Common Sense: High Taxes Are Not a Prime Reason for Relocation, Studies Say

Pool photo by Mikhail Klimentyev

Gerard Depardieu with Vladimir Putin in January. Russia granted Mr. Depardieu a passport after his spat with France over taxes.

Last month, Vladimir V. Putin hugged his newly minted fellow Russian citizen, the actor Gerard Depardieu, posing for cameras at the Black Sea port of Sochi. “I adore your country,” Mr. Depardieu gushed — especially its 13 percent flat tax on personal income.

Sochi may not be St. Tropez, but it does have winter temperatures in the 60s and even palm trees. Mr. Putin’s deputy prime minister confidently predicted a “mass migration of wealthy Europeans to Russia.”

Here in the United States, the three-time Masters champion Phil Mickelson recently walked off the 18th hole at Humana Challenge and said he might move from California because the state increased its top income tax rate to 13.3 percent from 10.3 percent.

“Hey Phil,” Gov. Rick Perry of Texas wrote in a Twitter message, “Texas is home to liberty and low taxes ... we would love to have you as well!!” Tiger Woods later said that he had left California for Florida for just that reason years ago. Mr. Mickelson can “vote with his Gulfstream,” a Wall Street Journal editorial noted, and warned California to “expect a continued migration.”

It’s an article of faith among low-tax advocates that income tax increases aimed at the rich simply drive them away. As Stuart Varney put it on Fox News: “Look at what happened in Britain. They raised the top tax rate to 50 percent, and two-thirds of the millionaires disappeared in the next tax year. Same things are happening in France. People are leaving where the top tax rate is 75 percent. Same thing happened in Maryland a few years ago. New millionaire’s tax, the millionaires disappeared. You’ve got exactly the same thing in California.”

That, at least, is what low-tax advocates want us to think, and on its face, it seems to make sense. But it’s not the case. It turns out that a large majority of people move for far more compelling reasons, like jobs, the cost of housing, family ties or a warmer climate. At least three recent academic studies have demonstrated that the number of people who move for tax reasons is negligible, even among the wealthy.

Cristobal Young, an assistant professor of sociology at Stanford, studied the effects of recent tax increases in New Jersey and California.

“It’s very clear that, over all, modest changes in top tax rates do not affect millionaire migration,” he told me this week. “Neither tax increases nor tax cuts on the rich have affected their migration rates.”

The notion of tax flight “is almost entirely bogus — it’s a myth,” said Jon Shure, director of state fiscal studies at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research group in Washington. “The anecdotal coverage makes it seem like people are leaving in droves because of high taxes. They’re not. There are a lot of low-tax states, and you don’t see millionaires flocking there.”

Despite the allure of low taxes, Mr. Depardieu hasn’t been seen in Russia since picking up his passport and seems to be hedging his bets by maintaining a residence in Belgium. Meanwhile, Russian billionaires are snapping up trophy properties in high-tax London, New York and Beverly Hills, Calif.

“I don’t hear about many billionaires moving to Moscow,” said Robert Tannenwald, a lecturer in economic policy at Brandeis University and former Federal Reserve economist. Along with Nicholas Johnson, he and Mr. Shure are co-authors of “Tax Flight Is a Myth,” a 2011 research paper.

Of course, some people do move for tax reasons, especially wealthy retirees, athletes and other celebrities without strong ties to high-tax locations, like jobs and families. In renouncing his French citizenship, Mr. Depardieu follows other French celebrities, the chef Alain Ducasse, the singer Johnny Hallyday and Yannick Noah, a former tennis star. Several Paris hedge fund managers have decamped to London and the fashion mogul Bernard Arnault applied for Belgian citizenship, though not, he has said, for tax reasons.

Stars like Mr. Depardieu and Mr. Mickelson certainly have incentives to move. Mr. Depardieu complained that he paid 85 percent of his income in taxes in France last year and has paid 145 million euros over 45 years. France has a top rate of 41 percent as well as a wealth tax, and the Socialist president, François Hollande, is trying to impose a temporary surcharge of 75 percent on incomes over 1 million euros. Mr. Mickelson earned more than $60 million last year, Sports Illustrated estimates, which means the three-percentage-point California tax increase could add up to an additional $1.8 million in tax.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 15, 2013

An earlier version of this column misstated Mr. Depardieu’s citizenship. He has applied for residency in Belgium; he is not a citizen of that nation. The earlier version also misidentified the golf tournament at which the golfer Phil Mickelson said he might move from California to escape its taxes. It was the Humana Challenge, not Pebble Beach.

