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Week 44, 2006

6) AUDIO/Slate: Running with slowpokes [Comment les débutants trop lents ont gâché le marathon. VOUS POUVEZ TELECHARGER UNE VERSION AUDIO DE CE TEXTE EN FORMAT MP3]

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A ) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic: Midterm elections [Le 7 novembre auront lieu les prochaines élections aux USA.]
http://content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=7579

Midterm Elections: Voters get ready to choose the nation's leaders

By Tiffany Chaparro

The race is on. Voters across the nation are getting ready to shape America’s next two years as midterm elections approach. Midterm elections are held midway into a president's term in office. This year, voters will elect 36 governors, 33 of the 100 U.S. Senators and all 435 members of the House of Representatives. The election is Tuesday, November 7.

The stakes are high in a midterm election. Since Congress has the power to pass legislation, the party that wins control of the House and the Senate can affect the amount of support the President receives for his agenda.

The majority party, or the party with the most elected members, also has more power to get things done. Right now, the Republicans have more members in the House and Senate. This means they can chair, or lead important committees and pass more laws. But since the Republicans only have a small majority, they don't always get to pass the laws they want.

Nancy Pelosi of California is the minority leader in the House for the Democrats. In 2002, she became the first woman to be elected in that position. If the Democrats do win control of the House this November, she could become the first female Speaker of the House as well.

"If elected Speaker, I would set the House on a new direction to ensure economic opportunity and security for all," Pelosi said in an interview with Scholastic News Online.

Midterm elections often indicate how the public feels about the President’s performance. If a Republican President is doing well, his party is more likely to do well in midterm elections. If voters are unhappy with a President, they sometimes vote against his party in midterm elections.

This year, Democrats hope to regain control of congress. If the Democrats can win 6 more seats in the Senate and 15 more seats in the House, they will have the majority in Congress.

This year, public opinion polls revealed that the President’s approval rating had dropped to the lowest of his presidency. As a result, some Republicans running for office are trying to distance their connection to the President.

The Republicans have had control of the Senate since 2003. They have had control of the House since 1995.

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B) Houston Chronicle: Stolen lunches? [Vos collègues vous piquent votre déjeuner?]
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/sixel/4137785.html?rid=23n
WORKING
Stolen lunches? Substitute cat food for tuna on wheat

By L.M. SIXEL
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

SOMEONE stole my lunch from the office refrigerator the other day. It was a really good lunch — leftovers from dinner the night before accompanied by caramel flan, yogurt, a peach and delicate French cookies from a previous brown bag seminar.

Now, it could have been nicked [stolen] accidentally. Or maybe someone was really hungry and needed the food. Either way, I was annoyed, and after taking an informal survey, it turns out I'm hardly the only victim.

When Patty Kingan was working as a secretary for a utility in Houston, she'd stock the communication's department refrigerator with sodas. But every morning when she'd come in, Kingan would find entire six-packs missing. "We didn't know who was taking them," recalled Kingan, who began to notice that the "good drinks" — the Cokes and Diet Cokes, along with the root beer and orange drinks — disappeared the fastest. "We'd put in Perrier every now and then — they didn't go for that," she said.

Kingan tried to stop the soda thief — or thieves — by writing notes. She started out nice: "The soft drinks are for the department only." Then got increasingly nasty: "We're going to report you." But to no avail. Taping the refrigerator shut didn't work either, so Kingan eventually called maintenance to attach a lock. "We'd laugh," she said, speculating that the culprits were contractors who worked at night. "We never did figure it out."

When Nora Dool was director of marketing for a career management firm, job seekers continually paraded in and out to take workshops and meet with consultants. The office refrigerator was fairly accessible, and Dool heard plenty of complaints from her co-workers about missing sandwiches, restaurant leftovers and desserts. But Dool said she was never a victim, and she attributes that to her diet. "I only brought in frozen dinners," she said. "I guess no one wanted Lean Cuisine."

Maybe it's a matter of packaging, a point that was lost on me when I brought my lunch. I packed it in a cute sack with handles, and I placed it prominently on the front shelf. If I had only put it in ragtag plastic grocery sack and shoved it in the back of the refrigerator so it looked like it had been there since New Year's, maybe no one would have touched it.

Taking revenge

After you've been the victim a few times, thoughts of revenge can begin to take shape. When Dennis Hoard was an electrician apprentice, he'd bring a meatloaf sandwich every Thursday. But every week the sandwich would disappear by lunchtime. Hoard suspected the foreman, a big guy who liked home cooking. So Hoard poured a laxative oil on his tasty sandwich one day.

"I thought I'd teach him a lesson," said Hoard, who is now a retired contractor in Willis. "He spent the rest of the day in one of the port-a-cans." The foreman had some harsh words when he emerged from the toilet, but the two later became good buddies, Hoard recalled. And it established Hoard's reputation as someone not to be messed with.

Sometimes the subtle approach can be just as effective. Brian Hill recalled the time when he worked at a local radio station and someone would regularly raid the weekend provisions of one of the anchors. So the next time the weekend anchor made her popular tuna fish sandwiches, she changed the recipe a little, said Hill, who was an editor at the station.

"There was no tuna," said Hill, who is now director of public affairs for the Houston Zoo. "It was all Little Friskies." And like usual, the nicely wrapped cat food salad sandwiches disappeared, so the anchor wrote up the popular recipe — including her secret ingredient — and posted it on the station's bulletin board for all to see. "I always thought that was the most beautiful thing," said Hill, who said that from that point on, food was safe in the linoleum lounge.

