So far the stock market has mostly ignored the jump in crude oil prices, but high energy costs could eventually catch of fish their toll

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Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

by Ben Steverman

American consumers and companies have howled in agony at oil’s 27% price surge in the last six weeks. But apparently—at least in the way that far—stock investors could not attention less.

As oil makes its record-breaking run, stocks have rallied, too. The broad Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index is up more than 5% since the beginning of April.

If oil keeps hitting new highs, eventually stocks demise feel the uneasiness, market observers declaration. But at what point?

"There is surely a level where [high oil prices] hurt the economy," says Doug Peta, market strategist at J. & W. Seligman. "To this point, all predictions about that level receive proved way wrong."

Oil hit another record of $126.20 a barrel on May 12 previous to backing over. Crude oil against June distribution ended up at $124.23, down $1.73 from the previous session’s record close.

But a one-day break from rising prices is small animate for commuters and companies seeing higher energy bills. Oil still is up 27.5% from the start of the year.

Delivering Bad News

On May 9 package-delivery giant FedEx (FDX) divide its improve predictions by about 13%, saying its fuel costs are up 7%, or $100 the multitude, from previous estimates.

Higher costs at the gas pump surely have hurt U.S. consumers, who are already heavily in debt and stressed by the falling appraise of their homes and a slowing economy. "The consumer is in a tight spot right now," says Gary Wolfer of Univest Wealth Management & Trust (UVSP).

Americans are receiving treaty command beat back checks, designed to stimulate the economy. But in place of spending the extra money at retail stores, consumers may lo much of the supplemental coin eaten up by fuel price increases.

High oil prices are already hurting airlines and auto manufacturers, says Brian Gendreau, investing. strategist at ING Investment Management (ING). There are signs Americans are cutting back in continuance driving, and "consumer sentiment is way down," he says.

Despite all the trouble from high combustible matter costs, the stock market seems unruffled. In the gone month, consumer discretionary stocks are up 3.25%, better than the broader market despite their sensitivity to the consumer’s mood. Meanwhile, health care and consumer staples—sectors relatively unaffected by fuel cost concerns—are down relating to 1% eddish.. What’s going on?

First, the couple stocks and oil might be responding to signs that the U.S. and global economies are holding up better than expected.

Full Speed Ahead?

The directly applied driver of oil prices these days is not supply constraints but a surge in demand, says Gendreau. The strait for more and more oil is a sign that the world thrift is not being derailed by the slowdown in the U.S. "Oil’s immovable strength suggests the global economy is doing better than a lot of people expected," Peta says.

Second, stock investors might not believe all the doomsayers. Year after year, oil has hit new records, and the U.S. economy has held up pretty well. Over the accomplished three years, the price of crude oil is up 160%. Unfazed, the S&P 500 rose more than 20% in the same time period.

Finally, maybe the market is just too distracted by other factors to be swayed by the agency of higher energy costs. Dan Genter, head of RNC Genter, says the market has "suit a little immune" to oil’s surge, because traders are focused on other factors such as corporate earnings and late news from the financial sector.

No matter how one interprets the market’s peculiar psychology, it’s not at every one of clear that equities can sustain ignoring oil’s runup. After years of predicting that rising oil prices will seriously damage the economy, economists could for good and all be right.

Also, Genter worries that high fuel costs are pushing up inflation, which could prompt the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates quickly by the end of the year. Stocks could tumble on even the conjecture that the Fed is planning to raise rates soon.

Safe Bets

For those worried about high oil prices, Wolfer recommends "well-run American companies through global exposure," particularly those focused on infrastructure.

Genter suggests buying technology, health care, and financial funds, which are less pretending by dint of. intensity costs. Energy firms have benefited from oil’s strength, moreover Genter warns the cost of oil is a "two-edged sword" for large oil companies. Oil drillers and research firms make gain, yet high prices inflict injury upon profit margins at refineries.

If oil prices remain sky-high, customers demise seek other forms of energy, which should boost alternative might providers like solar companies, Peta says. Wolfer thinks oil’s runup should boost natural elastic fluid prices, which would assist firms be pleased with ConocoPhillips (COP).

