron's collapse.   Three of them have found their way to jail...   In the dot-com boom of the 1990s, many students were drawn to technology.   But the current out-sourcing of computer jobs is driving many away.   According to the Computing Research Association [CRA], new enrollment in computer science programs nationwide declined 4% between 2001 and 2002, then a whopping 18% between 2002 and 2003...   The 160K factory jobs lost has made Ohio a key battleground state today and in the presidential election in November...   Last year alone, it lost 34K jobs just in manufacturing...   A recent study by Policy Matters directly connects the loss of 46K jobs to the signing of the NAFTA trade agreement.   But not all of Ohio's problems are rooted in Washington.   The state is ranked in the bottom 10 states for its support of higher education by its own board of regents.   And it ranks in the bottom 5 states in terms of friendly tax environments, according to the Tax Foundation...   Bob Taft: 'Site Selection just touted Ohio as the No. 1 state for new major business investment in jobs...   last month [January], we had an increase of about 25K jobs, including a small increase in manufacturing jobs...   Ohio's exports have expanded for the last four years.   And that's a huge part of our economy.   Our exports to Mexico, for example, have tripled since NAFTA.   Our exports to [Red China] have tripled since 1996.   Our exports to Canada are way up.   We have about 200K jobs in Ohio that are tied directly to expanding exports and, by the way, we also have over 900 foreign owned companies in Ohio expanding and growing and creating over 200K jobs themselves...   One estimate shows the increase in exports from NAFTA in Ohio is responsible for 50K new jobs...'...   Max Baucus: 'I believe frankly, very strongly that this is a -- something where we should use carrots to help the American companies keep jobs in the U.S., a lot more R&D, a lot more additional research funds, retraining, enforce our trade laws...   to retrain those and help those who have lost their jobs, and that's the whole point of expanding trade adjustment systems to service workers...'...   Now, electronic voting machines apparently failing to past the first big test in at least 3 states today.   Polling places in Georgia and Maryland using old fashioned paper ballots today after the electronic voting machines didn't work properly.   And many voters in San Diego county changed polling stations after dozens of machines there failed to boot up properly.   An estimated 50M Americans will vote electronically in the general election in November.   The machines leave no paper record and that has a lot of people very concerned."

2004-03-02
Andrew Jacobs _NY Times_
Chinese and American Cultures Clash in Custody Battle for Girl
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/national/02CUST.html
"A trial in Memphis between 2 couples has exposed conflicting notions about what defines a good parent...   The Hes say their daughter was 'kidnapped by white Christians' who have been using their wealth and the courts to their advantage.   The Bakers say the birth parents are unstable and abdicated their parental rights by failing to provide child support or to visit their daughter for months on end..."

2004-03-02
Keith Bradsher _NY Times_
Red China Poses Big Economic Challenge
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/business/worldbusiness/02YUAN.html
"Red China's vast population and military muscle...   The welcome that [Red China] is offering to multi-national companies and foreign investment has left many Western business executives... enthusiastically embracing [Red China], its cheap work force and its huge [potential] markets...   [Red China] still has vast reserves of cheap labor in inland areas and many backward industries that can grow swiftly as they copy Western and Japanese methods...   And its opening to foreign investment brings [Red China] both the latest technology and the corporate connections over-seas that help it fight restrictions on its exports...   Detroit auto-makers, are now big investors in [Red China] -- investors that oppose trade restrictions on it...   From soy beans to commercial banking, American businesses complain that [Red China] has thrown up regulatory barriers that limit their ability to compete.   Daryl Hatano, vice president for public policy at the Semiconductor Industry Association in San Jose, CA, said his group might ask Washington to file a protest with the World Trade Organization if [Red China] did not halt its practice of charging taxes as low as 3% for domestically produced computer chips, compared with 17% for imported chips.   Even with those taxes, imported chips hold 85% of the Chinese market...   John S. Chen, the Hong Kong-born chairman and chief executive of Sybase, an American software company that has expanded aggressively in both Japan and [Red China]..."

2004-03-02
Edmund L. Andrews _NY Times_
Medicare and Socialist Insecurity Challenge
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/business/02retire.html
"When Alan Greenspan urged Congress last week to cut future benefits in [Socialist INsecurity] and Medicare, sending elected officials to the barricades, he was if anything understating the magnitude of the problems ahead.   Today's budget deficits are measured in the hundreds of billions, but the looming short-falls for the two retirement programs are projected to be in the tens of trillions of dollars.   The Bush administration has estimated that the gap between promises under current law and the revenues expected will total $18T over the next 75 years.   But an internal study in 2002 by the Treasury Department, looking much further ahead, concluded that the gap was actually $44T -- and would climb each year that nothing was done."

2004-03-02
Alex Berenson _NY Times_
Tech Revival Fueled by Sales to Government
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/business/02place.html
"The recent pick-up in spending on networking equipment may be less impressive than it first appears...   The president's proposed budget for the 2005 fiscal year projects technology spending at $59.8G, a rise of 1% from 2004.   So only an increase in corporate technology spending can generate the growth that investors in Cisco and other networking companies appear to be expecting...   Since 2000, federal government spending on information technology equipment has risen from about $42G a year to nearly $60G, mainly because of new defense and homeland security programs.   Spending on defense projects like the Global Information Grid, which is designed to provide soldiers with real-time information from satellites and other sources about potential threats, is expected to continue to balloon."

2004-03-02
Keith Koffler _Congress Daily_/_GovExec_
Business lobbyists try to change terminology in effort at spin
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0304/030204cdam2.htm
"The coalition is now rallying around 'worldwide sourcing' as a less provocative term for the movement of jobs around the globe...   [Business lobbyists] have met in recent days and weeks with officials at the White House, the Commerce Department, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to brief them on the new message...   Business Roundtable President John Castellani told CongressDaily the new PR campaign stemmed directly from the torrent of attacks on [off-shore] out-sourcing..."
 

2004-03-03

2004-03-03 04:55:28PST (07:55:28EST) (12:55:28GMT)
Nancy Isles Nation _Marin Independent Journal_
Drivers fume over gasoline prices
http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234~24407~1993604,00.html
"SR of San Rafael said he saw prices rise at a gas station between Novato and Petaluma from $2.02 on his way up north in the morning to $2.09 when he returned 2 hours later...   believes that the state's oil refineries operate like a monopoly, artificially raising prices to boost their profits.   It's a theory that is often heard but not proven, SR said, because politicians are afraid to take on the oil companies.   While the national average for gasoline is $1.75 per gallon, Californians pay more than $2...   State Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office has been monitoring the gasoline market since 2000.   'In terms of malfeasance, we have not found any evidence of misconduct on the part of refiners or other players.', said Tom Dresslar, spokesman for Lockyer.   Jenny Mack, a spokeswoman for the California State Automobile Association, said refineries do routine maintenance in the early part of the year and some have run into problems, causing a disruption in production."

2004-03-03 06:08PST (09:08EST) (14:08GMT)
Carolyn Pritchard _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Michael Eisner out as Walt Disney chair, remains CEO
"Former senator George Mitchell has been elected to serve as non-executive chairman of the board."

2004-03-03 07:01PST (10:01EST) (15:01GMT)
Rex Nutting _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
CEOs see a few more jobs
"Nearly 9 of 10 corporate chief executives expect higher sales in the next 6 months, but only one out of three expect to hire more workers, according to a quarterly survey conducted by the Business Roundtable released Wednesday.   The Business Roundtable CEO Economic Outlook index improved to a record 94.3 from 89.6 in December.   The index began in 2002 November with a 52.7 reading...   The executives expect the national economy to grow 3.7% in 2004, up from 3.1% in 2003.   By contrast, the Blue Chip Economic consensus forecast sees growth of 4.6% in 2004...   In the March survey, 33% of CEOs said they'll hire more workers in the next 6 months while 45% said employment would be steady.   That leaves 22% who expect to shed workers.   Three months ago, 25% of CEOs expected to add to employment over the next 6 months."

2004-03-03 08:15PST (11:15EST) (16:15GMT)
_AP_/_Globe & Mail_
Death toll in Iraq bombings of Shiite sites jumps to 271: 15 arrested
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040303.wiraq0303_2/BNStory/International/
"As the death toll in Tuesday's devastating bombings in Iraq continued to climb, an official said that Iraqi police and U.S. troops had detained 15 people thought connected to the attacks.   A few hours later, the president of Iraq's Governing Council said that 271 people had been confirmed killed in the bombings of Shia shrines in Baghdad and Karbala.   Another 393 were listed as injured.   The Iraqi estimate was considerably higher than the tally from U.S. occupying forces, who put the number of dead at 117.   The confusion reflected the chaos Tuesday, when suicide attackers set off bombs and explosives, apparently on wooden pushcarts, among thousands of pilgrims who were gathered in the two cities for the holiest day of the Shia calendar, the mourning ceremony of Ashoura... U.S. officials and Iraqi leaders named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant believed linked to al-Qaeda, as a 'prime suspect' for the attacks, saying he is seeking to spark a Sunni-Shiite civil war in Iraq to wreck U.S. plans to hand over power to the Iraqis on June 30."

