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South African Journal of Child Health
On-line version ISSN 1999-7671
Print version ISSN 1994-3032
S. Afr. j. child health vol.8 n.3 Cape Town Sep. 2014
Blood pressure profile in children aged 3 - 5 years: Relationship to age, weight, height, gender and body mass index
P N C ManyikeI; C O OkikeII; J M ChinawaIII; I E ObiIV; U C UkohV
IMBBS, FWACP; Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, Nigeria
IIMBBS, FWACP; Federal Medical Centre, Asaba, Nigeria
IIIMBBS, FMCPaed; Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, University of Nigeria/University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Ituku-Ozalla, Nigeria
IVMBBS, FMCPH; Department of Community Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Nigeria/University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Ituku-Ozalla, Nigeria
VMBBS; Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, Nigeria
BACKGROUND: Blood pressure measurement is not commonly done in children. Most of the studies done in Nigeria so far on blood pressure and hypertension are in older children.
OBJECTIVES: To determine the blood pressure profile in children aged 3 - 5 years, establish the relationship between their blood pressure and age, body mass index (BMI), height, weight and gender, and compare the results with available values.
METHODS: A total of 603 apparently healthy nursery school children aged 3 - 5 years were randomly recruited from three nursery schools: two in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, and one in Asaba, Delta State. Their blood pressure, height and weight were measured and their BMI calculated.
RESULTS: Of the 603 pupils, 311 (51.6%) were males and 292 (48.4%) were females. Blood pressure ranged from 70/40 to 120/90, with mean (standard deviation) systolic values for pupils aged 3 years 87.5 (8.3) mmHg, aged 4 years 93.5 (8.5) mmHg and aged 5 years 93.5 (8.4) mmHg, and mean diastolic values for pupils aged 3 years 55.1 (9.1) mmHg, aged 4 years 61.2 (8.3) mmHg and aged 5 years 61.5 (7.8) mmHg. No gender difference was found, but age, height and weight all correlated positively with blood pressure. The values found in this study were similar to those in the literature.
CONCLUSION: The mean systolic and diastolic blood pressures of the age group studied were 91.3 (8.9) mmHg and 59.0 (9.0) mmHg. The blood pressure values obtained in this study were similar to published values in the literature.
Blood pressure (BP) measurement is a necessary part of the physical examination of children.[1,2] The most obvious statement about children's BP is that it is not taken seriously.[3] There is a lack of awareness of hypertension in children,[4] with a common belief that measurement of BP in infants and children is difficult and time consuming, with results usually normal.[3] However, measurement of BP in children merely requires patience, practice and an appropriate cuff size of 3 - 13 cm wide.[3] BP varies with age,[4,5] height[6] and sex,[7] progressively increasing from infants to adolescents.[8,9]
The prevalence of hypertension in childhood is probably between 1% and 3%,[8] but the majority of children will have mild increases in BP and can be regarded as having primary (essential) hypertension.[9] Primary hypertension in childhood is being increasingly recognised, is found to cluster in families and is associated with obesity.[9] The prevalence of hypertension increases progressively with increasing body mass index (BMI); some studies have detected hypertension in over 30% of obese children (BMI >95th percentile)[10-12]
In infants and young children, systemic hypertension is uncommon, but when present, it is usually indicative of an underlying disease.[4] The American Heart Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend that children have their BPs checked regularly from 3 years old onwards.[13] The normal auscultatory method can be carried out over the age of 3 years but is more difficult in younger children, in whom sedation may be necessary.[14]
Very few studies have been done in Nigeria on BP in this particular age group (3 - 5 years old), hence the reason for this study.
This is a multicentre, cross-sectional, descriptive study done between July 2012 and December 2012. Nursery school children between the ages of 3 years and 5 years from a random selection of schools comprised the study population. Those below 3 years and those above 5 years were not recruited.
Consent was obtained from the school authority, who informed the parents of the children about the study; the parents' consent was also obtained. Ethical clearance for the study was obtained from the Research and Ethical Committee of Ebonyi State University.
Children who cried or refused to participate were not recruited. The BP, weight and height of randomly selected, cooperative children were measured. An aneroid sphygmomanometer with standardised calibrations (Hospital and Home Care; CEO197 certified) was used to measure the BP. The cuff covered two-thirds of the right upper arm. Phase 1 and phase 5 of the Korotkoff sounds were used to determine the systolic and the diastolic BPs, respectively. The children's BP was taken in the school setting with the children relaxed and in the sitting position. BP measurements were done in the morning. Three consecutive readings were taken and the average BP calculated. Weight and height were measured with a stadiometer, with the children's shoes off. BMI was calculated using the formula: BMI = weight (kg)/height2 (m).
Data were analysed with SPSS software, version 20 (California, US).
Of a total of 603 children aged 3 - 5 years included in the study, 311 (51.6%) were males and 292 (48.4%) were females. The children ranged in height from 78 cm to 121 cm, with a mean of 103.4 cm. Weight ranged from 10.0 kg to 32.0 kg, with a mean of 17.4 kg, and BMI ranged from 11.2 to 32.9, with a mean of 16.3.
BP ranged from 70/40 mmHg to 120/90 mmHg, with a mean (standard deviation (SD) systolic pressure of 91.3 (8.9) mmHg (range 82.4 - 100.1 mmHg) and a mean diastolic pressure of 59.0 (9.0) mmHg (range 50.0 - 68.0 mmHg) (Table 1). Figs. 1 and 2 show box plots of systolic and diastolic pressures by gender and age.
A positive correlation between BP (systolic and diastolic) and age, BMI, height and weight was observed. There was no positive correlation between BP and gender with p>0.05.
Tables 2 - 5 show the percentiles constructed for systolic pressure and diastolic pressure by gender, height, weight and BMI.
In this study, we used a calibrated, certified aneroid sphygmomanometer for the BP measurements. Shah et al.,[15] working in America, noted that mean mercury and aneroid systolic and diastolic BPs were highly correlated. For the entire group, there was no significant difference in mean systolic BP using the aneroid device.
In our study, the mean systolic BP was 91.28 (8.86) mmHg (range 82.42 -100.14 mmHg), with a mean diastolic of 59.00 (9.03) mmHg (range 49.97 - 68.03 mmHg). These data are similar to Aderele and Seriki's,[16] who studied 100 children aged 3 - 7 years and obtained mean systolic and diastolic BPs of 89 mmHg and 55 mmHg, respectively. Similarly, Rosner et al.[17] found mean systolic and diastolic BPs of 93.4 mmHg and 53.6 mmHg, respectively, for 5-year-old black males, and 93.1 mmHg and 54.2 mmHg for 5-year-old black females. These do not differ significantly from the values measured in our 5-year-old participants.
We noted no gender difference in BP from our study. Abdurrahman and Ochoga[18] also noted no gender difference with BP in their study. Similarly, Hamidu et al.,[9] in their study on children aged 5 - 6 years, observed no gender difference in mean systolic BPs, but reported a mean diastolic BP of 97 (5) mmHg (higher than systolic) in the females. In their study, they found that BP increased with age, and that gender did not influence BP, which is in agreement with our study.
Goss[13] noted that the upper limit for normal systolic pressure in children aged 3 - 5 years ranged from 104 mmHg to 116 mmHg, depending on height and gender, while the upper limit for diastolic pressure ranged from 63 mmHg to 74 mmHg. Huff[19] noted a systolic BP of 99 mmHg and a diastolic BP of 65 mmHg. Ogunkunle et al.,[20] in their study on children aged 36 - 47 months, found that gender did not affect the BP, but age, height and weight all correlated positively with BP, also in agreement with our study. In addition, 3.2% and 1.7% of their study population had systolic and diastolic hypertension, respectively, while our study recorded 0.3% for systolic hypertension and 2.7% for diastolic hypertension, which brings the total prevalence to 3%. These proportions do not differ significantly from published values.[7,8]
We obtained a mean height of 78 cm and mean weight of 10 kg in our study, which showed stunting and wasting, respectively, in some of our 3-year-old participants. This is not surprising as malnutrition is still a public health issue in Nigeria. This is buttressed by the fact that nearly 20 million children are severely acutely malnourished worldwide, mostly in south Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa.[21]
Primary or essential hypertension in childhood is being increasingly recognised, is found to cluster in families and is associated with obesity.[9] Recent studies have also inferred that because of more frequent routine BP recordings in children, mild essential or primary hypertension is being increasingly diagnosed, and is stated to be the most common cause of high BP in children.[22]
The values in our study and other studies cited are normal and range between the published 50th and 90th age-specific percentiles of BP in children aged 1 - 13 years.[7]
Routine BP measurement should be a key aspect of physical examination of children since they are not immune from essential hypertension. This will allow for early detection of essential or primary hypertension and proper follow-up, especially considering that childhood hypertension can track into adulthood.
1. Balu HA. Clinical Methods in Pediatric Diagnosis. Delhi: CBS Publishers, 1990:69. [ Links ]
2. Frese EM, Fick A, Sadowsky HS. Blood pressure measurement guidelines for physical therapists. Cardiopulm Phys Ther J 2011;22(2):5-12. [ Links ]
3. Gill D, O'Brien N. Paediatric Clinical Examination Made Easy, 5th ed. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 2007:108. [ Links ]
4. Bernstein D. Diseases of the peripheral vascular system: Hypertension. In: Kliegman B, Jenson S, eds. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. 18th ed. Philadelphia: Saunders, 2007:1988-1995. [ Links ]
5. Obika LF. Pattern of paediatric blood pressure in rural, semi-urban and urban communities in Ilorin, Nigeria. Afr J Med Med Sci 1995;24(4):372-377. [ Links ]
6. Luma GB, Spiotta RT. Hypertension in children and adolescents. Am Fam Physician 2005;5:1-11. [ Links ]
7. Din-Dzietham R, Liu Y, Bielo MV, Shamsa F. High blood pressure trends in children and adolescents in national surveys, 1963 to 2002. Circulation 2007;116(13):1488-1496. [ Links ]
8. Odetunde OI, Neboh EE, Chinawa JM, Okafor HU, Odetunde OA, Ezenwosu, Ekwochi U. Elevated arterial blood pressure and body mass index among Nigerian preschool children population. BMC Pediatrics 2014;14:64. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2431-14-64] [ Links ]
9. Hamidu LJ, Okoro EO, Ali MA. Blood pressure profile in Nigerian children. East Afr Med J 2000;77(4):180-184. [ Links ]
10. Sorof J, Daniels S. Obesity hypertension in children: A problem of epidemic proportions. Hypertension 2002;40(4):441-447. [ Links ]
11. Freedman DS, Dietz WH, Srinivasan SR, Berenson GS. The relation of overweight to cardiovascular risk factors among children and adolescents: The Bogalusa Heart Study. Pediatrics 1999;103(6 Pt 1):1175-1182. [ Links ]
12. Graf C, Rost SV, Koch B, et al. Data from the StEP TWO programme showing the effect on blood pressure and different parameters for obesity in overweight and obese primary school children. Cardiol Young 2005;15(3):291-298. [ Links ]
13. Goss HV. Normal Blood Pressure Range for Children. http://www.livestrong.com/article/22730 (accessed 30 November 2013). [ Links ]
14. Forfar JO. History taking, physical examination and screening. In: Campbell AGM, Neil M (eds). Forfar and Arniel's Textbook of Pediatrics, 4th ed. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 1992:22. [ Links ]
15. Shah AS, Dolan LM, D'Agostino RB Jr, et al. Comparison of mercury and aneroid blood pressure measurements in youth. Pediatrics 2012;129(5);1205-1210. [http:dx.doi.org/10.1542/peds.2011-3087] [ Links ]
16. Aderele WI, Seriki O. Hypertension in Nigerian children. Arch Dis Child 1994;49(4):313-317. [ Links ]
17. Rosner B, Prineas R, Daniels SR, Loggie J. Blood pressure differences between blacks and whites in relation to body size among US children and adolescents. Am J Epidemiol 2000;151(10):1007-1019. [ Links ]
18. Abdurrahman MB, Ochoga SA. Casual blood pressure in school children in Kaduna, Nigeria. Trop Geogr Med 1978;30(3):313-324. [ Links ]
19. Huff R. Normal blood pressure values in children. http://www.ehow.com/about5571920 (accessed 30 November 2013). [ Links ]
20. Ogunkunle O, Odutola A, Orimadegun A. Pattern of blood pressure in apparently healthy Nigerian children aged 1 - 5 years. Niger J Paediatr 2007;34(1&2):14-23. [ Links ]
21. Collins S. Changing the way we address severe malnutrition during famine. Lancet 2001;358(9280):498-501. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(01)05630-6] [ Links ]
22. Kaplan NM, Devereux RB, Miller HS. Task Force 4: Systemic hypertension. J Am Col Cardiol 1994:24(4);885-888. [ Links ]
JM Chinawa


