The Times they aren't a changing

The rich on steroids

President Bush contends the quickening pace of the concentration of wealth among the wealthy is a trend of the past 25 years. It would appear to have been going on a tad longer.

First, from today's Times:

Report Says That the Rich Are Getting Richer Faster, Much Faster

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.

The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.

Just after the Civil War, the IRS noticed a similar phenomenon:

February 24, 1869
OUR WORKING CLASSES

How the Poor are Growing Poorer—The Wages of To-day Compared with those of Former Years—Comparative Prices of Food

“The rich become richer, the poor poorer,” by which expression Commissioner Wells, of the Internal Revenue Service, graphically pictured the condition of the American people generally, has a special application to New York. In no part of the country has wealth more rapidly accumulated and concentrated in the hands of the few – in the manner which we have shown in a former paper—or poverty become so general and extended, as in this City. Nowhere are the poor becoming more rapidly poorer than in the wealthiest City of the Union.

This is, as some argue, undoubtedly due to the fact that against all reason and their own interests the laboring classes insist on adopting mechanical rather than agricultural pursuits, and in search of occupation in these branches crowd into large cities instead of remaining in the rural districts, where, if wages are less, the cost of living is also proportionally less. The labor market of many mechanical branches in this City is often glutted—there is no denying that, and at this time of numerous strikes in various branches of industry, this oversupply of labor is a principal source of trouble, and the cause of non-success of many strikes,

Millions and Billions

Despite our current economic volatility, billionaires are in no danger of winding up on the endangered species list. For all the world’s problems, they are cropping up everywhere – even in once impoverished nations.

From an article in today’s Times under the headline "A New Breed of Billionaire,"

The global wealth boom has created a new breed of billionaire in once-destitute countries like Turkey, India, Mexico and Russia. Propelled by their rising economies, robust currencies and globally competitive companies, they have ridden a surge in local stock markets that have reached previously untouchable heights in a short five-year time frame. Now, a number of them are using their wealth to bolster their standing and push for social changes.

In 1963, the Times marveled at a similar development – the rapidly growing fraternity of millionaires. But these new rich weren’t international so much as invisible. It seems people have been complaining for 44 years that being a millionaire isn’t what it used to be.

September 15, 1963
OUR 398 MILLIONAIRES – A NEW BREED

BY ALVIN SHUSTER

WASHINGTON—It was easy in the old days to tell the millionaire from the rest of us.

He had that private railroad car, courted Lillian Russell and assorted French actresses, imported chefs from Paris to prepare 20-course meals to be served on gold plates, swam in pools of white Venetian tile or Carrara marble, built “cottages” with 110 rooms and 45 baths and owned a Nile steamer just in case he went to Egypt.

Not so of the millionaires of today. They live well, but for the most part, quietly, without the flamboyance of their predecessors. A few even live in the house with the 100-foot lot they bought 15 years ago before they hit it big. With a few exceptions, most are a little shy about it all. And even though one of their kind reached the White House by popular demand, many still feel ill at ease when publicly identified as “a millionaire.”

The article goes on to note that many of the nation's 398 millionaires somehow manage to pay zero taxes, but they do pay an average alimony of $24,000 a year. Like the international billionaires in today’s story, many are philanthropic – giving 15 percent of their incomes to charity, however some gave fewer than $100.

Out elderly for good behavior

It seems there is no prison for old men. Apparently if you can survive into your 80s or 90s in the pen, your chances of getting freed dramatically increase.

From today's Times:

New York Frees Oldest Inmate

By SAM ROBERTS

Charles E. Friedgood, who at 89 had been the oldest inmate in a New York State prison, was released on Tuesday and granted permission to live with a sister in Florida, where a daughter also lives, the State Parole Board said on Wednesday.

Granted, Friedgood -- who has the perfect name for this story -- is terminally ill. But there seems to be a long tradition of kicking the aged out on the street.