2004-03-03 12:27PST (15:27EST) (20:27GMT)
Jon Friedman _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
43% of Disney shares vote against Eisner
"there are still some votes to be counted, but the votes [counted] so far represent at least 38% of total Disney shares outstanding."

2004-03-03 15:00PST (18:00EST) (23:00GMT)
Lou Dobbs & Kitty Pilgrim & Lisa Sylvester _CNN_
off-shoring, illegal aliens
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/03/ldt.00.html
"The classic excuse, a computer glitch.   In California, the electronic voting was delayed as technicians tinkered with the machines.   In Georgia, everyone voted electronically with some problems in programming and voter cards for certain districts.   Officials blame human error in programming, saying it was a 'learning curve problem with election workers'.   In Maryland, there were voter card problems...   Rush Holt (D-NJ): 'Unless Congress deals with this nationally by requiring a voter-verified paper record of each vote each time a voter votes, we will have questions every time there's an election, including this November.'   Holt has written legislation that requires a paper trail and other ways to verify that systems have not been hacked, tampered with or otherwise malfunctioned...   Congress has been very slow to move on it.   There hasn't even been a hearing on it yet.   And another measure introduced in the Senate has not made much progress either...   Former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers today...pleaded not guilty to one count each of fraud, conspiracy and making false statements, before he was released on $10M bond.   WorldCom's former chief financial officer, Scott Sullivan, pleaded guilty yesterday.   He agreed to testify against Ebbers.   The trial will begin November 9...   Law-makers in Washington are beginning to realize, if they want to save their jobs, they will have to try to save the jobs of hard-working middle-class Americans.   The Senate tonight is debating an amendment that would ban the use of federal money to support off-shore out-sourcing.   It's one of several new proposals...   Under another bill, companies which replace American workers with foreign workers could be cut off from receiving federal grants and loans under the Defending American Jobs Act.   The bill targets companies like Motorola, which reportedly laid off 43K U.S. workers, invested $3.5G in [Red China] at the same time it received nearly $190M from the U.S. Export Import Bank...   Another bill backed by Democrats would repeal a set of tax exemptions deemed illegal by the World Trade Organization and replace it with tax breaks tailored specifically to help American manufacturers...   The new proposals have worried corporate groups...   There are other bills that, instead of fighting out-sourcing, focus on helping workers adjust.   Senator Max Baucus has legislation that would expand job training to laid-off service workers and would plow more money into research and development...   Tom Tancredo: 'there's nothing wrong with the law, the law is clear.   It says people who come into this country without our permission violate the law and need to be deported.   It says that people...who hire those folks are also breaking the law...   there's nothing wrong with those laws, there is something wrong with our willingness to enforce them...   1.4M legal immigrants coming into this country every year.   How about 65K (it has been up to 195K) a year on H-1B Visas every year.   How many hundreds of thousands of people here on L-1 Visas.   They're all legal...   Now why do we need to also have about another 1M to 1.5M people coming across our borders illegally just to satisfy the greed for cheap labor?'...   police discovered another almost 200 illegal aliens again hiding in a house in Phoenix.   This is the third instance in the last month of which we are aware.   Officers went to the house after they received a call from a neighbor regarding suspicious activity.   Police in Phoenix have found at least 6 houses sheltering illegal immigrants in the past 2 weeks...   David Dill, CS prof. at Stanford: 'Well we need to have paper ballots.   They can be paper ballots that people fill out like the existing optical scan systems or they can be paper ballots printed from a touch screen machine.   But you need a paper ballot somewhere with current technology...   http://www.verifiedvoting.org '"

2004-03-03
Jon Friedman & Russ Britt _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Tense Disney Share-Owner Meeting
"Wednesday's atmosphere inside the convention hall was tense.   [Michael] Eisner, sounding hoarse at times, was greeted with a smattering of applause while his foes, Disney and Gold, each received a standing ovation when they made remarks."
 

2004-03-04

2004-03-03 16:34PST (19:34EST) (2004-03-04 00:34GMT)
Marilyn Elias _USA Today_
Acupuncture works by restricting blood flow to the brain
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-03-03-acupuncture-blood-usat_x.htm
Yahoo!
"Acupuncture on pain-relief points cuts blood flow to key areas of the brain within seconds, providing the clearest explanation to date for how the ancient technique might relieve pain and treat addictions, a Harvard scientist reports today...   radiologist Bruce Rosen of Harvard Medical School.   He'll release the findings at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting in Orlando.   Rosen's team used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or MRIs, on about 20 healthy volunteers before, during and after acupuncture.   This type of brain scan shows changes in blood flow and the amount of oxygen in blood."

2004-03-03 17:08PST (20:08EST) (2004-03-04 01:08GMT)
Robert Powell _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
From nest egg to nothing: Out-live your savings? The concern is real.
"But in focusing on income-for-life products are we not getting a bit ahead of ourselves?   Who cares if we produce income for life if the amount of income produced is still inadequate?"

2004-03-03 18:37PST (22:37EST) (2003-03-04 03:37GMT)
David J. Lynch _USA Today_
India official says high-tech jobs will continue to leave USA
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/techcorporatenews/2004-03-03-india_x.htm
"Rebuffing U.S. critics, India's finance minister, Jaswant Singh, said Wednesday that high-tech jobs would continue to move from the USA to India because the savings make it unavoidable...   Amid the furor over job relocation, the Indian economy is growing at a robust 8% annual rate."

2004-03-04 02:42PST (05:42EST) (10:42GMT)
Anshuman Daga _Reuters_/_Yahoo!_
White- and Gold-Collar Job Boom Sets India's Tech City Abuzz
http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040304/tech_india_jobs_1.html
"Scuffles broke out one Saturday morning last month when some 8K people started queuing as early as 05:00 for a walk-in test to join India's largest software company, Tata Consultancy Services.   TCS had to call in the police to keep order...   The hiring frenzy in India is the flip side of daily tales pouring out of the United States and Britain, where thousands of software and back-office jobs are being cut as companies take advantage of cheap communications off-shore to drive down costs."

2004-03-04 05:30PST (08:30EST) (13:30GMT)
_Department of Labor ETA_
Unemployment compensation insurance claims increased by 11,715
http://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/press/2004/030404.html
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 340,399 in the week ending February 28, an increase of 11,715 from the previous week.   There were 429,003 initial claims in the comparable week in 2003.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.0% during the week ending February 21, unchanged from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 3,761,551, an increase of 30,335 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 3.3% and the volume was 4,192,955.   Extended benefits were available in Alaska during the week ending February 14.   53 states reported that 361,723 individuals filed continued claims under the Federal Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation (TEUC) program during the week ending February 14...   The highest insured unemployment rates in the week ending February 14 were in Alaska (6.8%), Michigan (4.8%), Pennsylvania (4.7%), Idaho (4.5%), Oregon (4.4%), Wisconsin (4.3%), New Jersey (4.1%), Massachusetts (4.0%), Montana (3.9%), Rhode Island (3.9%), and Washington (3.9%).   The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending February 21 were in Massachusetts (+4,649), California (+3,838), Connecticut (+1,530), Rhode Island (+1,441), and New Jersey (+1,170), while the largest decreases were in Michigan (-7,498), New York (-2,802), North Carolina (-2,366), Pennsylvania (-2,257), and Ohio (-1,564)."

2004-03-04 07:09:40PST (09:09:40CST) (10:09:40EST) (15:09:40GMT)
_Apple Valley Sun Current_
Libertarian primary contender Gary Nolan to make Eagan stop
"One of the Libertarian Party's candidates for president, Gary Nolan, will make a campaign stop in Eagan Tuesday, March 9...   Nolan, a Cleveland, Ohio, resident, is a former radio talk show host and a small-business man."

2004-03-04 09:02PST (12:02EST) (17:02GMT)
Jennifer Waters _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Clothing leads February retail sales gains
"Thomson First Call's round-up of 68 of the nation's largest chains produced a 6.7% surge in sales at stores open longer than a year -- a key industry bench-mark...   At First Call, all 10 of the department stores it covers delivered positive same-store sales for a 7.2% gain that well outpaced the 4.8% estimate.   The apparel segment that includes women's, men's and teen fashion stores churned out a 9.3% increase, also far ahead of the 5.9% forecast."