Eight out of 10 people want to feel they're part of a team, said John Buffini, president of Buffini Communication Systems in San Diego, which does personality testing for corporate clients. It's the other two who are not part of the team who can be a problem and are the likely culprits when confronted with the vast richness of the "office Serengeti,"as Buffini describes it.

Sometimes they're angry in a passive-aggressive way and act out by sabotaging the personal property of others, Buffini said. Others take lunches as a way to be funny or provocative. And then there's a group that lacks integrity, rationalizing that there's no name on the bag or that the owner is overweight and could stand to skip a meal anyway.

So which department is most likely to steal a lunch? Accounting, Buffini said, drawing on his experience with personality traits at work. They have to do things by the book, but they're often mad in a passive-aggressive way. Another likely candidate is the customer-service department, because personnel there are under constant pressure and have to handle angry people, he said.

As for the least likely lunch bandits, Buffini said, it's managers because of the scrutiny they're under from all sides, as well as "hero" departments like information technology, which come to your aid when you're down. And the mellow marketing folks get so many gift baskets that they're not interested in someone else's tuna sandwich, he added.

Caught in the act

And don't think home-office workers are immune from missing out on lunch. Freda Blackwell, who works from home in Katy as a sales associate for DBM, was eating her carefully prepared ham and cheese sandwich at her kitchen table when the phone rang, and she ran to answer it. When she returned, Blackwell found that Henry, her dachshund, had taken her place. He was sitting on the chair with his paws on the desk, munching away. "He loves cheese," Blackwell said with a laugh. "You still have to guard your lunch."

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C ) Slate: Pinching the Penny Pinchers [Les entreprises imposent parfois des mesures d'économie absurdes. BONUS AUDIO: Ecouter un entretien avec le journaliste au sujet de cet article.]
http://www.slate.com/id/2150340/

moneybox: Commentary about business and finance.
Pinching the Penny Pinchers: Idiotic examples of corporate cost-cutting.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Monday, Sept. 25, 2006, at 4:14 PM ET

Listen to an interview with the author here, or sign up for Slate's free daily podcast on iTunes.

.How do we know the economy is slowing down? The falling house prices are a clue. So are the bad macroeconomic data. And then there are the mindless, ultimately meaningless cost-cutting actions by gigantic corporations. We've reached the moment that occurs in every business cycle, before the news gets very bad, when successful companies start turning their employees upside down in hopes of shaking out a few pennies. Today, for example, the Financial Times reported that humongous investment bank Credit Suisse has told bankers to cut down on color Xeroxes and deal-closing dinners as part of a cost-reduction effort. And the Wall Street Journal, fleshing out a story broken last week by Valleywag, reported that Yahoo! "will require its U.S. workers to take vacation or unpaid time off the week between Christmas and New Year's, in a move that could signal concern about hitting some financial goals for the year."

Expect many more of these nickel-and-dime stories in the months to come. Big companies relentlessly benchmark. So, you can be sure that Microsoft's human resources folks are looking into unpaid vacation policies while accountants at Citigroup are examining color-toner budgets. (After all, back in July, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a huge shareholder of Citigroup stock, called upon CEO Chuck Prince to enact "draconian" cost-cutting measures. When a Saudi prince accuses you of profligate spending, you know there's a problem.)

These cost-cutting efforts differ from the massive cuts seen lately at crisis-ridden companies such as Ford. Yahoo! and Credit Suisse are trying to prepare for a slowdown in earnings as industry conditions decline. Ford is fighting for its life and so is offering to buy out unionized employees, slashing the white-collar workforce by one-third, and suspending its quarterly dividend. Ford's blunt cost-containing instrument, which takes something out of the hide of everyone from assembly-line workers to shareholders, is certainly damaging to morale. But it's accepted because 1) the company is losing money and 2) everybody bears the burden. By contrast, the cost cuts at highly profitable, sturdy companies such as Credit Suisse are imposed with ruthless indifference, reminiscent of something you might see on The Office. And because they're so arbitrary and meaningless, because they're apparently designed to inflict maximum annoyance on employees, they can be far more damaging to morale.
Click Here!

Frequently, managers looking for low-hanging fruit impose symbolic cost-cutting measures that take away some of the few pleasures their fellow employees enjoy. James Dimon, the legendary cost-cutter who is now the chief executive at J.P. Morgan Chase, has won kudos for his merciless efforts to slash expenses at the bank. Among his triumphs: shutting down employee gyms and cutting off cell phones provided to employees.

What ends up infuriating employees is that the scrimping on minor employee perks co-exists with a pay-any-price attitude for so much else. Credit Suisse, for example, pays seven-figure bonuses to hundreds of bankers every year. Telling associates who prepare deal books that they can't print out color PowerPoint slides because the bank needs to pinch pennies seems an exercise in futility. Yahoo!'s cutback seems even more likely to infuriate. On the heels of a warning on revenues that caused its stock to plummet about 10 percent, Yahoo! told its 10,500 employees to take off the week between Christmas and New Year's. Offices will be closed, allowing workers "to enjoy guilt-free time off while helping Yahoo! reduce unused vacation time," wrote Libby Sartain, Yahoo!'s human resources boss. Assuming average weekly wages of $2,000, that would save the company only $21 million—or about the combined earnings of CEO Terry Semel, CFO Susan Decker, and COO Dan Rosensweig last year. (See Page 26 of Yahoo!'s proxy statement.) Meanwhile, Yahoo! is rumored to be contemplating a $1 billion acquisition of Facebook.