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Eddie Murphy has been named and shamed as Hollywood's most overpaid actor, according to money magazine Forbes.
The annual list is calculated by weighing a star's paycheck against the money generated by his or her ticket sales at the box office, and thanks to box office bombs like "Imagine That," "A Thousand Words" and "Meet Dave," Murphy only averaged an estimated return of $2.30 for every $1 earned.
The poll marks a step in the wrong direction for Murphy, who was second on last year's Forbes list behind Drew Barrymore. She fell out of the top 10 this year due to the fact she took time away from making movies to become a mom.
Faring slightly better is Katherine Heigl in second place – her most recent films, "One for the Money," "New Year's Eve" and "Life as We Know It," returned $3.40 for every dollar.
Oscar winners Reese Witherspoon and Sandra Bullock are surprising entries at three and four, respectively, while funnyman Jack Black rounds out the top five.


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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court gave a Christian college in Illinois a temporary exemption from birth control coverage required by President Barack Obama's health reform law, days after ruling that for-profit employers can opt out for religious reasons.
The court said on Thursday in a split 6-3 decision by the justices that Wheaton College, which has objected on religious grounds, did not have to comply with the government compromise process for nonprofit groups with religious affiliations while litigation continues, an unsigned order showed.
On Monday, the court said on a 5-4 vote that closely held for-profit corporations could obtain an exemption based on the religious beliefs of their owners. By granting Wheaton College's request, the court indicated that its decision does not dictate the outcome of litigation involving dozens of nonprofit groups.
Under the healthcare law, known as Obamacare, employers must provide health insurance policies that cover preventive services for women, including contraception and sterilization.
The administration had already crafted a compromise for religious-affiliated nonprofits that allows them to "self-certify" to their insurance carriers in a form that they object, on religious grounds, to providing contraception coverage. But various nonprofits, including Wheaton, said the act of signing the form also infringed on their religious rights.
The court said in its order that the college could instead send a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to state its religious objections. Employers would still be able to obtain contraceptive coverage via their health plans, the court said.
The court reached a similar outcome in January in a case brought by an order of Roman Catholic nuns called the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Elena Kagan. Sotomayor said the college had failed to meet the requirements for an injunction, adding that "thinking one's religious beliefs are substantially burdened – no matter how sincere or genuine that believe may be – does not make it so."
The unsigned order said the court's action "should not be construed as an expression of the court's views on the merits."
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham and Richard Chang)


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Muhlenberg stages a brisk 'Winter's Tale,' Nov. 20-24Director Troy Dwyer rewires Shakespeare's tragicomedy to speak to contemporary issues and audiences
Monday, November 11, 2013 09:58 AM
Toward the end of his career, Shakespeare broke away from the conventional rules of playwriting and wrote a series of plays that featured wild dramatic verse and then-contemporary humor. The epitome of this defiantly innovative approach was "The Winter's Tale," written around 1610, and coming to the Muhlenberg College mainstage Nov. 20-24.
"The play has a real spirit of experimentation and rebelliousness," says Troy Dwyer, who directs the production. "When they go see Shakespeare, many audience members brace themselves to do a lot of work. And often enough, modern productions make them."
Dwyer's aim, he says, is to allow the audience to relax and enjoy the playfulness of Shakespeare's writing.
"I want the audience to let us do the work," Dwyer says. "I want them to experience a strong sense of joy and understanding that they don't have to labor for. That joy can come from comedy or it can come from the thrill of genuinely absorbing drama."
"The Winter's Tale" is the story of two intertwined kingdoms gripped by an icy prophecy. A demon bear hunts its victims along the tree-lined shore of Bohemia. Hundreds of miles across the ocean in Sicilia, something just as nightmarish stalks a young queen – her husband's jealous madness. As both monsters pounce, Shakespeare's unpredictable fantasy is set into motion.
Part suspenseful tragedy, part rollicking comedy, part grisly fairy tale, the play defies convention while showcasing what Dwyer calls "some of the most breathtaking language ever heard on the English stage."
The show runs Nov. 20-24 in the Studio Theatre, Trexler Pavilion for Theatre & Dance at Muhlenberg College. In the interest of expediting the action, Dwyer has cut the play to a brisk two hours.
"Modern audiences are very different from 1610 audiences," Dwyer says. "They understand stories differently, and I think if you're going to do Shakespeare in 2013, you have to adapt to that different sensibility. That doesn't mean dumbing the play down or stripping out historical context. It just means being thoughtful about pacing and emphasis, and working to develop relatable characters."
Dwyer has also added choreography by Allison Berger and an original score by Sean Skahill for an enhanced multisensory experience.
"I want the audience to be pulled away from the dependence on language and narrative by providing other textures of experience," Dwyer says. For example, the play's infamous demon bear is depicted not by a large fuzzy costume but by the actors, through movement and music.
"The music and choreography makes it a more holistic and engaging experience for audiences," Skahill says. "Music can express what you can't get out through just talking."
Dwyer says the play closely examines the institution of marriage with its inherent issues of power and parity. He expands that exploration to modern-day issues of marriage equality by gender-swapping certain characters.
"The play is partly about marriage and who has a right to it," Dwyer says. "It's about the ways that marriage is both a privilege and a peril — about the mythic demands that get mapped onto the institution of marriage. The play's young lovers believe that marriage is something worth fighting for, which is a refrain we hear all the time in current discourse. I think the play helps us to disentangle some of the more oppressive threads woven into marriage vows."
Muhlenberg College's Theatre & Dance Department offers one of the top-rated college performance programs in the country, according to the Princeton Review rankings. Muhlenebrg is a liberal arts college of more than 2,200 students in Allentown, Pa., offering Bachelor of Arts degrees in theatre and dance. It has been named annually among the Fiske Guide to Colleges' top 20 small college programs in the United States.
"The Winter's Tale" runs Nov. 20-24 in the Studio Theatre, Trexler Pavilion for Theatre & Dance, Muhlenberg College, 2400 Chew St., Allentown.
Performances are Wednesday through Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets and information are available at 484-664-3333 or online.


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New York can be quite a shock to the system, especially when you're young, broke, and guided by the notion that you just might be the voice of your generation. Taking it in stride and dispensing Woody Allen-worthy one-liners along the way is Hannah, a 24-year-old NYC newbie played by director, producer, writer, and current zeitgeist geiger counter for millennials, Lena Dunham.
Girls follows Hannah and her posse as they navigate the thrillingly turbulent/utterly rudderless post-liberal-arts-B.A. years in the big city. They ponder such questions as: "If a guy I'm sleeping with never texts me back, is he my boyfriend?" and "How long can I survive without eating lunch?" They also do their best to fend off "expert advice" and withering comments from bosses, parents, and gynecologists alike. Sample exchange:
Life Expert: "I could change the world, one extremely dumb girl at a time. And when I look at you, I see a pupil."
Hannah: "Thank you."
Executive produced by Judd Apatow, Girls also stars Jemima Kirke (of Dunham's Tiny Furniture; Simon's daughter (Google it!)), Allison Williams (Brian's daughter), and Zosia Mamet (of Mad Men; David's daughter) as Hannah's BFFs Jessa, Marnie, and Shoshanna, and Adam Driver (of J. Edgar) as Adam, the egregiously sexy non-texter.
Make a best-girls-and-beers date with the Dunham-written and -directed series premiere of Girls, this Sunday, April 15, at 10:30 PM—only on HBO.


