Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Harley riding cuomo spotted on the road to airport

And flight to Macau with cash for convention and to sell ny
Bonds

A worker cleaned slot machines in preparation for the opening on Tuesday of the Yellow Brick Road Casino in Chittenango, N.Y.Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

CHITTENANGO, N.Y. — The state’s newest casino opened here on Tuesday, brimming with hundreds of slot machines, scores of smiling employees and four flying-monkey sculptures adorning a “Wizard of Oz”- — — themed gambling floor.

But the bonhomie that surrounds the opening of the Yellow Brick Road Casino belies an increasingly fractious battle between theOneida Indian Nation, which owns the Yellow Brick Road and the much larger Turning Stone Resort Casino nearby, and Wilmorite, a Rochester developer that intends to open a $425 million casino just 55 miles west of Oneida territory.

Wilmorite’s project, called Lago, is at least a year from opening, but the conflict with the Oneidas has already led to legal saber-rattling, accusations of parasitic business plans and the possibility of a casino war along the Albany-to-Buffalo spur of the New York State Thruway.

Ray Halbritter, the representative of the Oneida Nation and the chief executive of Oneida Nation Enterprises, said he always told fellow members to “conduct ourselves in ways as if there were a casino across the street.” He added, “That day is upon us.”

Ray Halbritter, the representative of the Oneida Nation and the chief executive of Oneida Nation Enterprises, outside the casino. CreditNathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

In a strip mall just east of Syracuse, the Yellow Brick Road Casino has more than 400 slot machines, a 500-seat bingo hall and a Cyclone of Cash (visitors try to grab $1,000 in bills while standing in an enclosed whirlwind), all intended to lock up the affections of gamblers as Wilmorite waits.

Even before the new casino’s sidewalk was painted yellow, the Oneida Nation’s expansion plans were evident elsewhere: Slot machines were installed at tribal convenience stores, and a $25 million night-life complex opened at Turning Stone. There also are plans for a $100 million shopping and entertainment complex there.

The tribe’s competitive strategy extends beyond penny slots, cocktails and affordable buffets. The Washington law firm Williams & Connollydrafted a lengthy letter in April for the Oneidas to the chairman of theState Gaming Commission, Mark D. Gearan, asking that Wilmorite be denied a license. It said a casino so close to theirs could have “a devastating effect” on the tribe.

In particular, the Oneidas say they are troubled by economic projections — made by a firm hired by Wilmorite — that Lago would siphon tens of millions of dollars from Turning Stone. They say that would mean lost jobs, diminished tax revenue to the state and a serious threat to “the shared prosperity that both the Nation and the state have worked so hard to cultivate.”

Indeed, the undercurrent to much of the Oneidas’ maneuvering so far seems to be a none-too-subtle suggestion that the state has not lived up to the tenets of the Upstate New York Gaming Economic Development Act of 2013, which allows up to seven new, nontribal casinos to be built across New York.

Employees at the Oneida Nation’s Yellow Brick Road Casino last week.CreditNathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, hailed the gaming act, approved by voters and lawmakers, as a way to jump-start the economy in long-suffering regions north of New York City. But it came to fruition only after an agreement the Oneidas and two other tribes made with the state, ending decades of land and legal disputes.

As part of their deal, the Oneidas, after two decades of not sharing revenue, are paying the state 25 percent of their slot revenues, in return for a 10-county exclusivity zone. The result has been a sizable windfall: Since last spring, the tribe has paid nearly $65 million to the state, which has funneled a portion of that to nearby counties.

But the Wilmorite project — located beyond the Oneidas’ exclusive zone — endangers that, said Mr. Halbritter, who questioned the state’s motives.

“They share the revenue that we’re making, so their revenue is imperiled, too, which in essence impacts the overall intentions of the agreement we made — the very carefully negotiated agreement, very painstakingly negotiated,” Mr. Halbritter said last week. “And I think what the commission did is not consistent with both the agreement and the original intent of the governor and the Legislature.”