This type of self-defeating cost-cutting often occurs at knowledge businesses whose only real asset is smart, motivated employees. Docking everybody a week's pay at a time of year when 1) they're incurring high expenses and 2) a lot of their friends and colleagues are receiving bonuses doesn't seem like the smartest retention policy for Yahoo!.

To be sure, if companies were indifferent to costs across the board, they wouldn't be in business. But the penny-pinching is aimed squarely at the vast productive middle. Top executives are generally unaffected. (Do you think James Dimon pays for the cell phone he uses at work?)

As the economy moderates and as elevated interest rates continue to take their toll, it's likely we'll see plenty more such examples. Christmas/holiday parties are a prime symbolic opportunity for expense reduction. When an investment bank that took the whole gang to Vegas for a bash in 2005 instead decides to hold its party at TGI Friday's with a cash bar, disgruntled employees will leak the news to the press. Some investors may take it as a sign that management is watching the bottom line. But in the long run, that penny saved may not be a penny earned.

Got an example of mindless corporate cost-cutting? Please send it to Moneybox@slate.com. E-mails may be quoted by name unless sender requests otherwise.

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Consumed: Branching Out

By ROB WALKER
Published: September 24, 2006

Ours is the age of lifestyle. From clothes to coffee to cookware, every product or service seems to represent not just function but a statement about who we are and how we live. So the fact that Umpqua Bank, a chain based Portland, Ore., recently announced that it had “released its first album” makes a certain kind of sense. Umpqua isn’t just a financial institution, of course. It’s a lifestyle.

Certainly the message you would get if you were to visit the Umpqua branch in Portland’s trendy Pearl District neighborhood seems only vaguely related to the mundane business of certificates of deposit, checking accounts and loans. With free wi-fi access, Umpqua brand coffee, a spacious seating area and flat-screen television monitors, the place has been designed to suggest a stylish hotel lobby where you’re tempted to hang out (and, perhaps, read a tastefully printed brochure about certificates of deposit, checking accounts and loans). This and other Umpqua branches also serve as the setting for things like sewing groups, yoga classes and movie nights. Actually, the word “branch” is not used in Umpqua’s official internal terminology: the bank operates 127 “stores” in Oregon, California and Washington. As Lani Hayward, who oversees “creative strategies for the company,” explains, Umpqua sees itself as a retailer.

The reason for this strategy is the same one that leads companies across many sectors to play the lifestyle card: a proliferation of competitors peddling largely interchangeable wares. If a bank wants to stand out, it’s fairly difficult to do so with the financial products it offers. It can, however, differentiate the manner in which it sells and packages those products. This is more or less the approach that Umpqua’s C.E.O., Ray Davis, has taken over the past dozen years or so. When he started, Umpqua was just another small regional bank, with about $150 million in deposits. Today (because of acquisitions, in addition to building new branches), the figure has increased to more than $7 billion.

According to Hayward, the central idea of Umpqua’s image is “community hub.” The company trains its employees through a program offered by the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain, with the goal of providing service that’s better than what you might expect from a bank. And it gives its managers the autonomy to, for example, stay open during a snowstorm if the manager thinks the customers will want that. But the community-hub notion also plays a role in the curious-sounding decision to start selling CD’s (the kind with music on them) through a program called Discover Local Music.

Originally, Hayward says, Umpqua simply planned to offer free music CD’s to people who opened new accounts; it was part of an effort to woo younger customers. The bank worked with a Portland music marketing firm called Rumblefish, which put together what has become a 214-song library of tracks by local, relatively undiscovered talent in the markets where Umpqua operates. A test run in a few markets found that the new customers who wanted a free CD of promising local artists included not just young people but, basically, everybody. The program was rolled out across the entire chain, and Umpqua even sent Rye Hollow, a Portland band, on a five-city tour; it performed at several banks, as well as at a brew pub in Chico, Calif. Earlier this year, the bank started a Web site where anybody, customer or not, can listen to clips, put together a CD and buy it. (The bank splits the proceeds with the artists.) And in July, it began selling its own curated 12-track collection, “Discover Local Music: Vol. 1, Sacramento to Seattle,” at all Umpqua locations.

All of this of course brings to mind Starbucks’s famous forays into the music business, but Hayward says Umpqua views its championing of local musicians as more of a marketing effort than a potential profit center. (And of course, in addition to underscoring community-ness, working with upstart artists is a lot cheaper than putting together the star-studded compilations Starbucks sells.) It happens that, despite the fact that we’re well into the era of the A.T.M., Umpqua’s efforts to increase its number of locations (it’s planning to add smaller, “cafe-style” locations to the mix soon) is part of an industrywide branch-building boom. That’s why, as Hayward says, “we need to give people a reason to come in.” Just like any other lifestyle retailer. 

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In 1996, McDonald’s announced its intention to place one of its restaurants in downtown Montpelier. The historic downtown area was the logical choice; the only place in town with enough traffic to make the fast food place a worthwhile project. Oddly, the choosing of this “prime” spot also proved to be the cause of the rejection of the application.