2004-03-04 15:00PST (18:00EST) (23:00GMT)
Lou Dobbs & Eric Philips & Louise Schiavone & Bill Tucker _CNN_
illegal aliens, abetting off-shoring, gasoline prices up
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/04/ldt.00.html
"40% of Mexico's population lives in poverty.   An estimated 10M to 12M Mexicans live in this country illegally.   They send back to Mexico $12G a year in remittances, the second largest source of income for Mexico after oil exports.   President Fox wants President Bush to make it even easier for citizens to enter this country.   George W. Bush: 'We must make our immigration laws more rational and more humane.'...   Michael Teitelbaum, the former vice chairman of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, says there's nothing more permanent than a temporary worker...   Last year, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended nearly a million people trying to enter this country illegally.   More than 9 out of 10 of them were citizens of Mexico...   Manuel Delacruz... is a United States citizen and he is a member of Mexico's Congress.   Delacruz was elected last summer and says he hopes to create a new legislative district for Mexico's parliament, which would include Mexicans living in this country.   Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham today said the White House is extremely concerned about the recent spike in gasoline prices.   The national average for regular unleaded gasoline is now $1.70 a gallon and rising...   According to the Energy Information Administration, the average household is paying between 9% and 13% more this winter to heat their home with natural gas than last winter...   Brigadier General Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored Division, said insurgents have recently fired rockets from launchers nearly 20 miles from their target.   Until eventually, the maximum range of those rockets was just over 5 miles...   The Senate tonight voted overwhelmingly to block the use of federal money to export American jobs over-seas.   The amendment attached to a broader bill on corporate tax breaks was approved by a vote of 70 to 26.   Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut sponsored the amendment which would prevent companies from using money from federal contracts to out-source jobs over-seas...   Tucked into a corner of West Virginia (Weirton) is what is left of the blast furnaces and buildings that produced badly needed steel all through World War II and kept at it during the prosperity that followed.   Although production fell off, the mill still employed 13K workers into the 1970s.   Today, fewer than 3K jobs are left and the mill is bankrupt...   U.S. businesses spent $16G on off-shoring work last year, according to Gartner, and India gets the lion's share of that work...   Consultants often play a role as the middleman, connecting companies with off-shore providers, holding conferences to help companies out-source and off-shore work.   It's a large and fast growing business.   Conferences are heavily attended and often protested by workers displaced by out-sourcing...   Marc Andreessen is an Internet pioneer.   He co-founded a Silicon Valley firm that helps companies out-source work over-seas.   He's the chairman of the company Opsware...   Marc Andreessen: 'In the last 10 years, this economy has destroyed 325M jobs and created 342M new jobs...   And I think, in the next 10 years, we're going to destroy another 400M, create another 430M, 450M new jobs, and those jobs will be better...   In the last 15 years, the number of Americans employed by foreign companies has gone up from 2.5M to 6.5M.'...   The service jobs, the high-value jobs that are being exported to various countries around the world are not being exported so -- for entry to those markets of those countries, but rather for the return of those services and products to this market...   Ludwig von Mises: 'The common man is the sovereign consumer whose buying or abstention from buying ultimately determines what should be produced and in what quantity and quality.'..."

2004-03-04
Kirk Johnson _NY Times_
Energy Boom Has Wyoming Coffers Over-Flowing
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/04/national/04WYOM.html
"While many other states are still struggling to find their financial footing after years of budget turmoil, Wyoming's tiny government is awash in cash."

2004-03-04
Heather Timmons _NY Times_
Chair & Chief of Exploration of Royal Dutch Shell Group Were Pushed to Resign After Questionable Reserves Reports
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/04/business/04shell.html
"The top executive of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, the world's third-largest oil company, was forced to resign on Wednesday after an internal investigation into the company's surprise disclosure in January that it had over-stated its oil and natural gas reserves by 20%...   Walter van de Vijver, the chief executive of the exploration and production business and once seen as Sir Philip's successor, also stepped down on Wednesday."

2004-03-04
Don van Natta & Desmond Butler _NY Times_
Cellular Phones Deal Yet Another Blow to Privacy
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/04/international/europe/04PHON.html
"A Swiss company once sold Subscriber Identity Module cards without asking buyers for identification, making its cards a favorite with [those who value privacy].   But investigators were able to match the numbers with [individuals, anyway, and track them down].   Switzerland is ending anonymous card sales on July 1."

2004-03-04
Ed J. Montoni _Arizona Republic_
Anonymous voice of America's unemployed
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0304montini04.html

2004-03-04
_NRI Links_ Indian economy posts record 8.4% growth
http://www.nrilinks.com/news/n/7/9333.aspx
"India's economy expanded by 8.4% between July and September...   The figures put Asia's third-largest economy firmly on track to achieving the government's growth target of 7% for the fiscal year, economists said.   The 7% growth would still leave India behind [Red China] whose economy is forecast by the International Monetary Fund to expand by 8.5% in 2003 but it would be a big rise from the previous fiscal year's 4.3%."

2004-03-04
_Hampton Roads Daily Press_
H-1B visa subject of much controversy
http://www.dailypress.com/features/columnists/dp-67599cm0mar04,0,5737370.column?coll=dp-features-columnists
"Critics say the visas allow businesses to fill jobs with cheap foreign labor rather than hiring Americans at higher wages."

2004-03-04
Paul J. Lim _US News & World Report_
Jobs lost in the out-sourcing debate
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/buzz/archive/buzz040330.htm
"For example, [Federal Reserve Board governor Ben Bernanke] cited a recent Goldman Sachs study that found that U.S. manufacturers moved between 300K and 500K jobs abroad over the past 3 years.   However, lost in this debate is the fact that foreign companies have, during this time, shifted some jobs to the United States, he said.   For example, between 1997 and 2001, 'employment of US residents by affiliates of foreign companies operating within the United States increased by about 1.2M jobs', he said."
 

2004-03-05

2004-03-05 12:23:06PST (15:23:06EST) (20:23:06GMT)
_Reuters_/_CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Martha Stewart found guilty of conspiracy, making false statements, obstruction of justice
"The 8 women and 4 men returned their verdict on the third day of deliberations...   Stewart was found guilty of one count of conspiracy, two counts of making false statements and one count of obstruction of agency proceedings.   Stewart will be sentenced on June 17.   Each count carries a possible prison term of 5 years and a $250K fine, although legal experts do not expect Stewart to receive the stiffest sentence."

2004-03-05 13:28PST (16:28EST) (21:28GMT)
Tomi Kilgore _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Stock indices end on mixed note

"The Dow Jones Industrials Average closed up 7 points at 10,595 and the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite shed 7 points to finish at 2,047...   The key indices had been down as much as 63 points and 21 points, respectively, to start the session, before an intra-day bounce took the Dow up as much as 63 points and the Nasdaq up 14 points.   The Dow is up 0.1% from a week ago, while the Nasdaq has gained 0.8%, breaking a 6-week losing streak.   The technology sector remained weak..."

2004-03-05 15:00PST (18:00EST) (23:00GMT)
John King & Louise Schiavone & Christine Romans & Lou Dobbs _CNN_
Displaced Americans rally
"Today, Americans who lost their jobs to cheap over-seas labor markets rallied with law-makers to keep jobs in this country...   These workers are finding that there is nothing in the job market today to replace, for example, a $27-an-hour Lucent Technology job...   [Seasonally adjusted] Factories laid off 3K more workers.   24K construction jobs vanished and 9K restaurant jobs disappeared.   Where were the jobs?   Lower paid retail jobs and government jobs grew by 21K.   John, 392K American workers simply abandoned the work force.   We're down to 66% labor force participation.   That's the lowest in 15 years.   8.2M Americans are unemployed [and actively seeking work], and most troubling for investors, not only was February weak, January and December job growths both scaled back.   John, workers are consumers and they are investors too.   And that's got Wall Street's attention."

2004-03-05
James Risen _NY Times_
Russian Engineers Reportedly Gave Missile Aid to Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/05/politics/05MISS.html
"Any such work on Iraq's banned missiles would have violated U.N. sanctions, even as the Security Council sought to enforce them."

2004-03-05
Linda Greenhouse _NY Times_
Friends for Decades, but Years on Court Left Them Strangers
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/05/politics/05BLAC.html
"Harry A. Blackmun and Warren E. Burger were friends since childhood, but 16 years of serving on the Supreme Court together broke that bond."

2004-03-05
Ralph Blumenthal _NY Times_
In Texas, Hire a Lawyer, Forget About a Doctor?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/05/national/05DOCT.html
"A Texas company run by doctors has been operating a Web site that compiles and posts the names of plaintiffs, their lawyers and expert witnesses in malpractice law-suits."

