Claiming that The New York Times duped her into granting an interview for what turned out to be a drug company-funded advertising supplement, Jane Pauley has sued the newspaper for fraud. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, the 55-year-old broadcaster charges that she believed that the Times interview was for a news article on mental health issues, but that the story (accompanied by a full-page photo) ran in an October 2005 "special advertising supplement" promoting psychotherapeutic drugs sold by Eli Lilly and other pharmaceutical firms. Pauley, who in September 2004 disclosed her battle with bipolar disorder, alleges that the Times "duped" her into lending her name to its advertising gambit, according to the lawsuit...

It started out as a gag here on the editorial page of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and soon became a superstition:

Every time the stock market took a little dip, we'd reprint one of Paul Krugman's dour columns from the New York Jaundiced Times about the imminent doom of the American economy.

Almost immediately the market would bounce back and then some. It worked every time.

But we may have overdone it of late. By now the Dow Jones has started to cross into 12,000 territory. A few more Krugman columns explaining how the economy has cooled off and the thing could overheat.

We reprinted one of his columns last Thursday morning and, sure enough, by the end of the day, the Dow ended the day over 12,000 for the first time. AN HISTORIC HIGH! and all that jazz.

Well, sure. The Krugman touch never fails.

The more Professor Eeyore says the economy is going to hell, the more heavenly it gets. Can it be just a coincidence? The Dow seems to surge whenever it sees "Paul Krugman" in a by-line. It must be a kind of Pavlovian reaction by now.

My political heroes are Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich and George Bush -- W., not H.W. So it came as something of a surprise to me that, the more I dealt with Eliot Spitzer, the higher I came to regard him and the more respect I had for him as a public servant. I guess, as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Mr. Spitzer has been accused of overreaching as New York's attorney general, operating outside of his areas of expertise when dealing with federal securities laws and such. That's not what I saw as the general counsel of a large New York financial institution. Mr. Spitzer often had a better grasp of the underlying facts, legal implications and policy considerations than many from the federal regulatory agencies.

The US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission have been aiding and abetting China's protectionism. Both agencies have spent substantial resources to promote a U.S.-style antitrust regime in China. The article you cited references this. Last month, documents I received from the DOJ under a FOIA request show how DOJ lawyers are actually making line-by-line edits to the draft China Antimonopoly law, in many cases to give Chinese regulators greater power over the private sector.

Over the last few months, there is a growing perception that foreign companies have done too well from their investments. The Party leadership has publicly accused a few of capturing "excessive" market shares, acquiring too many stakes in China's strategic industries, and buying state assets at bargain prices. Above all, there seems to be a concern that overseas investors own too much of the technology crucial to China's economic development.

These sentiments aren't only murmured in private. Li Deshui, a former economic official, was quoted in March as criticizing "malicious acquisitions aimed at establishing monopolies." He cited beer, soft drinks and skin-care products as areas where foreign companies had done too well at the expense of their local counterparts...

In September, six ministries enacted regulations that give the Ministry of Commerce expanded power to block foreign purchases of local companies. The law's language is vague; a purchase that disturbs "the social or economic order or harm the public interest," for instance, could be reviewed...

The problem for foreign companies is that Beijing is willing to use tactics which give their Chinese counterparts an unfair advantage. These measures include state subsidies through politically motivated bank lending at below-market rates. For instance, Cnooc Ltd.'s abortive bid for Unocal Corp. last year was backed by several billion dollars in cheap loans from its government-owned parent company. It's also possible in future that Beijing will challenge patents and cap domestic retail prices to reduce the royalties paid to foreign patent and copyright holders.

China's economic nationalism is a marginal adjustment to, rather than a fundamental repudiation of, Beijing's broader embrace of globalization. ...Other "China risk" factors may receive far more publicity -- from the threat of a financial crisis to a political collapse, or even a conflict with the U.S. over Taiwan. But for companies doing business with China, it is the new surge in economic nationalism that poses, by far, the biggest threat for the foreseeable future.