The Gaming Commission declined to comment on Mr. Halbritter’s remarks. But Thomas Wilmot Sr., the chairman of Wilmorite, said he had been surprised by the level of annoyance his project had caused his Turning Stone counterpart.

“When we had won the license, he made a public statement that he welcomed the competition,” Mr. Wilmot said of Mr. Halbritter in an interview last week, adding: “And we’re not in any way opposed to the Oneidas’ going forward with the Yellow Brick Road project. We think competition is a good thing.”

The Lago casino was one of three chosen in December by the state’s Gaming Facilities Location Board; the other two are in the Catskills and in Schenectady, about 100 miles to the east of Turning Stone. The state is already home to nine racetrack casinos and five casinos operated by Indian tribes.

The Oneida Nation is not the only group challenging the Lago project, which was also initially opposed by a local group, including several Amish families, in Tyre, a tiny town halfway between Syracuse and Rochester.

In March, the owners of a racetrack casino in Farmington, N.Y., about 35 miles west of Tyre, filed suit against the Gaming Commission and Wilmorite, saying Lago was unlikely to enhance economic development and would cannibalize the market in “a sparsely settled rural region already oversaturated with gaming venues.” Mr. Halbritter said the Oneidas were also considering their legal options.

Such turf battles come at a time of broader concerns in the casino industry as a whole, with revenues already down in many neighboring states and nationwide, and several casinos closing in Atlantic City last year. In New York, annual winnings at the state’s nine racetrack casinos were down for the first time for the fiscal year that ended on March 31.

A welder working on the casino’s Cyclone of Cash game, which allows players to grab up to $1,000 in bills. CreditNathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

Lee Park, a spokesman for the Gaming Commission, called the decline “very modest” and spoke of “the slow pace of the economic recovery, which has affected gaming nationwide.” He also cited better results in early 2015.

The Thruway is nevertheless shaping up to be the state’s gambling highway: In addition to Lago and the proposed casino in Schenectady, several racetrack casinos sit on or near the Thruway corridor, including Vernon Downs in Vernon, just south of Turning Stone.

The Seneca Nation of Indians owns three casinos in western New York, including a $130 million casino that opened in Buffalo in 2013. The nation said that it was evaluating the new competition, but that the newer casinos were entering an already saturated market. “The piece of the pie keeps getting smaller and smaller,” said Kevin Seneca, a board member of the Seneca Gaming Corporation.

Wilmorite acknowledged that a large chunk of its potential business at Lago would come from existing in-state competitors. According to an analysis TMG Consulting did for the company, Lago can anticipate drawing about $54.2 million from the racetrack casinos in its first full year of operation and $78.5 million from tribal casinos. That amounts to an estimated 51 percent of Lago’s projected earnings.

But Mr. Wilmot said he anticipated that he would “expand the market very substantially.” Moreover, he noted that Mr. Halbritter and Turning Stone, which opened in 1993, only recently began to pay the state a percentage of the casino’s slot winnings. “He’s basically had a monopoly and not had to pay any gaming taxes,” Mr. Wilmot said. “So he’s had a very good run for a long time.”

Mr. Halbritter did not dispute the Oneidas’ success but said, “We created this opportunity from Day 1,” transforming a dirt-poor group into one that earns an estimated $250 million to $350 million a year at Turning Stone.

And he does not necessarily appreciate someone else trying to take advantage of that, he said.

“If I went to Wilmot and said, ‘I’m going to take from your existing business, that’s my business plan, my business plan isn’t to create anything new, my business plan is simply to go after your business and take money out of your pocket and your community,’ ” Mr. Halbritter said, “I mean, what would be the response?”

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Robin Miller, a 62-year-old oncologist in Atlanta with bladder cancer, was scheduled to receive a potentially lifesaving drug in December. But her doctor’s office called shortly before the appointment to say: “Sorry, we don’t have any. We can’t give it to you,” according to Dr. Miller.
The disruption was due to a global shortage of the drug, BCG, which arose after manufacturing problems at two of the few global suppliers. Without the drug, Dr. Miller feared her cancer would come back and she would have to have her bladder removed, a step she called “barbaric.”

