House Takes On Fiscal Cliff

Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Representative Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader, arrived on Capitol Hill to meet with House Democrats and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — As the new year began on Tuesday, Congressional efforts to head off tax increases on most working Americans shifted to the House, where members began to pore over details of a plan passed by the Senate in the early morning hours as Republican leaders began the delicate task of assessing the measure’s fate in their chamber.

Molly Riley/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Representative Eric Cantor arrived at the Capitol on Tuesday.

J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio arrived on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Tuesday.

Alex Brandon/Associated Press

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Monday after a meeting with Senate Democrats on the fiscal negotiations.

House Republicans were planning to meet at 1 p.m. to discuss the Senate legislation, cobbled together after furious negotiations between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, to avert automatic tax increases for all but the wealthiest Americans and put off, for two months, large cuts to the Pentagon and other areas of government.

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, said she would also present the plan to House Democrats and Mr. Biden, who helped sell the deal to Senate Democrats on Monday night, was set to meet with members of his party in the House just after noon.

With just two days to go before a new Congress convenes, the House has essentially three choices: reject the bill, pass it as written by the Senate after what is certain to be a robust, even rancorous debate, or amend the bill and quickly return it across the rotunda to the Senate. Should the House choose to amend the measure, it would almost certainly imperil its chances of becoming law before the new Congress convenes. The Senate compromise, which enjoyed wide bipartisan support, was so hard fought and senators do not anticipate taking another vote on it.

Any failure to pass the measure before the 112th Congress ends as of noon Thursday would require the process to start over in the new 113th Congress, meaning the Senate would have to vote again with a changed membership due the departure of several veteran lawmakers and the arrival of newcomers from both parties as a result of victories in the November elections.

But the strong, bipartisan 89-to-8 vote in the Senate about 2 a.m. on Tuesday will put strong pressure on the House to approve the legislation since a defeat would essentially leave the House responsible for a steep series of tax increases and spending cuts that some economists warn could send the nation back into a recession.

Yet it was clear Tuesday morning that many House Republicans were disenchanted with the plan, which, while containing many concessions that angered Democrats, still favors the latter party’s priorities and imposes a tax increase on the wealthiest Americans.

“I am halfway through reading it and haven’t found the cuts yet,” said Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, who generally votes against budget bills. “It’s part medicinal, part panacea, and part treating the symptoms but not the underlying pathology.”

Democrats have their own issues with the measure due to what they see as too many concessions on taxes, making it apparent some combination of Democrats and Republicans will have to come together behind the measure if it is to clear the House and be sent to President Obama for his signature.

Speaker John A. Boehner and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, arrived at the Capitol early Tuesday to begin working, but a spokesman for Mr. Cantor, Doug Heye, said no decision had been made on how to proceed.

Read More..

No surprise: YouTube, Angry Birds, Instagram and Facebook among 2012′s top apps

Title Post: No surprise: YouTube, Angry Birds, Instagram and Facebook among 2012′s top apps
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Playboy Hugh Hefner marries his 'runaway bride'

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hugh Hefner is celebrating the new year as a married man once again.

The 86-year-old Playboy magazine founder exchanged vows with his "runaway bride," Crystal Harris, at a private Playboy Mansion ceremony on New Year's Eve. Harris, a 26-year-old "Playmate of the Month" in 2009, broke off a previous engagement to Hefner just before they were to be married in 2011.

Playboy said on Tuesday that the couple celebrated at a New Year's Eve party at the mansion with guests that included comic Jon Lovitz, Gene Simmons of KISS and baseball star Evan Longoria.

The bride wore a strapless gown in soft pink, Hefner a black tux. Hefner's been married twice before but lived the single life between 1959 and 1989.

Read More..

Hispanic Pregnancies Fall in U.S. as Women Choose Smaller Families

ORLANDO, Fla. — Hispanic women in the United States, who have generally had the highest fertility rates in the country, are choosing to have fewer children. Both immigrant and native-born Latinas had steeper birthrate declines from 2007 to 2010 than other groups, including non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Asians, a drop some demographers and sociologists attribute to changes in the views of many Hispanic women about motherhood.

