An FBI sting operation in Miami led to the recovery of a Matisse painting entitled “Odalisque in Red Pants” owned by the Sofia Imber Museum of Modern Art in Caracas. The FBI agents posed as customers willing to buy the painting from a couple whose name has yet to be disclosed by the FBI.

The story started in 2002 when it was discovered that the Matisse hanging in the museum wall was a fake, after the Chavez administration had changed the board of the museum a couple of years earlier, including Ms. Imber, who had run it from its beginning (and purchased this particular painting for a relatively low price).

Initially there were accusations that the painting had disappeared after the management change, but others have suggested that the switch took place even before that, when the painting was lent to a Spanish exhibit in 1997. However, those at the museum until the management change have stated privately that they would have certainly noticed the switch. The current director of the museum has suggested it was an inside job, without ever explaining her statement.

RELATED: What do you know about Hugo Chavez?

The switch was discovered when a collector was offered the painting in 2001-2002 and began performing due diligence on the painting and wrote to the director of the museum. This led the museum to check the painting and the discovery that the one hanging in Caracas was a fake. The painting was offered to a number of collectors and rumors that it was for sale have recurred over the years.

Hopefully, with the recovery of the painting the full story of the switcheroo will be revealed and those responsible prosecuted.

For now, this is another picturesque (pun intended) story of the always devious Venezuelans in Government (no matter when the switch took place) always looking for an angle that will make them rich overnight.

– Miguel Octavio, a Venezuelan, is not a fan of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. You can read his blog here.

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Upward mobility has been a foundation of America’s self-image since the 18^th century.

If you work hard enough, nothing can stop you from getting ahead. That, at least in the minds of many Americans, is what distinguishes us from much of the rest of the world.

Yet, according to my always-provocative Tax Policy Center colleague Gene Steuerle, our tax and spending priorities not only fail to promote mobility for those who are starting at the bottom, but they often actively discourage the hard work and savings that help us climb the socio-economic ladder.

Oh, the federal budget is loaded with subsidies that encourage work and savings. But they are almost always aimed at improving the lot of middle- and upper-income households, not those who most need a leg up.

In testimony last week to the Senate Finance Committee, Gene estimated that of the nearly $750 billion in mobility-enhancing tax and spending programs in 2006, $540 billion–or nearly three-quarters– went to higher income households. Those with low-incomes received only about 2 percent of the benefit of subsidies for home ownership and almost none of the benefit of employer-related work subsidies or incentives for savings and investment.

Some of these programs not only fail to help poor and lower middle-class households, they actively hurt them. For instance, if home ownership is a key to upward mobility (an arguable proposition, but one many believe), we need to acknowledge that subsidies such as the mortgage interest deduction inflate home prices and make it harder, not easier, for poor families to buy.

Worse than that, Gene argues, once low-income households reach poverty level, government policy discourages work.  True, social welfare programs provide a valuable safety net for the very poor. For instance, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit are important income supports for low-income families.

But because these safety net programs phase out as incomes rise, some people face marginal tax rates as high as 80 percent for getting a better job or even a raise.  A new Urban Institute calculator shows how this works.

With a budget that encourages consumption rather than work and savings, the gap between the American Dream of unfettered mobility and the reality will only widen, Gene fears. His solution: Rethink those tax subsidies and spending programs that too often hinder mobility, paradoxically in the name of enhancing it.

This debate over mobility is a key subtext in the presidential race between Mitt Romney and President Obama. Each happily talks about the importance of the American Dream and upward mobility. Yet, neither seems willing to tackle the issues that Gene is raising.

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Ask Steve Ingersol, a 30-something waiter at Applebee’s near Akron, Ohio, how he’s going to vote in November, and he shrugs.

“No matter who the president is, it’s just someone to blame stuff on,” says Mr. Ingersol, a registered Republican who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 because he thought it would be “cool” to have a black president. This time, he says, his vote is a coin toss.

Ingersol doesn’t know it, but he’s a hot commodity in Ohio, part of a key demographic – the white working class – in what could be the decisive state of the 2012 race. If the upper Midwest, from Iowa to Pennsylvania, is the premier battleground region of the country, then Ohio is ground zero. While Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania lean Democratic, Ohio and Iowa are tossups. And with 18 electoral votes (to Iowa’s six), Ohio has more power to swing the outcome.

Chances are, between now and Nov. 6, Ingersol will hear plenty more about his choices. The TV airwaves are already crackling with political ads. The local Portage County Tea Party is armed with voter lists for door-to-door canvassing and phone calls. The unions, too, are revving up. And both the Obama and Romney teams are on track to set up more campaign offices around Ohio than did any previous nominees.

For Mr. Obama, winning Ohio isn’t essential to reaching 270 electoral votes. But it is for Mitt Romney. No Republican has ever been elected president without carrying Ohio.

Last week alone, Obama, Mr. Romney, and Vice President Joe Biden all made campaign appearances in Ohio. First lady Michelle Obama heads to Columbus and Dayton on Tuesday.

And it comes as no surprise that three of Romney’s top campaign surrogates and potential running mates are from the upper Midwest – starting with Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, a formerGeorge W. Bush budget director. The others are Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and formerMinnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

“[Senator Portman] is worth three to five points in Ohio,” says Ohio GOP chairman Bob Bennett, who has been talking up his state’s junior senator with Romney. “Independents like Portman. AndDemocrats don’t get mad at him.”

Where every vote matters

Rare is the running mate who can swing a state, but in a battleground as tight as Ohio, every vote matters. Four years ago, Obama won the state by just 4.6 percentage points, even as he was winning Wisconsin by 14 points and Michigan by 16. This year, his margins are down everywhere.

And with most voters already in one or the other camp, “Ohio will be decided by 5 to 8 percent of its electorate,” says Rex Elsass, one of the top GOP admen in the United States, based nearColumbus, Ohio.

Which brings us back to Ingersol, the Applebee’s waiter. In some ways, he’s the quintessential white working-class voter – a tough demographic for Obama in 2008 and even more so now. Ingersol is a single dad with no health insurance. But he’s so busy with work and family that the new health-care law is barely on his radar. And it may not be enough to bring him back to Obama.

“I’ve only been to the doctor once in the last 13 years,” Ingersol says proudly, suggesting he can do without insurance. (His kids are covered on their mother’s plan.)

In the Obama campaign’s Zanesville office, it’s health care that drew 23-year-old Chase Flowers to volunteer full time – specifically, the fact that the new law allows his parents to cover him and his sister.

“I tell people that health-care reform kills two birds with one stone,” he says. “It’s controlling health-care costs and helping people with their health.”

But to other Ohioans, “repeal Obamacare” is the ultimate rallying cry of the election. On a recent Tuesday evening, some 200 members of the Portage County Tea Party gathered near Akron for a candidates’ forum and then a pep talk from executive director Tom Zawistowski. Along the back of the room, 5,700 pages of voter names and contact information supplied by the Romney campaign were stacked on tables, waiting for volunteers to take.

Despite the tea party’s ambivalence about Romney, there’s no doubt that on defeating Obama and the state’s senior senator, Sherrod Brown (D) – two steps toward undoing the health-care law – they’re on the same page.

“We’re at war with the Republican Party in some ways: It’s not as conservative as we’d like it to be,” says Mr. Zawistowski, who is also president of the statewide Ohio Liberty Coalition. “But we’re working together on get-out-the-vote. They have resources that we don’t have.”

In his speech to his local tea party, exhorting members to canvass their neighbors, he gets choked up.

“The Supreme Court punted,” Zawistowski says. “They kicked it back to the legislature, to the American people.... My destiny, our destiny is in our hands. I thank God I live in Ohio. I want to fight this fight with you. We will decide.”

Collective-bargaining backlash

One of the biggest questions hanging over Ohio is what kind of residual impact there may be from last year’s battle over public-sector unions. Gov. John Kasich (R) took office in January 2011 vowing to curb collective-bargaining rights in an effort to balance the state budget. But when the law passed, the backlash was fierce – particularly so because, unlike in Wisconsin, it included police and firefighter unions.