June 24, 1916
SING SING’S OLDEST INMATE FREE

OSSINING, N.Y., June 23.—Joel C. Rundle, who is 75 years old and the oldest inmate of Sing Sing Prison, was pardoned today by Governor Whitman. Rundle had served eighteen years for killing a neighbor in Orange County and his pardon was sought by ex-Alderman A.H. Tompkins of Yonkers, who was a G.A.R. comrade of the old man. Governor Whitman also pardoned John E. Anhut, once lawyer for Harry Thaw, who was convicted of having tried to bribe officials to let Thaw escape from Matteawan. Anhut was paroled some time ago.

This next story reminded me of the film "The Shawshank redemption," when the character Brooks is released in old age but finds he has no place in the outside world.

May 30, 1924
PAROLED AT 80 IN VAIN

Warrant served on Sing Sing’s oldest Inmate—40 years behind bars

OSSINING, May 29.—Just after a a parole was ordered this afternoon for William De Witt, 80-year-old negro, Sing Sing’s oldest prisoner, a warrant for his arrest was lodged with the prison authorities by the Westchester County Court.

During the last sixty years De Witt has served twenty terms in various penal institutions in New York State for larceny. Since he was first sentenced in 1863 to the House of Refuge, New York City, he has spent more than forty years behind bars.

He now faces a charge of grand larceny in connection with a poor-box robbery in White Plains.

Logan's Runway

Pilots have been fighting mandatory retirement at age 60 since the measure was approved in 1960. But in a boost for grayer skies, the House of Representatives yesterday voted to raise the age at which all aviators will be grounded to 65. From today's Times:

House Votes to Raise Pilot Retirement Age
By AP

The House voted unanimously to extend the retirement age for commercial pilots to 65, changing a 1960 Federal Aviation Administration regulation forcing pilots to leave the cockpit at age 60. The bill, if approved by the Senate, would put the retirement age in line with international standards. The International Civil Aviation Organization adopted a retirement age of 65 in November 2006. The House measure would require pilots ages 60 and above to have a medical certificate renewed every six months and to take a flight test known as a line check every six months.

But pilots and the FAA, acknowledging that not everyone ages equally, had considered a similar extension back in 1962. Mandatory medical testing would be required, just as it is under the current legislation.

March 11, 1962
STUDY MAY EASE REQUIREMENT THAT AIRLINE PILOTS RETIRE AT 60

Some airline pilots may be able to keep their jobs beyond the current mandatory retirement age of 60 because of a Federal Aviation Agency medical research program.

“This program is specially designed to study man’s aging process and develop individual standards based on each pilot’s physical condition,” according to Najeeb E. Halaby, the F.A.A. Administrator.

“When these criteria are established,” he went on, “the agency will be able to tailor a retirement standard for each pilot instead of requiring all to quit flying at the age of 70 when present medical statistics indicate it is generally prudent.”

The endless jam

The war on traffic has been raging for the better part of a century to no avail. But rather than resign ourselves to perpetual gridlock, city officials press on.

Congestion pricing, whereby drivers are charged a premium to enter Manhattan, is the panacea of the moment. But according to today's Times there are a slew of wacky ideas brewing to supplement the charge, ranging from prohibiting taxis from picking up street hails to jacking up the cost of parking, which is said to be too cheap.

Ways to Cut City Traffic? Well, Maybe

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

You wouldn’t be able to hail a cab in Manhattan below 86th Street, where cabs would be allowed to pick up passengers only at taxi stands scattered throughout the area.

You wouldn’t be able to drive in Manhattan on the 5th, the 15th or the 25th of every month if your license plate ends in a 5. And parking on the street would cost you as much as parking in a garage.

These are some of the proposals under consideration by the state commission evaluating how best to combat traffic in Manhattan. The ideas may seem fanciful, futuristic or simply far-fetched.

But as long as automobiles have been trolling the streets there has been traffic -- and no shortage of ideas for ending it. In 1929, there were too many, too costly ideas.