The BCG shortage followed a 2012 mold infestation that halted production for more than two years at an aging factory in Toronto owned by France’s SanofiSA. The drug’s only other manufacturer for the U.S., Merck & Co., has recently suffered production delays of its own.

Some of the thousands of patients who depend on BCG have resorted to tracking online message boards, calling hospitals and traveling hundreds of miles to find supplies. Some patients have gone without BCG while others have received less effective alternatives. “There are patients who aren’t getting optimal therapy right now,” says Dr. Edward M. Messing, a urologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y.
The crisis illustrates the potentially grave consequences of a persistent problem in health care: drug shortages. The number of drugs in short supply in the U.S. has risen 74% from five years ago, to about 265, according to the University of Utah’s Drug Information Service, which tracks supplies. They range from antibiotics and cancer treatments to commodity items such as saline.
Interviews with company executives, hospital pharmacists and regulators point to several causes of the shortages. Companies have failed to build enough production capacity, haven’t maintained equipment, and failed to ward off contamination in aging plants. A U.S. Food and Drug Administration crackdown on shoddy quality unintentionally worsened the shortages because some companies responded by shutting down plants or scaling back production during renovations.
Many of the scarce drugs are older, injectable treatments that can be complex and costly to manufacture, but which command relatively low prices because they aren’t protected by patent. Hospitals and doctors’ offices are the main buyers of the drugs. Companies can’t easily increase prices because insurers reimburse many generic hospital-administered drugs under a payment system that is more frugal than for other medicines.

Current shortages

Among the current shortages is the generic painkiller ketorolac, widely used in hospitals during and after certain surgical procedures. Hospira Inc. of Lake Forest, Ill., a major U.S. manufacturer of the drug, notified customers in January it was recalling more than 18 million vials because of contamination by crystal particles. The company said it has taken corrective action and resumed shipping most versions of the drug.

“The shortage of ketorolac deeply affects patient care, as we don’t have great substitutes,” says Sean Adams,an anesthesiologist in Naperville, Ill. “The staff time and expense of managing shortages is enormous. Worse, there are significant patient risks with shortages,” including more side effects with alternative drugs.

The antibiotic Zosyn and its generic equivalents, used to treat infections including pneumonia, also are in short supply. Pfizer Inc., which makes Zosyn, said an increase in global demand and “unplanned” maintenance and repairs at a plant in Italy had caused the shortage. It expects to resume shipping vials in September.