The city’s residents campaigned heavily to prevent McDonald’s from moving into town. They held up signs, they spoke at city council meetings, and they talked to the press. Notwithstanding their efforts, however, the city could only stop the burger joint from moving in if it could be proven that allowing the company to do so would cause harm to the city. While Montpelier a small town (with a population of just over 8,000), the fact that it’s the focus of the state’s government means that its roadways and parking lots can get quite congested. Placing a McDonald’s in the middle of everything would certainly add to the difficulties, and this knowledge (verified by an independent study) gave the city council good cause to reject the application.

Despite the company’s appeals, McDonald’s has yet to find its way into Montpelier. And if they ever do, one of the most popular trivia questions of the last several years will become lost to time and progress.

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4 ) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic: Tough battle for control [Affrontement Républicains-Démocrates lors des élections US du 7 novembre.]
http://content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=7744

Tough Battle for Control
Republicans and Democrats in close race for control of Congress

By Karen Fanning
October 2006

Democrats and Republicans are engaged in a heated battle for control of Congress this election season. On November 7, American voters will declare a winner when they head to the polls for the 2006 midterm elections. It is the first time in 12 years that the Democrats have come this close to regaining control of either branch of Congress.

“The off year of the second term of any President is always a tough election,” said U.S. Senator John McCain, Republican, Ariz., when asked about whether Republicans could lose control of either the House or the Senate.

Candidates are campaigning around the clock to convince voters that their party is the right choice. After all, the stakes are high. A total of 33 Senate seats and all 435 seats in the House are up for grabs—and so is the balance of power in Congress.

Republicans currently control both the House and the Senate: With the exception of a short period in 2001, they have been in command of Congress for the past dozen years. Next month, the Democrats could end the Republican’s 12-year reign by picking up 15 seats in the House and 6 seats in the Senate.

The Issues

While Republicans remain upbeat, political analysts predict that the midterm elections could spell trouble. Polls indicate that most Americans are unhappy with the economy, despite the recent drop in gasoline prices. Voters usually blame the controlling political party for a sluggish economy.

Americans may take out their frustrations with the President by voting for Democrats instead of Republicans. While President Bush’s job approval rating has risen lately, it remains relatively low.

Voters’ concerns over terrorism will also play a major role in the elections. This issue could work well for Republicans. Polls show that Americans believe that Republicans are better prepared to tackle terrorism. Therefore, people who put fighting terrorism at the top of their priority lists are more likely to vote Republican. Despite their political differences, both sides agree that it is the federal government’s duty to protect the country from further attacks. In separate interviews with Scholastic News Online, the top two party leaders in the House of Representatives pointed out the importance of the fight against terrorism as an issue.

“[Democrats] believe our first responsibility is to keep the American people safe,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Democratic, Cal., told Scholastic News Online. If Democrats take control of the House, Pelosi is in line to become the first female Speaker of the House.

Current Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, Republican, Ill., echoed the Representative’s views. “Our government’s first responsibility is national security, providing for the common defense and keeping our nation’s families, schools, and cities safe from terrorism,” he said.

The war in Iraq may prove to be the biggest make-or-break issue when voters cast their ballots next month. Americans are angry about the growing death toll—more than 2,700 U.S. soldiers—which could hurt Republicans. However, Democrats have yet to agree upon a plan for the withdrawal of American troops, which could weaken their chances of winning.

Road to Victory

While most experts agree that next month’s midterm elections are too close to call, Hastert expects his party to triumph again. “If voters like the work we have done in the past two years, especially on national and economic security issues, then the Republicans will retain the majority in November’s election,” said the 64-year-old Speaker.

Pelosi disagrees. She insists that the American public is ready for change, and she likes Democrats’ chances on November 7. “Americans agree that Republicans in the House and the Senate have served as a rubber stamp for President Bush’s misplaced priorities,” said Representative Pelosi. “America should work for everyone, not just the privileged few. Democrats have a clear vision for a new direction for our country.”

Voters at the polls on November 7 will have the final say.

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6) AUDIO/Slate: Running with slowpokes [Comment les débutants trop lents ont gâché le marathon. VOUS POUVEZ TELECHARGER UNE VERSION AUDIO DE CE TEXTE EN FORMAT MP3]
http://www.slate.com/id/2149867/

sports nut: The stadium scene.
Running With Slowpokes: How sluggish newbies ruined the marathon.
By Gabriel Sherman
Updated Friday, Sept. 22, 2006, at 7:35 AM ET

Listen to the MP3 audio version of this story here, or sign up for Slate's free daily podcast on iTunes.

Illustration by Nina Frenkel. Click image to expand.Among autumn's sporting rituals there is one tradition that fills me with mounting dread: the return of marathon season. If you've been to the gym or attended a cocktail party recently, you know what I mean. Chances are you've bumped into a newly devoted runner who's all too happy to tell you about his heart-rate monitor and split times and the looming, character-building challenge of running 26.2 miles. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a slovenly couch potato who abhors exercise. I'm an avid runner with six marathons under my New Balance trainers. But this growing army of giddy marathon rookies is so irksome that I'm about ready to retire my racing shoes and pick up bridge.

According to Running USA, about 430,000 Americans ran a marathon last year, an increase from just 25,000 in 1976*. Next month, 40,000 participants will tackle the Chicago Marathon, and about 36,000 will run in November's New York City Marathon. The New York Times recently reported that the wannabes who get turned away from the big-city races—New York got 90,000 applications—have resorted to buying spots on the black market. As the ranks of marathon runners swell, I have to ask: What's the point?