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Silent Observer (sufferer), No More!
Author: Munir
Salam. Ex country treasurer of Citibank, na. Not a blogger but a reflector - of life & truth. I only write wot is true, humane & within the decency limits mentioned in the Quran & Hadids (seometimes violated for the sake of upholding decency by exposing nudity, indecency & pornos which r being made cheaply, widely & indiscreamenently available to ALL). Well let me elaborate a little more why I have mashallah taken up writing. Just start reading my blogs & soon inshallah (Allah willing) u will learn something u won't regret. U will understand wot I m trying is to eradicate the ignorance - mostly imposed by the western govts to mislead u. Why? In order to inflict prejudice n hatred in yor mind. That creates opportunity for them to falsify the truth against Muslims & their religion Islam. They don't care for u bcoz these r mostly some power loving, wisdomless, wreckless, irresponsible, evil worshiping bigots, power hungry liars. There is another aspect of my life that I, from time to time, share evidences with the public. my unfortunate job related exposure to the modern times largest, most sophisticated, merciless, religious fundamentalists terrorists plots under the protection & sympathy of their governments. These two combinedly r the cozes for 9/11 & after that many more major terrorists acts thruout the world. They generally use sorcery to set these terrorist acts in special venues, with underlying days/ dates & occasions so that apparently Muslims r doubted & blamed. Purpose is to create hatred against the last & only true religion left in the world, Islam. I will inshallah continue on with my effort to share the evidences & expose the hypocrits & lying crook perpatratots r brought to justice. Truth inshallah will come out sooner or later & the unholy bizness of generally portraying muslims as terrorists will stop once & for all. Munir Chowdhury http://wp.me/P631px-n8 https://www.blogger.com/profile/06605542118879859294 PS: I'm being advised by my well wishers that all machine readable infos on my passport were in the interim linked to the so called terrorists database so that in any foreign port instead of trump, theeresa & the gang, I can b called a terrorist & taken away never to b traced again. Please refer to the name list of terrorists bankers i have published & those who r the true 9/11 planners, executors, criminals. these shud b put into most dangerous watchlist. whereever these animals r traced shud b grabbed by their forlocks to face justice in front of the "neutral press". My website: http://kitabofenlightment.info View all posts by Munir


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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In eastern Massachusetts, the number of kids under age six who are obese declined significantly in recent years — a trend that might be happening nationwide as well, according to a new study.
On the down side, obesity rates among lower-income children remain more stubbornly stable, researchers report in the journal Pediatrics.
Recent studies have shown that after decades of rising obesity rates among U.S. kids and teens, the numbers seem to be leveling off.
But less has been known about young children specifically, said Dr. Xiaozhong Wen, of Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute in Boston.
Patterns in that age group are important, Wen said, because they give a glimpse into the future of the national obesity problem.
So his team looked at obesity trends among kids younger than six who were seen at greater-Boston-area pediatric offices.
The researchers found that after holding steady between 1999 and 2003, the obesity rate began to fall after 2004.
By 2008, just under nine percent of boys were obese, compared with almost 11 percent between 1999 and 2004. Among girls, the obesity rate declined from over eight percent to just over six percent.
The trend was similar to what was going on nationwide at the time, the study found. But Massachusetts children had a lower obesity rate than the national norm, and the decline over time was sharper.
Based on federal health survey figures, just over 10 percent of two- to six-year-olds in the U.S. were obese in 2008. That was down from 14 percent in 2004.
The rate among children younger than two, though, stayed steady at 9.5 percent.
The findings raise the possibility that young children in eastern Massachusetts may be "leading a new wave of better weight status," according to Wen.
Or that at least may be true of young children with private insurance, he said.
"We didn't see much change in children on Medicaid, unfortunately," Wen told Reuters Health. Medicaid is the government health insurance program for the poor.
Of Massachusetts children on Medicaid, 11.5 percent were obese in 2008, which was down from just over 12 percent in 2004.
Wen's team found a similar trend in a national database that tracks mostly low-income U.S. children. There, the obesity rate remained stable between 2004 and 2008 — at almost 15 percent among children between the ages of two and six.
It's not clear why obesity was generally less prevalent among Massachusetts kids versus the nation as a whole, Wen said.
But one reason, he noted, could be the higher percentage of Asian-American children in the Massachusetts study group. In addition, families in the state sample may have been higher-income versus the national average.
Wen said he could not say for sure why obesity is declining among young children in Massachusetts, and possibly nationwide as well.
He speculated, though, that greater awareness of the problem and pediatric screening for obesity could be playing a role.
Wen also noted that smoking during pregnancy, which has been linked with an increased risk of childhood obesity, has declined. At the same time, breastfeeding — which is associated with lower obesity risk in kids — has become more common.
Those are all potential factors, agreed Bettylou Sherry, a researcher at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who also worked on the study.
Another is the fact that birth weights nationwide have "unexpectedly" declined since 2000, Sherry told Reuters Health in an email.
Some studies, but not all, have linked birth weight to obesity later in life.
Nonetheless, the rate of obesity among two- to 19-year-olds nationwide has held steady since 2000, hovering around 17 percent, according to the CDC. That came after 20 years of rapidly rising rates.
Wen said it will be important to figure out why obesity among young children — at least the privately insured — may be waning. Knowing what measures are working "will help us use our health resources more efficiently," he said.
Just as important will be figuring out why lower-income kids are not showing much, if any, improvement.
"This study raises the possibility that the socioeconomic disparity is widening," Wen said. "That's our concern."
For parents, he said the important thing is to realize that obesity prevention at a young age is "critical."
"Obesity is not an easy thing to manage at a later age," Wen said.
In general, experts recommend limiting kids' time in front of the TV and computer, and giving them plenty of "whole foods" — like fruits and vegetables, low-fat dairy and fiber-rich grains — instead of sugar-, salt- and fat-laden processed foods.
Wen said it's also important for parents to be "good role models" — exercising and eating their own fruits and vegetables, if they want their kids to do the same.
SOURCE: bit.ly/I5siTe Pediatrics, online April 23, 2012.


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Toyota and Ford are going their separate ways when it comes to developing a rear-drive SUV and truck hybrid system. Originally announced in August 2011, the now-dissolved collaboration means future hybrid-powered light-duty trucks and SUVs from the two brands will each boast unique technology.
Though it's unclear exactly what vehicles would have benefited from the hybrid partnership, a rear-drive hybrid for trucks and SUVs could help the high-volume Ford F-150 and Toyota Tundra meet increasingly strict fuel economy regulations. While The 2014 Ram 1500 will be the only vehicle in its segment offered with a diesel engine, a hybrid F-150 or Tundra could offer better mileage in the city.
A hybrid system that doesn't significantly impact towing or payload capacity ratings could be of interest to truck buyers who already spend serious money on luxury-trimmed pickups. Though Ford and Toyota are no longer working together on the rear-drive truck and SUV hybrid project, such technology could also make a difference on rear-drive-based SUVs such as the Toyota 4Runner and Ford Expedition.
Ford says its own truck and SUV hybrid system will be available by the end of this decade. Before then, we're guessing the automaker will be paying close attention to EPA ratings and mileage, given recent reports of some C-Max and Fusion hybrid customers not achieving the EPA-rated mileage.
Toyota and Ford aren't breaking ties altogether: Toyota notes that the companies will continue to examine the possibility of collaborating on "next-generation standards for telematics."
Though Ford and Toyota are developing rear-drive truck and SUV hybrid systems independently, tell us: Which Ford and Toyota are in most need of a hybrid option?
Source: Toyota, Ford


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Worldwatch Presents State of the World 2012 at Stockholm+40
Event Date:April 23, 2012 - 3:15pm
Location:Stockholm, Sweden
Worldwatch President Robert Engelman will present State of the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity at Stockholm+40.
About Stockholm+40
The purpose of Stockholm+40 is to bring together actors from the international community for a dialogue on sustainable development and its challenges. The business sector, civil society, researchers, decision-makers and young people will discuss sustainable solutions in areas of technology, production and living. They will bring together their different perspectives to try to create a holistic view of what we can do to achieve sustainable development.
Stockholm+40 will be based on three main themes:
- Sustainable innovations
- Sustainable production
- Sustainable living


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Before he was Don Draper, Jon Hamm was involved with some far racier projects, the "Mad Men" star confessed on "The Late Show With David Letterman" on Friday.
"There's always that fallow period in any actor's life," he explained. "My most proud moment in that phase of my life, I worked behind the camera on some special projects – as a set dresser. So I would move all the props around. It was sort of on the low end of the Hollywood spectrum."
VIEW THE PHOTOS: It's Hamm-er Time! Hot Shots Of 'Mad Men' Star Jon Hamm
Asked which films he worked on, Jon drew a blank.
"I don't remember them having titles," he joked. "They were the kind of movies that would appear late night on Cinemax."
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Primetime Hunks
"There's a certain amount of nakedtivity in these, isn't there?" David asked him.
"There's a certain amount of nudeular activity, yes," Jon answered.
Related Content from AccessHollywood.com:
VIEW THE PHOTOS: The Men & Women Of Late Night Television
PLAY IT NOW: Dish Of Salt: 'Mad Men' Season 3 Premiere
PLAY IT NOW: Access Extended: Jon Hamm Talks 'The Day The Earth Stood Still'
MORE ACCESS ON THESE TOPICS: Jon Hamm - Mad Men - Movies - David Letterman - Late Night