Suddenly, traditionally Republican-leaning unions had common cause with their liberal union brethren. Last November, their efforts paid off: Ohio voters repealed the collective-bargaining law with 61 percent of the vote.

“[The law] was probably an overreach,” says GOP chair Bennett. But “we were outspent 2-1/2 to 1.”

Governor Kasich remains unpopular – a blow to Romney’s chances in Ohio, Democrats say – even though statewide unemployment has steadily declined to 7.2 percent in June, a percentage point below the national average. But it’s too soon to say whether the police and firefighters will stick with the more liberal unions in supporting Obama in 2012, despite Romney’s anti-union positions.

“It’s going to take some work. I wouldn’t say it’s an automatic thing,” says Robert Davis, political director of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Ohio Council 8 in Columbus. Even the membership of his own union, he says, is one-third Republican.

For Senator Brown, support for unions has already paid off. Last Tuesday, the state Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) endorsed Brown against Republican challenger Josh Mandel, the first time the organization has backed a Democrat for the US Senate since 1988.

The Ohio FOP has yet to state a choice to the national FOP for a presidential endorsement, but Romney’s support for the anti-union ballot measure last October, along with the union’s Senate endorsement, does not bode well for him. Republicans say that the police union’s political preferences are all about labor issues, not about how the rank and file will vote.

One issue that clearly boosts Obama is his 2009 bailout of the auto industry. One out of 8 Ohio jobs is auto-industry related; 80 of the state’s 88 counties contain auto supply manufacturers.

Still, there’s no denying that the sputtering economic recovery casts a shadow over all else in Ohio, as it does nationally. Ohio ranks ninth in the nation on home foreclosures. And if the battle for Ohio boils down to the southeastern, Appalachian part of the state, Obama could be in real trouble. Coal is king there, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s new regulations on coal-fired power-plant emissions are deeply unpopular.

Southeastern Ohio is also socially conservative – no to gay marriage and abortion, yes to guns – which is another strike against Obama. But it’s also economically liberal in its support of the social safety net. That’s why some political observers call it Ohio’s ultimate swing area.

Former Gov. Ted Strickland (D), who represented southeastern Ohio in Congress for 12 years, says he won’t deny that coal will sway some voters. “But it won’t be the determinative factor,” he says. “All along theOhio River, where steel mills have closed, I think the outsourcing of jobs is a more powerful issue in a generic kind of sense.”

A long winning streak

Ultimately, the battle for Ohio will be waged statewide. From the liberal northeast to the conservative southwest, the Buckeye State is in many ways a microcosm of the country. One exception is its small Hispanic population. But for now, Ohio is the reigning bellwether in presidential politics: It has voted for the winner every time since 1964, the longest streak of all 50 states.

When ads funded by outside groups are included, Team Obama expects to be outspent on TV and is banking on its ground game. Four years ago, the Obama campaign opened more than 100 offices around the state. This time, the campaign plans to outdo that. State campaign director Greg Schultz has been on the job since March 2009.

The Romney campaign, delayed by a tough primary battle, has had to play catch-up. As of July 16, there were 23 joint Romney–Republican National Committee “victory centers” in Ohio versus 36 Obama for America offices. All told, Romney and the RNC plan more than 60 or 70 victory centers, says a Republican source.

But it’s not the number of offices that matters, says the Romney campaign. “What’s clear is we are going to be able to match Barack Obama volunteer for volunteer, door-knock for door-knock, phone call for phone call between now and November,” says Christopher Maloney, spokesman for the Romney campaign in Ohio.

What’s also clear is that Romney can’t match Obama as a stump performer. As of July 24, the president and his top surrogates – Mr. Biden and Mrs. Obama – will have been here 47 times since Obama’s election. Biden may be his secret weapon, the “scrapper from Scranton” who can speak to white, working-class voters in a way that the Obamas can’t.

All those Obama visits play right into Romney’s hands, says Mr. Elsass of the Strategy Group for Media, the GOP ad firm. “Barack Obama,” he says, “energizes our base in a way that Mitt Romney can’t.”

In a sign that Democrats will let no challenge to their ground game go unanswered, the Obama campaign filed a federal lawsuit last Tuesday against Ohio election officials, saying new restrictions halting early voting three days before the election are unconstitutional.

The Obama campaign, joined by the Democratic National Committee and the Ohio Democratic Party, says the new rule is unfair, since military and overseas voters are allowed to vote in person until the day before the election. Four years ago, the Obama campaign saw early voting as crucial to winning Ohio.

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• In Pictures: On the Campaign Trail with Mitt Romney
• New polls show glaring weaknesses for both Obama and Romney

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Let’s first get something straight: Bill Clinton’s prime-time speech at the Democratic convention the night before President Obama’s isn’t going to decide the election.  

Yes, the charismatic former president remains extremely popular – 66 percent favorability in the latest CNN poll – and he could knock it out of the arena. Mr. Clinton has the potential, in particular, to reach white, working-class voters, a demographic that challenges Mr. Obama. But the election is still going to boil down to how swing voters feel about Mr. Obama’s potential to revive the economy over the next four years. Chances are, Clinton’s speech will be all but forgotten by Election Day.  

In fact, Clinton’s address – to be announced Monday, according to the New York Times – could end up hurting Obama.

“There will be people who say it helps Obama, but they’re already voting for him,” says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia,Charlottesville. “And it will just remind people that Obama is no Bill Clinton when it comes to the economy.”

Clinton, of course, governed during a rare stretch of peace and prosperity, leaving office with the federal budget in surplus. There’s no doubt that he will point out the dire economic straits that Obama inherited from his predecessor, President George W. Bush. But increasingly, voters are tired of the blame game and just want Obama to present a credible plan for the next four years.

When news broke of Clinton’s role at the convention, the campaign of Republican candidate Mitt Romney pounced.

“After four years of trillion-dollar deficits and anemic economic growth, it’s clear President Obama would love to run on President Clinton’s record in office,” Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said in a statement. “But no amount of showmanship can paper over the differences between these two presidents. Americans deserve a president willing to run on his own record, not the record he wishes he had.”

Clearly, Team Romney thinks Clinton’s prime-time role at the convention matters. And for Republicans, the Clinton appearance will provide an unflattering contrast with their own convention, which will have just taken place: The Democrats will present a picture of party unity that the Republicans can’t match. The junior ex-President Bush won’t have been at the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla.

Clinton’s presence also allows the Democrats to move beyond the at-times discordant narrative of the Clinton-Obama relationship, both during the 2008 presidential campaign of Clinton’s wife, now-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and more recently, in the former president’s comments on Mr. Romney and on policy.

In 2008, Bill Clinton famously dissed Obama’s candidacy, calling it a “fairy tale.” This past spring, he raised eyebrows by going off-message in praising Romney’s record at Bain Capital and suggesting that all of the Bush-era tax cuts should be extended into next year.

But after Clinton’s public apology, all is forgiven. Now they’re united in the common cause of keeping the Democrats’ hold on the Oval Office. Clinton, after all, loves nothing more than a hotly contested campaign.

And speaking of campaigns ... we’ll be watching Clinton’s remarks for any possible clues on his wife’s future. Secretary of State Clinton says she’s retiring at the end of this term, and looks forward to putting her feet up. But her husband has hinted he wants her to run again. Polls show her to be the instant front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2016 if she runs.

Of course, Bill Clinton won’t go near the subject in his address in Charlotte, N.C. But watch his eyes during the speech. Maybe he’ll be blinking out “Hillary ‘16” in Morse Code.

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It was the Davids versus the Goliaths. On one side of a $7.2 billion referendum aimed at unsnarling Atlanta’s traffic stood the two most powerful men in Georgia, and an unlikely pair to boot: Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, a Democrat.

On the other side stood the little guys: Debbie Dooley of the Atlanta Tea Party Patriots and Colleen Kiernan from the Georgia chapter of the Sierra Club. Despite seemingly dueling ideologies, they found common cause to lobby against a 1-cent-on-the-dollar tax to pay for 157 traffic-friendly projects in the metro area over 10 years.