As a result, in 2011, the American birthrate hit a record low, with 63 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, led by the decline in births to immigrant women. The national birthrate is now about half what it was during the baby boom years, when it peaked in 1957 at 122.7 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age.

The decline in birthrates was steepest among Mexican-American women and women who immigrated from Mexico, at 25.7 percent. This has reversed a trend in which immigrant mothers accounted for a rising share of births in the United States, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center. In 2010, birthrates among all Hispanics reached their lowest level in 20 years, the center found.

The sudden drop-off, which coincided with the onset of the recession, suggests that attitudes have changed since the days when older generations of Latinos prized large families and more closely followed Roman Catholic teachings, which forbid artificial contraception.

Interviews with young Latinas, as well as reproductive health experts, show that the reasons for deciding to have fewer children are many, involving greater access to information about contraceptives and women’s health, as well as higher education.

When Marucci Guzman decided to marry Tom Beard here seven years ago, the idea of having a large family — a Guzman tradition back in Puerto Rico — was out of the question.

“We thought one, maybe two,” said Ms. Guzman Beard, who gave birth to a daughter, Attalai, four years ago.

Asked whether Attalai might ever get her wish for a little brother or sister, Ms. Guzman Beard, 29, a vice president at a public service organization, said: “I want to go to law school. I’m married. I work. When do I have time?”

The decisions were not made in a vacuum but amid a sputtering economy, which, interviewees said, weighed heavily on their minds.

Latinos suffered larger percentage declines in household wealth than white, black or Asian households from 2005 to 2009, and, according to the Pew report, their rates of poverty and unemployment also grew more sharply after the recession began.

Prolonged recessions do produce dips in the birthrate, but a drop as large as Latinos have experienced is atypical, said William H. Frey, a sociologist and demographer at the Brookings Institution. “It is surprising,” Mr. Frey said. “When you hear about a decrease in the birthrate, you don’t expect Latinos to be at the forefront of the trend.”

D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer at the Pew Research Center and an author of the report, said that in past recessions, when overall fertility dipped, “it bounced back over time when the economy got better.”

“If history repeats itself, that will happen again,” she said.

But to Mr. Frey, the decrease has signaled much about the aspirations of young Latinos to become full and permanent members of the upwardly mobile middle class, despite the challenges posed by the struggling economy.

Jersey Garcia, a 37-year-old public health worker in Miami, is in the first generation of her family to live permanently outside of the Dominican Republic, where her maternal and paternal grandmothers had a total of 27 children.

“I have two right now,” Ms. Garcia said. “It’s just a good number that I can handle.”

“Before, I probably would have been pressured to have more,” she added. “I think living in the United States, I don’t have family members close by to help me, and it takes a village to raise a child. So the feeling is, keep what you have right now.”

But that has not been easy. Even with health insurance, Ms. Garcia’s preferred method of long-term birth control, an IUD, has been unaffordable. Birth control pills, too, with a $50 co-payment a month, were too costly for her budget. “I couldn’t afford it,” she said. “So what I’ve been doing is condoms.”

According to research by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the overwhelming majority of Latinas have used contraception at some point in their lives, but they face economic barriers to consistent use. As a consequence, Latinas still experience unintended pregnancy at a rate higher than non-Hispanic whites, according to the institute.

And while the share of births to teenage mothers has dropped over the past two decades for all women, the highest share of births to teenage mothers is among native-born Hispanics.

“There are still a lot of barriers to information and access to contraception that exist,” said Jessica Gonzáles-Rojas, 36, the executive director of the institute, who has one son. “We still need to do a lot of work.”

Read More..

DealBook: Major Investigations Could Bring Penalties in 2013

It is not really of question of whether there will be a major white-collar crime that captures the public’s attention in 2013; it’s a question of when and how costly it will be.