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Home › Scene › Best in Show! ›
Best in Show!
The Houston Antique Dealers Association, one of the oldest of its kind in the country, hit Houston's George R. Brown Convention Center with more than 90 dealers for its biannual show. Collectors and dealers traveled from around the globe for the affair, which featured book signings by Carolyn Farb and Leslie Sinclair and lectures from area experts like Jane Page. Patrons browsed collections from Austin's Bell & Bird, Dallas' Earl Buckman, and other exhibitors from Ohio, New York and California—even France! Proceeds benefited the Heritage Society and Junior Forum. Photos by Eric Hester


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Wall Street's $18.4 Billion Bonus
holden steinberg
After getting $125 billion in taxpayer bailouts, the top officers at Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and three other banks agreed to forgo their 2008 bonuses. Now they're awarding billions to their troops. Can government "claw back" that money?
On December 8, The Wall Street Journal reported that John Thain, the 53-year-old chairman and C.E.O. of Merrill Lynch, had let it be known he wanted a $10 million bonus.
In-Thain Demand: Ex–Merrill Lynch C.E.O. John Thain ($15 million signing bonus in 2007) and predecessor E. Stanley O'Neal (compensation: $87 million in five years). Photo illustrations by Darrow.
And why not? After all, Thain had made the brutally pragmatic decision, over the mid-September weekend that changed Wall Street forever, to sell the 94-year-old firm to Bank of America for $50 billion, averting the bankruptcy that awaited Lehman Brothers that Monday and saving Merrill's shareholders billions of dollars. Surely, even in a bad year, he was entitled to the equivalent of a 25-cent tip on the deal.
But the directors balked. Wouldn't that send the wrong signal after Merrill's net losses for three quarters of $11.67 billion? Especially after Bank of America had taken $15 billion of federal bailout money and was due to take the $10 billion earmarked for Merrill as well? When as many as 30,000 jobs may be lost from the acquisition?
The same day came a scathing letter to the board from New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo. Soon after, a grim Thain walked into Merrill's boardroom and apparently told the directors he'd had a change of mind: no bonus for him, thank you.
Thain had gotten the message at last: bonus season would be different this year. At least, it would have to look different.
Only a year before, Wall Street's financial firms had paid out $33.2 billion in bonuses—down a mere rounding error from the $33.9 billion bestowed in 2006—even as the credit crisis spread and $74 billion in shareholders' equity went poof. But now one firm after another had teetered or collapsed. And Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had stridden to the podium for his Al Haig moment, inflicting upon already hard-hit 401(k)-holding Americans the unfortunate acronym tarp (Troubled Assets Relief Program), and through it propping up nine large banks with $125 billion in federal bailout money. Paulson had taken the Cabinet post, in July 2006, with only the noblest of motives, but in hindsight, the move had been fortuitous; the former Goldman Sachs C.E.O. had been forced to sell his Goldman Sachs stock, then worth almost $500 million, at pretty close to its market peak.
Also: A quick rundown of what bonuses look like at seven big TARP recipients this year.
For many U.S. taxpayers, the bailout was infuriating enough on its own terms: $700 billion of public money in all ($5,073 for every taxpayer) given to Wall Street for bingeing on risky bets and pocketing the profits, living high and leaving the government to mop up the losses. But … bonuses! That was an incitement to riot.
And so, Thain's misstep notwithstanding, the top officers at six large tarp-infused firms declared they were forgoing bonuses this year. The headlines were dramatic, and they seemed to work. Editorial writers held their fire, public outrage cooled. But did all this falling on swords really mean no bonus season on Wall Street this year?
It did not.
Retreat in Style
The first cause for concern came well before the formal bonus season. It was the much-reported $440,000 junket last September to the Tuscan-style St. Regis resort at Dana Point, California, enjoyed by 70 high-performing employees of insurance giant A.I.G. The retreat, which included $23,000 for spa charges, was held less than a week after the company was promised its first $85 billion from a tarp fund separate from the one helping the banks.
In his office at 120 Broadway, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo started strategizing with his deputy counselor, Benjamin Lawsky, about how to stop what he would soon call "unwarranted and outrageous expenditures" by A.I.G. Civil charges could be brought, he decided—and would, if A.I.G. persisted in exploiting taxpayers. And so began a campaign on Cuomo's part to rein in A.I.G. that would broaden to include nine tarp-infused financial firms and their top officers' lingering hopes for bonus season.
Summoning A.I.G.'s new C.E.O., Edward Liddy, to his office, Cuomo demanded an immediate end to junkets. He threatened the company with legal action for "fraudulent conveyances": engaging in business transactions without sufficient capital on hand. A.I.G.'s legal team saw that as a stretch, as the law seemed more relevant to bankruptcy proceedings, and A.I.G., thanks to taxpayer money, wasn't bankrupt. But Liddy got the point and agreed to no more junkets.
Liddy had started at A.I.G. only a month before. He'd come from Allstate, and, at the Treasury Department's request, had agreed to work for $1 a year, at least until the company's fortunes improved. His predecessor was the problem. A.I.G. had let Martin Sullivan go last June after three quarters of hideous losses totaling $18 billion—but had not fired him. Its directors had reasoned Sullivan wasn't responsible for the mountains of credit-default swaps—unregulated insurance-like contracts—that A.I.G. had written on mortgage-backed securities and had to make good on now that the supposedly risk-free securities had tanked. So Sullivan had been free to leave with a package that included a $4 million pro-rated bonus, $15 million in severance, and other benefits then valued at $28 million, for a total of $47 million.
As for Joseph Cassano, the executive whose Financial Products division was responsible for all those C.D.S.'s, he'd left in February with a $1-million-a-month consulting contract (since discontinued) and $69 million in deferred compensation. Only six months before, in a widely reported quote, Cassano had said of the $441 billion portfolio of C.D.S.'s he'd bet would not default, "It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario with any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing one dollar in any of those transactions." He is reported to have since repaired to his three-story town house in London's Knightsbridge district, on a bucolic square with a private garden, and his lawyer declined to respond to an e-mail from Vanity Fair.
The word that's giving top Wall Street officers angina these days is "clawback." Cuomo wanted A.I.G. to claw back those packages, along with those of Sullivan's other top officers, even though A.I.G.'s board had approved them.
On October 29, Cuomo went further. He wrote a letter to the boards of nine big financial firms—Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Bank of America, Citigroup, J. P. Morgan Chase, and State Street—and expressed grave concerns about executive bonuses.
That letter may have become a subject of dinner talk between the C.E.O.'s of two arch-rival firms. Goldman Sachs's Lloyd Blankfein and Morgan Stanley's John Mack had taken to commiserating at the Palm, the Manhattan steak house favored by bankers and traders. The two men had a lot in common. With Lehman's fall, they led the last two major investment banks, both soon to become bank holding companies (meaning more financial backup from the government, but more regulation too). Together, they could rue the end of windfall profits from leveraging assets nearly 30 to 1. An era was over.
To forgo or not to forgo bonuses: that was the decision that fell first to Blankfein and Mack because of their late-November fiscal-year end, an investment-bank tradition to be followed one last time before converting to the standard year. Goldman, as always, set the tone. On November 16, Goldman announced that neither Blankfein nor the firm's other six top officers would take bonuses for 2008: only their base pay of $600,000 each.
The Street was rocked. In 2007, Blankfein had set an investment-bank record for C.E.O. compensation by taking home $68.5 million in cash and equity. His two co-presidents, Gary D. Cohn and Jon Winkelried, had gotten $67.5 million each. Now here he was coolly refusing to take more, even though Goldman had stopped bingeing on toxic securities long before the other banks. Its write-down on them was just $7.2 billion.
Going for Baroque: Goldman Sachs's Lloyd Blankfein, who took home $68.5 million in cash and equity in 2007.
Except that with Goldman stock's huge drop—65 percent—how large would the top officers' 2008 bonuses, weighted to the stock, have been in any event? And does forsaking a bonus even matter when Blankfein alone had earned $210,169,732 in total compensation from 2003 to 2007, according to Equilar, a compensation-tracking firm? "If they really want to forgo, give back the last two years' bonuses and give back half of your deferred compensation," suggests Gustavo Dolfino, founder and president of the WhiteRock Group, a Wall Street recruiting firm. Without a bonus this year, Blankfein might have to tighten his belt a bit—no more shopping, perhaps, for $40 million Southampton estates, as he'd done the year before—but still, he had the consolation of a new, $26 million apartment at 15 Central Park West. The suddenly bonus-less Winkelried has reportedly put his 5.9-acre Nantucket estate up for sale at $55 million, after annoying his neighbors by closing off a long-used lane that runs along the property.
Mack Attack: Morgan Stanley's John Mack, who has made around $70 million since 2005 despite forgoing bonuses the past two years.
As for Goldman's 440 partners, they are getting bonuses this year. Maybe in many cases not the $12 to $15 million each got in 2007—more like packages worth $3 to $4 million, according to The New York Times. Goldman has 30,000 employees in all, so some of the company's overall $10.9 billion in compensation and benefits this year will go to assistants, junior analysts, and the like, who will share a pool that's 46 percent smaller than last year's. But what's striking about the figure is that it's exactly as much as U.S. taxpayers just handed over to the firm. "For Goldman Sachs to get billions in tarp money and then three months later pay out a fortune in bonuses … is political tone-deafness," says Richard Cellini, of Integrity Interactive, an adviser on corporate ethics and compliance.