Also on that side was local NAACP president John Evans – another unlikely partner, especially for the tea party, which some critics have seen as anti-minority and anti-immigrant.

The establishment bipartisans had a reported $8 million on hand to sell the transit package. The tea party alliance has been quoted as having $15,000, but tea party member Julianne Thompson, reached by the Monitor Wednesday, laughed that off. “We had maybe a few hundred dollars,” she says.

On Tuesday, the “Sierra Tea” nexus claimed giant-killer status: Voters shot the Transportation Investment Act down, yelling “no” by a margin of 63 percent – despite warnings from supporters of imminent urban decline and worsening traffic woes. About 670,000 metro Atlantans voted.

The transit-tax defeat came on the same day that Texas tea party favorite Ted Cruz handily beatLt. Gov. David Dewhurst in that state’s GOP Senate primary, suggesting to some observers that reports of the tea party’s demise have been not only hasty, but also overamplified.

The defeat of the so-called antigridlock tax “means they're players,” Bob Grafstein, a University of Georgia political science professor, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC). “It reminds everybody they're around and they can defeat your grand plans.”

More specifically, the transit-tax vote hints at a newfound sense of pragmatism and subtlety that, critics have long suggested, tea party Americans have failed to exhibit on issues like the debt ceiling.

Well before the vote, tea party activists, Sierra Club officials, and the NAACP agreed to not just say no to the transit tax, but start building a “Plan B.” They even held joint press conferences ahead of Tuesday. The proponents of the plan reportedly were caught flat-footed when urban blacks and environmentalists, which should have been their natural partners, coalesced against the project.

One Plan B option the new coalition came up with would push the legislature to remove restrictions on how the city can spend current sales-tax revenues on MARTA, the existing bus and rail system in Atlanta, before building new light rail in gentrifying, in-town neighborhoods. That, the coalition argues, would make more money available for improvement and expansion, would benefit both whites and blacks in the city, and wouldn’t raise taxes – accomplishing key goals of all three groups.

“It shows that the tea party is, in fact, not inflexible, but actually willing to work with people who are not philosophically aligned with us,” says Ms. Thompson, the Atlanta tea party activist. “We’re willing to find consensus with other organizations and politicians from across the aisle, and we don’t believe consensus means that anyone has to compromise their values.”

To be sure, there were many other factors to the measure’s defeat, says Alan Abramowitz, political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta. For one thing, 68 percent of voters were Republicans, suggesting to some a miscue by the legislature, which didn’t foresee that, as in 2010, the Republican primary ballot would draw more interest than the Democratic ballot.

What’s more, “it’s always an uphill battle to get people to vote to increase taxes, especially a sales tax that hits people immediately,” Mr. Abramowitz notes. “And secondly, I think there’s a lot of skepticism right now about whether political leaders are going to keep their promises.”

Adds Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia in Athens: “Part of the problem also goes back to the 2009 stimulus package at the national level, which got a lot of [Georgia] voters thinking, ‘This [transit plan] is just another jobs bill that turns into patronage, and we’re not going to be fooled on that this time.’ ”

AJC political columnist Jim Galloway also picked up on the patronage idea, saying that concerns about it helped reinforce the coalition between civil rights, greens, and antitax folks.

“[S]uspicion of cronyism and back-room deals has served as ... non-ideological glue for both sides,” writes Mr. Galloway, meaning that “the two groups [tea party and Sierra Club] have permitted right and left wings to communicate and coordinate in a way that otherwise would have been unlikely.”

Others have suggested that proponents of the plan may have muddled the message by trying to sell the package as a traffic fix, a jobs creator, and an economic development tool. But even with so many facets, some say that the plan just wasn’t good enough.

Only half the projects would have actually gone toward relieving the Atlanta commute, the fourth-worst in the nation. And the actual returns on the investment in several projects, including a 10-mile streetcar loop, were far from clear.

Moreover, several projects on the list will go ahead anyway, but with Governor Deal, not voters, having the final say on priorities.

“If you want to solve transit problems in Atlanta, spend 52 percent of the [transit tax] on a super-deluxe bus service that goes everywhere,” says Baruch Feigenbaum, an Atlanta-based transportation analyst for the libertarian Reason Foundation. “Instead, what they did is put in some bus things, but also three light-rail lines that are largely going to be useless. It was a sexy project, but not a real effective project.”

Meanwhile, many Georgia politicos are skeptical about the real clout and longevity of the NAACP-Sierra Club-tea party coalition. In the state, which recently scored an “F” on political accountability in a survey by the Center for Public Integrity, raising money for lobbying is the name of the game, and so far, the coalition has not proved successful at that.

But given what happened in Atlanta on Tuesday, at least one tea party activist sees the awakening of a broader citizen movement aimed primarily at reforming entrenched political cronyism.

“We might not have all the answers yet,” says Thompson. “But the fact that we’re sitting down at a table together, getting input and working on solutions – I think that’s a really positive step in the right direction.”

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On Saturday, Erick Barrondo won silver in  the 20-kilometer race walk

[Yes, race walking is an Olympic sport – Read this.].

Barrondo won the first Olympic medal for Guatemala, a country which has been participating in the Olympic Games since 1952 (must be another accomplishment from Arevalo and Arbenz to add to my class notes).

Barrondo is from the Chiyuc aldea in San Cristobal, Verapaz.
 
On Friday, the New York Times ran a piece on why racewalking is so popular in Latin America.
 
Congratulations to Barrondo and to the people of Guatemala!

From the AFP:

Erick Barrondo won Guatemala's first ever medal in Olympic history with silver in the men's 20 kilometres walk on Saturday and hoped his win would inspire youngsters back home to forego violence for sport.

The 21-year-old, who finished behind China's Chen Ding, said that if this brought a reduction in his impoverished country's problems with gang violence it would be another victory. "It is well known that Guatemala has problems with guns and knives," said Barrondo.

"I hope that this medal inspires the kids at home to put down guns and knives and pick up a pair of trainers instead. If they do that, I will be the happiest guy in the world."

Barrondo's achievement prompted a phone call from Guatemalan president Otto Perez Molina. "The president congratulated me on the first Olympic medal for the country. He told me that everyone had come out on the streets to celebrate the triumph."

Here's more on Guatemala's newest national hero. 

– Mike Allison is an associate professor in the Political Science Department and a member of the Latin American and Women's Studies Department at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.  You can follow his Central American Politics blog here.

A version of this post ran on the author's blog, centralamericanpolitics. blogspot.com.The views expressed are the author's own.

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Are white supremacists recruiting from within the ranks of the US military?

That question – revived by killings at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin this week – has been the fear of civil rights groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, who have warned that hate groups encourage their members to join up for training and experience that they can later use to perpetrate crimes in the United States.

A former white supremacist who now trains the US military on how to recognize racism within its ranks, T.J. Leyden says he has been brought to military installations to educate service members who are concerned about troops becoming involved with gangs and neo-Nazi activities. “They want to know how to combat it,” he says, “and what they should be looking for.”

Mr. Leyden says he was encouraged to join the US Marines after becoming a skinhead. “The older guys in the white supremacy world were talking about it all the time,” he said. “They say, ‘This is a great option – you get some training.’ ”

They also recruit from among the US military. “A lot of the major white supremacy groups, they have chapters right outside military installations,” Leyden says. “They want people with military backgrounds.”

There is little known about Page's views on race while he was in the military. An Army spokesperson said that the service is not commenting on the reasons for his dismissal from the service. “At one time he was a sergeant and did leave the service as a specialist,” says Lt. Col. Lisa Garcia. “You can generally presume there was some kind of Article 15 action that reduced him in rank.” An Article 15 is an administrative punishment less severe than a court martial.US military officials have expressed concern in the past about extremism within its ranks.The Army's Criminal Investigation Division conducts a threat assessment of extremist and gang activity among Army personnel. "Every year, they come back with 'minimal activity,' which is inaccurate," Scott Barfield, a former gang investigator for the Department of Defense, told the Southern Poverty Law Center in its 2006 report "A Few Bad Men." "It's not epidemic, but there's plenty of evidence we're talking numbers well into the thousands, just in the Army."

