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Articles I missed
Undermining the Pell Grants
The New York Times, November 25, 2004, EDITORIAL
Daunted by soaring costs, as many as a quarter of low-income students with grades and test scores that make them prime college material no longer even apply to college. This is bad news at a time when skilled jobs are moving abroad and a college diploma has become the minimum price of admission to the new economy. The Bush administration, however, could actually make this problem worse by cutting the federal Pell grant program, which was developed to encourage poor and working-class students to pursue higher education.
The pending cut could cause as many as 1.2 million low-income students to have their grants reduced - and as many as 100,000 could lose their grants altogether. That inevitably means that students would either drop out or take longer to finish their degrees.
The Pell program, which is meant to help students pay for tuition and other expenses, like books and housing, has been gravely underfinanced for a long time. Congress has tried to mask the problem by tricky bookkeeping. In particular, Congress failed to revise the maximum grant to keep pace with rising costs. Left untouched for a decade, the aid formula is still capped at around $4,000 a year - far less than what it takes to support a college student. The Republican leadership tried to cut the Pell program by changing the formula for distributing the money in a way that would cut out students who had higher - although still inadequate - family incomes. The leaders backed off when middle-income families protested and student aid threatened to become an issue in the presidential campaign.
Back then, Congress agreed to hold off on any changes until it could look at the student aid problem as a whole during reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which is due to come before the body next year. But with the election behind it, the Republican leadership has advanced a proposal that could slash the program anyway, by roughly $300 million. Eliminating the resources to help needy and qualified students go to college will not even put a dent in the nation's growing deficit, but it will greatly diminish opportunities for upward mobility for the nation's youth.
Vermont's Country Stores Organize to Face Threats
By KATIE ZEZIMA, The New York Times, November 28, 2004
BRIDGEWATER CORNERS, Vt. - With its ample selection of Australian wines and shelves filled with DVD's and garlic-flavored pita chips, the country store in this tiny south-central Vermont town might appear to have come a long way since it opened in 1839.
But its creaky wood-plank floor, its wall of 19th-century mailboxes cater-cornered to a jar of Marshmallow Fluff and the proudly displayed town hunting ledger suggest that it has not really changed much.
Independent country stores like this one, the Bridgewater Corners Country Store, where customers are urged to sit outside at the wooden tables with a cup of coffee from a bottomless urn and where regulars run tabs, have long been a Vermont way of life. Now, threatened by the minimarts and large grocery chains that have driven some of them out of business in recent years, they have been banding together to help protect themselves.
Of the 100 independent country stores in the state, 55 have become members of the Vermont Alliance of Independent Country Stores. The organization, founded about two years ago, serves primarily as a support network, a sounding board and a marketing tool for owners. It promotes both the vitality and the history of the stores, limiting membership to those built before 1927, when the Winooski River flooded, decimating the state and killing 88 people.
"It's strength in numbers," said Charlie Wilson, owner of the Taftsville Country Store, which opened in 1840.
The alliance, started with state grant money and sustained by annual dues of $50, holds meetings every few months and is supported by the Vermont Grocers Association, a lobbying group. It is urging its members to market themselves with a detailed Web page on the alliance's site, www.vaics.org, and is working toward selling its own brand of products like salsa and jams.
"They represent, both in terms of the present and past, Vermont's communities," Dennis Bathory-Kitsz, executive director of the alliance, said of the stores. "They contain things that people want to buy, and they are a place that people want to go talk and meet friends. They are just a real example of those traditions in Vermont that survive not because they're cute but because they're necessary."
But the key to surviving in the market, members of the group say, is being able to adapt to changing times and falling prices with new products and amenities while retaining old-fashioned charm and friendly service.
"Country stores are struggling," Mr. Bathory-Kitsz said. "They've had three hits over the course of the 20th century. The first was the supermarket, the second the convenience store and third the big box store. Each took away part of the day-to-day operation that kept that store alive. Now they've had to substitute items and come up with ways to keep up. These changes have required a lot of imagination. Now there's A.T.M.'s in a lot of stores."
Mr. Wilson's red brick store, where his two dogs, Emily and Annie, greet customers, is a hodgepodge of tourist knickknacks, maple sugar candy, goat cheeses and basic sundries. The post office serving his town's 283 residents is in the back, past the ice cream freezer and beyond the substantial high-end wine collection. On a recent late afternoon, one man came into the post office and grabbed a soda, waving to Mr. Wilson, who put it on his tab.
"What we've become is a convenience store," Mr. Wilson said. "I carry all this stuff out of convenience for people. If someone runs out of flour or sugar or milk, they can come pick it up here."
Not that he is entirely happy about it. "I can't keep the store open and pay the light bills just to sell one box of sugar," he said.
Bob Hammond, owner of the store here in Bridgewater Corners, said: "It's hard to run a place like this. It's not always easy to stay competitive, to stay afloat."
Still, Mr. Wilson said that with the creation of the alliance, owners were now able to help one another in ways that were earlier unheard of, as when one owner lost his milk contract because his store was too small and another member of the group put him in touch with a distributor who was willing to deliver only a few gallons at a time. That, members say, would never have happened before the alliance, whose stores are sprinkled throughout the state.
"To be alone is one thing; to be among 50 or 60 people you know is another," Mr. Bathory-Kitsz said.
To customers like Sandy Sawyer, who shopped at the Bridgewater Corners store with her 8-year-old daughter the other day, convenience trumped all. The store is right around the corner from her house, and she needed to pick up some things for dinner.
But Pete Oldenburg, who stopped in on a work break for a cup of coffee, enjoyed the personal touch.
"You come in a little country store and you know all the people," Mr. Oldenburg said. "You try to keep the money local. It's not the fast-paced in and out of a big chain."