Barbara Murray, director of the division of infectious diseases at University of Texas Medical School in Houston, said the shortage sometimes forces doctors to switch to less effective alternatives.
Hospital emergency rooms have grappled with various shortages. Daniel Miller, an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, says he has been unable to get a supply of droperidol, a drug commonly used in the emergency room to relieve migraine headaches, abdominal pain and nausea. Alternatives such as narcotics are less effective, he says. Manufacturers have reported production delays and raw-material shortages, according to the Drug Information Service.
Sanofi resumed production of the bladder-cancer drug BCG in Toronto last fall, but shipments aren’t expected until later this year. Merck has more than doubled production of its BCG product at a plant in North Carolina, but last summer the company detected a possible air-quality problem and suspended production for six weeks, causing shipment backlogs that persist. The FDA says BCG’s few foreign suppliers haven’t been in a position to quickly boost production.
BCG, a liquid delivered into a patient’s bladder, is expensive to manufacture because it is derived from live bacteria. Yet because the therapy is 25 years old and no longer protected by patent, it fetches only about $145 a vial, compared with about $2,700 for a vial of Avastin, a newer, patented drug for other forms of cancer that hasn’t had shortage issues.
BCG’s low price, coupled with the complexity and cost of manufacturing, has made the drug unattractive for many companies to produce, says Erin Fox, director of the drug information service at the University of Utah.
The Medicare and private-insurance reimbursement system for drugs that are administered in hospitals and physician practices, such as BCG, makes it harder for companies to raise prices for those drugs than for others, says Mark Painter, co-founder of a Thornton, Colo., consultancy that advises practices on reimbursement.
Insurers reimburse doctors and hospitals that buy BCG based on the average price charged over the past year. So if any single manufacturer tries to boost prices significantly, its customers would take an immediate financial hit until reimbursement rates catch up. In some cases, gray-market distributors operating outside authorized networks have exploited shortages by stocking up on scarce drugs and marked up prices charged to hospitals and doctors, according to a 2012 report by congressional investigators.
Merck and Sanofi and their predecessor companies have raised the price for BCG modestly in the more than two decades they have sold it. Both companies say the price hasn’t discouraged them from investing in the capacity and quality of their manufacturing.
But manufacturing troubles have undermined output. In 2011, a malfunctioning sprinkler system flooded the Toronto plant where Sanofi produces all of its BCG. The company discarded tainted batches, cleaned the facility and resumed production, says Philip Hosbach, vice president of new products and immunization policy at Sanofi’s vaccine unit, which makes BCG.
But more problems followed. In April 2012, Sanofi halted distribution of BCG after finding that a test designed to ensure the sterility of the product before leaving the plant wasn’t working properly, according to a Sanofi letter to customers. “We couldn’t verify what was going on with the product and the facility,” says Mr. Hosbach.
The same month, inspectors from the FDA visited the factory and found Sanofi records documenting mold contamination on the floor of BCG production areas and on workers’ gloves, according to inspection documents. The FDA also found that Sanofi’s method to detect yeast and mold in BCG samples had failed, according to an FDA document.
The FDA issued a warning letter in July 2012 ordering Sanofi to fix those and other problems. Canada’s drug regulator, Health Canada, said in July 2012 its inspectors found the presence of mold in manufacturing areas that are supposed to be sterile. That August, Health Canada suspended the plant’s license to operate. The agency reinstated it last year.
The FDA had increased its inspections, particularly of foreign plants, in 2009, in response to a safety scandal involving contaminated drugs made in China. The FDA faced accusations that it had failed to scrutinize factories at home and overseas. It developed a “cadre of highly trained and experienced inspectors to conduct inspections of complex facilities such as those that produce sterile injectables,” FDA officials wrote in the scientific journal Nature in 2013.
The FDA says it didn’t raise manufacturing-quality standards and doesn’t expect companies to stop production after it identifies quality problems. The FDA tries to work with companies to keep medically necessary products available, but it can’t order a company to continue production, says Valerie Jensen, associate director of the FDA’s drug-shortages program. Sometimes plant shutdowns are “sudden and unexpected,” she says. The FDA says its inspection rates for biologics plants—a category that includes Sanofi’s BCG plant—have been consistent for more than 15 years.