Stephen King has a special Halloween request for voters: helping him end the “nightmare” he calls the GOP majorities in Congress.

In an e-mail with the subject line “I know scary,” King asks members of MoveOn.org to help organize pre-Halloween phone parties this weekend. At the parties, attendees will call “progressive” voters in key districts to remind them to vote Nov. 7.

“If I know anything, I know scary,” he writes. “And giving this president and this out-of-control Congress two more years to screw up our future is downright terrifying. Thankfully, this national nightmare is one we can end with — literally — a wake up call...

“And since it’s Halloween, we’ll celebrate with an optional costume contest, some pumpkin carving (I’ll be making a Jack-Abramoff-O’Lantern) and—of course—plenty of candy,” he adds.

...we still haven’t come to grips with the epidemic of corporate misgovernance revealed four years ago by the Enron and WorldCom scandals, then drowned out as a political issue by the clamor for war with Iraq.

Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, the most vilified figure from the most notorious financial scandal of the decade, was sentenced Monday to 24 years, four months in the harshest sentence yet in the case that came to symbolize corporate fraud in America.

Some retail shops in Georgetown have been in the hippie clothing business since the 1960’s. Today, they cater to those who are too young to be hippies; hell, most of their customers are too young to know that “Rage against the Machine” was a band. These retailers go to great lengths to disguise that they are businesses, lest their liberal customers exit stage left.

Turns out they may have other problems.

After 37 years of catering to the counterculture, the owners of the Georgetown-based fashion chain Up Against the Wall were poised for a $32 million payday.

Instead, the proposed sale of their company has wafted away, and the firm is embroiled in a legal dispute with its former controller. In court papers, the company said he was fired for doing a poor job. He said he was fired for refusing to manipulate the company's books, and in pressing his case, he attempted to subpoena the prospective buyer while the deal was pending.

This must be Bush’s fault.

...Proposition 87...would raise taxes on oil extracted from California by 1.5% to 6%, depending on the price per barrel -- all in the name of reducing energy consumption and dependency on foreign oil. Let us run that by you again: The idea here is to tax California oil in order to get Californians to use less Saudi oil. Brilliant.

If approved, the law would raise costs on California's oil producers by as much as $4 billion over the next 10 years. California would overnight become the state with the highest tax on oil producers in the U.S. -- which makes as much sense as Vermont levying the highest tax on maple syrup. Not one penny, by the way, would go to close Sacramento's enormous government debt burden -- which may rise by another $40 billion if the multitude of bond initiatives for new public spending are also approved by voters this November.

Instead, the revenue would finance a new state agency, the Energy Alternatives Program Authority. The new energy authority would be responsible for passing out multi-million dollar checks to projects researching alternative energy. If you think corporate welfare is out of control in Washington, wait until Sacramento politicians start passing out these billions in subsidies.

...Issue 2...would amend the state constitution to raise the minimum hourly wage to $6.85 from $5.15. It also mandates annual minimum-wage increases based on inflation and contains other sneaky provisions designed to aid union organizing.

...voters should also know that Issue 2 is about a lot more than a higher minimum wage. It's also a Trojan horse for other items on Big Labor's wish list that will only make Ohio's business climate less attractive. For example, the proposal imposes onerous and expensive record-keeping requirements on employers and says, "Such information shall be provided without charge to an employee or person acting on behalf of an employee upon request."

Courts have been reluctant to wade into compensation issues in the apparent belief that directors and the shareholders who nominally oversee them can better manage such matters. But shareholders have been unable or unwilling to effect boardroom change, and compensation excesses have become alarmingly common.

What kept me from seeing these matters more clearly earlier in what admittedly was a close call? I fear I allowed the vicious criticism of The Times by the Bush administration to trigger my instinctive affinity for the underdog and enduring faith in a free press...