They are prized recruits because they have a number of traits that make them valuable in the eyes of white supremacists, Leyden says. “They follow orders, they know how to take instructions.”

They also have valuable leadership experience. “They are leaders, they think outside the box – they’re doers,” he adds. “You’re getting some of these guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, and they’re combat vets. They know what combat’s like. You get them in and bring them in and that gives your group structure – that’s powerful.”

When he was in the Marines from 1988 to 1990, Leyden says, he recruited roughly half-a-dozen hate-group members. He told his new recruits to keep a low profile. “I’d tell them don’t get tattoos – get your training, then get out.”

He’d also tell them, “If you really don’t like it, then you can get yourself tatted up and discharged. After they got the training, ‘I’d say, then who cares if you get a bad conduct discharge? We’re going to overthrow the US government anyway.’ ”

Leyden didn’t follow his own advice. He got an “SS” tattoo on his neck and later hung a Nazi flag in his room. “The only thing my commander would say was, ‘Hey, can you do me a favor? Can you take that flag down when the CG [commanding general] comes through [for inspection]?”

He said it was not because commanders supported his racist views, but rather because they did not want to be disciplined by their own higher-ups for command failures like having a neo-Nazi in their ranks.

Leyden, who now works with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, says some of his fellow Marines back in his days in the service told him to his face that they thought his extremism was "pretty horrible.”  

Today, he says, he advises commanders to remove skinheads from their ranks immediately. “I tell them, get them out, don’t give them further training,” he says. “Do not give them opportunities to become better at what they do.”

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The House of Representatives approved in July a bill that’s likely to spark a showdown on military spending.

In the face of looming defense cuts and amped-up warnings on Capitol Hill, there are three things that experts wish every American – and politician, for that matter – knew about the Pentagon’s financial state of affairs.

1. America today spends more on defense (even adjusting for inflation) than it did during the Reagan buildup

Supporters of robust defense spending tend to justify these expenditures by claiming that the world is much more dangerous today. 

“[T]he evidence for that is pretty thin,” says Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “The Soviet Union on its worst day was capable of ending life on this planet in a few minutes. It could do more damage in a few minutes than Al Qaeda has managed to inflict in over a decade.”

Still, the United States continues to spend some $520 billion every year – plus the costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars – for U.S. military operations. In an acknowledgement of this, Reps. Mick Mulvaney (R) of South Carolina and Barney Frank (D) of Massachusetts proposed an amendment to freeze Pentagon spending at current levels. It passed with support from 158 Democrats and 89 Republicans, and the House voted July 19 to give the Pentagon $607 billion in total this year. This is more than the Senate – which has yet to propose its own version of the defense bill – or the White House says it wants.

2. Most Americans, regardless of political party, support more defense cuts

A new study finds that Americans want more defense cuts than do the politicians who represent them. They are also willing to accept on the order of one-quarter more cuts in military spending than the Obama administration is proposing. The White House has been anxious to seem hawkish on defense, particularly in an election year.

Americans surveyed by the Stimson Center proposed the highest cuts for the Afghan war, where they would like spending to be $53 billion. Annual spending in Afghanistan currently totals $115 billion. The administration has proposed a drop to $89 billion.

Most interesting to Matthew Leatherman, a research analyst at Stimson, is that support for defense cuts is equally strong in congressional districts that would stand to lose the most from them – in other words, areas where big defense corporations and jobs are based.

Indeed, 75 percent of voters in the top 10 percent of districts that benefit the most from defense spending actually want more cuts than the average of voters in the survey.

There was a slight partisan divide, Mr. Leatherman says. Voters in Democratic districts would cut defense spending by 22 percent, while voters in Republican areas would cut defense spending by 18 percent.

Still, the difference is “statistically insignificant,” Leatherman says. “We’re hearing a lot of rhetoric right now on the Hill and on the campaign trail about this being a wedge issue. But in our survey, the wedge just wasn’t there.”

3. Automatic defense cuts won’t devastate the U.S. economy – and may even help it

The companies that make America’s fighter jets, drones, and big-ticket weapons items warned in a press conference this week that a series of forced budget cuts known as “sequestration” would cost America more than 2 million jobs if it goes into effect.

Among other things, sequestration involves some $55 billion worth of automatic cuts in the defense budget. It’s set to go into effect in January unless Congress and the Obama administration can agree on a plan to curb the nation’s deficit.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has warned that such cuts would have dire effects on U.S. national security.

Moreover, the cuts would reduce America’s gross domestic product by $215 billion, says Stephen Fuller, an economist at George Mason University who works with the Aerospace Industries Association. “The results are bleak but clear-cut,” he said. “The unemployment rate will climb above 9 percent, pushing the economy toward recession and reducing projected growth in 2013 by two-thirds.”

It’s not an uncommon view. Travis Sharp, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, which has close ties to the Obama administration, warns that sequestration will “most definitely have negative impacts on employment and on workers in the defense industrial base.”

He worries, too, about the impact on defense research-and-development dollars, something he fears will be disproportionately affected by sequestration cuts. “A lot of the things that people use every day started out as research projects at the DOD,” he says, citing, for example, the Internet.

Others, however, say it's a good idea to keep the budget cuts in perspective. The DOD base budget under sequestration would be $469 billion – about what the Pentagon spent in 2006, when it was in the middle of fighting wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It was “not exactly a lean year for the Pentagon,” Dr. Preble notes.

Indeed, many of the predictions are overly dire, says Preble, who has studied regions that have experienced reductions in military spending in the past. Cuts initiated after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 “were far deeper and faster than what we’re contemplating under sequestration,” he says.

Still, after an initial economic impact, those communities closely tied to the defense sector nonetheless “recovered quite quickly and prospered with a more diversified economy,” Preble says. “So the question really comes down to, How long is that economic adjustment process?” Research indicates that the effects are most dramatic the year they happen, then decline dramatically over time.

As for claims that defense cuts would mean millions of lost jobs? “That seems implausible considering that the cuts would amount to less than 3/10s of 1 percent of GDP,” Preble says. “More to the point, the defense budget should never be seen as a jobs program.”

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Barack Obama says Pakistan is the country that most often keeps him awake at night. Husain Haqqani says he has the answer to the president’s insomnia.

The former Pakistani ambassador to Washington says the two countries should face the fact that their goals and priorities are not going to converge any time soon, and so should drop their stormy partnership to forge a “post-alliance future” based on reality over expectations and each country’s self-interest.

“If in 65 years we haven’t been able to find sufficient common ground to live together … maybe the best is to find friendship outside the marital bond,” says Mr. Haqqani, who was Islamabad’s ambassador to Washington until last November when he fell prey to a Pakistani political scandal.

Haqqani’s conclusion – which he plans to explore in a book to be published next spring, entitled “Magnificent Delusions” – is a variation on the theme of those policy experts in both countries who say the two unhappy partners should “divorce” rather than prolong a dysfunctional marriage where neither side likes or trusts the other.

“I’m not for [the US] declaring Pakistan an enemy,” Haqqani cautions, adding that his reason for proposing a “parting of ways” is so that “the important things can actually be addressed.”

One example: Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, and ensuring that it remains secure. Without the fixation on “a broad alliance that doesn’t exist,” he says, “you can … focus on the specific problem.”

He also hints that Pakistan’s bond to the US, and in particular the military and security focus of the relationship, have held Pakistan back from maturing politically in ways it might have been forced to otherwise. “Pakistan ends up behaving like Syria, but wanting to be treated like Israel,” he says.

Haqqani spoke Wednesday at the Center for the National Interest in Washington, before taking up the academic year as a professor of international relations at Boston University – a post he held before becoming ambassador in April 2008.

His last appearance in Washington as ambassador was at a Monitor breakfast – on Nov. 16, the same day he was ordered back to Islamabad to answer charges of seeking US government help in deposing Pakistan’s powerful military leadership. The charges – unfounded, according to Haqqani – turned into a political storm the Pakistani media dubbed “Memogate,” because it involved a memo sent to then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen seeking US help in preventing a military coup against Pakistan’s weak civilian government.