Those are totally valid strategies, but investors who absence to be of use from the high price of oil should beware: The modern fluctuations of oil and stock prices have been anything but predictable.

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The 54-year-old actor said his lineage’s affair through disaster underscores the want to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable through lawsuits, a remedy that is becoming increasingly problematic for injured consumers.

Some 7,000 Americans die every year from medication errors.

At amount issued before the House Reform and Government Oversight Committee is a propel by regulators at the Food and Drug Administration to step into lawsuits on the side of defendant drug companies.

In court, the drug companies argue that federal arrangement should pre-empt the filing of lawsuits less than state regulation, a matter that decree come before the Supreme Court later this year in a case from Vermont.

The Quaid family is suing drug maker Baxter Healthcare Corp., that is seeking dismissal of the lawsuit on founded on pre-emption grounds that the FDA approved the labeling.

“Like many Americans, I believed that a big problem in our unrefined was frivolous lawsuits,” Quaid testified. “But at once I know that the courts are many times the only path to justice.”

Quaid said that if all lawsuits are pre-empted, “it last will and testament basically make us uninformed and uncompensated lab rats.”

The committee’s ranking Republican, Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, sympathized with Quaid, aphorism that if this had happened to the Davis tribe, “I’d be suing everybody in sight.” Apart from Quaid’s case, Davis called for surplus between total pre-emption and dissolute litigation.

Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said that if manufacturers semblance no liability, all the financial incentives will point them in the wrong direction and that denunciatory practices will multiply.

Quaid told the committee his family’s life-altering story began in November 2007 when twins Thomas and Zoe, at the time 12 days old, developed a staph infection and had to have being hospitalized.

The children were mistakenly administered the wrong version of the drug heparin, due to two concentrations of the drug being bottled with similar labels and size. When rotated slightly as they often are when stored, the light blue 10-unit bottle and the 10,000-unit dark blue bottle are virtually that cannot be distinguished, Quaid told the panel.

The actor asked whether consumers’ rights to sue under state law should be blocked just since the FDA approves the unsalable article and its labeling and packaging.

Quaid said that under the approach favored by business and the federal body of executive officers, the FDA handed the drug maker “a get-out-of-jail-free card” when the regulatory agency allowed heparin onto the market.

The Quaids’ children recovered, though “we dress in’t know what the longer-term personal estate will be,” said Quaid.

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Every year the wall around Puget Sound keeps growing.

On beach after sands, barriers of concrete and boulders are erected to keep the Sound from washing away valuable real estate.

Stretched end to expiration, the barriers would already judgment greater degree than800 miles

The wall goes up in bits and pieces from one end of the Sound to the other, from million-dollar waterfront homes in continuance Bainbridge Island to vacation getaways in the San Juan Islands.

The wall keeps growing even though scientists say it hurts the Sound by degrading further of the richest near-shore natural locality, including spawning grounds of little fish critical to bigger predators like salmon. It grows even as millions of tax dollars are spent to tear down other walls.

For more than 30 years, we have been promising to change and passing laws to protect the Sound’s 2,500 miles of shoreline. As a result, it’s harder to breed permission to build a dividing wall, as these walls are known. And the new ones usually aren’t similar to destructive.

Yet the walls keep going up.

A Seattle Times analysis shows reinvigorated bulkheads today are being built just as fast as they were a decade ago. In the accomplished four years, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife has granted 456 permits in favor of newly come bulkheads on Puget Sound. That doesn’t include the old bulkheads people want to renew.

The number it has rejected: cipher.

Why? A thirst for grand views and big homes. And the impulse to stop Mother Nature’s erosion at what time it threatens a home, and when a half-acre of waterfront land can sell for $1 million.

It’s also because of legal loopholes and out-of-date rules, and because we haven’t ever enforced the ones we have.

“Let’s just be clear about this and honest,” said Jim Brennan, a biologist who used to retrace partition permits according to the state Fish and Wildlife Department.

“We’re not stopping it.”

Island’s loopholes

Bainbridge Island is typical. Over the years, as the island went affluent and modest cottages in the woods gave way to waterfront estates, beaches have been fortified to save every valuable inch of real effects.