2004-03-05
Amelia Gruber _GovExec_
Senate approves restrictions on off-shore out-sourcing
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0304/030504a1.htm
"By a wide margin, the Senate on Thursday approved a measure that would prevent most civilian federal agencies from out-sourcing jobs to contractors working outside the United States.   The measure, introduced by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-CT, as an amendment to a corporate tax bill, also would prohibit agencies from procuring goods or services from companies that send work abroad, with some exceptions.   Senators endorsed the bipartisan amendment by a vote of 70 to 26.   Under language in the fiscal 2004 omnibus spending package passed in late January, contractors winning public-private job competitions must work within the U.S. unless federal employees previously performed the jobs over-seas.   The language, offered originally by Sens. Craig Thomas, R-WY, and George Voinovich, R-OH applies only to job competitions conducted using 2004 appropriations."

2004-03-05
Eve Bender _American Psychiatric Association Psychiatric News_
New Rules Limit Eligibility for J-1 Visa Waivers
"Guide-lines issued by the Department of Health and Human Services place limits on the number of physicians who will be able to apply for J-1 visa waivers to work in underserved areas of the United States.   Only physicians working in the neediest areas of the United States will qualify for waivers of foreign residency from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under new application requirements issued in 2003 December.   Under the new guide-lines, which became effective in January, HHS will process J-1 visa-waiver applications only for physicians working in regions the government designates as Health Professional Shortage Areas and who score at least 14 on a 25-point scale that assesses several criteria about the area in which the physician would be practicing."

2004-03-05
Jeannine Aversa _AP_/_Madison Wisconsin Capital Times_
Bad news for job seekers
http://www.madison.com/captimes/business/stories/69510.php
"America's unemployment rate remained stuck at 5.6% in February as the economy added a paltry 21K positions [seasonally adjusted]..."
 

2004-03-06

2004-03-06 14:22PST (17:22EST) (22:22GMT)
_Reuters_/_CNN_/_Money_
While laying off thousands Kraft execs get $10M bonuses
"Bonuses totaling more than $10M were paid out to 5 Kraft Foods Inc. executives at the end of 2003, even as the giant food maker made plans to lay off thousands of workers.   In its annual proxy statement released on Friday, Kraft said the biggest pay-out, a $3.7M bonus, was made to chief executive Roger Deromedi.   Former co-CEO Betsy Holden got $3.5M, sweetening her demotion to global marketing chief in December.   Other payments were $1.3M for North American President David Johnson, $900K for international boss Hugh Roberts and $1.2M for global supply chain Executive Vice President Franz-Josef Vogelsang...   In January, Chicago-based Kraft said it would cut about 6K jobs and close 20 plants as it tried to restore growth."

2004-03-06
Louis Uchitelle _NY Times_
New Patterns Restrict Hiring
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/06/business/06HIRE.html
"the nation's employers remain stubbornly reluctant to add jobs in the United States.   Out-sourcing abroad, particularly the shifting of work to [Red China] and India, so much in the news, is one reason hiring at home has been sparse.   Another is rising productivity, squeezing more work from existing staff and other efficiences.   But these are only two aspects of a much broader syndrome that might be described as just-in-time hiring...   'Companies do not want to take on new workers unless they absolutely have to, and they do not have to yet.', said Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist at Global Insight, a forecasting and data gathering concern...   Temporary workers, in fact, are the fastest-growing segment of the work force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.   Since August, when employers finally began to add more jobs than they eliminated, temporary workers have led the parade.   Temporary help jobs increased by 112K in this period, bringing the total to 2.37M as of last month.   That is up from virtually zero in the late 1970s...   In an American Management Association survey of 230 executives last December, 48% said they would add workers this year, up from 38% in the poll a year earlier...   in manufacturing, which has been shedding jobs for 43 consecutive months...   the Commerce Department's inventory-to-sales ratio, a measure of the number of months needed to sell off existing inventories, has fallen to less than 1.4 months from nearly 1.6 months in the early 1990s...   a growing portion of the spending is going abroad, creating jobs in other countries rather than the United States.   That is because the value of imported capital goods, measured as a percentage of total expenditures, excluding cars and trucks, rose to just under 40% last year from just over 30% in 1990 and 15% in 1980.   Similarly, spending on imported consumer goods and services as a percentage of total out-lays stands at 12% today, up from 7% in 1990 and 4% in 1980."

2004-03-06
David Leonhardt _NY Times_
Employers Squeeze More Blood from Current Employees Rather than Hire
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/06/business/06ECON.html
"At no other point since World War II has the economy grown for such a long period without adding jobs at a healthy pace...   Weekly wages for most of the work force have risen less than 2% over the last year, roughly the rate of inflation.   In February, manufacturers cut the number of workers on their pay-rolls for the 43rd consecutive month.   The average length of unemployment increased to 20.3 weeks, its highest level since 1984...   Companies have remained remarkably reluctant to add workers even though the economy grew at an annual rate of 6.1% during the second half of last year -- the fastest pace in almost two decades -- and growth, most economists estimate, has continued at a pace not much slower since the year began.   New technologies have helped companies become more efficient, allowing them to produce more goods with fewer employees.   The uneven growth of the last four years also seems to have made some executives wary that the good times will continue, while others have shifted some jobs to countries with lower wages.   And the rising cost of health insurance has made executives think twice about adding workers, they say.   'This is a different cycle.', said Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez, an economic research firm in New York.   'To the extent that companies can squeeze another drop of blood out of their existing work force, they're doing it.   Eventually you reach the point where there's no more blood to be given, but we haven't reached it yet.'...   the longest employment slump since the 1930s."

2004-03-06
Alex Berenson _NY Times_
Judge Dismisses Most Serious Charge Against Ex-Tyco Officers
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/06/business/06tyco.html
"Although the judge struck down a charge of enterprise corruption, L. Dennis Kozlowski and Mark H. Swartz still face 32 charges."
 

2004-03-07

2004-03-07
_San Francisco Chronicle_
Executives campaign for off-shore out-sourcing: Loudest voices include those who disparage privacy, have wrecked forms that formerly had good reputations
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/07/BUGL25FFRH1.DTL

2004-03-07
Neil A. Lewis & David Johnston _NY Times_
U.S. Team Is Sent to Develop Case in Trial of Saddam Hussein
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/international/middleeast/07SADD.html
"A Justice Department delegation will take charge of assembling and organizing the evidence for Saddam Hussein's trial."

2004-03-07
Sarah Kershaw _NY Times_
Weapons that Enslave vs. Live Free or Die
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/national/07TASE.html
"But in 2003, for the first time in 15 years, no one [in Seattle] was shot and killed by the police...   Critics say the weapon is [abusive] because the shock leaves no obvious mark, other than what looks like a small bee sting.   Human rights groups in the United States and abroad have called Tasers... instruments of torture.   They are now being [abused] by more than 4K police departments."

2004-03-07
Carrie Kirby & John Shinal _San Francisco Chronicle_
Off-shoring's target: the Bay Area Silicon Valley could face export of 1 in 6 jobs
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/03/07/MNGRT5G2C11.DTL
"Jobs are more likely to be shipped over-seas from Silicon Valley than any other region in the nation, placing the Bay Area's economic engine directly in the path of the global freight train known as off-shoring.   Specifically, 1 in 6 jobs in Silicon Valley are at risk of being sent abroad, compared with only 1 in 10 positions nationwide, according to researchers at UC Berkeley.   The economists estimate that 1 in 7 San Francisco jobs could be exported...   Ashok Deo Bardhan and his fellow researchers, Dwight Jaffee and Cynthia Kroll of UC Berkeley's Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics...   The average programmer in San Jose earns $77,690 a year plus benefits, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics...   The main reason the Bay Area stands to lose more jobs lies in the region's predominance of white-collar work.   San Jose's vulnerability lies in its high proportion of technology workers, while San Francisco's lies in its legions of office and service workers, Bardhan said...   Of the California jobs at highest risk to out-sourcing, most of the 200K lost between 2001 and 2003 were casualties of the tech crash, not over-seas re-location, the UC Berkeley researchers say...   Another study by the left-wing Economic Policy Institute shows that industries gaining jobs in the United States pay an average of 21% less than job-losing industries.   In California, growing industries pay 40% less than those that are contracting...   More likely, the new jobs created will be taken by different workers, not those replaced by off-shoring, the UC Berkeley researchers say..."