If the cases of 2012 can serve as a guide, too many loopholes in the system allow fraud to go undetected.

Take for instance the onetime futures trading firm PFGBest, whose founder confessed to having committed fraud for years at the company, which has about $200 million missing from its accounts. Though futures regulators have spent months wringing their hands on how such a fraud could have gone on for so long, the fact remains that some financiers may keep one step ahead of law enforcement when it comes to white-collar crimes.

Federal prosecutors, however, are likely to remain strongly focused on the insider trading cases. The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan has already racked up an impressive record of winning convictions in every insider trading case that went to trial. They are even winning cases the old-fashioned way by relying primarily on the testimony of cooperating witnesses.

The one black eye that remains for the government is the lack of signature prosecutions emerging from the near collapse of the financial system in 2008. Although the Justice Department and the New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, have filed civil cases seeking billions in recovery for the sale of questionable securities tied to toxic subprime mortgages, the cases are likely to take years to play out.

Looking ahead to 2013, several major investigations remain open and are likely to bring significant criminal or civil penalties:

Still More to Come on Libor

The investigation of manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, had been moving quietly along until the British bank Barclays announced a $450 million settlement in June 2012. The subsequent firestorm in Parliament over the bank’s conduct led to the resignation of its chief executive, Robert E. Diamond Jr., and a push to shift control of the interest rate mechanism into more trustworthy hands.

In hindsight, Barclays got off easily as the first bank to reach a settlement, although it probably did not feel like it in the days after the announcement. UBS has become the new focus of attention for Libor manipulation; it recently paid a $1.5 billion settlement, and its Japanese subsidiary pleaded guilty to fraud.
Other banks caught up in the investigation have to be dreading whether the UBS settlement is the new benchmark. If so, then a billion dollars may be the starting point for any negotiations with the Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which have been leading the investigation in this country. Add to that any penalties assessed by foreign regulators, and the cost of resolving the investigation will be a significant hit to the bottom line of some global banks.

More ominous is the possibility that the Justice Department will demand guilty pleas from banks. That requires an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, which could prove to be useful in the numerous civil lawsuits that have been filed against the banks, meaning more money could be paid out to resolve those cases.

Tackling Bribery and Corruption

As The New York Times has detailed, Wal-Mart is dealing with significant corruption issues in its Mexican subsidiary. The company also acknowledged that it was reviewing its global operations, and had already spent nearly $100 million on its internal investigation.

Though the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was enacted in 1977, only in the past few years have the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission started to extract significant penalties, often in sectors that had not previously been involved in overseas bribery cases.

For example, among the settlements in 2012 included four companies in the medical field, which all paid significant penalties: Smith & Nephew, $22 million; Biomet, $22.8 million; Pfizer, $60 million; and Eli Lilly, $29 million.

As more companies get caught up in these investigations, it will be interesting to see whether the courts punish repeat offenders more harshly. For instance, I.B.M. reached settlements with the S.E.C. in 2000 and again in 2011 over violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. A federal district judge in Washington is demanding greater accountability from the company before he will approve the proposed resolution of the case.

Insider Trading in the Cross Hairs

Although insider trading cases have become a staple of federal action in the last three years, the new attention has been on Steven A. Cohen and his hedge fund firm, SAC Capital.

Prosecutors have charged a number of defendants with ties to SAC, and came close to Mr. Cohen in the insider trading indictment of the portfolio manager Mathew Martoma, Although Mr. Cohen is not named in the charges, prosecutors went out of their way to describe the “Hedge Fund Owner” as someone involved in the trading at issue, a sure sign the government is focusing on him.

Mr. Martoma’s lawyer said his client was innocent, which probably means that he will not cooperate with the government if it pursues a case against Mr. Cohen. Without that path to build a case, an interesting question is whether the S.E.C. will use its authority to hold SAC responsible as a “controlling person” for insider trading by its employees, which could result in a triple penalty being imposed. The firm received a so-called Wells notice stating that the agency is considering civil charges.