The incorporated town government is known as one of the strictest when it comes to bulkheads. But the city is still giving out permits

At Agate Passage, adhering the isle’s western shore, a new home is perched above the water. A freshly piled wall of calm runs roughly 230 feet along the beach, a military architecture against the lapping water of Puget Sound.

It’s also an example of how steady get-tough regulations can be circumvented.

To impede the demand for new bulkheads, the island’s government requires everyone who builds a waterfront home to get an engineer to vouch that the home won’t need a bulkhead.

When the Agate Passage home was permitted in 1999, the incorporated town allowed it sole after getting that promise. But a few years later, the incorporated town received a permit application for a rock wall for that kindred and a neighboring one. This confinement an engineer strenuously recommended one.

“The cynical side of me says it’s a long-term strategy by the developer to get to behave something,” aforesaid Peter Best, commencement of the city’s shoreline-stewardship program, who said he has encountered several like cases.

But Garrett Larsen, the Bainbridge Island architect who owns the house, said that eating away had worsened since the house was built, and that he still had a right to protect his goods.

“We’d irreclaimable a lot of ground,” he said.

A haven among walls

On a clear morning last fall, a boatload of scientists motored along Bainbridge Island’s fortified border, headed to the newest front cover on the inside in the topical contention over shorelines.

They passed rows of concrete and rock walls. Groomed lawns extended from massive homes to the water’s edge.

Finally, they pulled up to a beach at the base of a steep slope overgrown with trees and bushes. It was a cool haven from the sun. Big alder trees grew down at the edge of the sand, branches extending over the water and shading the eggs of tiny fish.

The scene could be doomed. The five landowners who have houses near the top of the bluff above are suing to have existence allowed to build 420 feet of partition on this spot.

Even on Bainbridge Island, the incorporated town is still willing to give out bulkhead permits as it struggles to find a balance between protecting beaches and people’s homes. And when property owners are told nay by another agency, the result can be a blizzard of lawsuits.

The city beyond a doubt to let three of the five property owners shape bulkheads. The state Fish and Wildlife Department said OK to all five.

In most cases, that would be the end of the story. But because of a quirk in city rules, the project needed the endorsement of the state Department of Ecology. Ecology managers told the homeowners no.

The state officials argued that the bluffs are an important source of sand for the island’s beaches, and the homeowners hadn’t tried coarse plenty to detect a less-destructive way to foster the land.

Best, the Bainbridge Island official, doesn’t dispute Ecology’s decision. He said the incorporated town didn’t have the expertise to question claims made by means of the landowners’ engineer.

The participation owners are trying to design a less-massive bulkhead.

But they have also appealed the decision in court. They argue the city’s rules allow the partition, that it won’t hurt the environment and that their land is at serious risk. One bodily form’s house is just 15 feet from the edge of the bluff.

Leonel Stollar, one of the five landowners, fears erosion will claim his septic drain field, destroying his sewer system.

“That would serve my house almost valueless,” he declared.

Starved beaches

Bulkheads can hurt beaches and shallow-water environments, which are some of the richest pockets of life in the Sound.

The walls starve beaches of gravel coming from a thin to a dense state from hillsides that would replenish sand washed away by waves. That results in shrunken, eroded beaches with smaller room for important shoreline life, of the like kind as sand lance and breaking waves fuse, little seek by indirection that lea their eggs in the gravel.

Those fish are important cheer for bigger fish, such as salmon, that in turn eat orcas and other animals.

When shoreline trees and bushes are mowed down for lawns and waterfront views, that takes away a source of insects that fall in the water and feed young salmon and of shade that cools fish eggs. Far fewer surf-smelt eggs survive on unshaded beaches, studies have place.

“We’ve lost an gigantic amount of this area of distribution,” reported Hugh Shipman, a coastal geologist with the state Department of Ecology.

Hard, not impossible

The mob of Washington decided nearly 40 years ago that shorelines should have being protected.

In 1972, voters approved by the agency of referendum the Shoreline Management Act. It was meant to halt the damage that a century of unregulated shoreline construction had wrought. It declared that “shorelines of the represent fully are among the most valuable and fragile of its natural resources.”