2004-03-07
Bob Powell _Exponential Improvement_
Why Off-Shoring Is Economically Unsustainable

2004-03-07
John Shinal _San Francisco Chronicle_
Workers devastated as companies rush off-shore
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/07/MNGRT5G2GL1.DTL
"Back in 1997, she left Apple Computer after being shifted from programmer to project manager as the company moved internal software development to India.   She left because she didn't want to lose her hands-on skills...   Like many of the 300K Bay Area workers who've been thrown out of work since the Internet bubble burst, his job prospects appear dim despite a long career as a highly paid information technology specialist.   'The skills I have aren't trivial.', said Allen, who spent 20 years writing software code and managing corporate data-bases and whose name is on several software patents."

2004-03-07
_AP_/_Saint Paul Pioneer Press_
Libertarian presidential primary certified results leaves Nolan the winner
http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/local/states/wisconsin/8124000.htm
"Unofficial results after the February 17 primary showed Michael Badnarik defeated Gary Nolan by 9 votes, but the official count put Nolan as the winner by 76 votes, according to the Elections Board.   The official results showed Nolan had 43% of the vote, compared with 41% for Badnarik.   12% of Libertarians who cast ballots were undecided.   Libertarian Party candidates for president appeared on the ballot thanks to Tomah bar owner Ed Thompson's showing in the 2002 gubernatorial election.   Thompson collected slightly more than 10% of the vote, the threshold required for the party to gain greater ballot access."

2004-03-07
_AP_/_Appleton Post-Crescent_
Official Count Shakes Up Libertarian Presidential Primary
http://www.wisinfo.com/postcrescent/news/archive/local_15079249.shtml
"The official results showed [Gary] Nolan had 43% of the vote, compared with 41% for [Michael] Badnarik.   Another 12% of voters who cast Libertarian ballots were undecided."
 

2004-03-08

2004-03-08 15:00PST (18:00EST) (23:00GMT)
Lou Dobbs & Lisa Sylvester _CNN_
electronic voting
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/08/ldt.00.html
"Congressman Robert Wexler has sued in federal court to force the installation of printers on e-voting machines...   Congressman Wexler said it's unconstitutional for counties with touch-screen voting machines to have a paperless system that makes it impossible to hold recounts...   Glenda Hood: 'But the fact of the matter is that today, there's no vendor that's presented any type of manufactured piece of equipment, a companion printer to go with those touch-screen machines for certification in the state of Florida.   The standards at the national level haven't even been developed.'...   Under the US-VISIT program, all other visitors from visa countries will be fingerprinted and photographed at the border by the end of the year, but not so for the 7M Mexicans with border crossing cards.   Critics say the president's decision will leave a huge security hole at the Southern border because border crossing cards are easy to get...   There are 4.8M illegal Mexicans in the United States, compared to only 47K illegal Canadians, according to a 2000 INS study.   And there's less economic incentive for Canadians to sneak into the United States.   Canada's per capita gross domestic product is just over $29K a year, ninth in the world.   In Mexico, it's less than $9K a year, ranking 82nd in the world...   Christopher Dodd: 'So instead of encouraging through our tax code people to pack up and leave, we ought to be doing everything we can to encourage them to stay here so that we'll have some products and services with which to compete in the 21st century global market-place.'...   This coalition is formed to promote out-sourcing, or to stop at least legislation at the state level or the federal that would curtail it...   Bruce Josten, US Chamber of Commerce: '39% of all software in this country is stolen under intellectual property throughout the world.   We lose $3G a year in intellectual property theft, in the movie industry alone.'...   Ed Yingling, EVP of the American Bankers Association: 'in the financial services area...We've created 1.3M jobs in the last decade...'...   And you're talking about structural changes, yet there should be an intellectual contest right now in this country over what's happening.   Better data should be procured by both the government and by business.   And an honest dialog about why this country can't put together a trade surplus in two decades.   Why, with a relatively low comparative tax rate, American corporations haven't been able to achieve a trade surplus, and why that should be on the back of American labor to adjust -- you know, we always talk about a strong and resilient economy the American economy is, and it is that.   Why does that fall squarely on the back of labor to be resilient?...   Bruce Josten: 'investments by corporate America 2002, it was over $1T in the United States, compared to $138G worldwide...   Chemicals are the number one commodity export for this country.'"

2004-03-08 15:05PST (18:05EST) (23:05GMT)
_CBS.MarketWatch.com_
AAA expects even higher gasoline prices
"Gasoline prices are set to move higher in the longer term, Robert Darbelnet, chief executive of AAA, told a news conference at the Detroit Economic Club Monday...   AAA, formerly known as the American Automobile Association, expects average gasoline prices to continue rising over the next 5 years, mainly due to 'rising demand and tougher clean air rules', spokesman Geoff Sundstrom told CBS MarketWatch.   Overall, gasoline prices have been climbing because of 'rising consumption, high crude oil prices, insufficient domestic gasoline refining capacity, new federal and state gasoline regulations, and chronically low inventories', Darbelnet said...   He estimated that as much as 10% of domestic gasoline needs were supplied from off-shore last year."

2004-03-08
Bill Carter _NY Times_
ABC Under Disney: Kingdom, Yes. Magic, No.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/08/business/media/08abc.html
"Television industry executives and producers say the network [abc] has been ham-strung by the top-down management style of its parent company."

2004-03-08
Simon Romero _NY Times_
Foreign Concerns Make Deals With Saudis to Search for Gas
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/08/business/worldbusiness/08oil.html
"Energy companies from [Red China] and Russia will be among the first foreign businesses to explore Saudi natural gas reserves in more than three decades."

2004-03-08
Saul Hansell _NY Times_
Getting to Know Me, Getting to Know All About Me: Web Personality Tests
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/08/technology/08tickle.html
"Tickle.com, a site built around tests that purport to say what breed of dog you are or what the theme song of your life should be, is growing and profitable."

2004-03-08
John Ribeiro _Computer World_
Indian out-sourcers tackle high-end IT: Pace of hiring for software development is frenetic
http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/outsourcing/story/0,10801,90889,00.html
"The tech sector is booming in the bustling city of Bangalore, India, which has been dubbed the Silicon Plateau... lthough some U.S. executives have begun to express reservations about off-shore out-sourcing..."

2004-03-08
Ron Scherer _Christian Science Monitor_
Why managers in a growing economy refuse to create new jobs: large inventories, high productivity, & out-sourcing mean businesses have added only 118K new jobs since January
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0308/p02s02-usec.html
"Unless the missing jobs turn up soon, there are serious ramifications..."
 

2004-03-09

2004-03-09 08:26PST (11:26EST) (16:26GMT)
Frank Barnako _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
MP3.com goes to auction
"Hundreds of computers, printers and Herman Miller Aeron chairs are on view Tuesday at the once-plush offices of MP3.com in La Jolla, CA.   They go under the gavel of Cowan Alexander on Wednesday.   'This asset auction represents the end of the ruptured Internet bubble and symbolizes a public up-swing in the technology economy.', said Don Cowan, president of Cowan Alexander.   'We have witnessed a drop of nearly 70% in dot-com auction activity from the heydays of 1999-2003.'"

2004-03-09 15:00PST (18:00EST) (23:00GMT)
Lou Dobbs & John King & Louise Schiavone _CNN_
electronic voting under fire
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/09/ldt.00.html
"at a minimum the president should endorse legislation that gives tax incentives, rewards companies that make their products and create jobs here in the United States...   the president should try to do more to protect and reward those companies that do, in fact, not only make their products, but create jobs here in the United States...   [Red China] and India stand warned that U.S. views free trade as a 2-way street...   Max Baucus: 'the jobs moving over-seas are high-paying and higher-skilled jobs.'...   [In Florida, today] some polling places opened late because of complications with those machines.   Poll workers in some other places set up the machines incorrectly and electronic polling cards were stuck in some voting machines.   Some of the problems were apparently due to inadequate training for election workers...   Electronic voting problems in California as well.   Mistakes by poll workers in Orange County last week allowed many voters to cast ballots in the wrong legislative districts.   _The Los Angeles Times_ reports that as many as 7K voters were given the wrong access code for their voting machines...   Robert Wexler: 'My objection to the electronic machines in Florida is that those voters who vote are not certain that the machine will tabulate their voted choice the way in which they intended it.   There's no certainty.   Also, in Florida, we have a requirement, which the whole country knows, of a manual recount.   And these machines are incapable of conducting a manual recount in a close election.   The reason why I say they are unconstitutional is because Bush vs. Gore requires each state to have a uniform set of standards.   In some counties, we don't have electronic machines and they can do recounts.   And in some of the largest counties, we now have the electronic machines and no recounts can be had...   This goes to the very integrity of our voting system in America.'...   George Colony, CEO of Forrester Research: 'Today it's about 220K jobs that have gone off-shore by year end 2003.   We advise large corporations [on] technology policies and also how they out-source...   15% have done it to date.'...   David Paterson: 'We understand it is an evolving global market and we all want to be a part of it.   What we're saying is that where companies are out-sourcing we think the public should know about it so the public can make a choice.   We think they should give 6 months notice before they transfer jobs over-seas so workers can be aware.   We should not make American workers be denied their severance pay if they don't train their foreign replacements as some companies are doing.   Finally... we want the express written consent of consumers when their records are being transferred over-seas, particularly medical records and personal banking or accounting or tax-payer records where the rights of privacy laws are not as strong as they are here in the USA.'...   Chris Larsen, CEO of e-Loan: 'a lot of companies are going out of their way not only not disclosing but actually deceiving their customers.   That's leading to a big consumer back-lash and that definitely has to stop.   We do believe disclosure is part of the answer...   [Labor is] about 70% [of costs in our margins].'"