January 10,1929
ASKS TRAFFIC BOARD TO BAR COSTLY IDEAS

Banham says 200 proposals already received would involve $2,000,000,000

Warns city lacks funds

Using streets more at night and removing obstructions would help, he tells trade board

The work of the citizens’ traffic committee should be limited to an improvement of present traffic facilities and should not be concerned with solutions requiring additional facilities, declared W.J.L. Banham, president of the New York Board of Trade, Inc., yesterday at the monthly meeting of the organization at 15 Park Row. He outlined some of the suggestions he will lay before the committee on plan and scope today.

Mr. Banham, who is head of the citizens’ traffic committee, said that the committee had 200 plans for street traffic solution which would cost at least $2,000,000,000 to put into effect. Since the city has no money available to carry out the proposals, he urged that those things be done which involve no expenditure of large sums. In this connection, he mentioned garbage and ash removal at night, of obstructions from sidewalks, and reducing the number of street openings.

A couple of years later, the doom and gloom traffic experts made an argument that could be used verbatim today.

January 20, 1931
M’ANENY ASKS SPEED ON SOUND CITY PLAN

“Creeping Paralysis” can be avoided only if city acts at once, he declares.

Cost of traffic jams and other present conditions put at $1,000,000 a day.

Unless New York City adopts quickly a fundamental, scientific plan providing for a growth which will give the metropolitan area a population of 21,000,000 within thirty-five years, “creeping paralysis” will overtake it, George McAneny, president of the Regional Plan Association, told a meeting of the New York Credit Men’s Association at the Commodore last night.

Parking and its relationship to traffic was and still is of utmost concern. After the jump, read about two attempts to improve congestion by making it harder to park which are not unlike those currently on the table...

Borderline politics

Presidential elections may have changed a great deal in terms of the length of the campaigns and the fortunes spent, but it seems candidates are still wrestling over the same unresolved questions.

Take the story in today's Times about Republican candidates telling a Spanish-language audience that they want to strengthen security at the border.

Republican Candidates Firm on Immigration

By MICHAEL COOPER and MARC SANTORA

CORAL GABLES, Fla., Dec. 9 — In front of what will probably be their most pro-immigration audience, Republican candidates toned down their rhetoric but told Spanish-language television viewers in a debate on Sunday that they would take strong measures to close off the country’s borders to illegal immigration.

More than 75 years ago, foreign-language speaking residents were equally dissatisfied with the candidates on the topic of immigration.

October 23, 1932
IMMIGRATION VIEWS OF NOMINEES ASKED

Foreign Language group seeks attitude of Roosevelt and Hoover on certain issues

The board of trustees of the Foreign Language Information Service made public yesterday a resolution it has adopted urging that President Hoover and Governor Roosevelt, as candidates for the presidency, state their attitude on certain issues of immigration policy of special interest to foreign-born voters.

In the 1952 election, immigration was one of the big issues, although it's hard to imagine such a fierce attack in today's watered down, focus-group tested rhetoric. It should be noted that Truman had already decided to bow out of the race.

October 18, 1952
CHARGES NOMINEE ACCEPTS ‘MASTER RACE’ THEORY OF NEW ALIEN LAW

By PAUL P. KENNEDY, special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17—President Truman denounced in unusually bitter terms today the Republican party and its Presidential candidate, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, in relation to what he termed “cruel and repellent” immigration legislation. Mr. Truman’s attack drew immediate Republican criticism.

The President charged that General Eisenhower was willing  to accept “the very practice that identified the so-called ‘master race’” despite the fact that the General had taken a leading role in breaking Nazi domination of Europe.

Mr. Truman declared General Eisenhower “has had an attack of moral blindness.” He asserted that the Republican candidate has had nothing to say on the subject of immigration and, in this connection, he “would endorse anyone with a Republican label,  no matter what his record is on civil liberties.”

The C.I.A. has delete on speed dial

The late, great New Orleans pianist James Booker had it right when in his signature song, "My Papa Was a Rascal," he warned that "we've all got to watch out, watch out for the CIA."