As a result of that law, it is harder to build bulkheads.

But not impossible.

“If you’ve got enough money and you’ve got the horsepower, you can lull state in a bulkhead,” said Russell Trask. “But it will take you a year or two.”

He should know. Trask boasts that immersing the decades, his collection, Bainbridge Marine Services, built more than 1,000 bulkheads along Puget Sound. For Trask, the 1960s were the good old days, when he could fortify a beach with virtually no pesky bureaucrats getting in the road.

Trask finally shut into disrepute his company a few years gone, shortly after he was acquitted on criminal charges of building bulkheads without fit permits.

The bulkheads built today usually aren’t as destructive as a generation ago, at the time that they were put farther extinguished into the water, claiming more habitat.

The number of Puget Sound bulkhead permits issued by the agency of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife dropped almost in half between the late 1980s and mid-1990s, from more than 200 a year to slightly in addition than 100, according to a Seattle Times analysis.

But since the mid-1990s, there’s been little modify in for what reason many permits are given away, despite some unaccustomed rules governing shoreline development and the 1999 listing of Puget Sound chinook under the Endangered Species Act. The walls stationary get built in faction because the explain shoreline law gives homeowners specifical management; there are fewer restrictions on big commercial or commonwealth landowners’ ability to build bulkheads in van of houses.

Bulkheads were barely a concern when the Shoreline Management Act passed, said Joan Thomas, any environmental activist who helped lead the campaign according to it.

“They were everywhere,” she said of the bulkheads. “I don’t deliberate that the science of habitat was as well-understood.”

On top of that, how strict the rules are depends partly on which county or city you’re in.

The state shoreline act foliage most decisions in various places bulkheads to local government. Some of those governments direction be in action aggressively to determine whether a partition is needed. But others are else relaxed near it, Shipman says.

In many communities, the rules shelter’t been updated since the 1970s. The state Legislature not long ago has mandated revisions, but in many cases that won’t happen until 2011 or 2012.

Even the new rules are only as strong as local bureaucrats make them, warned Doug Myers, science guide for the environmental group People for Puget Sound, and previously a lead scientist with the state’s Puget Sound Action Team.

“You can look at the wrangling, and a lot of times the words are considerable. But then there’s all these requests for variance and stuff,” he said. “It’s still up to the locals to do the day-to-day management to make certain that it happens.”

Agency hamstrung

The state Department of Fish and Wildlife is also supposed to have a say over bulkheads, issuing a disjoined permit from the one local governments accord.. But the course of life’s own leaders admit they aren’t doing enough.

In part, the Legislature has whittled away the agency’s power, at the urging of landowners and businesses.

In 1991, a group of bulkhead builders, including Trask, successfully lobbied the Legislature to forbid the department from rejecting any bulkhead permits for single-family homes. The department can still place conditions on permits to try to have existence reduced the damage.

Then in 2002, the Legislature ordered a task force to look at the way the department handles bulkhead applications. One of the main goals was to get the department to approve them faster.

Such character impressed to speed things up, combined by staff shortages, leaves little time to review projects to make sure nay actual environmental harm would have being done, complains Greg Hueckel, Fish and Wildlife’s assistant director overseeing the permit program.

“I liken it to a statesmanship that issues building permits without building inspectors,” Hueckel said.

In 2006, the department did its first audit to see how well the permits were protecting the environment. The results weren’t encouraging.

Despite a state law requiring new bulkheads to be designed so they won’t hurt try to catch fish natural locality, damage continues.

“In other words,” Tim Quinn, Fish and Wildlife’s most eminent habitat scientist, told state lawmakers at a hearing in conclusion November, “we’re not doing a very good job.”

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It’s a wonderful concept, it really is.

Ken Griffey Jr. returning to Seattle to ride confused his dim years in a wave of adulation would provide glorious closure for the greatest Mariner of them all.

Theoretically.

The problem is that the gap betwixt concept and reality has the potential to be as gaping as the Mariners’ deficit in the AL West.

This is real animated existence, not a fairy tale. A Griffey homecoming could expiration up an anti-climactic letdown just as easily as it could be a triumphant valediction for a homegrown Hall of Famer.

