October 29, 1990

When Sarah Smith, a welfare caseworker from the South Bronx, was referred to a lawyer last year, there were two victims in her case: Ms. Smith, who had suffered years of abuse from her father and later from her two husbands; and Owen Smith, her second husband, whom she finally shot to death. Now, as prosecutors prepare to try Ms. Smith for murder, a third victim has emerged: her defense lawyer, Michael G. Dowd.

The unbeaten Giants won their big game with the Washington Redskins today, 21-10, by doing what they do best. In the sort of hard-hitting, well-played game these intense rivals always seem to produce, the Giants made three big plays on defense, all interceptions and all vital. The first, by Everson Walls in the second quarter, set up the touchdown that gave the Giants a 14-0 lead. The second, by Greg Jackson with 6 minutes 51 seconds left in the game and the Giants clinging nervously to a 14-10 lead, came in the Giants' end zone and prevented a Redskin touchdown. The third, by Walls a little more than two minutes later, was returned 28 yards for a touchdown that insured the Giants' victory.

Many American companies are laying off workers now, rather than waiting to be hit by hard times as they have in the past. Some economists warn that this outburst of corporate preventive medicine increases the odds of a steep recession. The number of people laid off in the United States has increased sharply since June, reaching the levels of the early months of the 1981-82 recession. While some companies, including Citicorp, Digital Equipment and McDonnell Douglas, are acting because sales and profits have already begun to shrink, many others, including General Electric's appliance division and Nordstrom department stores, are only anticipating such a downturn.

Candor is not a town that often finds itself ahead of a trend. Still, when people here heard that the rest of the country was being swept by a new anti-incumbent fervor this fall, they could only chuckle. In Candor, antipathy toward elected officials is not a passing fancy; it is more a way of life. And as another election approaches, the mood of voters here can best be described as disgusted, as usual.

Anyone who has driven along the Northeast's highways over the last half-century has sped past the creations of the Kullman family: stainless-steel diners evoking railroad cars, "colonial diners" topped with weather vanes, "Mediterranean diners" adorned with statuettes. But today, in the factory where hundreds of diners were born and then swaddled on flatbed trucks for delivery to suburbia, what used to be the Kullman Dining Car Company has bid the age of diners farewell. It is a different age, and Kullman Industries is now doing a brisk business in prefabricated prisons.

One publishing house has largely avoided the public bloodlettings that have wracked book publishing in recent years. Indeed, Simon & Schuster has been a model of relative publishing stability. That low-profile approach seems to have paid off: with sales of $1.3 billion last year, six times those of 1983, Simon & Schuster is the largest book publisher in the United States.

In its search for an additional $40 billion to throw at the Federal budget deficit, Congress approved a three-pronged attack on the nation's tax code on Saturday. The intent is to get that money from the upper class and upper-middle class through higher taxes for Medicare, a variety of income tax changes and additional excise taxes for gasoline, tobacco, alcohol and certain luxury goods. The majority of taxpayers -- those with incomes below $50,000 -- should be relatively unscathed. That is, their Social Security and income taxes will not rise. The working poor will even get money from the Government through the earned income tax credit. But like everyone else who buys gasoline, alcohol or tobacco, they will pay higher excise taxes.

Congress hopes to raise $40 billion by increasing income tax rates for higher-income people, Medicare levies and so-called sin taxes. Business Day, D1.

President Saddam Hussein of Iraq reversed a decision to ration fuel today and dismissed his Oil Minister on the ground that a miscalculation by the official had led to the announcement 10 days ago that the country faced a gasoline shortage. The Iraqi leader's move came as he met twice in Baghdad with a special Soviet envoy sent by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. After two sessions of talks that had raised hopes that a peaceful solution to the Persian Gulf crisis might be imminent, reports from Baghdad quoted Soviet correspondents traveling with the envoy, Yevgeny M. Primakov, as saying the sessions had ended "without having achieved agreement on the issues discussed."

New York City has a budget of more than $28 billion and a projected gap in it for the coming fiscal year of perhaps $2 billion -- in other words, it is short one dollar for every 14. But the problem is really more severe, because the budget over which the city has full control is closer to $12 billion, and that means it is short one dollar for every six. That little-understood reality, compounded by a stagnant economy and uncertainties about the cost of wage settlements, is why the city's current troubles have evoked dire threats of thousands of layoffs and the worst cuts in city services since the fiscal crisis of the mid-1970's.

From the storefronts of Main Street to the shops along Franklin Turnpike, merchants here can see the end of the 80's across their counters, in sagging sales of everything from lumber to liquor, from bicycles to auto-repair equipment. With few exceptions, business people in this upper-middle-class Bergen County suburb say their customers have cut spending. The merchants in turn have reduced their inventories and their orders for goods, creating more drag on the slowing regional economy.

Early in his first term, when the state was faced with a debilitating budget deficit, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo adopted the slogan, "We must learn to do more with less." He recited it to anyone who would listen: to commissioners hoping to expand their agencies, to lawmakers looking to extend the state's largess, even to hospital workers seeking higher pay. "We must not in this state fall victim to the doctrine that the only way to make progress is to spend massively," Mr. Cuomo said at the opening the 1984 legislative session. "We must find new opportunities to domore with less."