2004-03-09
Steve Lohr & Matt Richtel _NY Times_
Lingering Job Insecurity of Silicon Valley
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/09/technology/09jobs.html
"Well-educated technology workers have long been at the fore-front of American economic growth and innovation, used to working in a field where rapid change is the rule.   As markets shift, new technologies emerge and companies die.   Yet such changes typically meant little more to these employees than moving rather easily from one well-paying opportunity to the next.   But [many] of them can't find jobs...   DF who holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, has found little demand for the kind of software design work that is his specialty...   The unemployment rate last year among computer scientists, for example, was 5.2%, the highest level since the government began tracking this work as an occupation two decades ago.   In most of those years, the unemployment rate for computer scientists was under 2% [except that the rate for those 50 and above was 17%].   Similarly, unemployment among electrical engineers last year, at 6.2%, was the highest in 20 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics...   Doug Henton, president of Collaborative Economics, a consulting firm in Mountain View, CA, said that the average technology company in Silicon Valley generated about $200K in goods and services for each employee last year, up 9% from 2002.   That is double the roughly $100K produced per employee by technology companies nationwide, and the $87K generated by the typical American company."

2004-03-09
Francine Barnes _NY Times_
Filming the Hand That's Stealing His Wallet
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/09/business/09flier.html
"Bob Arno, a security consultant in Las Vegas, spends 7 months each year traveling the world filming pick-pockets and other street thieves."

2004-03-09
Erica Goode _NY Times_
Skeptics Challenge Psychologists & Psychiatrists to "Prove It"
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/09/health/psychology/09SKEP.html
"In journal articles and public presentations, the psychologists, from Emory, Harvard, the University of Texas and other institutions, have challenged the validity of widely used diagnostic tools like the Rorschach ink-blot test.   They have questioned the existence of repressed memories of child sexual abuse and of multiple personality disorder.   They have attacked the wide use of labels like codependency and sexual addiction.   The challengers have also criticized a number of fashionable therapies, including 'critical incident' psychological debriefing for trauma victims, eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR, and other techniques...   Their criticisms reflect a widening divide in the field between researchers, who rely on controlled trials and other statistical methods of determining whether a therapeutic technique works...   American Psychological Society... now counts close to 15K members, its executive director, Dr. Alan Kraut, said."

2004-03-09
Paul Craig Roberts _V Dare_
Out-Sourcing: A Not So New Occupational Hazard
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/occupational_hazard.htm
"According to official US statistics, at the end of February 2004 the US economy had 229K fewer jobs in computer systems design and related disciplines than in 2001 January, a decline of 17.2% in 3 years.   Architectural and engineering employment lost 33K jobs during the period, a decline of 2.6% (the data are from the BLS pay-roll surveys)...   High school and college students are...abandoning occupations that can be out-sourced...   Nationally, enrollments in computer science and computer engineering are down 23% this year.   At MIT, the premier engineering school, enrollment in electrical engineering and computer science has fallen 33% in 2 years.   The New York Times (March 1) reported that even MIT's best graduates are abandoning their computer engineering profession for investment banking...   As Business Week notes, 'most of the big growth areas will be low-skill and low-paying'...   Writing in the Wall Street Journal on-line (February 20), Steve Liesman, senior economics reporter for CNBC, [wrote] 'In 2001 October, this country passed an ignominious mile-stone: For the first time ever, the number of college-educated unemployed surpassed the number of unemployed who don't have high school diplomas.'"
 

2004-03-10

2004-03-10 05:30PST (08:30EST) (13:30GMT)
Greg Robb _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Drop in US exports creates record $43.1G trade deficit in January (with graph)
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid={7D939785-2D4D-45FF-82CB-4A0655505D50}&siteid=mktw&dist=nbi
"This is slightly above the previous record of $43G set last March...   The December trade gap was revised slightly higher to $42.7G from the initial estimate of $42.5G...   January exports fell $1.06G, or 1.2%, to $89.0G.   This was the biggest decline in exports since last August.   Imports fell 0.5% to $132.1G in January, but remained at the second highest level on record.   Exports of goods fell 1.7 pct to $61.9G for the month...   The U.S. trade deficit with [Red China] totaled $11.5G, up from $9.4G in the same month one year ago, but well below the monthly record of $13.6G set last October.   The January trade deficit with the European Union totaled $5.9G, the lowest since 2002 March."

2004-03-10 08:12PST (11:12EST) (16:12GMT)
Lou Dobbs _CNN_/_Money_
Exporting America: false choices: addressing the facts
http://money.cnn.com/2004/03/09/commentary/dobbs/dobbs/index.htm
"Number 1: We're not creating jobs in the private sector, and that's never happened before in our history.   Our economists and politicians need to be coming up with answers, not dogma.   Number 2: We haven't had a trade surplus in this country in more than 2 decades, and our trade deficit continues to soar.   Number 3: We've lost 3M jobs in this country over the last 3 years, and millions more American jobs are at risk of being out-sourced to cheap over-seas labor markets...   1: How many more jobs must we lose before they become concerned about our middle class and our strength as a consumer market?   2: When will the U.S. have to quit borrowing foreign capital to buy foreign goods that support European and Asian economies while driving us deeper into debt?   3: What jobs will our currently 15M unemployed [and under-employed] workers fill, where and when?"

2004-03-10 10:14PST (13:14EST) (18:14GMT)
Carolyn Pritchard _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Directors' pay packages increase 13%
"Compensation packages granted to directors of the 1,500 largest U.S. public companies rose 13% last year as boards added more qualified members to respond to corporate-governance reforms.   Total director compensation, including cash and stock options, rose to a median $100K at S&P 1500 companies, according to a study by the Hay Group, a Philadelphia-based human-resources consulting firm.   The total for S&P 500 companies rose to $135,300.   The Sarbannes-Oxley reform law was the driving force behind the increase, Hay spokesman Dario Priolo said.   The bill required minimum qualification levels for board members, aiming to end the practice of chief executives seating unqualified friends, family members and cronies to rubber-stamp their decisions...   Director pay is set by members of a board's compensation committee.   While there's an inherent conflict-of-interest in that arrangement..."

2004-03-10 11:21PST (14:41EST) (19:41GMT)
Leticia Williams & Luisa Beltran _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Bank of India and prosecutor Eliot Spitzer near settlement: BofI to pay $10M in SEC trading violations
"Bank of [India's, formerly known as Bank of America,] under-writing subsidiary will pay $10M to settle charges that the firm tried to obstruct an investigation into possible trading violations, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday.   Separately, Charlotte, NC-based Bank of America is expected to reach a settlement with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer over improper mutual-fund trading as soon as next week, people familiar with the negotiations said.   According to the SEC, the company's investment banking division, Bank of America Securities, deliberately delayed producing e-mails pertaining to the investigation as well as certain compliance reviews and personal trading records of a former senior employee.   The unit agreed to a censure and a cease-and-desist order from further violating securities laws, without admitting or denying the SEC's findings."

2004-03-10 13:36PST (16:36EST) (21:36GMT)
_AP_/_South Florida Sun-Sentinel_
Evacuation ends, rain slows 38K acre wild-fire in NE Florida
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-310wildfires,0,3571467.story?coll=sfla-news-florida
"Fire-fighters got a brief respite Wednesday from a raging wild-fire that swept through 34K acres of timber and swamp land and briefly threatened this Baker County community.   Rain-fall and weakening winds helped slow the fire, which grew from about 8K acres to 30K acres Tuesday on the Baker-Columbia county line...   Baker County Sheriff Joey Dobson said firefighters saved about four homes and no damage or injuries were reported.   On Wednesday, the U.S. Forest Service reported the fire was 20% contained and it expected to have it contained by March 21...   It began March 2 in the Impassable Bay area of the Osceola National Forest and it was being fought with 20 bull-dozers, four water-carrying helicopters, an airplane and more than 100 fire-fighters from the Florida Division of Forestry, U.S. Forest Service and the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuges.   The fire began as a prescribed burn scheduled for about 1,100 acres."