Goldman spokesman Michael DuVally says no tarp money is going to bonuses: "The compensation that was paid to employees came out of our business activities." Charles Geisst, finance professor at Manhattan College and author of the upcoming Collateral Damaged: The Marketing of Consumer Debt to America, begs to differ. "If they didn't have the tarp money, they would be forced to raise fresh capital," he says. "Now, I agree it's a long-term item on the balance sheet. But [without the government money] they would have to take a dip into what operating profits they have left, and reduce those salaries. So the tarp money is a substitute. Theirs is an extremely disingenuous argument." Counters DuVally, "Professor Geisst is wrong. We paid bonuses out of earnings, not capital." But as former compensation consultant Graef Crystal put it on Bloomberg.com, "The argument of saying we're not using the bailout money is just crap because money's fungible. Money's money. It exposes them to ridicule."
Just as hard to buy is the old mantra that Goldman has to pay staggering sums to its partners to keep them from being poached by other firms. To date, some 200,000 jobs have been lost in the financial sector, many of them at the executive level. Where are all those partners going to go?
Capitalist Fools, January 2009
Reversal of Fortune, November 2008
The $3 Trillion War, April 2008 (with Linda J. Bilmes)
The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush, December 2007
Some, says a recruiter who has clients at Goldman Sachs, are actually in deep financial trouble. "Hypothetically, they had $100 million of stock at its 2007 value," the recruiter says. "I've heard stories where people have borrowed $30 to $40 million to invest in real estate or private equity or hedge funds. Well, that $100 million is worth maybe $25 million. So you have some partners and senior directors who are really hurting."
Three weeks after Blankfein's bonus announcement, John Mack sent out a memo to Morgan Stanley worldwide: he, too, would forgo his bonus, as would his two top lieutenants. The next 35 or so officers of the firm would have their compensation cut by 65 to 75 percent. It was the second year in a row that Mack had scrapped his own bonus: for Wall Street, that was pretty close to noble.
At the same time, Morgan Stanley had had to take $15.2 billion in write-downs on toxic securities through the third quarter of 2008, all on Mack's watch. The share price had dropped by 70 percent, and the firm had come close to bankruptcy last September before securing a lifesaving $9 billion infusion of Japanese capital. Now Morgan, like Goldman, had $10 billion in tarp money, and, like Goldman, it would be paying bonuses to many of its 47,000 employees and partners. Morgan noted that, overall, the bonus pool would be cut by 50 percent, but that would still mean an estimated $5 billion in bonuses for 2008—more than the company's modest $1.59 billion profit for the year.
Just since his return to Morgan Stanley in 2005 from a short stint at Credit Suisse, Mack has been awarded, according to Equilar, $69,565,233, more than enough for greens fees at the Apawamis golf course, in Rye, New York, where his home, resembling a French château, looks out on the 18th hole. Forgoing his 2008 bonus would hurt, but perhaps not that much.
Raising the Stakes
How had it come to this? Huge bonuses in good years leading, or so it seemed, to terrifying drops and talk of clawbacks? For, not so long ago, investment bankers were like dentists and lawyers, toiling in the upper middle class for 40 or 50 years before retiring to their nice homes in Connecticut. Their firms were partnerships. In a good year the partners got bonuses; in a bad they wrote checks to the partnership to cover the shortfall.
Then, in the 1980s and 90s, the firms went public, and everything changed. "They shared the downside risk with their investors, yet seemed to keep the upside for themselves," says Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, at the University of Delaware. "It's a lousy deal for shareholders."
Only, the shareholders didn't seem to mind as long as the stock went up and the stakes grew larger and larger. By the late 1990s, investment bankers were no longer Cheever-esque commuters. The best were more like star professional baseball players, aiming to make their fortunes in 5 or 10 years of high-pressure trading or deal-making. The higher the risks, the higher the bonuses. The game was to win—and get out before those risks came home to roost. And then came the 00s, with the seemingly no-risk game of securities backed by subprime real-estate mortgages. For the banks, it was a lot like printing their own money—and all of it led to the year-end bonus, which by this time wasn't a bonus so much as expected pay. By tradition the firms paid out nearly half their revenues in compensation and benefits each year, so as the revenues skyrocketed, so did the "pay."
"As bonuses grew and grew, thinking beyond the next quarter became irrelevant to the management of the firm," says Richard Ferlauto, director of corporate governance and pension investment at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, for whose 1.6 million members he works as a shareholder activist. "Pay became so large that it was decoupled from providing incentives to drive long-term strategic planning."
The worst part, says Russ Gerson, of the Gerson Group, a Wall Street recruiter, was that there was no disincentive for taking major risks. "Think about it: if you're a Wall Street professional and you know that if you can create $100 million of revenues you'll get $15 million, while if you lose $100 million you'll still get paid $2 to $3 million, what would you do?"
Or what if as C.E.O. you could drive your firm to take maximum risks in mortgage securities, rack up $8 billion of write-downs, and still be allowed to resign, not be fired, so you could leave with $161 million in deferred compensation and stock? Wouldn't you do that?
Merrill Lynch's E. Stanley O'Neal did, leaving the storied firm in tatters in late 2007 with no successor in place. Desperate for top talent, Merrill's board threw Thain a $15 million signing bonus and a multi-year pay package worth between $50 million and $120 million, depending on how high he pushed Merrill's share price. Unfortunately, Thain was stuck with O'Neal's mountain of toxic debt. By the time he reached out to Bank of America's Kenneth D. Lewis last September, he was presiding over another roughly $40 billion in write-downs and watching the share price plummet from more than $50 to $17. All he had to show for saving Merrill was his $750,000 base pay and that $l5 million signing bonus.
Thain, like Blankfein, had built up quite a lifestyle. There was a $27.5 million duplex at 740 Park Avenue—the late philanthropist Enid Haupt's old place. Plus a huge Westchester estate. Before he was forced out by Bank of America, in mid-January, Thain reportedly spent $1.22 million of company money redecorating his new office with such items as an $87,000 area rug, $11,000 window shades, and a $68,000 credenza. And the two top lieutenants he'd hired away from Goldman to help him turn Merrill around hauled home as much as or more than $100 million between them in contractually agreed-upon pay and bonuses.
Thomas K. Montag, 51, started in August as Merrill's new global-sales-and-trading head, after a signing bonus of $39.4 million and a pledge to have Merrill buy his $50 million of Goldman stock. This was money no board or public official would shame Montag into surrendering. Some of it may have gone to redecorating the six-story, Stanford White–designed l903 town house on East 73rd Street that Montag had purchased earlier in the year. The house, listed at $38 million, reportedly has a wood-paneled basketball court and a capacious climate-controlled wine cellar.
At least Montag is still on the job. Peter S. Kraus, 55, reported for duty at Merrill in early September as head of growth-and-acquisitions strategy. Soon Merrill was sold to Bank of America, and Kraus left, pocketing, for his three months of work, a contractual severance package that The Wall Street Journal reports could be as high as $25 million. On December 18, Kraus's wife, Jill, closed for $36.63 million on the seventh-floor apartment at 720 Park Avenue that used to be owned by onetime adman and former ambassador to Slovakia Carl Spielvogel and his wife, Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel.
That seems to be where the big money is still going this bonus season: to the executives a level or two below the C.E.O.'s. Some make news when jealous or appalled colleagues leak to the press. But most avoid public scrutiny. The trading floors of one large New York firm are abuzz about the $15 million bonus due to go to the head of one trading desk. Rank-and-file traders who work for the guy are used to getting bonuses of between $300,000 and $700,000 above their $150,000 base salaries. This year it's rumored they're getting nothing.
A Tale of Two Citis: from left, Citigroup's Vikram Pandit, who got $165 million when his hedge fund was bought by Citi in 2007; former C.E.O. Charles Prince (total compensation: $158.3 million over four years); and "senior counselor" Robert Rubin (total compensation: over $126 million in the past decade).
Looking Under the tarp
What are the restrictions on executive compensation and bonuses demanded of the tarp recipients by Henry M. Paulson Jr.? A paltry few. Pay of more than $500,000 for top five executives can't be booked as a tax deduction by their employers, for example. And a severance package can't be greater than three times the annual base pay. "Annual bonuses or discretionary bonuses—those aren't directly regulated or restricted," says David M. Lynn, a Washington lawyer and former S.E.C. official. For that matter, he says of the banks and their tarp money, "there's nothing in the law itself that prevents them from doing what they want with the money."
The bigger the tarp infusion, the more galling the lack of bonus restrictions. Take Citigroup, so sodden with toxic securities that the Treasury's first $25 billion in tarp funds had to be followed in less than a month with another $15 billion, as well as a separate guarantee of $5 billion: $45 billion in all. In December, as Thain decided to embrace relative penury and fellow C.E.O.'s such as Jamie Dimon, of J. P. Morgan Chase, were hinting they'd follow, Citigroup's Vikram S. Pandit stayed mum on the bonus question. Even a stern admonition from Cuomo failed to budge him.
Pandit, like Thain, could attribute his firm's mess to his predecessor, Charles O. Prince III, who'd pushed the pedal to the metal on mortgage-backed securities and, like Merrill's O'Neal, walked away in late 2007 with a whopping bundle, in his case $68 million, because Citi, like Merrill and A.I.G., had declined to fire its C.E.O. for cause. Pandit, in his one year as C.E.O., chalked up more write-downs (more than $30 billion to date), and a net loss of $18.72 billion for 2008. Surely weighing on the issue of a bonus for Pandit after this performance were the terms of his triumphal arrival.
And no one at Citi had forgotten the terms of that arrival. At the suggestion of resident wise man Robert Rubin, Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, Citi had brought Pandit in by buying his fledgling hedge fund, Old Lane Partners, for $800 million, of which Pandit reportedly pocketed $165 million. (Last June, Citi announced it was closing Old Lane, incurring a $202 million write-down.) At about the same time he paid $17.9 million for the 10-room apartment at the Beresford, on Central Park West, formerly owned by actor Tony Randall.