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Former Bell official says he voted for pay raise out of fear

One of the former Bell city leaders accused of plundering the town's treasury by taking oversized salaries testified Thursday that the fat paychecks and other extraordinary benefits that came with the job were all but forced on him.

George Cole, a former steelworker, returned to the witness stand for a second day and testified that he voted for a 12% annual pay raise for a City Council board in 2008 only because he feared retribution from then-City Manager Robert Rizzo.

"He had shown himself to be very vindictive if you crossed him at that time," Cole said. "I was worried that if I didn't vote for this, if I voted against it, he would do whatever he could to destroy the work that was important to me and the community. I knew that was his character."

Cole said it was the most difficult decision he ever made while on the council but was in the best interest of Bell — a city, he said, where he had devoted decades to advocating for new schools and programs for at-risk youths and senior citizens.

Cole, along with Luis Artiga, Victor Bello, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal, is accused of drawing an inflated salary from boards and authorities that rarely met and did little work.

The pay increases for the authorities were placed on the consent calendar — a place for routine and non-controversial items that are voted on without discussion. Cole defended the practice and said the agendas, minutes and staff reports were always available to the public at City Hall and at the library.

"I never tried to hide what we were doing," Cole said.

He also testified that the minutes did not reflect work done for those authorities.

Cole justified his vote for previous City Council pay raises to allow for a more diverse pool of council candidates who could use the money. And when he voted for a council salary increase in 2005, Cole noted that Bell was in a "very strong financial position."

The 63-year-old also told jurors that when he discovered $15,500 had been deposited into a 401(k)-style account for him, he complained. Cole said Rizzo refused to remove the money.

Initially, Cole said, Rizzo was a first-rate city administrator, making improvements such as repairing and keeping streets clean and erecting a protective fence around the city's largest park.

"From the time he started, he was able to accomplish things other managers previous to him said couldn't be done or were unable to do," Cole said.

Cole said the two would sometimes meet for breakfast to discuss city matters. "It was business," he said. "It wasn't two chums getting together."

But when Cole decided to give up his salary during his last year in office, he said it fractured his relationship with Rizzo. When he learned about Rizzo's near-$800,000 salary from a story published in The Times in 2010, he said he felt sick.

"I just felt like the dumbest person in the world that this guy had just pulled one of the biggest cons I've ever seen on, not just me, but on the city of Bell," Cole testified.

Rizzo faces 69 felony corruption charges. He and his former assistant, Angela Spaccia, are expected to go on trial later this year.

Cole's top annual salary was $67,000, his attorney said. At the time, he was earning nearly $95,000 a year as chief executive of the Steelworkers Old Timers Foundation.

In 2004, the city paid the state pension system $36,648 to buy Cole an additional five years of service time. Cole was one of 11 Bell administrators for whom the city bought service time.

CalPERS — the state's largest public pension program — has disallowed the service time the city bought, saying the buy-ins were not council-approved and that a municipality cannot pay for them.

Cole also was among the 40 or so Bell employees who were scheduled to receive additional payments through Bell's own supplemental retirement plan, established in 2003. In combination with the CalPERS pension, the payout was among the best retirement plans for non-safety employees in the state. The council never approved the plan.

jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com

corina.knoll@latimes.com

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Where Will All the Female <em>Star Wars</em> Characters Go?

Yes, Princess Leia was a smart, resourceful woman who had action hero chops of her own. She wasn’t just a princess waiting around in a castle for men to save her — despite the infamous scene where she ended up in a metal bikini as a sexy slave to a giant space slug.

But the fact remains: If you count up all the significant female characters who appear in the original Star Wars trilogy, the list reads as follows … Princess Leia. The only other two women with names and speaking parts in all three movies are Aunt Beru, and that Rebel Alliance representative at the end (who no one remembers until they’re forced to come up with more women).

As great a character as Leia was, however, she was functionally the lone representative of the female gender in a larger Star Wars universe where every other character moving the plot forward was a man. It’s even sadder when you consider that the dearth of women who play important roles (or any role at all) in the classic George Lucas films from the late ’70s and early ’80s echoes a problem we still have today: Women are dramatically under-represented in films and media.