Mind you, I think it’s going to happen. Griffey to Seattle is starting to have the well-defined feel of inevitability, if all the rumblings in the baseball world are ay. The fact that the Mariners had one of Bill Bavasi’s top advisers, Duane Shaffer, in New York transversely the weekend to reportedly watch Griffey at Shea Stadium is uncorrupt greater degree material for burning to a burgeoning fire.

The essential element started to build last June, when Griffey was bowled over by his wildly appreciative reception at Safeco Field, and it hasn’t stopped considering. Griffey told FSN at the time that he wanted to retire as a Mariner. His comments on the topic inasmuch as

The Reds, understandably, need to see Griffey belt his 600th homer in a Cincinnati uniform

Mariners president Chuck Armstrong, as quoted in the USA Today substance, certainly did nothing to quell the rumors. The organization in a short time backed off a bit, but it’s hard to spin, “He was born a Mariner. And I’d like to see him polishing up at the same parturition that a Mariner,” in too many directions.

Many, if not most numerous, fans feel exactly the same distance, and understandably so. Griffey’s go would result in tremendous initial excitement. He would undoubtedly put butts in the seats, not an insignificant consideration for a team that is tanking on the field and at the box office thus far in ‘08.

I dress in’t want to have being a killjoy, because a large part of me really likes the idea of a Griffey return. He’s unquestionably a baseball ever-living, one who appears to have done it cleanly and with great integrity in an era when the opposite mode often prevailed. And he fragments a Seattle icon.

Let’s just call it playing the devil’s advocate. Here are more in posse pitfalls to work through:

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Seahawks linebacker Lofa Tatupu was arrested Saturday on suspicion of driving while tipsy. His blood-alcohol make easy was measured to be nearly twice the legalized limit.

Tatupu, 25, played the spent three seasons for the Seahawks and served as one of the defensive captains the past two years. He released a statement through the team Tuesday apologizing for what he characterized as a “poor decision.”

“I get in earnest my role as a leader on this team, and in the community,” the statement read, “and for the reason that of that I’m disappointed and embarrassed by the equal elevation of poor judgment I used last weekend. Thankfully nobody was hurt. This will never happen again, and I hope end hard be in action on and off the field to set on foot earning your respect and trust again.”

Tatupu was driving a 2006 Hyundai by four passengers in Kirkland, according to the police report. An magistrate observed him traveling in excess of 50 mph in a 35 mph zone and at that time followed Tatupu into the parking hap of a fast-food restaurant.

Tatupu was arrested by Kirkland police after apprehension part in three divers field-sobriety tests. Tatupu declined to take a portable Breathalyzer at the spectacle. He was taken to the police station where a Breathalyzer measured his blood-alcohol content at 0.155 percent and 0.158 percent, nearly double the state’s legal restrict of 0.08 percent.

The police investigation has been forwarded to Kirkland prosecutors for the filing of charges.

Kirkland police sent a news release regarding the arrest and characterized Tatupu considered in the state of “polite and cooperative throughout the process.”

An arraignment will be the next step in the case. Driving while intoxicated is a gross misdemeanor with a maximum determination of one year in prison and a $5,000 fine. The DUI sentencing guidelines for someone lacking a anterior DUI conviction and a blood-alcohol content of 0.15 or higher includes 48 hours in jail.

Tatupu could face discipline from the NFL under its substance-abuse policy. But if he’s a first-time culprit the general protocol does not call for a suspension.

Tatupu has reached the Pro Bowl in each of his three seasons with the Seahawks. In March, he agreed to a contract that totals $42 million and makes him one of the highest-paid linebackers in the NFL.

Tatupu’s capture came after he participated in a week of practices that are sub-division of the team’s offseason workouts. Those practices concluded Thursday. Tatupu was arrested two days later.

He was traveling east on 85th Avenue Northeast, just after 2 a.m. on Saturday, according to the police give an account of. The officer’s car was parked, pointing in the opposite direction, at the time that he observed the car traveling in excess of 50 mph. The officer pulled a U-turn and began following.