Production suspended

In June 2012, after consulting with regulators, Sanofi suspended production of BCG so it could renovate the plant. Initially, Sanofi planned to resume shipping BCG in late 2013. But in July 2013, a heavy rainstorm flooded the plant again, delaying repairs, says spokeswoman Marisol Peron.
“We recognize and regret the impact that this supply constraint may have on patients and their health-care providers,” she says.
After Sanofi’s production halt in 2012, the FDA asked Merck to boost BCG production. Merck raised output at a plant in Durham, N.C., to more than 700,000 doses last year and is targeting 850,000 this year, compared with about 350,000 in 2011, says Sanat Chattopadhyay, Merck’s senior vice president of global manufacturing operations.
But last July, Merck halted production for six weeks because its routine monitoring of air quality in the plant detected mold, says Mr. Chattopadhyay. Merck determined that no BCG product was contaminated. But the hiccup contributed to a backlog in shipments.
In March, Merck sent a letter to physician practices and hospitals saying it expects shipping delays to persist into early 2016.
Soon after the Merck production halt, says Dave Clifford, his doctor canceled a BCG treatment scheduled for September 2014 because of the shortage. Mr. Clifford, 70, has been given chemotherapy instead and remains cancer free, but studies have shown chemotherapy is less effective than BCG at preventing relapses. As of last week, he still hadn’t received any BCG.
“How can that happen in this country?” asked Mr. Clifford, a retired buyer of men’s clothing who splits his time between Plymouth, Mass., and Bonita Springs, Fla. “We put people on the moon.”
Mary Greene, 70, was diagnosed with bladder cancer last July and had a tumor removed. She was supposed to start receiving BCG in October, but was unable to get any. Ms. Greene, assistant director of development services at Columbia Law School in New York, scoured a patient-advocacy group’s online message board for tips on BCG availability.
She eventually found some at a different New York hospital and has received periodic doses there since December, under the care of a different doctor. Her cancer hasn’t returned. “This totally took me by surprise,” she says. “It was the very first time I had to think about the drug companies as failing the people that they’re supposed to be there for.”
Her new urologist, John Sfakianos of Mount Sinai Hospital, says delays in administration of BCG can increase the risk that a tumor will come back.
The BCG shortage continues. In early April, Dr. Messing’s practice in Rochester had enough BCG for about six higher-risk patients, but not enough for another nine patients who would normally receive it but are at lower risk of recurrence, he says. He says he is trying to save the drug for cases where it may prevent patients from “losing their bladders or lives.”
The BCG shortage has hit other countries including the U.K. and Canada. “Here it’s being rationed,” says Wassim Kassouf, a urologist at McGill University Health Center in Montreal. “We’ve decreased dosing.” Some studies suggest a reduced dose may be comparably effective to a full dose in the initial phase of treatment, but it isn’t clear whether it remains as effective in the long term.
The FDA explored whether manufacturers of foreign versions of BCG could fill the U.S. gap, but concluded they weren’t able to in the short term, an agency spokesman says.
A federal law passed in 2012 gave the FDA more powers to prevent and resolve shortages, including requiring manufacturers to provide advance notice to the agency of potential shortages, and allowing the FDA to speed up approvals of manufacturing upgrades. The number of new shortages decreased to 44 in 2014, from a peak of 251 in 2011. The FDA says it prevented 101 shortages last year by working closely with manufacturers following notifications of potential shortages.
A 2014 report from the Government Accountability Office said the FDA could do more to alleviate shortages, such as routine analysis of shortage data to identify trends or patterns.
The FDA recently made available a free software application for mobile devices that identifies drugs in short supply and allows users to report a suspected drug shortage to the FDA.
Dr. Miller, the retired oncologist in Atlanta, eventually found a different urology practice in town with a BCG supply and has gone back on the drug. She is scheduled to get another dose in June, but is anxious about whether it will be available.
“I’m still pretty concerned,” she says. “Time is of the essence. This is not something we want to be debating a year from now.”

Monday, June 1, 2015

The hell with fictiom

Before I shoot anyone with anything I shoot it myself to prove it works and put it on you tube

Chesimard shoots cops.

Tsarnaev bombs little kids in Boston

I simply want to shoot Bcg so life will be better

Nikkii fine may read clinical trials.gov faustman
Pubmed.org faustman DL
Pubmed.org RISTORI+ Bcg
Pubmed.org RISTORI + Bcg

I seldom bet,but I will bet my life that Bcg works. " advertised"

What do you say Nikki finke?

Nikki Finke and Jay Penske's Business Romance -- Vulture

www.vulture.com/.../nikki-finke-and-jay-penske-business-relationship.html

Nov 24, 2013 - The meet-uncute of Nikki Finke, scourge of Hollywood, and Jay Penske, .... work, citing health problems (she is an insulin-dependent diabetic).

Call Me - The New Yorker

Nikki Finke and Jay Penske's Business Romance -- Vulture

www.vulture.com/.../nikki-finke-and-jay-penske-business-relationship.html

Nov 24, 2013 - The meet-uncute of Nikki Finke, scourge of Hollywood, and Jay Penske, .... work, citing health problems (she is an insulin-dependent diabetic).