And they’re even more poorly represented in roles where they are driving forces, not just ancillary characters or love interests for male heroes.

If you’ve never really noticed the absence of women in Star Wars (or movies at large), consider yourself living proof of how the limiting narratives of culture and media can warp our expectations. To the point where the presence of one woman in a cast of dozens of memorable male characters can seem like perfect equality.

Women accounted for a mere 33 percent of the roles in the top 100 Hollywood films in 2011, according to a study commissioned by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. When it came to the leading characters, women were even more dramatically under-represented, comprising only 11 percent of identifiable protagonists.

It gets even worse when you look at all-ages entertainment. Women — who, by the way, make up half the human population — comprised only 28 percent of speaking roles in top-grossing family films last year. And when women did appear, they were far less likely to hold roles of power or influence: making up only 3 percent of executive portrayals, for example, compared to 25 percent in real life.

Consider also how many Hollywood films — including the original Star Wars trilogy — fail the Bechdel Test, which asks only that a film contain two women who talk to each other at some point about something besides a man.

While not necessarily an indicator of quality, the Bechdel Test recognizes another uncomfortable truth: that women are most often portrayed in media primarily in terms of how they relate to men. I doubt the people who made these movies don’t believe they don’t value women as discrete human beings independent of men. But it’s the story the media shows if not tells.

It’s the narrative we’re all exposed to, over and over, whether we realize it or not.

Just look at the formidable female character Amidala, portrayed by Natalie Portman in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. She takes the throne of Naboo as queen at the age of 14, knows her way around a blaster to lead and win a war, and later steps into the role of a wise and far-seeing senator.

But ultimately, her narrative arc proves far less empowering than that of her daughter’s. Where Leia at least remained the same powerful, determined woman from beginning to end — and won Han’s heart regardless — Amidala crumbled emotionally and physically in Episode 3 after the loss of Anakin. She died not because of medical complications during childbirth or Anakin’s Force-choking domestic abuse, but because (according to the droid doctor) “she lost the will to live” after Anakin turned to the Dark Side. A reason so lame that it sounds like a futuristic version of “the vapours.”

Criticisms about representations of gender (or race and other diversity) are often countered in fandom by sociological or scientific analyses attempting to explain why the inequality happens according to the internal logic of the fictional world. As though there is any real reason that anything happens in a story except that someone chose to write it that way.

Fiction is not Darwinian.

Fiction is not Darwinian: It contains no impartial process of evolution that dispassionately produces the events of a fictional universe. Fiction is miraculously, fundamentally Creationist. When we make worlds, we become gods. And gods are responsible for the things they create, particularly when they create them in their own image.

Science fiction in particular has always offered a vision of the world not myopically limited by the world as it exists, but liberated by the power of imagination. Perhaps more than any genre of storytelling, it has no excuse to exclude women for so-called practical reasons — especially when it has every reason to imagine a world where they are just as heroic, exceptional, and well-represented as men.

More than any genre of storytelling, science fiction has no excuse.

Yes, many franchises are locked into demographic and historical legacies that make it difficult to introduce new characters that develop the iconic power or fan following of characters like Superman or Spider-Man. This makes women unlikely to play big roles in the important stories, and more likely to be killed, de-powered, or demoted. But the good news for Star Wars is that while these grandfathered gender dynamics may weigh heavy on stories that are still trapped in the past, they need not hinder the future.

Close your eyes, for a moment, and imagine a version of the Star Wars universe full of rich female characters who play diverse roles ranging from Jedi warriors to military leaders to bounty hunters.

Here’s the exciting news: It already exists. It’s called the Star Wars Extended Universe, a world developed through the officially licensed novels and other media outside the feature films. And it’s rife with excellent female characters who have already been embraced by Star Wars fandom, notably: Mara Jade, who appears at different times as an assassin, smuggler, Jedi Master (and Luke Skywalker’s wife); and Jaina Solo, a Rogue Squadron fighter pilot and Jedi Knight (and, you guessed it, Leia’s daughter with Han).