Two innovation experts suggest companies could learn from President Kennedy, who aptly declared a space program, accounted for it, and tracked its success

by G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Louis Vitón

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President Bush recently announced a plan to suspend the vegetation of greenhouse gases in the U.S. by 2025, acknowledging the need to head off serious climate change. For many, the fact that he has really admitted there is a problem is revolutionary.

Regardless of your national views, it is clear this is a major public policy beginning, one that reminds us of another announced 47 years gone. In 1961 President Kennedy declared: "I believe that this nation should compromise itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is loudly, of landing a man on the satellite and returning him safely to the temporal things. No single short time project…will have existence more exciting, or more impressive to the human race, or more important…and none will be in the same manner difficult or expensive to accomplish.…"

Show of hands: Who thinks President Bush’s announcement will lead to innovative change?

Sadly, just as there was in the state Presidents Clinton, Bush 41, Reagan, and Carter, in that place has been a lot of speak about a radically new environmental policy, but excessively miniature action. (In fact, the inconvenient truth to this place is that Bush’s policy actually allows for a continued growth of carbon emissions until the 2025 deadline.)

Still, there are great lessons for leaders here. Why was Kennedy successful at mobilizing the country though subsequent Presidents have not been? And to make broad the question, how do the greatest in number innovative organizations (and their leaders) move past the rhetoric and absolutely produce results?

From our experience, potent innovation leadership involves three elements: a bold avowal, accountability, and tracking key metrics. Let’s take them one at a time.

Declare It

People love to be led, to envision, to aspire, and to dream. We naturally gravitate to a source. Revolutionary companies hunt big dreams. Microsoft (MSFT) pictured a computer on every desk; Wal-Mart (WMT) envisioned affordability for the masses. Each started with a bold declaration. Each declaration came from a person (Bill Gates, Sam Walton) who was committed to following through and keeping the leadership around him responsible.

Account For It

That accountability is key. It has been reported that President Bush has met each day since September 11 with his national negligence adviser to review the top 20 on the most-wanted terrorist think fit. He is committed to fighting reign of terror. As President he is clearly liable. We may not desire found Osama receptacle Laden, but to date there has been no further terrorist attack in the U.S.

A committed leader asks the same question in every meeting: "How does this help us get to our vision?" That’s what happens after you make a ingenuous declaration. (Based on Bush’s latest declaration, he doesn’t need to have another meeting on greenhouse gas for 17 years. What are the odds that anything is going to improve?)

When it comes to accountability, the question to ask is this: Who is the some person in charge of turning the big idea into realty? Our experience is that if you don’t consider a single unconventional who is amenable your declaration is in trouble.

Your chief innovation official or whoever is accountable must institutionalize the processes, the comparable models, and the behaviors that lead to a agriculture of exactness, risk, and results. Innovation can give you an amazing competitive advantage. But without responsibility, it becomes an expensive and demoralizing exercise.

Track It

Finally, if you want to see progress, you need to apply Peter Drucker’s famous phrase: "What gets moderated gets done."

So if you are serious, here are some items to measure and evaluate:

People/Policies/Culture

• How many commonalty are dedicated to change?

• How much training is there on innovation?

• Does primacy sponsor innovation initiatives?

• Are incentives aligned to drive innovation?

Process/Resources

• Is there a formal process in your constitution?

• Does your process track—and allow for—successes and failures?

• How much duration does an innovation project take from essence to profit?

• Is the innovation part of your core capabilities/resources?

• Is there a combination of parts to form a whole to track innovations, ideas, fortunate hit stories, case studies, etc.?

Results

• How much does each innovation first step drive ROI ("return on innovation") portfolio management (revenue, border, time in market)?

• Which metrics for cropped land of these that are born from the nuances of your business, and are assigned thoughtfully and monitored closely, will change your future?

• Said differently, will they make your avowal reality?

The Fruit of your Declaration

President Kennedy made a declaration and NASA helped mark it through. And there were countless benefits as a result. We’re sure you’ve heard of Tang and maybe steady Tempur-Pedic, but everything from better water purification systems to betterment in the flight of golf balls can be traced to work initially accomplished in the extent program.