Today, the great majority of marathon runners set out simply to finish. That sets the bar so low that everyone comes out a winner. Big-city marathons these days feel more like circuses than races, with runners of variable skill levels—some outfitted in wacky costumes—crawling toward the finish line. The marathon has transformed from an elite athletic contest to something closer to sky diving or visiting the Grand Canyon. When a newbie marathoner crosses the finish line, he's less likely to check his time than to shout, "Only 33 more things to do before I die!"
Click Here!

It wasn't always this way. In 1970, when 127 hearty souls lined up for the inaugural New York City Marathon, the marathon was the province of a few masochists dumb enough to try to run as far as most people commute by car. Back then, Americans who ran took running seriously. The icons of the era were Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers, a couple of guys who happened to be the best marathoners in the world. Now, P. Diddy and Oprah spark tons of media buzz for finishing marathons in lackluster times. American record-holder Deena Kastor, who won the 2005 Chicago Marathon in 2:21, is completely anonymous.

The democratization of the marathon began in the early 1980s. The success of books like Jim Fixx's The Complete Book of Running inspired mass "Just Do It" participation. As the popularity of marathons increased, the speed of the race slowed to its current snail's pace. In 1980, the average finish time for a male marathoner was 3:32, according to Running USA*. Today, it's more than 4:20. In 2003, the start time of the New York City Marathon was moved forward an hour earlier, in part to grant thousands of stragglers extra hours so they could finish before sunset.

Aside from an elevated sense of self-worth, what do marathoners get from their efforts? There's no doubt that a lot of people train for marathons to get in shape. But the human body is just not designed for such high-mileage running. As a result of their crash course in distance running, a preponderance of marathoners suffer repetitive-use injuries like stress fractures, tendonitis, and shin splints. It would certainly be healthier for inexperienced joggers to run fewer miles at a faster pace.

Perhaps more troubling, the slow-marathon outbreak has created a host of new health hazards. Slowpokes face the risk of hyponatremia, or overhydration. This is caused when a runner consumes too much water, diluting the body's electrolyte balance (and potentially leading to a heart attack) unless he consumes a sports drink like Gatorade to replenish the depleted sodium. Slow runners are particularly at risk because the body loses sodium as it perspires. The longer a runner is on the course, the more electrolytes they'll sweat out. In the past decade, according to the Washington Post, at least four runners have died from drinking too much during a marathon.

Marathons might not be good for your health, but they are certainly good for business. A boatload of races have sprung up to assist would-be marathoners in their quest for mediocrity. The Rock 'n' Roll Marathon, for one, has bands performing every mile to keep bored runners entertained. Maybe if people ran faster they wouldn't need Zeppelin cover bands to keep boredom at bay.

Running was once a purist's sport—you needed only to lace up your shoes and hop out the door. No longer. During a recent run in Central Park, I dodged groups of marathon trainees festooned with heart-rate monitors and space-age breathable fabrics that looked like they'd emerged from some NASA lab. Along with this profusion of gear, a constellation of coaches, massage therapists, chiropractors, and other gurus now peddle services to the marathon masses. In New York, the Bliss Spa offers the "Cold Feet" treatment, a one-hour procedure that "uses alternating hot and cold therapies to help circulate and deflate aching, swollen feet and puffy ankles." Two groups that Bliss says deserves this kind of pampering: marathon runners and pregnant women.

In many ways, the slow marathon is the perfect event for the American athletic sensibility. Just finishing a marathon is akin to joining a gym and then putzing around on the stationary bike. We feel good about creating the appearance of accomplishment, yet aren't willing to sacrifice for true gains. It's clear now that anyone can finish a marathon. Maybe it's time we raise our standards to see who can run one.

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7) Elections: Sample ballot [Bulletin de vote]

Le premier novembre de chaque année ont lieu partout aux USA des élections. Chaque scrutin comprend des élections pour un grand nombre de postes, voire des initiatives populaires, des référendums sur les amendement constitutionnels, etc. Les modalités du scrutin varient selon l'état, voire selon la circonscription.

Pour trouver des exemples de bulletins de vote, saisir "sample ballot" sur Google. Je joins un exemple d'une circonscription de la Floride.

Cliquer ici (PDF)

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8) The Economist: Negative campaigning [Les publicités publiques négatives dominent les ondes.]
http://economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_RDDTQSS

Negative campaigning
The same to you, with knobs on

Oct 5th 2006 | WASHINGTON, DC
The mid-term mud starts to fly

“THE facts are that since Bob Humpty went to Washington, more than 350m people around the world have died from various causes, including disease, famine, earthquakes and machete attacks. Coincidence? Not according to these realistic-looking headlines.” That attack ad was dreamed up by Dave Barry, a comedian. But are the real ones much better?

Their logic is often equally strained. For example: “During Deborah Pryce's congressional tenure, gas prices have more than doubled,” one learns from a website called www.badpryce.org. Deborah Pryce is the Republican representative for Ohio's 15th district. Oil traders rarely cite her influence when trying to explain why prices go up or down, but you never know.