With a brand new film trilogy on the way from new Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy and director J.J. Abrams — famous not only for his sci-fi success with the Star Trek reboot but also female-lead TV fare like Alias — there’s no reason new Star Wars movies can’t aspire to achieve what the Extended Universe already has. A world where the other half of the human race is not only visible to movie-goers of all genders and ages, but equally capable of astonishing and inspiring feats of heroism.

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Eric Church leads line-up for country music awards

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) – Singer-songwriter Eric Church grabbed the lead in one of the biggest events in country music on Wednesday with seven nominations for the Academy of Country Music Awards while country-pop darling Taylor Swift received five nods.

Church, 35, was nominated as Male Vocalist of the Year and received his second consecutive nod for Album of the Year, this time for his widely acclaimed 2011 album “Chief”, in the 48th annual Academy of Country Music Awards.

He was also nominated for Single Record and Song of the Year for “Springsteen”, which became his second No. 1 single last year, and for Video of the Year for “Creepin’”.

Newcomer Hunter Hayes, 21, garnered six nominations, including New Male Vocalist of the Year and Video of the Year for “Wanted.” Hunter is new to the country scene, having released his self-titled debut album last year.

Country music favorites Swift and Miranda Lambert, 29, whose hits include “The House That Built Me and “Over You,” received five nominations each.

Swift received her fourth consecutive nomination for Entertainer of the Year. If she wins, it will be the 23-year-old singer’s third consecutive claim to that title which is decided by country fans’ voting.

Swift is also nominated for the sixth time for Female Vocalist of the Year and for the fourth time for Video of the Year for “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.”

Swift was ranked last year by Forbes as the second top-earning woman in music after bringing in an estimated $ 58 million from her album, endorsements and a perfume in the past year. She was beaten to top slot by Britney Spears.

Lambert’s country singer husband Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan will co-host the annual award ceremony in Las Vegas on April 7. Shelton has hosted the show for the past three years.

(Reporting by Vernell Hackett, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: Ask Well: Swimming to Ease Back Pain

Many people find that recreational swimming helps ease back pain, and there is research to back that up. But some strokes may be better than others.

An advantage to exercising in a pool is that the buoyancy of the water takes stress off the joints. At the same time, swimming and other aquatic exercises can strengthen back and core muscles.

That said, it does not mean that everyone with a case of back pain should jump in a pool, said Dr. Scott A. Rodeo, a team physician for U.S.A. Olympic Swimming at the last three Olympic Games. Back pain can have a number of potential causes, some that require more caution than others. So the first thing to do is to get a careful evaluation and diagnosis. A doctor might recommend working with a physical therapist and starting off with standing exercises in the pool that involve bands and balls to strengthen the core and lower back muscles.

If you are cleared to swim, and just starting for the first time, pay close attention to your technique. Work with a coach or trainer if necessary. It may also be a good idea to start with the breaststroke, because the butterfly and freestyle strokes involve more trunk rotation. The backstroke is another good option, said Dr. Rodeo, who is co-chief of the sports medicine and shoulder service at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

“With all the other strokes, you have the potential for some spine hyperextension,” Dr. Rodeo said. “With the backstroke, being on your back, you don’t have as much hyperextension.”

Like any activity, begin gradually, swimming perhaps twice a week at first and then progressing slowly over four to six weeks, he said. In one study, Japanese researchers looked at 35 people with low back pain who were enrolled in an aquatic exercise program, which included swimming and walking in a pool. Almost all of the patients showed improvements after six months, but the researchers found that those who participated at least twice weekly showed more significant improvements than those who went only once a week. “The improvement in physical score was independent of the initial ability in swimming,” they wrote.

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Airbus Abandons Plan to Use Controversial Batteries

PARIS — Faced with a potentially prolonged investigation into what caused batteries on two Boeing 787 Dreamliner jets to catch fire or emit smoke last month, Boeing’s European rival, Airbus, said Friday that it had abandoned plans to use the same battery technology on its forthcoming wide-body jet, the A350-XWB.

Airbus said that it began informing airline customers on Thursday that it would not move ahead with an original plan to use the lightweight lithium-ion batteries to power a number of the A350’s onboard systems, and would revert instead to a conventional battery, made of nickel-cadmium, that is already used extensively on existing Airbus models.

“Airbus considers this to be the most appropriate way forward in the interest of program execution and reliability,” said Marcella Muratore, an Airbus spokeswoman.