In today's Times, we learn that important videotapes of al Qaeda interrogations was destroyed to protect the undercover operatives:

C.I.A. Destroyed 2 Tapes Showing Interrogations

By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about its secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terrorism suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. The tapes were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that video showing harsh interrogation methods could expose agency officials to legal risks, several officials said.

But by now they've erased enough cuts to put out a two-disc greatest hits album. When the tapes could prove useful to an investigation, they have a way of mysteriously getting disappeared. Take this wipe-out from the Nixon years:

January 30, 1974
C.I.A. Destruction of Tapes Reported

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 (AP)--William E. Colby, director of Central Intelligence, said tonight that the C.I.A. could find only one tape recording bearing on the Watergate affair and that it had destroyed all its other tapes from that period.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Colby said: "Senator [Howard] Baker asked us if there were any other tapes that bore on the subject. And we don't have any other on this subject at the moment. We had periodic destruction of our tapes."

Mr. Baker, the Tennessee Republican who is vice-chairman of the Senate Watergate Commission, confirmed in another telephone interview that he had requested any C.I.A. tapes bearing on Watergate...

Mr. Colby's comments followed a Columbia Broadcasting System report Tuesday night saying that the C.I.A. has destroyed numerous tape recordings considered vital to the Watergate investigation.

Still uninsured after all these years

Universal health coverage may be one of the big issues of the 2008 election, but people have been whining and wheezing about their lack of insurance for more than 90 years.

First, from today’s Times:

Albany: Proposal for Universal Health Insurance

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A state lawmaker proposed yesterday that New York create a $59 billion health insurance program that would cover everyone in the state and would probably be paid for through a tax increase. The plan, from Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, would generally replace the private health plans that now provide coverage to many people through their jobs. Assemblyman Gottfried, a Manhattan Democrat who is chairman of the Health Committee, said the program would have to be paid for by new taxes, but he said that state residents would pay less than they now pay in premiums and deductibles. Critics said there was little evidence that the state could afford the program, or that it could do better than the current system.

In 1916, state legislators proposed a similar idea.

January 30, 1916
HEALTH INSURANCE FOR NEW YORK’S WORKERS

New York State is facing one of the most radical proposals in the interests of the wage earner ever made in this country—a compulsory health insurance bill. The measure was introduced in the Legislature on Jan. 24 by Senator Ogden L. Mills.

Although its promoters, members of the Social Insurance Committee of the American Association for Labor Legislation, have been working on the project for more than three years and have distributed over 13,000 copies of the tentative bill, the plan comes as a surprise to many people, and a wave of inquiry is sweeping through associations of employers…

“Paternalism,” “socialism,” are slogans of the foes of this measure, which is bound to arouse discussion in every direction. It means in general terms an effort to introduce into the United States the compulsory health insurance of Great Britain or the sickness insurance of Germany, so that every manual worker and every wage earner whose income does not exceed $100 a month will, when he becomes ill, have the services of a physician, attendance, and even medicine and surgical appliances, and that for at least half a year, if his disability continues, he will receive a weekly allowance for the support of himself and his family. Death and funeral benefits are included.

Naturally this was deemed “un-American,” and the bill was scorned and later vastly watered down by doctors, employers, and insurers:

Gone and forgotten

Anonymity is sacred in New York. Millions wander the streets each day happily oblivious to the lives around them. But every once in a while, we are reminded of the dark side to this blindness.

Today's Times tells the story of Christina Copeman, who was discovered in her Brooklyn home -- two years after she died.   

Neighbors Reflect on a Death No One Noticed
By ANDY NEWMAN

For the last years of her life, Christina Copeman kept to herself.

She stopped answering the door shortly after her estranged husband died in 1990. She turned away from her friends and neighbors in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, ignoring their hellos.

So when Ms. Copeman dropped out of sight altogether, people were not immediately suspicious. Perhaps she had gone back to Trinidad for a vacation, they said. Maybe she had gotten sick there, or decided to stay.

