Monthly Archives: September 2012

Does it Take a Village to use an iPad?

September 27, 2012Around Townbfiggefox

I’m not quite ready to for the challenges of being a woman in 1627 (as in this photo taken at Plimouth Plantation, the recreated Pilgrim village). But sometimes I resent having to cope with the techno challenges of 2012.

Take my iPad. Yes, I’m lucky to have it. I had no idea how wonderfully useful it would be. I bought it at Creative Computing (across from the Princeton Airport on 206). But I did not trek to Bridgewater (the closest real Apple store) to get the freely given advice and tutoring. I thought I’d be OK by just bumbling through, watching some how-to videos, and calling Apple Care (the subscription help desk) if I got stuck.

When a casual acquaintance clued me in that I had never learned to turn my new iPad3 completely OFF, which was why my battery was always running down, I realized it was time to go to a class and tried to register for the $10 2-hour class at Princeton Senior Resource Center.

It was closed. Sold out. A month later, today there was an opening — and an eye opener. Thanks to Barbara Essig (in the red shirt) and Archana Swaminathan I learned lots of great stuff, like how to tell when my apps need upgrading and that it was time to switch to IOS6. (Have you switched yet?) Well, the new software sabotaged my email, fixable only after lengthy conversations with Apple Care. And my real software problem (my iPad won’t talk to my Windows XP) will never be solved.

Surely there are hundreds if not thousands of other iPad buyers — those who aren’t getting training in the workplace and aren’t paying for $40 classes in stores — who are bumbling along, asking friends for tips and never really conquering the knowledge gap. I tell myself — you’re not cooking over a wood fire, you are not subject to the whims of the weather — only to the whims of incompatible software. Be thankful. Enjoy the photo (shown here) that your iPad can take. Take Essig’s next class. And keep on comparing notes and asking your friends for tips. Apparently “it takes a village” to survive the techno challenges of 2012.

(High marks for the re-enactors at Plimouth village. They impersonate real people, so they answer your questions as “Priscilla Alden” or “Mistress Brewster.” One leaves thankful to be living in our time.)

White-Collar Crime: Not in our town, not this time

September 25, 2012Uncategorizedbfiggefox

Check out the NYT special section today, DealB%k, about the future of white-shoe law firms, especially the terrific full-page graphic White-Collar World on page 4 by Guilbert Gates (under the direction of the reporter, Peter Lattman). The excerpt at left shows about 20 percent of the fascinating diagram of “big trouble lawyers” and the scoundrels (or the accused but acquitted) financiers they defended. (Aside: only two women are in the former group, only one — Martha Stewart — in the latter.)

Since I devour Style’s wedding pages for any mention of brides or grooms from Princeton, I pounced upon this with similar intent and found, yes, one person that I knew from the late 1980s. Well, I didn’t actually know him, because he never would talk to me, but I delivered papers to Jay Regan at Princeton/Newport’s third-floor office on Spring Street, corner of Witherspoon.

It was during the 1980s insider trading scandal, when then attorney general Rudy Giuliani was going after “everyone and his brother,” including Richard Milliken and Martin Segal. (For an in-depth account of one of those trials, see this Money-CNN piece. Michael Powell detailed Giuliani’s excesses in a 2007 New York Times article) . Regan and Princeton/Newport got caught up in the prosecution. Powell wrote:

In 1987, about 50 armed marshals raided and locked down the investment firm Princeton/Newport Partners. A federal appellate court overturned that racketeering conviction, but the firm remained shuttered. “We were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said financier Jay Regan, a principal at Princeton/Newport. “It’s strange to be sacrificed on someone’s altar.”

It was a very tense time around that office on Spring Street. When you deliver papers for U.S. 1 — and every staff member was a deliverer in the early years — you taste the vibes in an office as soon as you open the door. For that route I went first to the three-story building on Palmer Square, then in and out of the retail shops along Nassau and Witherspoon, chit chatting with the real estate people and the hoagie people — but when I opened the Princeton/Newport door — immediate shut down, icy cold. Initially I didn’t know what was wrong. Shy folks, I thought. Then I read the papers and realized what was going on.

I never got to do the Diane Henriques thing (Henriques is the NYT financial reporter who wrote the book on Bernie Madoff). I never did get to interview Jay Regan, the little fish caught in the Millken pool; it was a NYT and WSJ story. Thanks in part to “big trouble” lawyer Theodore V. Wells Jr. of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, Garrison (headshot in the excerpt above), all but a few of the charges were dropped. It cost Regan six years of litigation; he is now general managing partner at Harbourton Enterprises on Hulfish Street.

Postscript I: Diane B. Henriques is keynoting the Mercer Institute’s Executive Leadership Summit on Tuesday, October 9.

Postscript II: I can’t help but compare this account of the White-Collar World with The New Jim Crow, as exposed by Michelle Alexander. Untold millions are spent on defending against charges of white collar crime. Very little, reports Alexander, is spent on defending African Americans snared in the legal quagmire of required minimum sentences. For instance, statistics show showed that black teenagers disproportionately represented in the juvenile justice system in New Jersey.

Since the survey was done in 2004, some efforts have been made to correct the problem of how black juveniles are treated differently from white juveniles, but overall, I believe, this is a scandalous state and national problem. So do others in Princeton who are working, not just to raise everyone’s consciousness, but to actually change the system. I’ll be posting blogs about their work at Not in Our Town Princeton, and you’ll be hearing more about it from various sources in the coming months. It will be the topic for Continuing Conversations on Race on Monday, October 1, 7:30 p.m., at the Princeton Public Library. In the meantime, mention this post and get a discount on the Michelle Alexander book at Labyrinth Books.