If the S.E.C. files such a case, this would be a new front in the fight over insider trading that shifts attention to the hedge funds and investment firms that employ the people who capitalized on confidential information. That could potentially expose firms to enormous liability even if their managers were not specifically aware of any legal violations.

Rogue Traders

Every year seems to bring news of a major trading loss as a result of a breakdown in the internal controls at a major financial institution. In 2011, UBS revealed that actions by Kweku Adoboli, a trader in London, cost the bank about $2.3 billion. In 2012, JPMorgan Chase said that a hedging strategy by traders in London had cost the bank at least $6 billion in losses.

On a smaller scale, the boutique brokerage firm Rochdale Securities suffered a $5 million loss when a trader bought about $1 billion in Apple shares, far beyond what he was permitted to do.

Although many of the outsize losses hurt banks’ shareholders rather than the general public, such actions have drawn public calls for accountability.

Prosecutors in London successfully obtained a conviction against Mr. Adoboli this year, and UBS was fined $47.5 million over failing to prevent the actions.

More cases like these are likely to play out. As DealBook reported in October, investigators are looking into the actions of four people who previously worked for JPMorgan in London.

The nature of the markets may allow for more such blowups. Lightning-fast electronic trading allows huge positions to be built up in minutes, heightening the risk of sizable losses if anything goes awry.

And even when there is no sign of intentional wrongdoing, a small error can easily affect global markets. A software glitch at Knight Capital ended up costing the firm about $460 million, while memories of the 2010 “flash crash” are still fresh.

As the new year comes, white-collar cases will continue to serve up new object lessons of the perils and the pitfalls of the financial system. Some will come as a result of creative maneuverings by financiers, and some may call into question whether regulators are effectively overseeing the markets.

---

Read More..

Shape of Fiscal Deal Emerging, but Spending Still at Issue

WASHINGTON — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, on Monday reached agreement on a tentative deal to stave off large tax increases starting on Tuesday, but remained stuck on whether and how to stop $110 billion in across-the-board spending cuts in 2013, an official familiar with the negotiations said.

Under the emerging deal, income taxes would rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent on income over $400,000 for single people and $450,000 for couples. Above those income levels, dividends and capital gains tax rates would also rise, to 20 percent from 15 percent.

Speaking at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, President Obama took note of the progress.

“Today it appears that an agreement to prevent this New Year’s tax hike is within sight, but it is not done,” he said. “There are still issues left to resolve, but we are hopeful that Congress can get it done. But it is not done.”

The official familiar with the deal stressed that taxes would rise in some sense on the top 2 percent of earners, as Mr. Obama had wanted. That is because the deal would reinstate provisions to tax law, ended by the Bush tax cuts of 2001, that phase out personal exemptions and deductions for the affluent. Those phaseouts, under the agreement, would begin at $250,000 for single people and $300,000 for couples.

The estate tax would also rise, but considerably less than Democrats had wanted. The value of estates over $5 million would be taxed at 40 percent, up from the current 35 percent. Democrats had wanted a 45 percent rate on inheritances larger than $3.5 million.

Under the deal, the new rates on income, investment and inheritances would be permanent.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats would be granted a five-year extension of tax cuts they won in the 2009 stimulus law for middle-class and working-poor taxpayers. Those include a child credit that goes out as a check to workers who do not earn enough money to pay income taxes, an expanded earned income credit and a refundable credit for tuition.

Democrats also secured a full year’s extension of unemployment insurance without strings attached, a $30 billion cost.

All combined, the official said, the new package would raise about $600 billion over 10 years, compared to the revenue generated if current tax levels were simply extended. That, he said, is 85 percent of the revenue Democrats had wanted to raise under Mr. Obama’s initial proposal, which would have raised around $700 billion.