Haqqani denied having anything to do with the memo, but even as ambassador he was a vocal advocate of a stronger civilian government to which the military would take a back seat. That position earned him the disdain of Pakistan’s military and powerful intelligence services, which openly derided Haqqani for having in their estimation adopted an American perspective on the relationship after living so long in the US.

Haqqani says one need only consider recent opinion polls from both countries to conclude that a relationship based on unrealistic expectations on both sides is not working. He notes that a Pew global opinion poll earlier this year revealed that 74 percent of Pakistanis view the US as an “enemy” – almost identical to the percentage of Americans that a Fox News found do not consider Pakistan an “ally.”

Indeed, Haqqani notes that the latter poll found that the only country Americans like less is Iran, with North Korea actually earning a slightly higher “likability” rating than Pakistan.

About half of Pakistanis would like the US to continue sending billions of dollars in assistance to Pakistan despite their disdain for the source, but Haqqani says the US should give up the illusion that aid can buy policies the US prefers. He points to what he calls the most recent round of “engagement,” the post-9/11 years during which the US sent Pakistan tens of billions of dollars in mostly military aid to enlist Pakistan’s cooperation against Al Qaeda and in Pakistan.

Another failure, he says.

Under a “post-alliance” relationship, Haqqani says he assumes the US will continue its campaign of drone strikes against Taliban targets in Pakistani territory. Pakistan, on the other hand, will pursue a policy that it believes will promote its primary goal, which is to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a base for attacks on Pakistan.

Haqqani says Pakistan has an existential question to decide: “Do we want to be a future South Korea, or do we want to be Iran without oil?” he posits.

It’s a question only Pakistanis can answer, he says, and perhaps one that the US-Pakistani relationship, as it stands now, is allowing Pakistanis to put off answering.

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On her trip to Africa earlier this month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made the case for US companies as effective commercial partners that can help facilitate broad-based economic growth on the continent. “The days of having outsiders come and extract the wealth of Africa for themselves, leaving nothing or very little behind, should be over...” Ms. Clinton said in a speech in Senegal.

More than championing US-Africa cooperation, Clinton’s remarks can also be read as a thinly veiled swipe at China. Africa is indeed growing wary of Chinese investment, which presents an opportunity for US businesses. But in order to take advantage of this opportunity, Clinton must ensure that US diplomats become more effective advocates of the US private sector and reinforce the power of America’s brand in Africa.

Africa’s economies are booming, with several countries growing at around 8 percent per year. China has known this for some time, and James Shinn, former US ambassador to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso, says Beijing or Beijing-backed companies have signed 32 bilateral investment agreements, formed trade cooperation zones with six countries, and have made foreign direct investments of over $50 billion. As a result, China recently surpassed the United States as Africa’s largest trading partner.

These trends would seem to pose a significant challenge for the US on the African continent. And yet, all across Africa, a backlash against China is brewing.

Just last month, three separate developments evidence this anti-China mood.

In Ethiopia, the government is in a contractual dispute with Chinese company Petro-Trans after it announced it would revoke the company’s license for oil and gas exploration due to lack of investment. In Senegal, traditional shoemakers are refusing to sell to Chinese buyers for fear that China will knock off its products. And in Mauritius, the government is considering other uses for land it had once promised to Chinese companies to develop a special economic zone, since six years have passed and the Chinese have yet to do anything with the land.

These three flare-ups are merely the ones that became news items. Far more significant is the across-the-board plummeting reputation of the Chinese commercial brand in Africa.

Ask any African ministry official or businessperson his or her views on Chinese companies and you tend to get the same response: horrible quality and broken promises. Africa’s business and government elite aren’t the only ones taking note; the Chinese brand is often the object of ridicule even among average Africans. Photographs of a leaking ceiling in the new African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, donated and built by Chinese contractors, made the rounds on Facebook last month, with a caption mocking the quality of Chinese construction.

The American brand in Africa, by contrast, continues to be strong. US firms are known to provide the best quality and hire the most local workers. They are considered the least corrupt and the most considerate of the environment. And they are generally believed to complete initiatives on time and abide by their commitments.

But China still enjoys two structural advantages in Africa. First, it still has significant foreign currency reserves that it uses, among other things, to finance the construction of infrastructure projects in Africa. In other words, African countries often do not pay for the shoddy roads and bridges that China builds.

Second, the guidelines that govern how African countries award contracts – as dictated by international funders like the European Union and the World Bank, as well as African governments themselves – typically favor the lowest-price bid. This plays right into the hands of Chinese companies.

Competing against China’s cheap financing and low construction costs will require the effort of various US agencies, including the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Export-Import Bank, the Commerce Department, and even the White House. But US diplomats can immediately take advantage of China’s reputational issues in Africa to hammer home certain points to their African counterparts.

First and foremost, China’s cheap financing is not as cheap as it seems. Much like the Godfather, who doles out favors but expects bigger favors in return at some later time, the Chinese government is not ashamed to cash in on preferential trade agreements or access to natural resources. In exchange for this access, China will offer infrastructure development.

Similarly, officials throughout East Africa have complained that the Chinese government will often construct small infrastructure projects (like a small highway) pro bono, but later demand that Chinese construction firms be hired for larger infrastructure projects (like a dam) for which China will no longer foot the bill. In these and other ways, China can slowly gain effective control over much of a country’s economy.

As important, the low-cost of Chinese construction is often more than offset by the higher costs of maintenance and repair or lower output, as the case may be. The poor quality of Chinese constructed infrastructure has been well documented in China, Africa, and elsewhere. Some officials in Ethiopia and Kenya have argued that they have to spend more money fixing Chinese-built roads than it would have cost them to build high-quality roads in the first place.

A cheaper Chinese product might seem like a fantastic buy at first, but not when it produces less efficiently than its American-made equivalent, and certainly not when it breaks.

Guidelines for how African countries award contract must reflect these lessons, so US diplomats should lobby to change their structure. A structure that takes account of multiple factors – not just cost, but also quality, environmental impact, and training of local labor – would be much better for Africa as well as for US companies.

For the US private sector to succeed in these markets, the US government must conduct effective commercial diplomacy, a concept that Secretary Clinton has been promoting for some time. Across Africa, her Department can now lead the way.

Alexander Benard is managing director of Gryphon Partners, an advisory and investment firm. He recently published an article in Foreign Affairs on the US-China competition in emerging markets.

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Rosa Finnegan has plenty of similarities with other wage-earning Americans. She hitches rides in with a co-worker, likes to joke around with colleagues, and feels very grateful to have her job. At the end of the day, she's ready to sink into a cushy chair at home.

But Mrs. Finnegan is also a trailblazer. She offers striking proof that employment and productive activity need not end when the so-called retirement years arrive.

Let's put it this way: Where many people now nearing retirement can recall Sputnik, civil rights protests, or the pitching wizardry of Sandy Koufax, she mentions memories of gas-lit streets, the spread of telephones, and working at a rubber plant during World War II.

Having passed her 100th birthday this year, Finnegan is still working at a needle factory in this Boston suburb, helping to make and package the stainless-steel products in custom batches.

Yes, she walks a bit more slowly now than many of her co-workers. But Rosa, as they all call her, still has willing hands and a nimble mind. And she has no desire to leave her job.

"I'd rather be here than almost anywhere," she says. "You feel like you're still a worthwhile person, even though you're old – [you're] not sitting in a rocking chair."

What's notable is not just that she wants to keep working, but also that she's found an employer who values her presence. When Rosa notched her 100th birthday earlier this year, Fred Hartman, chief executive of the family-run business called Vita Needle Company, celebrated with a cake during a morning break time – and then let her keep right on working.

In fact, at a time when the manufacturing of many goods has shifted from the United States to overseas, Vita Needle has survived partly because it has welcomed older workers. The median age of its 48 employees is 73. These workers have proved to be both reliable and low cost. Staff turnover has decreased, and the company believes the older workers help turn out a better product, offsetting the lower-wage advantages that some overseas firms enjoy.