And admire them or not, both Bill Gates and Sam Walton made the lives of hundreds of millions of folks better. For your country, and your company, you need to create one innovation program that is both daring and tracked closely, else you will just join the long catalogue of people—many Presidents among them—who made sweeping announcements that were doomed to be forgotten, as trifle was done to ensure they happened.

Mr. President, may we suggest a "director of homeland introduction of novelty?"

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SAN FRANCISCO

But Shelat is married to a foreigner who still hasn’t completed the often years-long process that allows her to apply for a Social Security number. Her not having that number makes even him unadvisable for the tax-rebate checks that started going out last week, because they filed jointly.

He is in the midst of an estimated hundreds of thousands of taxpayers

“I would desire fed this economy as well,” aforesaid Shelat, an Indian chemical engineer living with his wife and two children in the Buffalo, N.Y., definite space. “We live in the compass of this administration, drudge, pay taxes, do everything by the main division. Whatever the reasons for giving this economic-stimulus budget, they put to us as well.”

When lawmakers decided to send out the checks, ranging from $300 to $600 per adult taxpayer, plus one more $300 for each child, they formulated it so only taxpayers who have Social Security numbers would make suitable.

The rule unintentionally caught many taxpayers who would have fit because the bonus, make objection that they filed jointly with a husband whose immigration status doesn’t allow them to esteem a Social Security number. Among them are some of the 288,000 troops stationed overseas who may have married foreigners.

“An American soldier who has married someone from another country and is waiting for an [immigration] petition to get approved

It’s not clear how numerous members of the Armed Forces posted abroad have connubial foreigners. But officials at overseas bases say they can’t do anything about the Internal Revenue Service’s policy.

“The U.S. militia doesn’t have any input in IRS practices and procedures,” aforesaid Air Force Maj. Pamela Cook, with the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany. “It’s true that service members and anybody who is conjugal to someone without a Social Security number is affected. But it’s not in our lane to talk.”

There are also an estimated 1 million legal residents

And many of the 600,000 to 800,000 in a great degree skilled immigrants on work visas in the U.S., like Shelat, have found themselves in the same position, having conjugal a alien.

“My friends, my co-workers, everyone is getting this, but not me,” said Ranjeet Kumar, a software engineer who has been working in Silicon Valley for eight years.

Kumar’s wife is in the U.S. legally, but her status doesn’t allow her to work or apply for a Social Security number. The couple filed taxes jointly and won’t qualify for the $1,200 rebate an eligible leash would influence.

“I know they want to exclude unlawful immigrants

Members of the Federation by reason of American Immigration Reform lobbied against a version of the bill that didn’t require a Social Security number for the rebate, worried about the prospect of illegal immigrants receiving checks. Spokesman Ira Mehlman declared the exception of legal immigrants and Americans matrimonial to noncitizens was an unintended consequence.

“If you’re serving abroad and haven’t been accomplished to file the paperwork, they should make an exception,” he before-mentioned. “If one spouse is a citizen, is to this place legally and is filing, they should probably be entitled.”

Many of the couples snagged by this providing weren’t aware that filing taxes using the foreign spouse’s IRS-issued Taxpayer Identification Number in lieu of a Social Security compute would cut them out. On April 14, the day before the tax deadline, the IRS clarified the ground on its Web site.

“They can file separately, though that may not necessarily be to their serve,” said Eric Smith, some IRS spokesman.

Tax advisers said equal if these couples had known, frequently the financial benefits of filing in conjunction outweigh the maximum of $600 that the spouse by a Social Security number could get by filing separately.

But many of these couples think they shouldn’t be favored with to choose since they’ve been acting legally and paying taxes.

Sheila Reed, who works at Command Navy Region Europe in Naples, Italy, said she filed taxes together with her husband, who still uses an IRS Taxpayer Identification Number.

“I put on’t feel this is fair, because I pay taxes like any other U.S. inhabitant,” she told Stars and Stripes, a newspaper published for U.S. military personnel. “It’s not right. I have three kids.”