In addition, the deal would stave off sharp cuts for one year to health care providers who treat Medicare patients. That cost, about $30 billion, would be paid for with cuts to other health care programs.

The official said all those provisions are sealed, but a big issue remains open: what to do about automatic spending cuts. Democrats, including the White House, are demanding a one-year “pause” to give negotiators time to strike a broader deficit reduction deal. Republicans have offered a three-month hiatus but no more.

“It would be crazy to not come together on this,” the official said.

Democrats are more likely to protest the deal than Republicans. Liberals are already complaining that almost all of the Bush tax cuts would be made permanent, but that Democratic tax cuts secured in the stimulus law get only a five-year lease on life. Richard L. Trumka, the head of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., is demanding a separate vote to kill any cut to the estate tax, which goes to the richest of the rich.

Senator Tom Harkin, a liberal Democrat from Iowa, earlier Monday warned that the negotiations were producing what “looks like a very bad deal the way this is shaping up.”

Some conservatives in the House will almost immediately criticize the deal, saying it lacks sufficient spending cuts. House leaders were waiting to get full details of any agreement and were particularly interested in details on the sequester.

Robert Pear, John M. Broder and Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.

Read More..

Angry Birds, YouTube among top apps of 2012

TORONTO (Reuters) – Angry Birds, Instagram and Facebook continued to be among the most downloaded apps of the year but rising stars also earned coveted spots on smartphones and tablets.

This year consumers spent on average two hours each day using mobile applications, an increase of 35 percent over last year, according to analytics firm Flurry. The number is expected to continue growing in 2013.

“2012 was a transformative tipping point in the way consumers use apps,” said Craig Palli, a vice president at mobile marketing company Fiksu, adding that the biggest shift is in consumers’ eagerness to turn to apps for a broad range of day-to-day tasks.

Categories such as social networking, media and entertainment, photo editing, and games, continued to captivate consumer interest, with YouTube and Angry Birds being the top free and paid apps respectively at Apple’s App Store.

Meanwhile, several apps released this year quickly joined the ranks of the top downloaded and revenue grossing apps of the year.

The game Draw Something for iPhone and Android quickly gained widespread popularity when it was released in February, and despite dropping off, is still the second most downloaded paid app of the year Android and Apple devices.

“It had a big run and other multi-player puzzle-oriented games like newcomers LetterPress and ScrambleWithFriends proved popular, too,” Palli said. “But in many respects these titles were inspired by the more revolutionary Words With Friends.”

Songza, a music-discovery app for iPhone, Android and Kindle Fire, saw significant growth in both the United States and Canada, where it is now one of the top free apps on the App Store.

Paper, a sketchbook app for the iPad, is estimated to be one of the top grossing apps released this year according to Distimo, an app analytics company. It was named by Apple as the iPad app of the year.

But the real revolution, according to Palli, is among consumers who are eager to turn to apps for their day-to-day tasks, such as finding a taxi or hotel, following current events or increasingly, making payments.

“It is really consumers who are turning to apps first and traditional methods second,” said Palli.

Uber and Hailo, which allow users to book limos and taxis, and AirBnB and HotelTonight, for finding accommodations, began to move mainstream in 2012, Palli said.

Payment apps such as Square, and Apple’s introduction of the Passbook has further positioned the smartphone as a digital wallet.

This year, during major events such as the Olympics, Hurricane Sandy and the U.S. presidential election, the top apps on the App Store reflected those events, said Palli, showing the demand for keeping up with current events through apps.

(Editing by Patricia Reaney and Bill Trott)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Angry Birds, YouTube among top apps of 2012
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Armstrong better, Green Day to resume tour in 2013

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Green Day is going back out on the road.

The Grammy-winning punk band announced new tour dates Monday.

The band canceled the rest of its 2012 club schedule and postponed the start of a 2013 arena tour after singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong's substance abuse problems emerged publicly in September when he had a profane meltdown on the stage of the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas.