2004-03-10 15:00PST (18:00EST) (23:00GMT)
Lou Dobbs & John King & Bill Tucker & Kitty Pilgrim _CNN_
immigration, over-population
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/10/ldt.00.html
"President Bush said 16K Americans work for Honda in Ohio.   Honda hired those workers to gain access to the world's biggest consumer car market.   And the company's profits go straight back to Japan...   The quality of American workers is not in question.   But that's not why many foreign auto-makers have plants in the United States.   Alan Tonelson, US Business & Industry Council: '...The United States imposed quotas on all foreign automobile imports.'...   The policy was imposed in the early '80s and it has worked wonders.   Foreign auto-makers now have plants and joint ventures in 11 states.   There are plants in Michigan, California, Illinois.   And those employ United Auto Workers.   Plants in South Carolina, Alabama, Ohio, Tennessee, Mississippi, Indiana, Kentucky, and a soon-to-open Toyota plant in Texas all will be non-union...   In the Georgia primaries, smart cards were left unprogrammed.   In California, ballots were sent to the wrong precincts.   Maryland also had some of the wrong encoders for the machines...   Rebecca Mercuri: '...the testing really does not reflect the actual conditions on Election Day.   And there's all sorts of things that go on behind the scene that we really don't ever really hear about.   As far as these paper -- when it prints out this paper after the fact, the voter doesn't get to see that.   That's all done behind the scene.   And the voter doesn't have any way of confirming that that ballot is actually the one that they really cast...   basically there's no opportunity to verify that either the ballots that you cast or what you intended or the vote totals are actually correct.   All this is controlled by the vendors, and in some cases the election community, but largely it's just turned over to the vendors and it's a proprietary nature.   This is unacceptable.'...   Richard Lamm, former governor of Colorado, Sierra Club: 'one fight is the question of immigration and population, should it be an environmental issue.   The second one is the way the people are doing it...   No American I ever talked to wants to live in an America of a billion people or even half a billion people.'...   Paul Craig Roberts: 'When you lose high value added jobs, you lose occupations.   And we can already see the effect in enrollments.   You know, this year, the enrollments in computer engineering [majors] dropped 23%.   In MIT announced the enrollment in the engineers has dropped 33% in the last 2 years...   How many more jobs will be lost?   High value added.   High productivity jobs.   Middle class jobs.   Jobs that were the ladders of mobility.   Those are the jobs that it pays to out-source or hire over the Internet.'"

2004-03-10
_NY Times_
Economic Trouble in Germany
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/10/opinion/10WED5.html
"The economy contracted by 0.1% last year and is headed for growth of only 1.5% is year.   Unemployment stands at 10.3%.   Huge public deficits are running afoul of the pact that Germany itself forced on euro-zone members.   Consumers and investors lack confidence.   The reasons for the problems are no mystery: a lavish welfare system, which the state can no longer afford, and high labor costs, which send businesses elsewhere.   The Germans know all that full well, just as they know that they need to make deep and painful changes if they are to turn things around and resume that economic miracle of which they used to be so proud.   The trouble is that they are not willing to accept the consequences.   Chancellor Gerhard Schrˆder has had to pay a heavy political price even for the meek and woefully inadequate welfare, labor and tax reforms he has attempted.   A quarterly charge of 10 euros for health care was enough to create a major furor."

2004-03-10
William Safire _NY Times_
Privacy in Retreat
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/10/opinion/10SAFI.html
"'I believe privacy is a fundamental right', said the candidate George W. Bush one month before his election, 'and that every American should have absolute control over his or her personal information.'...   Terror's threat is real.   But as we grudgingly grant government more leeway to guard our lives, we must demand that our protectors be especially careful to safeguard our rights.   Officials all too often fail to see both sides of their jobs.   As reported last week by Robert Pear and Eric Lichtblau in The Times, the Justice Department said that medical patients 'no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential'...   Medical records contain dates of treatment, doctors' names, prescriptions -- all clues to identity.   Who would not be deterred from going to a hospital that meekly passed along those records?..."

2004-03-10
Dean Calbreath _San Diego Union-Tribune_
California could lose 11.5% of existing positions to off-shore out-sourcing warns economist
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20040310-9999-news_1b10offshore.html
Background on Business Services Out-Sourcing and the California Economy
http://staff.haas.berkeley.edu/kroll/pubs/State%20testimony%20030804.pdf
"Out-sourcing and global competition may eventually kill nearly an eighth of California's existing jobs, an economist warned state legislators yesterday as they debated measures aimed at discouraging companies from shifting jobs over-seas.   State-wide, 11.5% of jobs could eventually be sent over-seas, Cynthia Kroll, economist with the University of California Berkeley's Haas School of Business, told a state Senate committee hearing.   Areas with high concentrations of high-tech jobs could be at greater risk, [Kroll] added.   She estimated that Silicon Valley, which is still reeling from the bursting of the dot-com bubble, could lose 15.7% of its jobs.   Local economists say San Diego is at less risk for massive job losses because local businesses concentrate more on research and development than manufacturing...   To staunch the bleeding, the U.S. Senate last week approved an amendment that would restrict U.S. contractors from out-sourcing their government work to over-seas locations.   20 states are considering similar measures, including California, which is debating three measures written by Sen. Liz Figueroa, D-Fremont, who chairs the Senate Business and Professions Committee.   One of Figueroa's bills would bar the state from sending contracts outside the United States; a second would require companies to tell the state when they plan to move 20 or more jobs over-seas; and a third would increase protections of privacy when medical and financial information is shipped over-seas...   During yesterday's hearing in Sacramento, lobbyists from business groups such as the California Chamber of Commerce appeared before the committee warning against regulating out-sourcing, while labor groups pushed to keep jobs within the state.   'New rules and regulations cannot assure economic prosperity for all.', said Jeff Lande, vice president of the Information Technology Association of America."
 

2004-03-11

2004-03-10 20:47PST (23:47EST) (2004-03-11 04:47GMT)
Leigh Strope _AP_/_Sacramento Bee_
Unions fight for survival
http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/business/story/1199598p-8178613c.html
"Organized labor is in the fight of its life to remain relevant to workers as it struggles to rebound from setbacks in organizing and politics.   Labor leaders meeting this week at a luxury seaside resort are revving up for the largest multi-million dollar effort to mobilize their members to defeat President Bush.   John Kerry, the Democrats' presumptive nominee, addressed the AFL-CIO meeting by satellite Wednesday...   About 400K new members were organized last year, he said.   But membership is at an all-time low, with just 12.9% of the work force belonging to a union last year.   That's down from 13.3% in 2002, according to the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics.   In the private sector alone, only 8.2% of workers were union members last year."

2004-03-11 00:00 (03:00EST) (08:00GMT)
Brad Grimes _PC World_/_Yahoo!_
RFID: What the US Department and Wal-Mart have in common
"The 2 organizations have become poster children for radio frequency identification (RFID)...   Both organizations are requiring their suppliers to use RFID tags if they want to continue doing business with them.   With RFID, tiny radio transmitters are attached to products.   These tags, as they're called, emit radio waves carrying data that's read using special scanners.   RFID tags are like high-tech bar codes, only they can hold more data and their signals can be received over a far greater distance...   [But people] want companies to be able to track the individual products they buy...   Companies are sensitive to the backlash that RFID [has caused], so they're saying all the right things."

2004-03-11 05:30PST (08:30EST) (13:30GMT)
Thomas Stengle _DoL ETA_
Unemployment compensation insurance claims fell 4,672
http://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/press/2004/031104.html
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 337,465 in the week ending March 6, a decrease of 4,672 from the previous week.   There were 414,188 initial claims in the comparable week in 2003.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.9% during the week ending February 28, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 3,695,438, a decrease of 44,505 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 3.3% and the volume was 4,191,412.   Extended benefits were available in Alaska during the week ending February 21.   53 states reported that 302,840 individuals filed continued claims under the Federal Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation (TEUC) program during the week ending February 21...   The highest insured unemployment rates in the week ending February 21 were in Alaska (6.8%%), Puerto Rico (5.6%), Michigan (4.7%), Idaho (4.5%), Oregon (4.4%), Rhode Island (4.3%), Wisconsin (4.3%), Pennsylvania (4.2%), Massachusetts (4.1%), and New Jersey (4.1%).   The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending February 28 were in New York (+13,499), California (+9,719), Oregon (+1,223), Washington (+1,074), and Connecticut (+658), while the largest decreases were in Massachusetts (-4,695), Texas (-1,838), New Jersey (-1,556), Rhode Island (-1,486), and Georgia (-1,020)."