The New York Times, November 25, 2004, EDITORIAL
Daunted by soaring costs, as many as a quarter of low-income students with grades and test scores that make them prime college material no longer even apply to college. This is bad news at a time when skilled jobs are moving abroad and a college diploma has become the minimum price of admission to the new economy. The Bush administration, however, could actually make this problem worse by cutting the federal Pell grant program, which was developed to encourage poor and working-class students to pursue higher education.
The pending cut could cause as many as 1.2 million low-income students to have their grants reduced - and as many as 100,000 could lose their grants altogether. That inevitably means that students would either drop out or take longer to finish their degrees.
The Pell program, which is meant to help students pay for tuition and other expenses, like books and housing, has been gravely underfinanced for a long time. Congress has tried to mask the problem by tricky bookkeeping. In particular, Congress failed to revise the maximum grant to keep pace with rising costs. Left untouched for a decade, the aid formula is still capped at around $4,000 a year - far less than what it takes to support a college student. The Republican leadership tried to cut the Pell program by changing the formula for distributing the money in a way that would cut out students who had higher - although still inadequate - family incomes. The leaders backed off when middle-income families protested and student aid threatened to become an issue in the presidential campaign.
Back then, Congress agreed to hold off on any changes until it could look at the student aid problem as a whole during reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which is due to come before the body next year. But with the election behind it, the Republican leadership has advanced a proposal that could slash the program anyway, by roughly $300 million. Eliminating the resources to help needy and qualified students go to college will not even put a dent in the nation's growing deficit, but it will greatly diminish opportunities for upward mobility for the nation's youth.
Vermont's Country Stores Organize to Face Threats
By KATIE ZEZIMA, The New York Times, November 28, 2004
BRIDGEWATER CORNERS, Vt. - With its ample selection of Australian wines and shelves filled with DVD's and garlic-flavored pita chips, the country store in this tiny south-central Vermont town might appear to have come a long way since it opened in 1839.
But its creaky wood-plank floor, its wall of 19th-century mailboxes cater-cornered to a jar of Marshmallow Fluff and the proudly displayed town hunting ledger suggest that it has not really changed much.
Independent country stores like this one, the Bridgewater Corners Country Store, where customers are urged to sit outside at the wooden tables with a cup of coffee from a bottomless urn and where regulars run tabs, have long been a Vermont way of life. Now, threatened by the minimarts and large grocery chains that have driven some of them out of business in recent years, they have been banding together to help protect themselves.
Of the 100 independent country stores in the state, 55 have become members of the Vermont Alliance of Independent Country Stores. The organization, founded about two years ago, serves primarily as a support network, a sounding board and a marketing tool for owners. It promotes both the vitality and the history of the stores, limiting membership to those built before 1927, when the Winooski River flooded, decimating the state and killing 88 people.
"It's strength in numbers," said Charlie Wilson, owner of the Taftsville Country Store, which opened in 1840.
The alliance, started with state grant money and sustained by annual dues of $50, holds meetings every few months and is supported by the Vermont Grocers Association, a lobbying group. It is urging its members to market themselves with a detailed Web page on the alliance's site, www.vaics.org, and is working toward selling its own brand of products like salsa and jams.
"They represent, both in terms of the present and past, Vermont's communities," Dennis Bathory-Kitsz, executive director of the alliance, said of the stores. "They contain things that people want to buy, and they are a place that people want to go talk and meet friends. They are just a real example of those traditions in Vermont that survive not because they're cute but because they're necessary."
But the key to surviving in the market, members of the group say, is being able to adapt to changing times and falling prices with new products and amenities while retaining old-fashioned charm and friendly service.
"Country stores are struggling," Mr. Bathory-Kitsz said. "They've had three hits over the course of the 20th century. The first was the supermarket, the second the convenience store and third the big box store. Each took away part of the day-to-day operation that kept that store alive. Now they've had to substitute items and come up with ways to keep up. These changes have required a lot of imagination. Now there's A.T.M.'s in a lot of stores."
Mr. Wilson's red brick store, where his two dogs, Emily and Annie, greet customers, is a hodgepodge of tourist knickknacks, maple sugar candy, goat cheeses and basic sundries. The post office serving his town's 283 residents is in the back, past the ice cream freezer and beyond the substantial high-end wine collection. On a recent late afternoon, one man came into the post office and grabbed a soda, waving to Mr. Wilson, who put it on his tab.
"What we've become is a convenience store," Mr. Wilson said. "I carry all this stuff out of convenience for people. If someone runs out of flour or sugar or milk, they can come pick it up here."
Not that he is entirely happy about it. "I can't keep the store open and pay the light bills just to sell one box of sugar," he said.
Bob Hammond, owner of the store here in Bridgewater Corners, said: "It's hard to run a place like this. It's not always easy to stay competitive, to stay afloat."
Still, Mr. Wilson said that with the creation of the alliance, owners were now able to help one another in ways that were earlier unheard of, as when one owner lost his milk contract because his store was too small and another member of the group put him in touch with a distributor who was willing to deliver only a few gallons at a time. That, members say, would never have happened before the alliance, whose stores are sprinkled throughout the state.
"To be alone is one thing; to be among 50 or 60 people you know is another," Mr. Bathory-Kitsz said.
To customers like Sandy Sawyer, who shopped at the Bridgewater Corners store with her 8-year-old daughter the other day, convenience trumped all. The store is right around the corner from her house, and she needed to pick up some things for dinner.
But Pete Oldenburg, who stopped in on a work break for a cup of coffee, enjoyed the personal touch.
"You come in a little country store and you know all the people," Mr. Oldenburg said. "You try to keep the money local. It's not the fast-paced in and out of a big chain."