Armstrong told fans in a statement Monday that he's "getting better every day" and "the show must go on."

The tour is scheduled to begin March 28 at the Allstate Arena in the Chicago area.

The band released its most recent album, "Tre," on Dec. 11, more than a month ahead of schedule.

Read More..

Memphis Aims to Be a Friendlier Place for Cyclists

Lance Murphey for The New York Times

The Shelby Farms Greenline, which replaced a Memphis rail line.

MEMPHIS — John Jordan, a 64-year-old condo appraiser here, has been pedaling his cruiser bicycle around town nearly every day, tooling about at lunchtime or zipping to downtown appointments.

“It’s my cholesterol-lowering device,” said Mr. Jordan, clad in a leather vest and wearing a bright white beard. “The problem is, the city needs to educate motorists to not run over” the bicyclists.

Bike-friendly behavior has never come naturally to Memphis, which has long been among the country’s most perilous places for cyclists. In recent years, though, riders have taken to the streets like never before, spurred by a mayor who has worked to change the way residents think about commuting.

Mayor A. C. Wharton Jr., elected in 2009, assumed office a year after Bicycling magazine named Memphis one of the worst cities in America for cyclists, not the first time the city had received such a biking dishonor. But Mr. Wharton spied an opportunity.

In 2008, Memphis had a mile and a half of bike lanes. There are now about 50 miles of dedicated lanes, and about 160 miles when trails and shared roads are included. The bulk of the nearly $1 million investment came from stimulus money and other federal sources, and Shelby County, which includes Memphis, was recently awarded an additional $4.7 million for bike projects.

In June, federal officials awarded Memphis $15 million to turn part of the steel truss Harahan Bridge, which spans the Mississippi River, into a bike and pedestrian crossing. Scheduled to open in about two years, the $30 million project will link downtown Memphis with West Memphis, Ark.

“We need to make biking part of our DNA,” Mr. Wharton said. “I’m trying to build a city for the people who will be running it 5, 10, 15 years from now. And in a region known to some for rigid thinking, the receptivity has been remarkable.”

City planners are using bike lanes as an economic development tool, setting the stage for new stores and enhanced urban vibrancy, said Kyle Wagenschutz, the city’s bike-pedestrian coordinator, a position the mayor created.

“The cycling advocates have been vocal the past 10 years, but nothing ever happened,” Mr. Wagenschutz said. “It took a change of political will to catalyze the movement.”

Memphis, with a population of 650,000, is often cited among the unhealthiest, most crime-ridden and most auto-centric cities in the country. Investments in bicycling are being viewed here as a way to promote healthy habits, community bonds and greater environmental stewardship.

But as city leaders struggle with a sprawling landscape — Memphis covers about the same amount of land as Dallas, yet has half the population — their persistence has run up against another bedeviling factor: merchants and others who are disgruntled about the lanes.

A clash between merchants and bike advocates flared last year after the mayor announced new bike lanes on Madison Avenue, a commercial artery, that would remove two traffic lanes. Many merchants, like Eric Vernon, who runs the Bar-B-Q Shop, feared that removing car lanes would hurt businesses and cause parking confusion. Mr. Vernon said that sales had not fallen significantly since the bike lanes were installed, but that he thought merchants were left out of the process.

On McLean Boulevard, a narrow residential strip where roadside parking was replaced by bike paths, homeowners cried foul. The city reached a compromise with residents in which parking was outlawed during the day but permitted at night, when fewer cyclists were out. Mr. Wagenschutz called the nocturnal arrangement a “Cinderella lane.”

Some residents, however, were not mollified. “I’m not against bike lanes, but we’re isolated because there’s no place to park,” said Carey Potter, 53, a longtime resident who started a petition to reinstate full-time parking.

The changes have been panned by some members of the City Council. Councilman Jim Strickland went as far as to say that the bike signs that dot the streets add “to the blight of our city.”

Tensions aside, the mayor’s office says that the potential economic ripple effect of bike lanes is proof that they are a sound investment.