2004-03-11 07:14PST (10:14EST) (15:14GMT)
Rex Nutting _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
February retail sales disappoint says Commerce Department
Advance Monthly Sales for Retail Trade & Food Services
http://www.census.gov/svsd/www/fullpub.html
"Core retail sales were bit weaker in February than economists expected, according to estimates released by the Commerce Department on Thursday.   Retail sales rose 0.6% after a revised 0.2% gain in January.   However, all of the gain came from the 2.7% rise in auto sales.   Excluding autos, sales were flat after soaring a revised 1.2% in January...   Overall sales are up 7.9% year-over-year...   Clothing store sales rose 0.4%.   Sales at leisure-time stores, such as music, books and hobbies, fell 1.2%.   The chain stores had reported the strongest year-over-year growth in sales in three years when they reported February same-store sales.   Gasoline station sales were also a shock, falling 0.1% despite the surge in gasoline prices during the month.   Durable goods sales were mixed.   Electronics and appliance store sales rose 0.5%, but furniture store sales dropped 0.4% after a hefty gain in January.   Building material, garden and hardware store sales were flat after a 1% drop in January.   Sales at health care stores sank 1.2%, the largest decline since 2001 September.   Sales at food stores fell 0.5%, reversing an inexplicable 2.1% rise in January."

2004-03-11 10:03PST (13:03EST) (18:03GMT)
Kristen Gerencher _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Taking chronic pain seriously: Pain-management clinics contend with high demand
"the practice known as pain management is hitting its stride as clinics take lessons learned in the acute pain environment of surgery and modify them for a growing number of chronic ailments ranging from back pain to arthritis, medical experts say.   About 50M Americans -- or one in five -- suffer some kind of ongoing pain, according to the American Pain Society, which represents 3,500 U.S. doctors, nurses and psychologists specializing in pain care.   Chronic pain is estimated to cost U.S. employers anywhere from $61.2G to $100G annually in lost work, impaired productivity and medical insurance claims.   What's more, clinicians are bracing for an influx of aging baby boomers, who appear to be less stoic about pain than their parents' generation, says Barry Cole, education director for the American Academy of Pain Management, which represents 6K practitioners in 12 disciplines ranging from dentistry and podiatry to rehabilitation and chiropractics."

2004-03-11 10:55PST (13:55EST) (18:55GMT)
Greg Robb & Rex Nutting _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Greenspan repeats expectation of more job creation and insistence that education is key but skill is more important than that
"'We have reason to be confident that new jobs will displace old jobs as they always have, but America's job turnover process will never be without pain for those caught on the down-side of creative destruction.' he said...   The key to maintaining America's edge is education, Greenspan said, noting that relative changes in wages and salaries over the past years show that the U.S. has a shortage of high-skilled workers and a surplus of low-skilled workers.   'Although in recent years the proportion of our labor force made up of those with at least some college education has continued to grow, we appear, none the less, to be graduating too few skilled workers to address the apparent imbalance between the supply of such workers and the burgeoning demand for them.', he said [ignoring the burgeoning supply of them who are unemployed]."

2004-03-11 15:00PST (18:00EST) (23:00GMT)
Lou Dobbs & Kelli Arena & Suzanne Malveaux & Bill Tucker & Peter Viles & Christine Romans _CNN_
trains attacked in Spain, off-shoring
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/11/ldt.00.html
"a rush-hour massacre in Spain, almost 200 people killed, more than 1K wounded...   Susan Lindauer is 41 years old.   She is a U.S. citizen, as you said, a former journalist, a former Capitol Hill staffer, and according to prosecutors, a paid agent for the Iraqi Intelligence Service...   The government alleges Lindauer met repeatedly with members of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, that she accepted payments of $10K for expenses and services.   Prosecutors also say that she met with an undercover FBI agent and, following his instructions, left documents at dead-drop operations.   The indictment also says that she tried to influence U.S. foreign policy by dropping off a letter at a U.S. official's home, saying that she had access to and contact with members of Saddam Hussein's regime...   Tony Raimondo [withdrew his appointment to be 'manufacturing czar' after it was claimed he had] fired some 17% of his own work force -- he's a Nebraska businessman -- and that he built a plant out in [Red China]...   David Dreier: '93% of what the United States exports to Australia today are actually manufactured goods and, under this agreement, 99% of them will be able to go terror-free into Australia...   The president has included $23G in his budget for job re-training.'...   Most of those programs are managed by J.P. Morgan, and E-Funds and they off-shore the work.   A survey done by Stella Hopkins of the _Charlotte Observer_ found that 40 states, plus the District of Columbia have food stamp help desks that use operators in other countries...   We all have great faith in the American way of life and preserving it...   Pete Bennett of nomoeh1b.com: 'There are Ph.D.s, mathematics experts all over the place that have been displaced by this program or by the onslaught of out-sourcing.   There has to be a qualified worker.   Maybe they might just have to pay for relocation and relocate them to some other part of the country.   But it's about time they really looked hard inside the United States.'...   big cities such as New York and Los Angeles... hire foreigners by the hundreds to teach math, sciences and languages...   Michael Cutler: 'It's not just the border, they were looking to come up with another 200 plus agents to look for the something on the order of 400K aliens who've absconded within our borders.   80K of whom have serious criminal records.   So they're talking about another 200 plus agents and the odds just don't work out...   we've got 38K cops patrolling New York streets, policing 8M people...   And we've got 2K INS agents policing a number of perhaps as high as 14M illegal aliens scattered across the North American continent...   as it is we have a visa waiver program where we're letting people into this country from 28 countries, where we're not properly screening these folks.   Now we're also exempting... the people from those 28 countries from U.S. Visit, which is supposed to record photographs, finger-prints other biometrics to keep track of who's here.'...   Because of [Red China's] booming economy, construction sites, this economy is going to suck in almost 6M barrels of oil a day.   That's up 11% from last year."

2004-03-11
Alan Greenspan
prepared remarks
http://www.federalreserve.gov/BoardDocs/Testimony/2004/20040311/default.htm
"Research on wealth creation in both emerging and developed nations strongly suggests that it is the knowledge and the skill of our population interacting under our rule of law that determine our real incomes, irrespective of the specific jobs in which these incomes are earned and irrespective of the proportion of domestic consumption met by imports...   In the 1970s, the supply of skilled workers received another boost from the rapid expansion of our nation's community colleges.   In short, technical proficiencies across all job grade levels appeared to rise about in line with the needs of our, even then, complex stock of capital.   But for the past 20 years the real incomes of [average] skilled, especially highly skilled, workers have risen more than the average of all workers, whereas real wage rate increases for lesser-skilled workers have been below average, indeed virtually non-existent [as has been the compensation of many highly skilled workers].   This difference in wage trends suggests that, at least in relative terms, we have developed a shortage of highly skilled workers and a surplus of lesser-skilled workers [or not].   Although in recent years the proportion of our labor force made up of those with at least some college education has continued to grow, we appear, nonetheless, to be graduating too few skilled workers to address the apparent imbalance between the [burgeoning] supply of such workers and the burgeoning demand for them.   Perhaps the accelerated pace of high-tech equipment installations associated with the large increases in productivity growth in recent years is generating unachievable demands for skilled graduates over the short run.   If the apparent acceleration in the demand for skilled workers to staff our high-tech capital stock is temporary, as many presume, the pressure on our schools would ease as would the upward pressure on high-skilled wages."

2004-03-11
Ian Austen _NY Times_
Toronto's Hell Highway
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/technology/circuits/11toro.html
"The first highway to use digital cameras and license-plate-reading software rather than toll collectors opened in 1997...   Throughout last year, more bills kept appearing - including one for $43 - for trips Mrs. N had supposedly made along a toll road she had never seen.   Along with the bills came threats of small-claims court and collection-agency action...   A spokesman, Dale A. Albers, declined to provide statistics.   But a cluster of temporary office buildings and one permanent addition attached to the highway's headquarters suggests that it might be a significant issue.   The buildings were erected mostly to accommodate an increase in customer service staff from 27 to 300 employees...   Each day the software from Hughes (which was subsequently acquired by Raytheon) sends about 2,600 to 2,800 digital snapshots of plates that cannot be read - roughly 10% of its harvest - to the 407's Exceptions room.   [Well, that's good; at least there's hope.]...   The highway adds a surcharge of about $2.50 on every video toll fee.   Given that the 407 charges a peak rate of about 11 cents for each kilometer traveled, the extra fee can outstrip the actual toll on short trips.   (By comparison, 407 transponder users are charged a $7.60 activation fee and 76 cents a month to lease the units.   All users must also pay a monthly account fee of $1.50.)"

2004-03-11
_NY Times_
Soft Money Slinks Back
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/opinion/11THU2.html
"Committees set up by Democrat operatives should be asked to play by the same rules that