With only a month to go before the mid-term elections, the slurs are splatting like tomatoes at a Spanish tomato-throwing fiesta. An early contender for the lowest-blow award is Vernon Robinson, the Republican challenger for a House seat in North Carolina, who produced a video alleging that his opponent, Brad Miller, “pays for sex, but not for body armour for our troops.” Mr Miller “voted to spend your money to study the sex lives of Vietnamese prostitutes in San Francisco,” not to mention “the masturbation habits of old men” and “something called the Bisexual, Transgendered and Two-Spirited Aleutian Eskimos, whoever they are.”

Well, sort of. Mr Miller did miss a vote on appropriations for the war in Iraq, but only because he was on his way to Iraq to visit the troops. As for the kinky stuff, Mr Robinson is referring to Mr Miller's vote not to micromanage the National Institutes of Health's budget for research into sexually-transmitted diseases. So perhaps he is not a callous pervert. But you should not vote for him anyway, because he wants to turn America into “one big fiesta for illegal aliens and homosexuals,” including those who burn the American flag.

In American politics, the constitutional guarantee of free speech trumps most other considerations, libel included. The only real check on attack ads is that if they sound too shrill, voters may recoil. But neither party seems unduly worried about this. In the early stages of the campaign, many candidates ran positive ads to introduce themselves. But as polling day nears, most ads—90%, by some guesses—have turned negative.

Republicans charge that Democrats are soft on terrorism, crime and border security. Democrats claim that Republicans are corrupt, incompetent, beholden to big corporations and marching in lockstep with President Bush. Some ads are paid for by the candidates themselves, but many of the most bare-knuckle messages are funded by independent groups such as MoveOn.org (which bashes Republicans) and the Economic Freedom Fund (which bashes Democrats).

Such groups have mushroomed in recent years. For the parties, this is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they have no control over what independent groups say on their behalf. On the other, they can plausibly distance themselves from the more underhand attacks on their opponents.

For example, MoveOn has released a series of ads in which four Republicans in marginal seats are described as “caught red-handed”. To illustrate their red-handedness, MoveOn paints their hands red. It also adds a gratuitous picture of Jack Abramoff, a convicted fraudster. Yet none of the four has done anything illegal.

Personal attacks have long been part of American politics. The Declaration of Independence had some choice things to say about George III. Federalists called Thomas Jefferson an “atheist” and his followers “cut-throats who walk in rags and sleep amid filth and vermin”. In the 1960s, a Democrat ad hinted that Barry Goldwater might start a nuclear war. Modern campaigns are probably no worse than the old ones, but several things have changed.

First, campaigns now wallow in cash—the two parties have spent $500m between them so far on this year's race, according to Political Money Line, a watchdog. Second, the proliferation of media gives campaigners more options for getting out their message, but makes it harder to be heard above the hubbub. Both parties try to create scandals by sending flunkies to film everything their opponents say or do, and then posting gaffes on the internet. This works—as George Allen, the junior senator from Virginia, discovered when he used a racial slur for the man filming him. It also kills spontaneity on the campaign trail.

Lastly, both parties try to find out as much as possible about individual voters so as to target them more precisely. If, for example, someone has signed a petition calling for a bond issue to finance local schools, a candidate might tell him that his opponent will cut spending on education. Distorting your opponent's record is easy: congressmen often have to vote yes or no to omnibus bills with hundreds of loosely-related provisions, so they can all be portrayed as having backed a provision that, on its own, they would have shunned. Voters know this, however, and are highly sceptical of what attack ads tell them.

The ads that work best are the funny or funky ones, because people remember them, argues David Mark, the author of “Going Dirty: the Art of Negative Campaigning”. For example, Michael Steele, a Maryland Republican running for the Senate, pre-empted his opponent's attacks with a chatty spot. “Soon your TV will be jammed with negative ads from the Washington crowd,” says Mr Steele. “Grainy pictures and spooky music saying: ‘Steele hates puppies.' And worse. For the record, I love puppies.” Then, with a puppy at his side, he offers some policy ideas. The Democrats responded in the same tone. “Michael Steele. He likes puppies. But he loves George Bush.”

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9 ) Slate: More Idiotic Corporate Penny Pinchers [De nouveaux exemples d'entreprises qui imposent parfois des mesures d'économie absurdes.]
http://www.slate.com/id/2150625/

More Idiotic Corporate Penny-Pinching Measures
The company that supplies coffee but makes employees buy the milk. The one that keeps Post-it notes under lock and key. The one that tracks every time you use a paper clip …
By Daniel Gross
Updated Friday, Sept. 29, 2006, at 5:04 PM ET

Our Monday article on mindless corporate penny-pinching inspired dozens of readers to report on the many ways in which their corporations—large and small—manage to save very little money while destroying morale and alienating employees. Based on this avowedly nonscientific sample, Moneybox has been able to determine precisely which symbolic but generally ineffectual cost-cutting measures anger workers the most. The message to corporate bean counters is loud and clear: Whatever you do, don't stint on office supplies (especially paper clips) and caffeine.

Lots of you complained about your company's idiotic plan to cut costs by clamping down on the purchase and use of office supplies. J.S., a former employee of U.S. Bank, recalled that the company refused to order or pay for Post-it notes. At a very large name-brand data provider, pens and Post-its are apparently kept under lock and key. A relative of a telephone company employee reports that the gigantic firm said it "will no longer purchase supplies such as pencils, and paper, and Post-its" for the office where the employee works.