Rubin, oddly enough, let it be known in early December that he would forgo his $14 million bonus package for the second year in a row. Still, it was a piddling gesture. Rubin had pocketed an annual compensation package totaling $14 million or more from 2000 through 2006. One of Wall Street's highest-paid directors, he had professed in interviews that he had no operating responsibility, yet reportedly pushed Citi to take ever higher risks on what proved to be toxic securities. Now the company's market cap was down from $244 billion in 2006 to $20.5 billion, some 75,000 jobs had vaporized, and its share price was down to $3.77, a low not seen in more than a decade. Finally, on December 31, Pandit coughed up the bilious words: no bonus for him or chairman Winfried F. W. Bischoff, 40 percent less for other top officers, and a drastically reduced bonus pool for everyone else.
Well, not everyone. At Citi, as at the rest of Cuomo's tarp nine, the bonus pool has shrunk, but hardly evaporated. And, as at other banks, a lot of bonuses are contractual, tied to performance, so some have actually grown. One standout is that of Andrew J. Hall, a low-profile British-born commodities trader at Citi's Phibro who reportedly pocketed around $125 million. About five years ago, Hall bet big on oil futures, locking in prices he thought would look low as demand in China and India grew. He made so much money that Citi let him create his own corporate fiefdom in Westport, Connecticut—and set his own terms. Hall declined to explain to Vanity Fairhow he made last year's fortune, but energy analyst John Kilduff, of MF Global, suggests a scenario: "You would have bought in January and hopefully sold at the all-time highs, and sold more than you had, went short the market, and rode it all the way down the $100 drop." Hall, a contemporary-art collector, has fought a long, losing battle with his Southport, Connecticut, neighbors for the right to place an 80-foot-long concrete sculpture on the lawn of his Greek Revival home. Last year's windfall will doubtless help him fill the walls and grounds with art at another of his properties: Schloss Dernberg, a 1,000-year-old German castle.
"As previously announced, we will not use tarp funding for compensation," notes a recent Citigroup statement. Others disagree. "I don't see how to separate the $45 billion bailout that Citigroup gets from the $125 million bonus paid to the Phibro commodities trader," says corporate-governance gadfly Graef Crystal. "Obviously if the government hadn't bailed these people out they would have gone bankrupt and the Phibro guy wouldn't have gotten a bonus—no one would have."
For A.I.G., which took three times as much tarp money, that point was at least three times as true. Yet so many versions of the company's own bonus story emerged that Representative Elijah E. Cummings (Democrat, Maryland), of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, declared, "It pains me to say this, but I begin to wonder if it has been made intentionally confusing. The arrogance here is unbelievable." (A.I.G. spokesman Nick Ashooh says, "It was certainly not our intention to cause confusion, and we sincerely apologize if we did.")
Perhaps A.I.G.'s game was to distract the lawmakers' attention from junkets. (Ashooh says that wasn't the intention.) If so, it succeeded. By then, Cuomo had persuaded A.I.G. to freeze $600 million of deferred compensation and bonus pools for the company's high-flying financial-products division—the toxic-securities risktakers—including Joe Cassano's $69 million. A.I.G. was also persuaded to freeze $19 million of former C.E.O. Sullivan's $47 million package. (Other clawbacks are under review.) Still, bonuses of one sort or another would be given to top executives. And that reckoning, as Cummings learned, failed to include the artful introduction of retention payments (i.e., bonuses).
To those who now follow the company's S.E.C. filings, an 8-K on September 22, 2008, shortly after the government's first injection, of $85 billion, was of interest. About 130 executives would be given retention awards. The specific award to be granted to one Jay Wintrob was noted, since Wintrob is one of the public company's five top-earning officers, for whom compensation details must be disclosed. Wintrob was to receive $3 million. He is A.I.G.'s V.P. of retirement services. His total 2007 compensation was $7,632,352.
Junket Bonds: A.I.G.'s new, $1-a-year C.E.O., Edward Liddy, and predecessor Martin Sullivan, who got $35 million for 2006 and 2007.
In a letter, Cummings asked A.I.G.'s new C.E.O., Edward M. Liddy, to explain the 130 retention awards. On December 5, Liddy replied, noting that A.I.G. intended to sell businesses that made up 65 percent of the company—in order to pay back its loan from the government—and that keeping key employees of those businesses was crucial to their value. Helpfully, he mentioned that the pool of recipients had since grown to 168, and that the retention awards ranged from $92,500 to $4 million.
Days later, reporter Hugh Son of Bloomberg News broke an astounding story. According to sources inside A.I.G., the company planned to bestow retention awards not just on 168 employees but on 2,000, who had been advised to keep their awards secret. If they discussed them with anyone but their families and financial advisers, they would lose them. The Bloomberg story noted that as many as 7,000 A.I.G. employees might receive retention awards.
Cummings was livid. "A.I.G. came to the U.S. government and said they were about to go out of existence," he fumes. "They were on the respirator and the plug was just about out of the wall. None of them would be employed if it were not for the U.S. government and the taxpayers of this country." And here was A.I.G. dispensing public money—$481 million was the latest figure Cummings had gleaned—for secret bonuses? A.I.G.'s Ashooh says the final number of retention-award winners will more likely be about 5,000, receiving about $600 million in all. He does acknowledge that this doesn't include the roughly 380 employees of A.I.G.'s now moribund financial-products division, which traded all those toxic securities. He has no idea what their awards will be. Ashooh says the "secrecy" of the awards was merely an intramural matter, to keep recipients from spreading envy among their colleagues. "It's confidentiality, not secrecy, that's the issue."
Cummings takes umbrage at that. "If they give a bonus, it's public money," he declares. "They are owned by the taxpayers of America, the same ones who are losing their jobs and homes and damned sure didn't have a bonus for Christmas."
Here's the bottom line on Wall Street bonuses for 2008—according to the New York State Comptroller's Office. They're on track to be 50 percent lower than last year's. That's a sharp cut, except that it's still $18.4 billion. Taxpayers may see that money as theirs. Bankers and traders see it as pay for work done. "There's no sympathy for us anywhere," says one thirtysomething trader, "but it's not as if we weren't working hard." Working hard and, in many cases, earning good money for the firm. "The system was: if we pay you $2 million for a job, it's because you helped us make $20 million."
All too often, unfortunately, those profits were of the short-term sort, generated by risky securities now turned to ashes. Bonus-bagging bankers may be loath to admit it, but the answer is obvious: tie bonuses to longer-term profitability. Have them vest in two years, maybe three. Meanwhile, keep them in escrow. The question is: Will the bankers stand for it? "If the government says you can't pay people who are successful, then game over," says executive-compensation consultant Alan Johnson. Second-raters may let their bonuses be tied up, but "the people who are good," says Gustavo Dolfino, the Wall Street recruiter, "will say, 'Screw that, I'll start my own firm or start a restaurant in Greece.'" Or, adds fellow Wall Street recruiter Gary Goldstein of Whitney Partners L.L.C., they'll be poached by unlikely new players: regional banks. "The regionals aren't encumbered by subprime stuff.… They've done so well they're becoming national."
For all the upper-middle bankers still taking bonuses this year, a lot of younger, lower-middle types are getting goose eggs; as one puts it: No bonuses at all. "Now suddenly I have to think about living on my salary," says one mid-30s trader glumly. "It's $140,000 a year—with two kids, and parents who want to retire." Peter Singer, a prominent bioethics professor at Princeton and author of the newly published The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty,suggests the bonus-deprived take a hard look at themselves. "How much happier does it make them to have $10 million rather than $200,000? … Have they got enough from that salary to provide them and their families with the basics of what they need to live? And by that I don't mean a six-bedroom apartment on Park Avenue."
For a lot of them, apparently not. Dolfino says the choice for some mid-level bankers and their families isn't some firm across the street that will pay more, because none will. That game is over, at least in Manhattan. "The market for them is Mumbai, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai. We've been moving them out there for a year."
Highfliers who traded the riskiest of securities face a grimmer prospect. In his memo to staff, John Mack declared a new Morgan Stanley clawback policy starting with cash bonuses for 2008. The policy is ominously broad: awards could be clawed back not just for risky trading that results in long-term losses but also for "reputational harm to the Firm"—a pretty vague definition. Soon that policy may be industry-wide.
At least the Morgan Stanley guys have cash bonuses, provisional though they may be, for now. Credit Suisse—not a tarp recipient—is handing out the market equivalent of just deserts. Its bonuses this year are the same toxic securities its bankers and traders sold their customers last year. However, since the securities have already been marked down to 65 cents on the dollar, there may be nowhere for their value to go but up. Shareholders have borne the losses to date; the Credit Suisse–ers may do quite well.
For thirtysomethings and fortysomethings, the worst may still be to come: not just one bad year, but another. "That," says one Wall Street recruiter, "is when it will hit them." But for top officers? Maybe not so bad. After all, when a company's stock has gotten beat down to $2 a share, and the top officers who helped drive it down get a few million shares in stock options, how hard is it to double that money?
A.I.G.'s Ed Liddy, for one, will be eligible for a "special bonus for extraordinary performance" in 2010. What does that mean? No one, including tarp officials, seems to know.
The print version of this article put the total value of 2008 bonuses at $16 billion. This was based on early estimates from the New York Comptroller's Office, which reached the $18.4 billion figure after the issue had gone to press.
Michael Shnayerson is a Vanity Fair contributing editor.