That was nearly two years ago.

There have been countless incidents like this, though few in which the deceased managed to elude discovery for quite so long. In 1871, Margaret Mannisan had a fate similar to Coperman's:

August 8, 1871

A SHOCKING DEATH -- TERRIBLE FATE OF A FEMALE RECLUSE

Yesterday morning the occupants of a lower room at no. 5 King street noticed blood upon the ceiling, and called in Patrolman McAuley, of the Twenty-eighth precinct. The policeman went to the room overhead and knocked at the door. It was fastened on the inside, and the policeman, after waiting a sufficient time for it to be opened, forced it open. The occupant of the room was MARGARET MANNISAN, a native of Ireland, sixty-five years of age, unmarried. Upon a pile of rags upon the floor lay her dead body, swollen and decomposed almost beyond recognition.

Coroner Young, upon making an investigation later in the day, found that the woman had lived alone in this attic room for the last five years, and had not been seen alive since Friday night. Upon an examination of the body Dr. marsh was of the opinion that the woman had died in convulsions, in which she had ruptured a blood vessel.

The deceased was spoken of by those who knew her as a sober, industrious woman of eccentric habits, who, however, hated the male sex with almost unnatural malignity, and would never speak to any of the gender.

Yes, it was all because she hated men.

A few years later, a man died leaning on the window sill of his apartment, which overlooked the elevated train tracks. Note one of the great all time subheads..

Grave wave warnings

Stories about our impending demise may – it turns out -- not be greatly exaggerated, but they aren’t necessarily new either.

Today’s Times considers the risk that a tsunami could obliterate chunks of the eastern seaboard:

A Warning About East Coast Tsunamis

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

The risk is low. But the consequences could be high, with deadly waves striking the coastal communities of Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey and killing thousands of people.

Today, the federal government is announcing that it has completed the mid-Atlantic region’s risk assessments for the killer mounds of water known as tsunamis, or tidal waves.

In an extremely long-winded article on March 13, 1878 under the headline, “THE COMING TIDAL WAVE," similar dire warnings were aired and dismissed:

A superstition exists among the people here that a tidal wave will inundate the coast and extend into the interior of the country.

Eleven years later those “superstitions" turned out to be warranted, at least according to this tsunami of melodrama.

September 9, 1889
WASHED BY A TIDAL WAVE
A STARTLING VISITATION AT SEASIDE RESORTS
Beaches submerged and strollers drenched and carried into the surd—Panic at Atlantic City

Yesterday was not a particularly inviting day for a trip to the seashore, but the weather has got to behave far worse than it did to prevent a crowd from gathering on the strand at Rockaway Beach of a Sunday afternoon in early September, The crowd from the cities clustered about New York Bay was not comparatively large yesterday, but those who composed it – some three thousand in number – were treated to an experience with the Atlantic Ocean they will not soon forget.

Thick weather has been prevailing out at sea for three or four days, the ragged edges of the storm making occasional appearances in rain-threatening clouds over this and neighboring cities. Yesterday the sea, which had been rolling high, began to increase, rolling in huge billow shoreward and breaking in thundering roars on the beach. The wonderful power and majesty of the ocean in such commotion was the most attractive feature of the resorts strung along the beach, and there were large crowds watching the sea at what they supposed was a safe distance, when, at 4:30 o’clock, a tidal wave rolled upon the beach seventy feet beyond the previous high-water mark.

It broke over at least two thousand men, women, and children who were sitting, walking, or standing on the strand. It came unperceived by the great majority, and although there was a general scramble to get beyond its reach, but few were successful in wholly escaping its grasp. The great majority of the crowd suffered a thorough drenching. Many are tumbled over in the rush of waters and several women and children were caught by the undertow and carried back toward the surf line. Their screams of terror were heard shrill above the roar of the waters, and for an instant it seemed as if some must have been swept away and drowned, but strong arms reached for them and all were rescued with no more serious injuries than the shock, the fright, and the drenching.