The desire to cut costs by saving or recycling paper clips aroused the most incredulity and anger. Former Bear Stearns employee B.B. recalls being given a bag of paper clips on his first day "with the explanation that the firm would never buy paperclips … This was on the direction of [legendary gazillionaire CEO] Ace Greenberg, and the company seemed almost proud of this inane cost-cutting measure." A former Bank of America investment-banking analyst recalls that the megabank "once told its employees to use paper clips instead of staples because paper clips could be re-used to save money." According to one correspondent, managers at a data center of a different firm were asked to "keep a listing (on a piece of paper) of each clip that we used, and the reason for the use!"

Why do efforts to save on Post-its and paper clips arouse so much derision? You'd be hard-pressed to come up with an item that is cheaper than paper clips. At Staples, a box of 100 can be had for 49 cents. And large companies that buy in bulk certainly get an even better deal. What's more, these aren't exactly luxury items. People generally use paper clips, Post-its, pens, and notebooks to complete corporate chores. And yet companies presume that their workers show up each morning not for the wages and the benefits but for the opportunity to stuff stacks of purple stickies and tiny coils of very low-grade steel into their bags.

You also expressed outrage at efforts to cut costs on liquids, particularly those that contain caffeine or that enhance the enjoyment of caffeinated products. A former employee at a self-described "major hip award-winning advertising agency" started sending out résumés after the firm declared that milk in the break room could be used only for coffee and tea, not for cereal. V.S., a former waitress for a large restaurant chain in Colorado, recalls that the company spitefully docked employees $2 per paycheck for the soda they drank while on shift. Two correspondents recalled how WorldCom, just as it was about to explode in a multibillion-dollar fraud and debt scandal, decided to save a few pennies by ending its free coffee service. And this java jive is still going on. An employee at a large telecom supplier reports that its once fully stocked coffee stations have replaced milk and cream with icky powdered whitener.

Such coffee cutbacks aren't just petty, they're self-defeating. Companies get a lot of bang for the buck by providing coffee—a legal drug that keeps employees pepped up. Workers, including this one, need caffeine to get through the day. Get up from your desk, go to the nearest coffee place, and return. Now repeat. That's how much time a company loses by not providing company joe. On my first day on the job at Bloomberg 14 years ago, I was surprised and pleased to find not just coffee but the entire contents of a convenience store on offer, gratis. The reason? Billionaire Mike Bloomberg didn't want people leaving the building to get coffee, cookies, or anything else they needed to keep them going on his dime.

Perhaps the most futile cost cut involves a product that frequently comes as an adjunct to coffee. With the slowdown in the housing market, Countrywide Financial Corp. is undergoing a significant round of job cuts and cost-cutting. Employees are undoubtedly upset that one in 10 of the administrative staff may lose their jobs. But they'll really be incensed by this nugget, reported by Mortgage Wire: "One source told MW that the company has even canceled its regular practice of providing employees with free doughnuts on the last Friday of every month."

This afternoon, I undertook an audit of my own place of employ: Slate's New York bureau. Office supplies? Oh, yeah. We've got closets filled with notebooks and pens, Post-it notes in various shapes and hues, and paper clips, glorious paper clips—a three-year supply just sitting there for the taking. Caffeine? The small coffee maker seems to be mostly ornamental. There are free bottles of water and soda on our floor, although the Diet Coke needs to be replenished. Free doughnuts? Sadly, never.

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10 ) The Economist: Outsourcing mortgages [La dernière fonction à être délocalisée en Inde ? Le traitement des dossiers de crédit immobilier.]
http://economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_RDDTGJT

Outsourcing mortgages
Home and away

Oct 5th 2006 | DELHI
India moves in on the West's mortgages

SOMEBODY'S misfortune is often another's big chance. Rising interest rates and shaky property prices have made life harder for homeowners and mortgage lenders in America and elsewhere. Many mortgage providers are responding by outsourcing processing work to specialist firms. According to NelsonHall, a consultancy, the total annual value of such outsourcing contracts around the world is about $10.9 billion, with about a third of that in America alone. As yet, only a small proportion is being sent offshore. But as costs mount, says Sunil Mehta of NASSCOM, the Indian outsourcing industry's lobby, mortgages are “ripe for offshoring”.

It has also, he says, reached an “inflection point”. India in particular is poised to benefit from a huge rise in “mortgage-process outsourcing” in the next few years—worth anything from $100m-150m a year to $3 billion-7 billion. Big lenders are now using their own “captive” operations in India for many mortgage processes, and independent “third-party” business-process outsourcing firms are also on the hunt for work.

One force driving this, as usual, is cost. Higher interest rates eat away at the money-spinning business of refinancing outstanding mortgages, slash business volumes and squeeze margins. So the attractions of a low-cost destination, such as India, increase. Mortgages, moreover, involve a whole range of processes ripe for outsourcing. At “origination”, they might include telemarketing, data entry and document verification. “Servicing” a mortgage can be performed remotely. So, to some extent, can managing defaults and “securitising” mortgages by aggregating them and dicing them into tradable instruments. Victor Martinez-Angles, of Genpact, India's biggest independent outsourcing firm and once an arm of General Electric, estimates that 50-80% of mortgage-related work can be done offshore.

In August Genpact became the latest Indian firm to acquire an American “front office” when it completed the purchase of MoneyLine Lending Services, an American mortgage-service firm. The savings in using Indian firms can be huge. Mr Martinez-Angles reckons Genpact can make savings of 30-40% for each mortgage loan compared with an American bank. But Andy Efstathiou, of NelsonHall, says that the main impulse behind outsourcing in the industry as a whole is not so much cost-cutting as shifting from a fixed cost base to a variable one: the contracts give companies more flexibility to scale up and down as volumes vary.