Vita Needle is an extreme example, but it's just one of many employers who in varying ways have been learning to value workers on the mature end of the spectrum.

The rise of the older worker is cast sometimes as a problematic feature of the current job climate: a "gray ceiling" in which the lingering of older employees leaves scant opportunity for younger workers to be hired, developed, and promoted. The challenge is genuine, as recent headlines about a "lost" generation of youth imply.

But take a larger and longer view, and the picture may be much more positive. There's the potential for ample demand for younger and older workers alike. Many seniors, for their part, are engaged in a righteous rebellion against artificial limits – against the notion that hitting 65 means one's contributions to society are largely in the rearview mirror.

The trend, while not new, is still in its early stages and promises to have long-term significance. Life spans have been expanding, and attitudes about how to live during the so-called golden years have been evolving toward less emphasis on leisure and more on usefulness.

It's also a story about the financial imperative facing individuals and nations, which is intertwined with the global economy's current aura of debt crisis. Fiscal pressures in nations like Japan, Italy, and the US are linked closely to the demographics of retirement, with a wave of age 60-plus people who will either have to support themselves or be supported by taxpayers.

The rise of the gray workforce shouldn't be exaggerated. The concept of retirement isn't being phased out entirely. But elderly people are increasingly taking on jobs, either in the form of part-time employment, seasonal work, or brief encore careers.

Combine that with the sheer size of the baby boom cohort, and the trend promises to alter the makeup of workplaces across the developed world over the next two decades. Already, in fact, the growing presence of older workers is one of the most notable facts of the current US job market.

Since January 2010, job seekers age 55 and up have accounted for 70 percent of all employment gains in the US. Viewed over the past decade, the pattern is even more stark. That older group has added some 10 million employees to its ranks, even as employment among other age groups has actually declined by more than 4 million.

Those statistics, by the way, shouldn't be interpreted to mean that older workers have found it easy in a tough economy. The reality is that only about 17 percent of seniors are employed, which is far lower than the 39 percent who say in surveys that they "need" to work in retirement, according to a report this spring by Wells Fargo.

What the statistics do show is an inexorable force. The rising share of seniors employed over the past decade, coupled with the number of boomers poised to hit retirement who want to keep working, means the number of older people in the workforce will continue to surge.

"It's staggering," says Kim Ruyle, a human resources consultant. For the next decade, he says, thousands of boomers every day will be hitting the 62 to 65 age frame that in the past has been accompanied by cake-and-speech farewells at the office.

Where are older people finding work? Just about everywhere, actually.

Across the country from Needham, Mass., amid the balmy breezes of San Diego, Scripps Health offers another case study in welcoming older workers. Scripps has been recognized many times as among the "Best Employers for Workers Over 50" – as ranked by AARP. And it's a major employer – 14,400 people in a network of local hospitals and clinics.

High demand for skilled professionals like nurses makes health care one of the key industries trying to hang onto older workers. Scripps is a leader in this trend. Its retirement rate for employees who hit 65 is half the national average.

One of those "silver collar" workers is Barbara Genzler, a registered nurse who manages the surgery department. She's 67 and has no plans to retire. With 43 years of nursing experience behind her, most of it at Scripps, Ms. Genzler says she loves the work. "That's why I'm still doing it," she says. Even though the job is physically demanding, Genzler says she doesn't tire easily and plans to work at the hospital until she's unable to physically. "I can easily see spending my 70s working here," she says. "There's a lot of longevity in our department."

In recent years, the AARP "Best Employers" list has also included manufacturing companies like John Deere, financial firms, universities, and a range of other employers. In more than a few cases, these firms report that half or more of their workers are over 50.

To some degree, older workers are found in virtually every occupation. A graying grocery bagger or orange-aproned Home Depot associate has become a common sight. But think about this: Among Americans over 65 there are 101,000 active farmers and ranchers, a similar number who drive buses or taxis, 25,000 musicians, 17,000 crossing guards, and more than 80,000 chief executives. Warren Buffett, you are not alone.

Many work as professionals, such as lawyers. But many more occupy low-paid positions, laboring as retail clerks or janitors (more than 100,000 in each of those fields, says the Urban Institute, citing US Census data).

The demand for older workers is global. If anything, the pressure on employers to welcome elderly workers appears greater in Japan and much of Europe than it is in the US. The reason is that, while the US has some population growth contributing to its labor force, those other advanced nations are plateauing or facing outright demographic decline because of low immigration and fertility rates. That translates into fewer working-age people to support each prospective retiree.

For now, Europe has a culture and policy climate that encourages retirement and discourages working past 65. But that appears to be changing. "We've seen a lot of countries in Europe, particularly Germany, starting to address these problems by raising the retirement age," says Richard Johnson, an expert on aging and retirement at the Urban Institute in Washington.

The Australian government, seeing what it perceived as a mismatch between older workers' value and employer demand, recently launched a program offering $1,000 bonuses for each worker over 50 that employers hire.

Amid pizza shops and hair salons near the town square of Needham, the entrance to the Vita Needle Company is almost invisible. It's a bit like the entrance to the railway Platform 9-3/4 in the fictional realm of Harry Potter. You'll probably see this door only if you're looking for it.

Yet there it is. Up a staircase, the little factory occupies a wooden-planked space that was once a dance hall. Where "factory" conjures up images of forklifts, assembly lines, or robotic machines, this is different: a modest-sized shop floor where people sit at workbenches, exchanging bits of casual conversation as they use hand-operated tools such as stamping machines, drills, and wire brushes.

Employees include former salesmen, postal workers, or waitresses (as Finnegan was) among them. Up the stairs come 10-foot-long boxes filled with thin steel tubing. Down the stairs go customized needles for industrial and medical uses.

"We make some of the finest needles in the world here," says Mr. Hartman, whose family founded the firm here in 1932.

For Vita Needle, the appeal of older workers is that they combine reliability with low maintenance and low costs. The older employees don't need a lot of supervision. They just come in and get the job done, sometimes setting their own schedule, like a 5 a.m. arrival.

Most of the shop-floor employees are part-time workers, not covered by the company's health-care benefits. That makes the senior demographic a good fit. (The older employees are eligible for Medicare, so they have health insurance even as the firm reduces a fast-rising cost of business.)

The needle factory blends collegiality with an industrious ethic on the part of workers. Workers like the social contact as much as anything, conversing as they pull lunch containers out of a fridge in the middle of the one-room workspace.

Finnegan says she might feel out of place if a workplace was dominated by young employees. The company's upward tilt in age is part of the banter.

"I don't want to fall," Finnegan says as she navigates an aisle. "There's too many old people around that would have to pick me up!"

Vita Needle's age profile isn't something that could be replicated everywhere. Some firms feature tasks that are too physically demanding for older workers. But the basic rationale for hiring senior workers – high quality work at relatively low cost – spans many industries.

Often older workers accept lower pay in return for jobs that are less demanding. (The needle plant emphasizes precision and quality control, but most of the jobs aren't highly skilled.)

Employers have also come to appreciate older workers for their dedication and performance. Sure, there are negative perceptions, too. Jackie James, director of research at Boston College's Sloan Center on Aging & Work, says some employers view older workers as less flexible and less interested in learning new skills. But her group's surveys find that people with silver hair and empty nests win over employers in prominent ways.

"Older workers are perceived as being reliable and having a very good work ethic, [and] more engaged in the work than the younger workers are," says Ms. James.

Mature workers often provide firms with a ready answer for particular needs, such as mentoring or taking on short-term projects. "Smart employers are targeting the mature workforce," says Melanie Holmes, a vice president at the staffing firm ManpowerGroup in Milwaukee. They offer the experience that today's productivity-focused companies are eager to have, she explains.

At the same time, Ms. Holmes says age discrimination against mature workers also lingers. In some cases, she notes, companies believe they waste money when they invest in training an older person, even though evidence suggests that young hires won't necessarily stay on the job any longer.