Not everyone indicted for white collar crime is a criminal in our town. The same is true for those accused of other crimes, but not everyone has the money for the good lawyer. This results in a new caste system that can be far more damaging to African Americans than the indignity of separate drinking fountains

Kickstart Tech: Kickstart Dance

September 14, 2012Uncategorizedbfiggefox

I first met Savraj Singh at an Einstein Alley Entrepreneur’s Group meeting– or was it first at NJEN? and then in September, 2010, at the World Day of Prayer (photo at right), where he was representing his Sikh congregation. Full of energy for his company, WATTVISION, he was struggling for funds.

Earlier this year he emailed me about his Kickstart program. Kickstart is the social media version of asking friends and family to chip in on your new venture. An article by Lynn Robbins in U.S. 1 Newspaper reported that his company had raised $37,000 as of September 4.

Good news! Singh and his partners (shown left) passed their $50,000 goal yesterday, raising $67,293 from 497 contributions, ranging from $1 (which gets you listed on the website) to more (which gets you discounts on the product, a gateway and energy sensor.) Some of the higher end contribution categories are still open.

Today another would-be Kickstarter emailed me — dancer and choreographerny, Jamuna Dasi, the producer of a very successful annual concert at Grounds for Sculpture on Sunday, October 7. She seeks a modest amount — $5,000 .
Says Dasi: I have been producing The Outlet Dance Project for 8 years. Until today, the dancers and myself have never been paid and I have barely been able to cover the costs of producing this popular, well-attended, and highly valued community event. This year I would like to be able to give a $200 stipend to each choreographer and not have to worry about covering our modest production costs. ‘=

It’s not the first arts cause to do a Kickstart (Robbins’ article reported on 4 local efforts) and maybe this is a viable alternative to waning corporate funds. The minimum pledge of $1 will receive a dance-related haiku, but sponsors of $500 will have a dance especially choreographed for them at any location they choose. If Singh’s venture gives you the opportunity to be the next Rockefeller, the arts ventures let you be the next in the line of the Medici family. The deadline is October 4, the performance is October 7.

Tying a Tourniquet on the Economic Crisis

September 13, 2012Uncategorizedbfiggefox

Elizabeth Bogan, senior lecturer at Princeton University (shown here with Jim Solloway) addressed the West Windsor Republicans on September 12 with a non-partisan discussion on the economy. She considers herself a market oriented economist, taking the middle ground between the Krugmans and the tea partiers. Her charts were, of course, predictably discouraging, but she had some unpredictable insights on why that’s true.

DISABILITY: For 42.7 million to be on disability is way too many, in her view (and, in today’s news, Congress’s view). People who could be working, aren’t.

HEALTHCARE. In Medicare — elders are getting $3 of care for every $1 they paid in, and that is unsustainable, she says. We must attack the myth that everyone has the best of care.” We don’t all drive the same cars, we don’t all have the same food budget, maybe we don’t all get equal care, after all.

Ryan’s plan is not soon enough or not radical enough, she says, but it does set limits on what you are going to spend. “There is no tooth fairy.” She doesn’t think that a Romney/Ryan administration would actually eliminate Obamacare. “But they do understand efficiency.”

Of her strategies below, # 3 (better use of computers) is my fave, since I’m all for efficient digital health records and personal health records. (Whatever happened to that company, birthed in Princeton, that would put your health record, your insurance, and your bank account all on the same card? Now that would be efficient.) I also like #4, change the rules, because it would let my doctor get paid for emailing me.

BEYOND HEALTHCARE: Because we had two wars without raising taxes (nonsense! says Bogan), we are addicted to public and private debt that is being picked up by the Chinese. When China turned to a capitalistic-style economy (eating our lunch with manufacturing jobs), the world’s labor force increased exponentially. In this country, the lawyers, accountants and consultants are doing well, but jobs disappeared for the lesser educated, who must now focus on personal service jobs.

One strategy, says Bogan, is to quit giving the day traders a free ride. Tax each and every financial transaction at a rate of 1/10th of 1 percent. Every stock sale. Every mutual fund buy. It would have a minimal effect on most of us, but it would hit the nano-second traders right where it should.

Raise the retirement age to align with today’s life expectancies. Raise it to 67 (for the early stage) and 70 (for the final stage).

Tax the returns to hedge fund managers as ordinary income instead of as a capital gain (and this, from the spouse of a hedge fund manager.)

Tighten leverage rules to require 10 percent down on anything — houses, appliances, anything.

And what about taxes? Surveys show, she says, that folks from all income levels think that 25 percent is about right. Clinton got it right. He reduced the number of brackets. “We don’t have room to make huge tax cuts now,” she says. “The Obama rhetoric confuses business. If we grow the economy, fewer people would choose food stamps and welfare. I am comfortable with debt if I believe it will solve long-term problems.”

Woodbridge Runs for Mayor

September 3, 2012Uncategorizedbfiggefox

A Republican running for town office in Princeton? Sounds like an oxymoron.

But Dick Woodbridge has filed to run, not for the first time. He has served many terms on council, for both the Borough and the Township, and he has been the township’s mayor.

He opens his campaign office today at 162 Nassau Street. That’s in the block opposite New York Camera and Thomas Sweet; last campaign season it was the Obama headquarters.

Small glitch — some media outlets say 62 Nassau. No, 162 Nassau, and the grand opening was today, Labor Day.