Like all outsourcing to India, however, mortgage-servicing is vulnerable to protectionism, justified by fears about data security, such as those aired in a British television “sting” operation this week in which Indian call-centre workers were caught extracting confidential information from customers and selling it. NASSCOM remains confident that India's record on this is as good as anywhere's, though Mr Mehta says one attraction of the mortgage business for India is the potential for its firms to diversify away from “voice-based” work—ie, call centres. Expanding operations in the West, through acquisition or otherwise, recognises the limits of “offshoring”. Some mortgage services—such as advising nervous customers on the biggest financial deal of their lives—might actually be better performed at home, or even face-to-face, than down a telephone line from India.

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October 21, 2006
A Student’s Video Résumé Gets Attention (Some of It Unwanted)
By MICHAEL J. de la MERCED

With his name and image on Web sites and his appearance on the “Today” show, Aleksey Vayner may be the most famous investment-banking job applicant in recent memory.

Mr. Vayner’s curious celebrity came after an 11-page cover letter and résumé as well as an elaborate video that he had submitted to the Swiss bank giant UBS showed up on two blogs, and then quickly spread on the Internet. The clip, staged to look like a job interview, is spliced with shots of Mr. Vayner lifting weights and ballroom dancing and has him spouting Zen-like inspirational messages.

The video clip flooded e-mail inboxes across Wall Street and eventually appeared on the video-sharing site YouTube. Blogs brimmed with commentary, much of it mocking, about Mr. Vayner and his feats. Television programs and newspapers then picked up the Web’s latest viral sensation.

Now Mr. Vayner, a student at Yale University, is starting to speak out about his 15 minutes of fame, portraying himself as being victimized by the flash flood of Web interest. “This has been an extremely stressful time,” Mr. Vayner said in an interview.

The job materials that were leaked and posted for public view included detailed information about him that allowed strangers to scrutinize and harass him, he said. His e-mail inbox quickly filled up, with most of the messages deriding him and, in some cases, threatening him.

Mr. Vayner’s experience shows the not-so-friendly side of the social-networking phenomenon. While sites such as YouTube allow aspiring comedians or filmmakers to share their creations with millions of others, they also provide the ideal forum for embarrassing someone on a global scale. Materials can quickly make the rounds on blogs, via e-mail and through online hangouts like MySpace, becoming all but impossible to contain.

Wall Street workers may be especially quick to hit the send button. Last month, a compromising video of a Merrill Lynch banker and his female companion on a Brazilian beach had much of Brazil’s financial-services industry glued to their computer screens. Over the summer, a persnickety birthday party invitation from a Citigroup intern was e-mailed all over London’s financial district.

Mr. Vayner’s seven-minute clip, entitled “Impossible is nothing,” presents images of him bench-pressing what a caption suggests is 495 pounds and firing off what is purported to be a 140-mile-an-hour tennis serve.

The tone of the video seems too serious to be parody, yet too over-the-top to be credible. After sharing the clip, fellow students at Yale, he said, began telling their own tales about Mr. Vayner on the Web, fabricating stories of bare-handed killings and handling nuclear waste. The Internet scrutiny also raised questions about some of Mr. Vayner’s claims in his résumé, including assertions that he ran his own charity and investment firm.

There have also been questions over whether he copied sections of a self-published book, “Women’s Silent Tears: A Unique Gendered Perspective on the Holocaust,” from Web sites.

Mr. Vayner, 23, contends that both the charity and investment firm are legitimate. And the accusations about his book, he said, were based on an earlier draft that has since been changed.

He says he has been interested in finance since he was 12, when he was creating financial data models. So Mr. Vayner, who is a member of the class of 2008 at Yale, decided a few weeks ago to look for a job at a Wall Street firm. He thought that making a video would help him stand out amid the intense competition for investment-banking positions. By emphasizing his various athletic pursuits, which he said included body sculpting, weightlifting and tai chi, Mr. Vayner said he could show that he had achieved success in physical endeavors that could carry over to the financial world.

“I felt demonstrating competency in athletics is a good way to stand out, because the same characteristics are the same in business,” Mr. Vayner said. “The need to set and achieve goals, to have the dedication and competitive drive that’s required in business success.”

Despite the mockery that the video has inspired, he still speaks proudly of his athleticism. Nearly all the feats in the video are his, he said, and they are real. But he says he is not certain that the skiing segment actually shows him.

In the end, though, Mr. Vayner said he was less concerned about the mockery than about what appeared to have been a leak of his application materials from UBS. Mr. Vayner and his lawyer, Christian P. Stueben, said they were exploring legal options against the investment banks to which he sent the application.

A UBS spokesman said in a statement: “As a firm, UBS obviously respects the privacy of applicants’ correspondences and does not circulate job applications and résumés to the public. To the extent that any policy was breached, it will be dealt with appropriately.”

For now, Mr. Vayner said he was camping out at his mother’s residence in Manhattan, having taken a short leave of absence from Yale when his video hit the Internet. (A Yale spokeswoman declined to comment.)

He said he may have lost his chance to work on Wall Street, and added that he may not succeed in securing a financial job at all. Real estate development is an option, he said, but for now his future is unclear. In the meantime, he plans on taking his midterm examinations next week.

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