Perceptions remain complex, with some observers seeing exploitation where others see bosses like Vita Needle's Hartman as promoters of a healthier society.

Hartman has reaped benefits from his workers but also has tailored his operations with their interests and employability in mind. In a new book centered on Vita Needle, Caitrin Lynch, a sociologist at Olin College in Needham, describes it this way: Sometimes the workers may quip, and partly grouse, that they are "making money for Fred." At the same time, "it is due to Fred's business acumen, but also to his good will and social conscience, that they have jobs in the first place."

Howard Ring is one who's glad to work at the needle plant. "When you get to be older, it's very hard to get a job," notes Mr. Ring, now 77, who says he works to cover his expenses.

After a career in mechanical engineering ended with a layoff more than a decade ago, he says it was a "stroke of luck" that landed him his current job. He happened to visit Vita Needle's shop one day, saw a milling machine like one that he had at home, and asked if they were looking to hire anyone.

That was about six years ago. "I don't see any imminent retirement in my future at all," he says.

The rise of senior workers is part of a larger story of economic transformation. The advancement of human civilization has been enabled by various revolutions: in agriculture, metallurgy (think Bronze Age), and industrialization, to name a few.

Now, even as technology remains a driver of economic change, ManpowerGroup CEO Jeff Joerres argues that the world is in the "human age." It is one in which victory goes to organizations that best manage talent.

Companies basically want to attract the best workers (whatever their age), help them maximize productivity, and keep them happy. Efforts to tap the skills and dedication of well-seasoned workers are part of the process.

At Scripps Health in San Diego, this means offering a phased retirement program that allows employees 55 and older to gradually work less but remain on the payroll, and maintain their benefits, for as long as they want to and are able.

"We want them here," says Vic Buzachero, senior vice president of human resources for Scripps. "The more senior worker has a well-rounded knowledge base in terms of how to care for patients."

In one recent survey, the Society for Human Resource Management polled professionals in the field and found some 72 percent saying the loss of talent due to older workers retiring or departing is a current or potential problem.

So far, though, the response by employers has been mixed, with many not making older workers much of a priority, even as others cater to them in creative ways.

Some companies have made cubicles easier for mature workers to navigate, with enhanced lighting or larger keys for typing. AARP credited one of its "Best Employer" winners, First Horizon bank in Tennessee, with offering older workers something as simple as parking spaces close to the building.

One perk that appeals to older and younger alike is a flexible work schedule. This can take various forms, from adjusting start times to offering compressed workweeks, telecommuting, or job sharing.

In Des Moines, Iowa, Diana Heisner is one who appreciates something less than the 9-to-5 grind. She officially retired early in 2010 from her work as an administrative assistant at Principal Financial Group, an insurance and financial services firm.

But soon she was back at work, helping out through a program the firm developed called "Happy Returns." The idea is to encourage company retirees to come back into part-time service at the firm, whose headquarters sprawls across four blocks of downtown Des Moines.

For her part, Ms. Heisner sets aside about six weeks a year to fill in for other administrative assistants on maternity or sick leave. If she works more than that, it could cut into her Social Security income. She calls Happy Returns a win-win for retirees and the firm.

"We know the company. We know the systems. And in my case I still know a lot of the people," she says before settling into a cubicle that offers air-conditioned refuge from a searing Great Plains summer.

Heisner likes to gab with old friends about Iowa State University sports, and to earn extra income that she can use at a mall or the odd yard sale.

Some companies, including L.L. Bean, the big Maine outdoor-goods retailer, find older workers a helpful source of seasonal labor. When the company girds for its holiday season rush of mail orders for everything from backwoods jackets to backpacks for preschoolers, it comes at a time of year when many retirees wouldn't mind stepping in for a stint of work.

Carolyn Beem, a company spokeswoman, says the older workers bring a strong customer-service ethic that often rubs off on the new hires who sit alongside them. Unlike Scripps, which posts openings partly on websites targeting mature workers (such as RetirementJobs.com), L.L. Bean doesn't actively target the older population in its recruiting.

The bottom line is that em-ployers are forming increasingly close bonds with older workers, and those workers make up a growing share of the labor force. Don't expect those changes to slow down anytime soon.

Where financial experts used to talk about seniors being supported by a "three-legged stool" – Social Security, savings, and perhaps an employer pension – work is now an additional leg, says James at Boston College.

And from New England to the Pacific shores, many people are following Rosa Finnegan's path of finding fulfillment in part through staying employed.

One of the oldest employees at Scripps Health, Kenneth Curzon, is about to turn 90 in November. The cheery, slightly stooped Mr. Curzon manages parking operations full time, as he has done since 1990.

"It gives me a lot of satisfaction coming here each day, knowing I'm doing something other than sitting in a corner dreaming about things that happened years ago," says Curzon. "I have a lot of friends here."

Back at Vita Needle, longtime worker Bill Ferson can relate to that thought. As someone who lives on his own just down the road, he credits the job with keeping him alive mentally and moving physically. The results show in his spry wit.

"I'm 39 years old," he tells a visitor. This results in a raised-eyebrow pause, before Mr. Ferson explains that reversing the order of those digits would be the accurate way to put it. Then he's ready to turn back to the swaging machine he operates, putting out a new batch for his needle-factory team.

• Steve Dinnen in Des Moines, Iowa, and Eilene Zimmerman in San Diego contributed to this report.

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In this week’s political fight over the killing of the US ambassador in Libya, the two presidential candidates are being likened to White House predecessors they’d just as soon avoid: Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter and Mitt Romney to Richard Nixon.

It’s hardball campaign politics, of course, less surprising perhaps with the Obama-Carter comparison.

As he was fighting to get re-elected in 1980, Mr. Carter as commander-in-chief had to deal with the Iran hostage crisis – 52 Americans held for 444 days when militants took over the US Embassy in Tehran. Carter ordered a rescue mission that failed, killing eight US service personnel.

“For the first time since Jimmy Carter, we’ve had an American ambassador assassinated,” Romney foreign policy adviser Richard Williamson told the Washington Post. (The reference is to Adolph Dubs, US ambassador to Afghanistan, killed in a kidnapping attempt in 1979.)

Other Republicans and conservative commentators weighed in as well with their own Carter comparisons, including Rep. Allen West, Sen. James Inhofe, former UN ambassador (and Romney advisor) John Bolton, and Sean Hannity on Fox News.

Mr. Romney himself has invoked Carter, as did GOP vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan when he asserted that “every president since the Great Depression who asked Americans to send them into a second term could say that you are better off today than you were four years ago, except for Jimmy Carter and for President Barack Obama."

Mr. Carter, of course, lost the 1980 election, and the Romney campaign’s aim is to see President Obama meet the same political fate.

But in his controversial comments regarding the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya – that Obama was “sympathizing” with the attackers and “apologizing for America’s values” – Romney himself is being likened to a failed president, the one forced to resign in disgrace.

The main difference, however, is that the comparison is being drawn by a major conservative voice: Peggy Noonan, the Wall Street Journal columnist and former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan.

“He has not shown that he is a person of original foreign policy thinking,” she said in a Wall Street Journal video. Regarding what many analysts found to be snap and intemperate comments in the middle of a diplomatic crisis that would spread from Egypt and Libya to other countries, she said, “I don’t feel that Mr. Romney has been doing himself any favors.”

Then came the kicker.

“Romney looked weak today,” Ms. Noonan said. “At one point, he had a certain slight grimace on his face when he was taking tough questions from the reporters. And I thought, ‘He looks like Richard Nixon.’”

As the week wore on, Noonan wasn’t the only one on the right critical of Romney’s attempt to cast the tragedy in Libya – where Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other embassy employees were killed in what seems to have been a coordinated attack, perhaps with ties to Al Qaeda – in an overtly political light.

The Romney campaign “probably should have waited,” former US Senator John Sununu said on MSNBC. “You look at the way things unfolded, you look at the timing of it, they probably should have waited."

Mark Salter, senior strategist for Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, wrote on RealClearPolitics: “In the wake of this violence, the rush by Republicans – including Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin and scores of other conservative critics – to condemn [Obama] for policies they claim helped precipitate the attacks is as tortured in its reasoning as it is unseemly in its timing.”

