October 30, 2004

New York City's ambitious effort to recruit 40 experienced principals from across the country has fallen spectacularly short. The effort, part of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's overhaul of the city's schools, cost nearly $200,000. There were advertisements placed in newspapers and education publications. There were trips to network at conferences in Nevada, Florida and California. There were fees to a search firm that helped compile a database of principals who had led failing schools to glory.

David Wittig's spoils from his tenure as chief executive of Kansas' largest electric utility, a company once brash enough to be called the Enron of the Midwest, are the talk of Topeka. There is the Ferrari, a 550 Maranello model, purchased for $229,751, and the Landon mansion, this city's most luxurious home, refurbished by a celebrity decorator from New York at a cost of nearly $2 million. And, of course, more than $25 million in salary and other compensation that Westar Energy paid over seven years to Mr. Wittig, 49, including $2 million from a life insurance policy while he is still alive.

Some of the biggest names in corporate America have been tarnished and toppled in recent years, but Ronald S. Baron remains a true believer. Mr. Baron, who manages $8 billion in mutual funds bearing his name, says he invests by looking for chief executives with big ideas about aggressively increasing the scale of their businesses. By identifying these companies early, he hopes to triple or quadruple the value of his funds' investments as the businesses grow.

On Friday, just days before the presidential election, the Bush administration agreed to consider a petition from a coalition of embattled textile manufacturers that would limit some imports from China. American manufacturers and the labor union representing textile workers have been pressing for help in advance of the lifting of all trade quotas on textiles and apparel on Jan. 1, 2005, allowing for the free flow of goods around the globe.

For Adela Simone, a long way from her apartment in Forest Hills, Queens, it was quickly becoming a frustrating afternoon -- at four homes in a row, no one answered the door, and at the next house, an elderly woman began screaming at her. ''Don't annoy me, I'm busy,'' the woman shouted at Ms. Simone, one of 200 health care workers from New York who have been in Florida for weeks, going door to door to urge Democrats and Kerry-leaning independents to vote. ''I already had three people annoy me last week.''