A study in 2011 by the University of Massachusetts found that building bike lanes created more jobs — about 11 per $1 million spent — than any other type of road project. Several bike shops here have expanded to accommodate new cyclists, including Midtown Bike Company, which recently moved to a location three times the size of its former one. “The new lanes have been great for business,” said the manager, Daniel Duckworth.

Wanda Rushing, a professor at the University of Memphis and an expert on urban change in the South, said bike improvements were of a piece with a development model sweeping the region: bolstering transportation infrastructure and population density in the inner city.

“Memphis is not alone in acknowledging that sprawl is not sustainable,” Dr. Rushing said. “Economic necessity is a pretty good melding substance.”

Read More..

Shape of Fiscal Deal Emerging, but Spending Still at Issue

WASHINGTON — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, on Monday reached agreement on a tentative deal to stave off large tax increases starting on Tuesday, but remained stuck on whether and how to stop $110 billion in across-the-board spending cuts in 2013, an official familiar with the negotiations said.

Under the emerging deal, income taxes would rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent on income over $400,000 for single people and $450,000 for couples. Above those income levels, dividends and capital gains tax rates would also rise, to 20 percent from 15 percent.

Speaking at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, President Obama took note of the progress.

“Today it appears that an agreement to prevent this New Year’s tax hike is within sight, but it is not done,” he said. “There are still issues left to resolve, but we are hopeful that Congress can get it done. But it is not done.”

The official familiar with the deal stressed that taxes would rise in some sense on the top 2 percent of earners, as Mr. Obama had wanted. That is because the deal would reinstate provisions to tax law, ended by the Bush tax cuts of 2001, that phase out personal exemptions and deductions for the affluent. Those phaseouts, under the agreement, would begin at $250,000 for single people and $300,000 for couples.

The estate tax would also rise, but considerably less than Democrats had wanted. The value of estates over $5 million would be taxed at 40 percent, up from the current 35 percent. Democrats had wanted a 45 percent rate on inheritances larger than $3.5 million.

Under the deal, the new rates on income, investment and inheritances would be permanent.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats would be granted a five-year extension of tax cuts they won in the 2009 stimulus law for middle-class and working-poor taxpayers. Those include a child credit that goes out as a check to workers who do not earn enough money to pay income taxes, an expanded earned income credit and a refundable credit for tuition.

Democrats also secured a full year’s extension of unemployment insurance without strings attached, a $30 billion cost.

All combined, the official said, the new package would raise about $600 billion over 10 years, compared to the revenue generated if current tax levels were simply extended. That, he said, is 85 percent of the revenue Democrats had wanted to raise under Mr. Obama’s initial proposal, which would have raised around $700 billion.

In addition, the deal would stave off sharp cuts for one year to health care providers who treat Medicare patients. That cost, about $30 billion, would be paid for with cuts to other health care programs.

The official said all those provisions are sealed, but a big issue remains open: what to do about automatic spending cuts. Democrats, including the White House, are demanding a one-year “pause” to give negotiators time to strike a broader deficit reduction deal. Republicans have offered a three-month hiatus but no more.

“It would be crazy to not come together on this,” the official said.

Democrats are more likely to protest the deal than Republicans. Liberals are already complaining that almost all of the Bush tax cuts would be made permanent, but that Democratic tax cuts secured in the stimulus law get only a five-year lease on life. Richard L. Trumka, the head of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., is demanding a separate vote to kill any cut to the estate tax, which goes to the richest of the rich.

Senator Tom Harkin, a liberal Democrat from Iowa, earlier Monday warned that the negotiations were producing what “looks like a very bad deal the way this is shaping up.”

Some conservatives in the House will almost immediately criticize the deal, saying it lacks sufficient spending cuts. House leaders were waiting to get full details of any agreement and were particularly interested in details on the sequester.

Robert Pear, John M. Broder and Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.

Read More..