“Politicians must pander, it goes with the job,” conservative writer David Frum wrote on the Daily Beast. “But they mustn't leave their fingerprints all over their pandering. The Romney campaign's attempt to score political points on the killing of American diplomats was a dismal business in every respect. Disregarding every other aspect, however, it was graceless and stupid as a matter of politics.”

These days, Republicans love to be likened to (or at least bask in the glow of) Ronald Reagan. So perhaps it’s worth noting what Mr. Reagan as presidential challenger said during President Carter’s dark hour when the Iran hostage rescue mission had failed.

“This is a difficult day for all of us Americans,” Reagan said at a press conference. “It is time for us … to stand united. It is a day for quiet reflection … when words should be few and confined essentially to our prayers.”

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Attention residents from northern Alabama to Boston: In anticipation of winter, you might have to get the snowblower tuned up and stock up on warm clothes.

But if you live in Chicago or Minneapolis, you might not need to get the snow shovel out much this winter at all.

What’s more, farmers in west Texas, Kansas, andNebraska might finally get a break: A painful drought could end.

Yes, fall is just under way, but America’s meteorologists are starting to focus on winter.

The winter forecast is particularly important for energy companies, which need to buy natural gas or stockpile home heating oil. The forecast also helps retailers know whether they need to buy extra items like scarves. Large cities might need to decide whether they should load up on salt to keep the roads clear. And farmers can use the forecast to plan their crops.

“I know a lot of our clients use the winter forecast for industrial and utility applications,” says James Aman, senior meteorologist at Earth Networks-WeatherBug in Germantown, Md. “But it could be helpful for emergency planners in California if the forecast were for heavy rain that might cause mudslides: They might want to prepare for it.”

Winter forecasting can be quite challenging, says Bryan Norcross, senior executive director of weather content and presentation at the Weather Channel in Atlanta. “This is very much an uncertain branch of science,” he says.

For example, to know how much rain or snow an area will receive, a meteorologist needs to predict the path of the jet stream, the river of air that crosses the nation. Last year, the jet stream was far to the north, resulting in very mild conditions in places like New York and Boston. If the jet stream dips to the south, it can result in cold weather all the way to Florida.

“The early indications are that it will be somewhere in the middle,” Mr. Norcross says. “If it’s in the middle, you kind of have a combination of enough cold air to produce winter storms that affect bigger cities.”

The main dynamic that could influence the jet stream this winter appears to be a developing El Niño, which is an unusually warm water temperature in the Pacific Ocean.

“It is not official yet, but it looks as if a weak El Niño is forming,” says Meghan Evans, a meteorologist in State College, Pa., for AccuWeather.com, which released its winter forecast on Wednesday.

AccuWeather looks at other years where the weather patterns were similar to make its forecast. Ms. Evans says other “good matches” are the winters of 2006-07, 2002-03, and 1953-54.

Using those years as a model, AccuWeather is forecasting above-normal snowfall from the southern Appalachians to southern New England. The biggest storms, it says, will take place in January and February.

“Once the snowfall starts, temperatures will be below normal through February,” Evans says.

The Great Lakes area from Michigan to the western part of New York State – known for heavy lake-effect snows – will get a lot of the white stuff between November and January, Mr. Aman forecasts.

But cities such as Chicago and Minneapolis, which normally have a lot of snow, will miss out on big storms this winter, according to AccuWeather. “The main storm track will be well south of the area,” Evans predicts. “They may get some Alberta clippers, which are quick-moving storms moving out of Alberta, Canada, but there is usually not much snow associated with them.”

The more southern track of the storms, however, is expected to bring some needed moisture to the southern Plains and west Texas, AccuWeather forecasts. This may help to alleviate a drought that caused angst for many farmers.

Then again, the AccuWeather forecast is not so good for Washington State, Oregon, parts ofWyoming, Idaho, and Montana. According to the US Drought Monitor, some places such as Pendleton, Ore., and Boise, Idaho, received only 10 percent or less of their normal August and September rainfall. Things aren’t expected to improve.

“We feel pretty confident precipitation will be below normal in the Northwest, and the drought will worsen,” Evans says. “That could extend the fire season.”

But further south, the shift in the jet stream could bring helpful rain to southern California. Last year was drier than normal in California. “It looks like southern California will get more precipitation than normal, while the northern areas will be near normal,” Evans says.

The Rocky Mountain region could start with a burst of snow – helpful to ski resorts, Evans says. AccuWeather then expects the snow will ease up before a second round of the white stuff hits the area in late February or early March.

The Southeast part of the country, meanwhile, could be a little wetter than normal. In fact, AccuWeather expects northern Gulf of Mexico areas, such as Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, to face the threat of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes into late November and early December. Temperatures might be a degree or two below normal in places likeTallahassee, Fla., and Atlanta.

Once the cold fronts start to surge south, they could be problematic for the nation’s citrus-crop areas, AccuWeather says. However, it expects most of the area to avoid a damaging freeze.

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Following two full years of study, scientists have confirmed that they have identified a huge geothermal hotspot in Utah, presenting the possibilities of exploitation of the find for cheap energy 

RELATED: Top 5 nations that use renewable energy

The area in question, covering an area of about 100 square miles, lies in Utah’s Black Rock Desert basin, south of Delta. During the two-year study, researchers drilled nine deep wells in the basin in an effort to confirm that water at very high temperatures was close enough to the surface to be manipulated, potentially allowing it to be converted relatively easily into steam to be used to generate electricity. (See more: World Energy Consumption Facts, Figures, and Shockers)

Rick Allis, director of the Utah Geological Survey, will report his team’s findings on the site to the energy industry at next week’s annual meeting of the Geothermal Resources Council in the hopes that it will generate interest among developers. The site itself offers particular benefits given its state of industrial development, including a large wind farm and a major transmission line currently serving a nearby coal-fired power plant. 

“Our next step is to get (geothermal energy investors) interested in moving forward to develop this resource,” said Allis. (See more: Renewable Energy — Facts and Figures)

Karl Gawell, president of the Geothermal Energy Association, is expecting positive results from the release of the “exciting” news, citing potential breakthroughs in the way that humanity powers its societies if the site can be properly exploited. The local benefits are not lost on Gawell, either.

“It’s exciting for Utah, too, because it could eventually generate a lot of jobs and economic growth,” he said.

Source: Scientists Identify Massive Geothermal Hotspot in Utah

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KIRYAT MALACHI, ISRAEL — Adi Pito and his friend Avi Genasia were checking out the damage from the first – and so far only – fatal rocket attack of the past week when there was a deep rumble on the horizon.

There was also a buzz from Mr. Genasia’s iPhone. A rocket had been fired from Gaza.

Thanks to Color Red, a new app thought up by a 13-year-old, Israelis all over the country know exactly when and where each rocket is headed.

The geeky solution for Israel’s more than 3 million residents threatened by rocket fire isn’t the first time Israel’s high-tech prowess has been applied to its security threats. In fact, much of Israel’s innovation economy – which is considered second only to Silicon Valley – is spurred by the demands of its military and related security industries.

Perhaps adversity whets Israel’s competitive edge, as suggested by the 2009 best-seller Start-Up Nation. According to Israeli press reports, the young teenager behind Color Red is from Beersheva, one of the cities that bears the brunt of Gaza rocket fire – and thus pops up most frequently on the app.

You can choose to have all alerts sent to your phone, or just those for areas you select from a long list – all in Hebrew. The system efficiently delivers its notifications based off the government's public warning alerts.

Depending on where Israelis live, they have between 15 and 90 seconds to reach a bomb shelter once the sirens begin to wail. Lately, the sirens have been followed by a large BOOM as Israel’s Iron Dome system kicks in.

Then, if you also have the app from daily newspaper Haaretz, you see an alert pop up while sipping your latte on the Mediterranean coast: Iron Dome intercepts rocket over Tel Aviv.

Apps may not blunt the rockets, but it’s nice to know where they’re falling – and where they’re not.

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