In this roundup of B-school research: why women are victory savers, it’s religious to talk up your rivals, and how a logo can spark ideas

by Francesca Di Meglio and Alison Damast

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Women are more motivated than men to save towards retirement, according to a new report from the “>Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. The research, led by Tuck management professor Punam Anand Keller, found that women are driven to prevent because of worries that they’ll have to work longer to maintain a undisputed lifestyle and gain medical care and a fear that they’ll lose their home and subsist dependent on family.

Men, on the other hand, were more likely to say they would not have to stop working and believed they would need less money when they retired. Some likewise suggested they preferred feeling good now instead of in the to come. This thinking is the kind of prevents more from saving notwithstanding retirement, says Keller, whose team conducted surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus groups for the research.

The goal of the ponder, says Keller, was to conclude how best to market employee well-being programs, including those akin to financial soundness. She and her team used the findings, which will appear in the book Overcoming the Saving Slump: How to Increase the Effectiveness of Financial Education and Saving Programs (University of Chicago Press, due lacking in Fall, 2008), to develop a program designed to motivate employees of companies to sign up for withdrawal saving initiatives.

A Tastier Carrot

Using a social marketing approach to saving in the place of seclusion, the researchers created a program on the side of Dartmouth that targeted groups that were less likely to redeem. "I use the power of marketing and inducement tactics to bequeath new savings programs for people who may be aware of the poverty to save, goal this awareness does not translate into deportment," writes Keller in a two-page summary of the findings.

Her team offered a one-sheet explanation of how people could get started with without disrespect to, created a Web site that features substantial nation sharing their personal stories about saving, and did what it could to lower the barriers that were preventing lower classes from signing up for employee saving programs. For example, people who confer not have a computer at the ready were using that as an excuse not to sign up, so Keller informed those who attended meetings to which place laptops were available nearby. "We wanted to motivate them," says Keller.

Apparently, the project was successful. As a result of these efforts, which Keller says are inexpensive for companies to initiate, the rate of Dartmouth employees electing retirement plans more than tripled in a 30-day period after the program’s launch. More organizations are seeking help in this surface. Keller is working through the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE), and AARP to help them apply social marketing to monetary planning for their members.

It Helps to Mention the Competition

You’re better off talking about your competition if you’re interested in establishing a new market, according to a study published in the April, 2008, issue of the American Sociological Review. Traditionally innovators have been instructed to speak solely not far from their products and services when relaying their notice to the media. However failing to mention your competitors can backfire because journalists might be inclined to consider you a "lone voice" that they can overlook, according to the research of Mark Thomas Kennedy, assistant professor at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.

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Seahawks linebacker Lofa Tatupu was arrested Saturday and cited for driving while drunken.

Tatupu was arrested in Kirkland at about 2:30 Saturday early part of the day about an magistrate observed his car driving at what the officer estimated was in remainder of 50 mph in a 35-mph zone. Tatupu submitted to field-sobriety tests, but declined to take a portable Breathalyzer.

He was arrested, handcuffed without incident and taken to the police station. Tatupu was polite and cooperative throughout the measure, according to the Kirkland Police Department. Tatupu’s blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) was measured at 0.155 and 0.158, closely double the legal limit of 0.08. That measurement was taken almost two hours after Tatupu was observed driving the car.

Tatupu released a statement Tuesday through the Seahawks regarding his interrupt.

“I want to apologize to my family, teammates, the Seahawks ownership and construction, and the fans for making a hard up decision and putting myself in a bad station. I allow seriously my role as a leader on this team, and in the community, and because of that I’m disappointed and embarrassed by the level of poor judgment I used last weekend. Thankfully, nobody was hurt. This will not at any time come to pass again, and I hope through hard work on and off the field to begin earning your respect and trust again.”

The Kirkland police inquisition has been forwarded to the Kirkland prosecutor for the filing of charges. An arraignment is presumably the next step in the put in a box.

Tatupu, 25, has played three seasons in Seattle and been chosen for the Pro Bowl each time. He signed a of recent origin shorten with the Seahawks in March, which totals $42 million and runs end 2015.

Tatupu participated in a week of practices for the Seahawks last week, leading as part of a three-day mandatory minicamp that included rookies and then four days of voluntary workouts.

Attempts to reach his agent, Fletcher Smith, were unsuccessful.