Airbus completed the assembly of its first test version of the A350 late last year and initial ground tests of that plane using the lithium-ion batteries had already begun at its factory in Toulouse, France. By switching gears now, the company said it hoped to be able to stick to its schedule of delivering the first aircraft in the second half of 2014.

Investigators at the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board have not determined the root cause of two episodes in January involving fire or smoke from the 787’s lithium-ion batteries, which are made by a Japanese company, GS Yuasa. The incidents prompted the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to ground all 787s on Jan 17.

In recent weeks Airbus executives had indicated their concern that the continued uncertainty about the cause of the 787 battery problems, as well as the nature of any fixes that might be ordered by the F.A.A. and its European counterpart, the European Aviation Safety Agency, might endanger the A350’s development schedule, leading to potentially significant compensation payments to airlines.

Airbus currently has 617 orders for the A350 from 35 airline customers.

Ms. Muratore, the Airbus spokeswoman, stressed that the company remained confident that the lithium-ion battery system that it had been developing with its French supplier, Saft, was “robust and safe,” and added that Airbus planned to use lithium-ion batteries on the A350s it will use for flight tests scheduled to begin this summer.

The decision to revert to nickel-cadmium batteries, she said, was made purely for commercial reasons.

“As a result of making this decision now, Airbus does not expect it to impact the entry into service schedule,” Ms. Muratore said.

The Boeing 787 is the first commercial airliner to make extensive use of lithium-ion batteries. Prior to the A350, Airbus had only used the technology to power a limited number of auxiliary functions on its twin-deck A380 superjumbo, which entered service in 2007.

Battery makers have promoted lithium-ion batteries as being significantly lighter and faster to recharge that nickel-cadmium batteries. Promotional materials from both Yuasa and Saft have also described the technology as requiring significantly less maintenance that conventional batteries, reducing operating costs for airlines.

But investigations by Japanese and U.S. regulators in recent weeks have revealed that airlines had experienced multiple problems with the 787's batteries before the overheating incidents in January, raising questions about their reliability.

Battery experts say that while lithium-ion batteries weigh 30 percent to 40 percent less than conventional batteries, their contribution to the overall weight of a jetliner is minimal: The empty weight of a Boeing 787, for example, is about 242,000 pounds or 110,000 kilograms; its two lithium-ion batteries weigh 63 pounds each.

Ms. Muratore of Airbus said that it was too early to say what, if any, impact the battery switch may have on the A350's fuel-efficiency or other performance targets. But she stressed that weight ''was not a factor'' in the decision. She added that the dimensions of the nickel-cadmium batteries were not expected to be significantly larger than those of the four lithium-ion batteries they will replace, reducing the design adjustments that will have to be made.

Airbus said it was too early to estimate the financial impact of making the battery switch. But analysts said it was likely to be minimal compared to the potential burden of hundreds of millions of dollars in penalty payments to customers in the event of a delivery delay.

“I think this probably gets lost in the wash,” said Nick Cunningham, an aerospace industry analyst at Agency Partners in London. “You’re probably only talking about a few million dollars.”

He estimated that the added weight of the nickel-cadmium battery was probably equivalent to losing one passenger seat of payload. “That’s likely to be well within the margin of guarantees” on performance that Airbus has made to airlines, he said. “This seems like the thoroughly sensible thing to do.”

Aviation regulators have long known about the risks of lithium-ion batteries, which are more prone to overheating if improperly charged or discharged. Because of their unique chemistry, a fire that begins in one cell of a lithium-ion battery is difficult to extinguish and can rapidly spread to neighboring cells — a condition known as thermal runaway.

The technology was nonetheless approved by the F.A.A., the E.A.S.A. and regulators in other countries for use on the 787 in 2007, with the provision that Boeing employ a series of additional safeguards to contain smoke and fire in the event of an incident.

Airbus that it would continue to study the lithium-ion technology as it moves forward with the A350’s development and would “take on board” any relevant findings that resulted from the ongoing investigation of the Boeing 787 incidents.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 15, 2013

An earlier version of this article mischaracterized incidents in January involving lithium-ion batteries in Boeing 787 Dreamliners. In one case a battery caught fire, and in another a battery emitted smoke; both batteries did not catch fire.

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Vintage piano given Valentine's Day deadline

HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — The piano was delivered to its bluff-top perch under cover of fog nearly two weeks ago. It is scheduled to leave this coastal enclave in a burst of flames on Sunday.