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1049 East King Street, Lancaster, PA 17602
Website Design by White Stone Marketing


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This week in the magazine, Tad Friend writes about the California cemeterian who is trying to redefine the idea of last rites. Here, with Amy Davidson, he talks about green burials, graveyard tourism, and the future of funerals.
AMY DAVIDSON: The central character in your piece is Tyler Cassity, who has been an inspiring and at times frustrating figure for everyone from California environmentalists to the producers of "Six Feet Under." You write that he may end up having a significant influence on the American way of death. How so?
TAD FRIEND: Tyler Cassity is a powder keg of ideas. He rose to prominence in the so-called "death care" industry by taking a bankrupt cemetery in a borderline part of Los Angeles and turning it into Hollywood Forever, where he had movies projected on the side of Rudolph Valentino's mausoleum, and displayed his "LifeStories," which are A&E-style video biographies of the dead. The idea of video tributes has been widely adopted by funeral directors across the country. (Cassity doesn't talk as much about his idea for displaying DNA samples of the dead in an illuminated globe—a concept that had only three takers. And the globes leaked.) His newest project is green burial; if it takes off, it could change our expectation of what will happen to us when we're dead—and how we relate to nature.
What is green burial?
Green burial entails placing a body in a grave in either a shroud or a biodegradable wooden box—or, in a variation that Cassity is currently working on, a papier-mâché "egg" that resembles a seed pod. The idea is that the body will swiftly rejoin the ecosystem as fertilizer for the grass and trees above it. In a way, it's a very old-fashioned idea—as Cassity notes, Jews have, essentially, conducted green burials for five thousand years—but it's also a striking departure from the way most American bodies are now buried.
And how are most American bodies buried?
They are usually embalmed with chemicals so that the body looks fresh for the viewing, and then buried in metal caskets that are placed inside cement vaults or in aboveground crypts. An embalmed body goes into the ground with three gallons of formaldehyde and mercuric chloride in it, all of which merely slows, rather than forestalls, the process of bacterial decomposition. It turns out that the "sealer" caskets that kept all air out—a refinement of casket technology intended to reassure families that their loved ones would "sleep" undisturbed—only hastened the decay. I don't want to go so far as to say that you can see slime oozing out of crypts, but, actually, you can.
You write that one of the insights behind green cemeteries is that they not only minimize the environmental impact of a burial—the metal coffin, the formaldehyde—but actually conserve land. How so?
The most expansive vision for green burial is that environmental organizations would use cemeterians such as Cassity to help them conserve land: he would bury people on, say, five hundred acres of a five-thousand-acre tract, and the money from that would go toward restoring and preserving the remainder of the land. So far, the idea has yet to be implemented, as there turn out to be a raft of legal and ecological issues that environmental organizations want to work through before they join up with someone who's going to be planting corpses in their open space. One place where Cassity would like to work with an environmental partner is Carmel Valley, California, a beautiful condor habitat. But the environmentalists are concerned that families visiting the bodies there might carry the sudden-oak-death fungus with them on the soles of their shoes. They also want to make sure that Cassity or his investors can come up with half the purchase price of the land up front—some ten million dollars.
Tyler Cassity initially worked on Fernwood, a facility in Marin County, with two other people, Billy Campbell and Joe Sehee. After a while, they were no longer on speaking terms. What happened?
Dr. Billy Campbell started the country's first green-burial cemetery, in South Carolina, in 1998, and Joe Sehee had been Cassity's media consultant. The three men agreed to work together in 2003, hoping to establish "memorial landscapes" across the country. Campbell's goal was to save a million acres from development by putting bodies in the ground, a strategy that Sehee likes to call "conservation through consecration." But it all fell apart, slowly and then, this February, abruptly. The rupture was both personal and philosophical. Cassity might argue that Campbell and Sehee were business novices who, in the end, brought neither funding nor realistic expectations to the equation. Campbell and Sehee might argue that Cassity avoided formalizing the partnership—and that, at Fernwood, his primary concern seemed to them to be not saving land and the environment but, simply, making a profit. Despite all the fury and the consultations with lawyers, though, both Campbell and Sehee really seemed to miss Cassity, and in my piece I write about what happened when they all tried to reconcile not long ago.
You portray Cassity as a dramatic man, whether he's dealing with life or with death. Is that part of a funeral director's job description, at least in America?
All of the other funeral directors I spoke with, in the course of my reporting, were genial people who took pride in their function. None of them seemed to spend quite as much time as Cassity does philosophizing—for example, about how film embalms time, or how a cemetery is "a library of bodies catalogued by name and date." Nor, for that matter, did the other funeral directors I spoke with spend as much time being beaten with eucalyptus branches in a Russian bathhouse or musing about the publicity benefits of dying young.
Cassity's family owns several cemeteries, as well as a funeral-insurance business—an angle that is very "Six Feet Under." What's his connection to the show?
He's been a consultant to the show, though any resemblance between him and the character of David Fisher—a gay funeral director who fights with his older brother—is purely coincidental, as Cassity didn't begin to work with the show until after the pilot. It was Cassity, however, who gave the show's writers the idea to have Nate receive a green burial after his death on the show, a few weeks ago.
You mentioned Hollywood Forever, which had revenues of more than nine million dollars last year. How did Cassity manage that?
He spent two million dollars just getting the place running—mowing the lawn, straightening the gravestones, scooping the rats out of the ornamental pond. Then he began screening movies, throwing parties, and building new mausoleums, turning the cemetery into a sort of city commons. And it probably didn't hurt that Dee Dee and Johnny Ramone both chose it as their final resting place. Johnny's not there yet—his wife is still holding on to his ashes—but his monument, a statue of himself playing the guitar, is a siren call for a certain kind of customer, one who imagines the afterlife as like a really long night at CBGB.
That raises a question: Who are cemeteries for? The living or the dead?
They're for the living; the dead can't enjoy them. The trick for cemeterians is to get the living to come to them, since once the "season of death"—the first three months—has passed, the average grave receives only two visits. That's why Hubert Eaton, who ran Forest Lawn Memorial-Park, which was one of California's top tourist attractions in the nineteen-fifties, put in lots of art works, like a huge stained-glass replica of Leonardo's "Last Supper," and Tyler Cassity has peacocks strutting the grounds of Hollywood Forever.
Fernwood and Hollywood Forever are both, in their own ways, archetypally Californian. You mention that some funeral directors believe that green burials and similar ideas might work for California but not for anywhere normal. Do they have a point?
Almost everyone I have mentioned the idea of green burial to seems to find it instinctively appealing. The question is whether enough green-burial facilities can be established to make it a practicable option in the rest of the country. Owing to community resistance, only about three municipal cemeteries are approved each year, nationwide; people just don't like having bodies next door. With green burial in particular, people worry about disease spreading from unembalmed bodies, or foxes or coyotes digging them up and trotting by carrying someone's foot. If the body is properly buried, then it doesn't and they won't.
Marin County, where Fernwood is situated, is also, you write, a stronghold of hospices and "home funerals"—which involve people who act as "death midwives." This suggests a connection to the home-birth movement, with its goal of getting childbirth out of the hospital. What is going on here, culturally?
There's a "We read about how to do this on the Internet, so why should we pay you to do it?" feeling in the air in Marin. The area is ground zero of the baby-boomer generation's desire to wrest control back from the experts in green scrubs. To make a wild generalization that I'm sure can easily be refuted, liberal areas such as Marin seem to focus this desire on the beginning and the end of life, and in more conservative areas it gets expressed at other life stages—such as with homeschooling.
Has Fernwood delivered on its promise yet? Has green burial?
Fernwood doesn't even officially open till November, so it's too early to say. As for green burial: no and yes. No, because fewer than two hundred people, nationwide, have had green burials. Yes, in the sense that many of those people's families have been uplifted by the experience. And yes, too, in that, judging from the unusual standard of success for this technique, it seems to work. As Billy Campbell told me at his green-burial facility, in South Carolina, "In the woods, after a while, all that's left of a body is a dark spot and a few teeth."
So is green burial an ethical choice or an aesthetic one?
It's both. At the moment, at Fernwood, more people are choosing to be cremated, and to have their ashes scattered or buried in nature, than to have their full bodies fertilize the soil. This suggests that people like the idea of being in nature but don't feel that they have to be actively contributing to its renewal—ashes, or "cremains," have no nutritive value. And burying ashes is a lot cheaper than burying a full body.
What does Cassity want to happen to his body when the time comes?
He would like to be memorialized at Hollywood Forever with a circular monument of Carrara marble set in the ornamental lake, atop which will be a statue of a naked Narcissus on all fours, gazing at his reflection. Which is weird, because that was also my plan. ♦


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She's the model detective.
A Staten Island stunner showed cops how it's done after a man allegedly hacked into her portfolio, downloaded her professional photos and uploaded them to a smutty porn site.
The 5-foot-4 knockout, Lori LaManna, says she was forced to trade in her bikini for a badge, of sorts, to bust Nicholas Defina, 23, because investigators refused to do their job.
"The detectives said I was basically out of luck," LaManna, 22, told The Post. "They thought it was another stupid girl sending out naked pictures of myself and now I would have to pay the price. That wasn't the case."
LaManna said she first learned through a female acquaintance that six of her provocative photos were downloaded on the XXX Indonesian site.
"I broke down hysterical crying. My whole week went to s–t. I canceled all of my appointments in the city," she said, noting she missed a photo shoot and a music-video audition.
"It was like being molested. My personal space was invaded. I was violated."
LaManna's nightmare began shortly after Defina — whom she had met a few times through a friend — allegedly contacted her several times on Facebook under an assumed name and asked her for nude photos.
LaManna, who has had small roles on the NBC show "Smash" and the CBS hit "The Good Wife," quickly shut him down.
"My response was, 'No, only me and my photographer have access to my full photo shoot. This is not porn. Don't be disrespectful,' " she said.
So Defina allegedly posed as LaManna on Sept. 27 and sent an e-mail to her professional photographer to gain access to her online portfolio of 400 pics, law-enforcement sources said.
In the e-mail, Defina allegedly wrote, "Hey, this Lori. I got a virus on my computer. I need the password to access my photos," according to LaManna.
"I don't why [the photographer] wasn't suspicious, but he wasn't and gave up the password," she said.
Defina then allegedly downloaded all of the smoking-hot snapshots from LaManna's private account on the photographer's Web site and uploaded six of them onto the porn site.
After getting no action from the police, LaManna spent the next 24 hours building a case against the alleged cyber perv, she says.
She Googled the screen name attached to the Yahoo e-mail, "AlexIsPureLove," and that led her to Defina's Myspace page, she says.
LaManna printed out the evidence she had gathered and presented it to detectives at the 122nd Precinct station house in New Dorp.
"I said, 'Here — now you have a person. I'm giving you the person. I know who it is,' " LaManna said.
"And they were just blown away. They were shocked. They started investigating," she said.
The NYPD's Computer Crimes Squad traced the e-mail back to the laptop at Defina's residence in Travis, law-enforcement sources said.
On Nov. 9, detectives interviewed Defina, and he allgedly admitted to the caper. Investigators searched his computer, with Defina's consent, and found the racy images, sources added.
"Detectives did their job. Maybe not as quickly as the complainant preferred, but they did their job nonetheless," said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.
Defina was arrested Tuesday and charged with unauthorized use of a computer, criminal impersonation and aggravated harassment, records show.
Additional reporting by Doug Auer


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I Can...
Last night the kids and I [hubby is out-of-town] went to father-in-law's house to eat some incredibly good grub. [Of course, all meals that I don't have to prepare are incredibly good...] Some of my father-in-law's family was in town and eventually all the old family memorabilia came out...I had no clue what's been sitting in my father-in-law's house all this time! [He lives about 10 minutes away from us.] So, can you guess what I'm doing the rest of this week? Yup, scanning, photographing, indentifying, "database-entrying", etc., etc.... Just some of the items in this collection are:
- 125-year old Autograph Album of my hubby's great-grandmother, Pearl Williams;
- A book of Longfellow's poem "Evangeline" belonging to Pearl;
- A collection of Red Man chewing tobacco trading cards featuring American Indian Chiefs;
- One of Pearl's War Ration Books from World War II;
- A matching jewelry box and photo album that made its way to Iowa by covered wagon;
- Pocket Watch belonging to Pearl; and
- A Civil War tin-type picture of one of hubby's great-great-grandfathers' brother who was shot in The Battle of the Wilderness and was imprisoned in Libby Prison, where he died.