In between the fog and the fire, musician and sculptor Mauro Ffortissimo has been treating his neighbors to an illicit outdoor concert series grandly dubbed Sunset Piano. Chopin, Debussy, a tango or two. The performances are timed to end the moment the sun sinks below the horizon.

He plays to cyclists and dog walkers, babies in strollers, his landlady in a folding chair, the charmed, the perplexed. Every night the battered baby grand has sounded just a little bit worse as the elements erode the aging, al fresco instrument. Every night, the audience has grown.

Ffortissimo (not his real name, but you probably figured that out already) had hoped to serenade the residents of Half Moon Bay for a month. But it didn't take long for reality to intrude on the 50-year-old artist's well-laid plans.

Two days after Ffortissimo and friends rolled the piano out to a scenic spit of city land, a code enforcement officer sent a warning via email. Someone had complained.

No permit, no piano.

The 90-year-old Estey "appears to be an unauthorized encroachment onto public property," wrote Lamonte Mack. If you can't prove the installation is authorized, he told Ffortissimo, "please remove the piano — and platform — within 10 (ten) days."

That made the deadline Valentine's Day, an occasion to celebrate love, if not misplaced musical instruments.

The artist legally known as Mauro Dinucci has taken the bad news in stride. Asked about the end of the piano during Tuesday night's crowded concert, he crowed: "Woo, hoo! Valentine's Day! Bring chocolate!" and promised that "before we burn this baby, we give it one last boat ride."

Thursday will be the piano's last scheduled bluff-side concert along the Coastside Trail at the end of Kelly Avenue. Friday, Ffortissimo said, he has been invited to play the instrument at the Half Moon Bay Yacht Club.

Saturday he'll give a sunset performance on the water, a nod to the piano's earlier owners who once sent it from California to Panama and back by sea. Sunday he plans to set the piano ablaze in the flower-strewn field behind his studio.

"The idea of the burning," Ffortissimo said, "is a cremation, to liberate the piano from its physical form … I just hope it won't be a 'Spare the Air' day."

Not everyone is as happy as Ffortissimo about the piano's upcoming freedom.

Mayor Rick Kowalczyk, who has yet to hear the Sunset Piano himself, said he was trying to "see if I can't get something done in the short term to allow Mauro to stay." Kicking the Estey off of the bluff, he said, "feels a little bit like a child has a lemonade stand and the city shuts it down."

On Tuesday evening, more than 100 music lovers gathered round as the sun — and the temperature — dropped. Two women danced together on the grass. Wine was sipped and beer chugged. Children ate cold pizza. Shorebirds glided by.

Far away from Half Moon Bay, President Obama was preparing to give his State of the Union address. Christopher Dorner was thought to be shooting it out with police.

But here on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Susan Swanson of Redwood City poured white wine from a blue metal flask as Ffortissimo played Albinoni's "Adagio in G Minor." She'd read about the piano performance in the local newspaper, she said, "and it's the kind of news I like to read — good news.

"This to me is everything," said the trying-to-retire office manager. "It's a perfect moment. Once in a lifetime maybe. It's so odd, isn't it?"

maria.laganga@latimes.com

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<cite>The Monitor</cite> Heads to a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Not sure if you noticed, but it’s Star Wars Week on Wired. We’ve already dealt with the old movies and what the new movies will need, but it’s time to leave the big screen and get a handle on the best of the ancillary Star Wars products out there. To that end, we’ve got a new comic book that takes place between installments of the Original Trilogy, and two analog (or at least analog-inspired) games to take you back to your childhood. Beware, because we are descending to levels of Deep Nerd heretofore unplumbed.

Tasting notes for this week’s show:

• Brian Wood, the writer of Dark Horse’s new Star Wars ongoing comic, is also the man behind The Massive — the trade paperback of which is coming out next month. Highly recommended.


• Game publisher Fantasy Flight, maker of X-Wing Miniatures, also has a card game that’s pretty great. It’s a “living” card game rather than a conventional collectible game, meaning that you don’t have to pay through the nose chasing the best cards (though expansion packs are released periodically).


• A minute isn’t really enough to get across a full description of all the tables in Zen Studios’ new Star Wars Pinball, so here’s a deeper rundown.

Working on the Play section and editing features, Peter handles Wired magazine‘s pop culture and entertainment coverage: movies, TV, music, videogames, comic books and anything else that is absolutely integral to the survival of our species.

Read more by Peter Rubin

Follow @provenself on Twitter.

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The New Old Age Blog: A New Commission: Time to Cheer or Yawn?

The fate of the Class Act, which would have established the nation’s first voluntary public long-term care insurance program, was sealed in 2011 when the Obama administration shut it down, essentially calling it unworkable.

As long as the language remained part of the Affordable Care Act, supporters allowed themselves to hope, or perhaps fantasize, that the administration might return to the subject. How to care for an aging population, and who pays for that and how, are questions that won’t go away.

But Congress quietly administered the coup de grâce last month, during the fiscal cliff negotiations. The budget deal stripped the Class Act language from the Affordable Care Act. R.I.P.

In its place — thanks to the intervention of Senator Jay Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia — the negotiators created a Commission on Long-Term Care, charged with developing plans for “a comprehensive, coordinated and high-quality system” ensuring long-term care for older adults and people with disabilities.

Its 15 members — three picks each for the president, the Senate majority and minority leaders, and the House speaker and minority leader — face a tight deadline. Within six months, they are supposed to recommend legislative or administrative actions, including actual legislative language. Then bills are to be introduced in both houses of Congress on the very next day they are in session.

Which sounds like urgency, but is it? Even Connie Garner, the longtime Kennedy staff member who directs the advocacy group called Advance Class, was skeptical. “What can you really do in six months?” she said. Actuaries and policy types had been working on the Class plan for 19 months before the plug was pulled. “And so what if you introduce a bill?” she went on. “You can introduce stuff and nothing happens.”

So when Advance Class held its monthly board meeting a few days after the Class Act officially bit the dust, Ms. Garner figured this push for a national long-term care approach was dead, along with her organization. She had prepared a valedictory, praising the group for at least putting the issue on the national agenda.

“But they said, ‘No, we’re going to keep Advance Class going; we’re going to fight the long fight,’ ” she recalled. So on we go.

Discouragingly, the commission has already hit delays: Its members were to be named within 30 days of the budget deal’s enactment, but only the Congressional Democrats have made appointments.

Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, nominated a veteran health policy scholar, Judy Feder, who is now at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute; the labor executive Laphonza Butler, who heads California’s United Long-Term Care Workers Union; and Javaid Anwar, a Nevada internist.

Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, appointed Bruce Chernof, chief executive of the SCAN Foundation, which promotes quality care for the elderly; Judith Stein, founder of the Center for Medicare Advocacy; and George Vrandenburg, a retired corporate lawyer who has put his philanthropic muscle behind Alzheimer’s causes.

We have heard nothing yet from the White House or the Republican Congressional leadership.

Maybe that barely matters. “I can’t imagine anything coming out of this commission that won’t be totally forgotten a year from now,” said Jesse Slome, executive director of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance. “How many commissions have there been?”

Yet one thing that he and the proponents at Advance Class can agree on — maybe the only thing — is that this issue demands attention.

Otherwise, Mr. Slome says, we are stuck with what we have when it comes to older people who might need expensive care for 30 years, and disabled people who might need care for even longer. And what we have, he said, amounts to “a little here, a little there, a little Medicare, a lot of Medicaid, a little long-term care insurance and a lot of unpaid family caregiving.” (I would say very little long-term care insurance, and a vast amount of unpaid family care.)

Discussing the future of Medicare and Medicaid without including long-term care is pointless, Mr. Slome added. Ms. Garner notes that she meets frequently with Republicans and that they never dismiss the issue as unimportant.

Well, there’s a start.

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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DealBook: American and US Airways Announce Merger Deal

6:35 a.m. | Updated

Ending a yearlong courtship by US Airways, American Airlines agreed to merge with the smaller carrier, paving the way for the creation of the nation’s largest airline.

The boards of the companies have unanimously approved the deal, valued at $11 billion, according to a news release Thursday morning. A merger would bolster American’s domestic footprint, strengthen its presence in the Northeast and give it a bigger network to attract business travelers and corporate accounts.

Under the terms of the deal, US Airways’ shareholders will own 28 percent of the combined airline, while 72 percent of the stake will be held by AMR shareholders, creditors, labor unions and American employees.