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Search Constraints
You searched for: Subject Area Politics Remove constraint Subject Area: Politics Subject Area Quality of Life Remove constraint Subject Area: Quality of Life Year 2014 Remove constraint Year: 2014
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1. Annual Survey of Orange County 1987
2014. Baldassare, Mark. This year, the Orange County Annual Survey highlights growth and its effects on the quality of local life. This topic moves to the ... UC Irvine.
2. Annual Survey of Orange County 1989
2014. Baldassare, Mark. The theme of this year's survey is "Orange County: Approaching the 1990s. The survey is designed to provide an extensive analysis of ... UC Irvine.
3. Annual Survey of Orange County 1990
2014. Baldassare, Mark. The theme of this year's survey is "Issues of the 1990s." The 1990 Orange County Annual Survey explores three interrelated issues that ... UC Irvine.
4. Annual Survey of Orange County 1991
2014. Baldassare, Mark. This 1991 survey examines ten years of trends in the Orange County Annual Survey. In asking questions from the 1982 benchmark survey, the... UC Irvine.
5. Annual Survey of Orange County 1995
2014. Baldassare, Mark. This fourteenth Orange County Annual Survey, UCI, spotlights several top concerns of Orange County residents. This year's survey focuses ... UC Irvine.
6. Annual Survey of Orange County 1996
2014. Baldassare, Mark. This fifteenth Orange County Annual Survey, UCI, examines several topics of recent relevance in Orange County and analyzes social, ... UC Irvine.
7. Special Survey of Orange County 2003
2014. Baldassare, Mark. This survey of 1,004 adult residents includes questions from earlier Orange County Annual Surveys. It also includes key indicators from t... UC Irvine.


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Item Description
Report of H. J. Strickler, Commissioner to Audit Claims of Citizens of the Territory of Kansas
Author: Strickler, Hiram Jackson
Date: 1859
Isaac T. De Ment filed claim # 252 for items stolen or destroyed in his storehouse and home by proslavery forces under the command of G. W. Clarke. The itemized list included a variety of good from fabrics and clothing to food and hardware. Each claimant had to submit an itemized list and have two witnesses attest to the losses claimed. Even though many of these claims were approved for payment, no funds were ever appropriated or distributed.
Location of Original: KSHS Call Number: 328.7304/Un3/Serial Number 1017
Item Number: 101199 Number of images: 5
Keywords: Clarke, George W.; Clothing and dress; Damage claims; De Ment, Isaac T.; Food; Groceries; Linn County, Kansas Territory; Militia; Strickler, Hiram Jackson
pg. 466
pg. 467
pg. 468
pg. 469
pg. 470


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Housing and Community Development (Department of)
The California Department of Housing and Community Development develops and implements California's housing policies. The department guides, encourages and, where appropriate, directs the public and private sectors to cooperate and participate in providing a decent home and suitable living environment for every Californian. The department assesses the state's housing needs and assists communities to plan for and meet these needs.
Complaint Jurisdiction:
Enforcing health and safety codes ; developing building and housing standards; enforcing manufactured housing and mobile home laws and regulations; providing financial and technical assistance to low income mobile home park residents and mobile home park resident purchase or park conversion; repairing or replacing properties damaged by natural disaster; providing technical assistance and information about laws and regulations governing housing and community development; providing funding to local government and private for-profit and nonprofit agencies for: Housing for low income, disabled, or elderly persons; subsidized housing in urban or rural areas; independent living skills training programs for people with developmental, mental, or physical disabilities.
Complaints Outside Jurisdiction:
Local building inspection; complaints that individual homeowners or renters have with local housing authorities, redevelopment agencies, or city and county permits.
Department of Housing and Community Development
2020 West El Camino Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95833
(800) 952-8356(general information)
(916) 263-7400(media)
Office of the Mobile home Ombudsman
This office was created to provide assistance to mobile home owners by serving as a clearinghouse for mobile home related complaints. The Ombudsman is not empowered to deal with rental agreements or lease or rent disputes, but can address concerns relative to: registration and titling, inspections, installations, warranties, sales, accessories and improvements, financing, and the Mobile home Residency Law. Regulates mobile home park management, sales, and salespeople. Has jurisdiction for landlord tenant issues relative to park residents, spaces for RVs and RV parks.
Office of the Mobile Home Ombudsman
PO Box 31
Sacramento, CA 95812-0031
(916) 323-9801 Mobile home Ombudsman
(800) 952-5275 Complaints against dealers
(800) 952-8356 Mobile home registration
The Division of Housing Policy Development operates housing and community development programs that provide loans and grants to local jurisdictions and private for-profit and nonprofit organizations to increase the supply of affordable housing. The division also provides technical assistance to local governments and nonprofit organizations to increase the supply of affordable housing. Among its special functions are rehabilitation and housing assistance, farm worker and Indian housing services, and predevelopment housing assistance, housing construction financing, emergency shelter programs, rural development, and housing replacement services in highway corridors.
Division of Housing Policy Development
(916) 323-3176
This division identifies housing and community development needs and problems and develops recommendations to meet these needs. The division prepares legislatively mandated reports, including the California Statewide Housing Plan, and reviews and comments on statutory compliance of housing elements of local general plans.
Division of Financial Assistance
(916) 445-4728


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Man cannot live on white bread alone -- especially when there are so many healthier grain options out there. From whole wheat pasta to gluten-free millet and quinoa, these recipes provide more fiber, protein, and flavor than those with bleached and refined ingredients.
The neutral flavor of gluten-free penne (try Bionaturae's rice, potato, and soy mix) allows an assertive oven-roasted puttanesca sauce to shine. This dish is also dairy-, egg-, and nut-free.
In this hearty whole-wheat pasta dish, red-pepper flakes provide a spicy contrast to sweet red bell peppers, a great source of vitamin C.
Broccoli, onion, tomatoes, yellow zucchini, and eggplant, coupled with nutty wheat berries (unprocessed whole kernels of wheat), make a lusty dish. This is an excellent accompaniment to meat or fish. It also could be served as an entree.
This cold noodle dish, made with buckwheat pasta, was inspired by the taste of buckwheat blinis with smoked salmon and creme fraiche.
Fiber-rich whole wheat pancakes are ideal for leisurely mornings.
Bean salad becomes an elegant entree when tossed with basil and whole-wheat, kamut, or spelt pasta shells.
These English muffins are made with a mix of whole wheat and white flours, along with rolled oats and a sprinkling of flaxseed and caraway seeds. Low-fat buttermilk gives the muffins a slight tang and a light texture. But unlike whole-milk dairy products, it contains very little saturated fat.
Our rice salad, which can be served chilled or at room temperature, includes three types of grain -- wild, brown, and brown basmati rice -- as well as tomatoes, cucumber, celery, onion, and peppers. Any combination or commercial blend of rice would work well in this recipe.
The sweet, nutty flavor added by Jerusalem artichoke flour, balanced with the texture of semolina ("regular") pasta flour, makes this pasta an excellent choice for this citrus-infused broth.
Brown rice gives this vegetarian stir-fry a nutty flavor and hearty texture, and contains more fiber than white rice.
Substantial, nutty spelt or farro noodles meat their match in a spirited Sicilian-style sauce.
Soba noodles are made from buckwheat, which contains all eight essential amio acids. Pure 100 percent buckwheat noodles are also gluten-free.
Quinoa, which is used like a grain but is really a seed, can be found at natural food stores and many supermarkets.
The vegetarian burger pictured here is are made with quinoa, egg, breadcrumbs, and beans, and topped with a Greek yogurt sauce. Quinoa contains twice the protein of rice, though it's the quality of the protein that stands out: With all nine essential amino acids, including lysine, the tasty seed is considered a complete protein.


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eCommerce Strategy
Ecommerce trends
Posted: 11 April, 2018 Category: eCommerce Tags: eCommerce , eCommerce Strategy
Let's take the example of Amazon. Just pay attention to the main page. After being registered, you'll never see it like this anymore. There will be plenty of things added like: recently seen products, left feedbacks, wish lists and so on. Amazon carefully collects all the information and provides an authorized user with only potentially interesting information on its basis.
What is HTTPS and why switch on it
Posted: 11 April, 2018 Category: Magento Tags: eCommerce , Magento Development , eCommerce Strategy
Surfing on the internet you must have noticed that some websites have http and some https URL. What does it mean and is it important?
2 Item(s)


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Home >> Course Descriptions >> College of Education
Curriculum and Materials for Early Childhood Educators
Three semester hours.
This course provides an understanding of curriculum development principles and in-depth research analyses of the learning environment, authentic assessment of children and program effectiveness, and appropriate child guidance. Prerequisites: Graduate standing and EDEC 5324.
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Undergraduate Degrees - Academic Graduate Regulations -
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Appendix A - Appendix B - Appendix C - Appendix D