The merger would create a rival with the size and breadth to compete against United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, which have grown through mergers of their own in recent years and are currently the biggest.

But while United and Delta went through bankruptcies and mergers over the last decade, American has been steadily losing ground while racking up losses that have totaled more than $12 billion since 2001. It was the last major airline to seek court protection to reorganize its business when it filed for bankruptcy in November 2011.

The wave of big mergers in the industry has created healthier and more profitable airlines that are now better able to invest in new planes and products, including Wi-Fi, individual entertainment screens and more comfortable seats for business passengers. But some consumer advocates said they worried that reducing the number of airlines would lead to higher fares over the long run and allow airlines to increase revenue by imposing new or higher fees.

The deal, which was completed in recent days, could be formalized as American leaves bankruptcy. W. Douglas Parker, the chairman and chief executive of US Airways, will take over as American’s chief executive. Thomas W. Horton, American’s current chairman and chief executive, will be chairman, though his tenure could be limited.

The merger still needs to pass several steps. It must be approved by American’s bankruptcy judge in New York. US Airways shareholders, who will also have to approve the deal.

In addition, it will be reviewed by the Justice Department’s antitrust division, though analysts expect regulators to clear the deal.

If approved, the nation’s top four airlines — American, United, Delta and Southwest Airlines — would control nearly 70 percent of the domestic market.

The merger is a victory for Mr. Parker. Over the last year, he has convinced American’s creditors that the carrier needed to expand its network to compete. In April, he won the critical backing of American’s three labor groups, which defied American’s management and publicly endorsed a deal with US Airways.

The biggest challenge for the merged company, which will be called American Airlines, will be to integrate operations over the next couple of years. That is no easy task since airline mergers are often rocky — involving complex technological systems, big reservation networks as well as large labor groups with different corporate cultures that all need to be seamlessly combined.

United angered passengers last year after a series of merger-related computer and reservation mistakes, and late and delayed flights.

Mr. Parker has done this before. In 2005, when he was the head of America West, he engineered a merger with the larger US Airways.

In this case, the merged American Airlines will still be based in Fort Worth and have a combined 94,000 employees, 950 planes, 6,500 daily flights, eight major hubs and total sales of nearly $39 billion. It would be the market leader on the East Coast, the Southwest and South America. But it would remain a smaller player in Europe, where United and Delta are stronger. The merger does little to bolster American’s presence in Asia, where it trails far behind its rivals.

American has major hubs in Dallas, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. US Airways has hubs in Phoenix, Philadelphia and Charlotte, N.C., and has a big presence at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington.

In reviewing previous mergers, federal regulators have not focused on the overall size of the combined airline but instead looked at whether a merger would decrease competition in individual cities. To do so, regulators examine specific routes, or city-pairs, and look at whether a merger reduces the number of airlines there.

The last time the Justice Department challenged a merger was the proposed combination between United Airlines and US Airways in 2001. It rejected that on the ground that it would reduce consumer choice and possibly lead to higher fares.

Since then, the department has allowed a wave of big mergers that have reshaped the industry, said Alison Smith, a former antitrust official and now a partner in the law firm McDermott Will & Emery.

American and US Airways only have about 12 overlapping routes, a figure that is unlikely to set off regulatory opposition, she said. One problem, however, could come up at National Airport, where the combined carriers hold a market share of about 60 percent. There, regulators might request that American give up some takeoff and landing rights before approving the merger.

Regulators sought similar concessions from United at Newark Liberty International Airport after its merger with Continental Airlines.

It is also unclear whether American needs all of its combined hubs. Analysts pointed out that Phoenix was at risk because of its proximity to Dallas, since it makes little sense to have two big hubs so close to each other.

Despite the increased concentration, consumers can still expect to find vibrant competition, said William S. Swelbar, a research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s International Center for Air Transportation.

“We will have four very big, very vigorous competitors in the market,” he said.

Travelers are better served by bigger airlines offering more connecting flights and more destinations, analysts said. Consumers today can easily compare fares and shop for the cheapest flight online, which keeps airfares in check.

But Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, disagreed. He said that consumers would see few benefits to offset the merger’s negative impact — including “reduced competition, higher fares and fees and diminished service to small and midsize communities.”

Michael J. de la Merced contributed reporting.

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