Call Me - The New Yorker

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/12/call-me

Oct 12, 2009 - Why Hollywood fears Nikki Finke. ... site with references to her diabetes and dental work, drawing readers into the drama of her daily struggle.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/12/call-me

Oct 12, 2009 - Why Hollywood fears Nikki Finke. ... site with references to her diabetes and dental work, drawing readers into the drama of her daily struggle.

MEDIA

Nikki Finke, Feared Hollywood Reporter, Turns to Fiction

By RAVI SOMAIYAMAY 29, 2015

Nikki Finke had this new portrait taken recently, despite a lifelong fear of photographs. She toyed with other positions in journalism, most notably the chance to write about politics. CreditJen Rosenstein

LOS ANGELES — If Nikki Finke had not been a journalist, she says she could have been a detective. The police in New York, where she reported decades ago, used to show her “these gruesome homicide photos,” she said, to try to freak her out. Instead she found them fascinating.

The memory came up on a recent day in Ms. Finke’s obsessively tidy apartment, overlooking a swath of the city from West Hollywood toward the airport. Her stomach for the unsavory side of the business was never in question as she built her reputation as perhaps the most feared reporter in Hollywood.

With a combination of tenacity and intimidation, Ms. Finke generated scoop after scoop on the entertainment industry at Deadline, the website she started in 2006. Mention of her name still elicits a blend of terror and fascination from the coterie of agents, executives, stars and others who were her sworn enemies or closest allies, depending on the day.

But now at 61, Ms. Finke finds herself facing a daunting new chapter in her career: a plan to leave journalism and write and publish fiction about the entertainment industry.

She recently came to a lucrative legal settlement with Jay Penske, the owner of Variety and Women’s Wear Daily, who bought Deadline in 2009, only to clash with Ms. Finke, forcing a split. She is now barred from practicing journalism about the entertainment industry online for about a decade, according to a person with detailed knowledge of the settlement. Ms. Finke declined to discuss the settlement for fear of violating it.

She has been a journalist for 40 years, she said, at Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine and The New York Observer among other publications. Peter W. Kaplan, the legendary editor of the Observer, once told her three things she said had become “the words I live by:” 1. You’re best when angry; 2. Write what you really know; and 3. Tell the truth about Hollywood.

She remains angry, though she says it is directed only at the use and abuse of power in Hollywood. Perhaps, she said, it is rooted in defiance of her old-fashioned family that once tried to bribe one of her editors to prevent her being assigned to Moscow. And the memories of some moments from her journalistic career can prompt tears. But she can no longer report on Hollywood for the Internet, the place she feels most at home, unless she finds a way to do so for Mr. Penske.

She began her hiatus by going on a cruise, she said, taking in Spain and Portugal before crossing the Atlantic. She read 22 books while aboard. She attended to her health — she is a diabetic and said that she had burned out, working up to 22 hours a day. Not to mention dealing with the ire of executives and others whom she had targeted over the years with a blend of news and scathing personal attacks. She began contacting old friends, and old enemies, to invite them over for lunch — a fact, she said, that should dispel the myth that she is a recluse. She had a new portrait taken recently, despite a lifelong fear of photographs. She declined to be photographed for this article, supplying the portrait instead.

She toyed with other positions in journalism, most notably the chance to move to Washington to write a column about politics.

Jim VandeHei, the chief executive of Politico, said he had tried to hire her because she is “tenacious, fearless and vicious,” and “unafraid to rattle the rich and powerful.” But she did not relish the prospect of starting from scratch, has never really loved Washington and has decided that she cannot work for anyone else again.

The idea she settled on, she said, is a website dedicated to fiction — short stories, novellas and excerpts — on the entertainment industry. It is called Hollywood Dementia, and she plans to charge $1 to $3 to read a story when it begins publishing this year.

“There is a lot of truth in fiction,” she said. “There are things I am going to be able to say in fiction that I can’t say in journalism right now.”

She said there was an appetite on both sides and cited creative people in Hollywood who have no forum to air their stories on the industry, for fear of losing work, and readers who ate up the sometimes salacious details revealed by the hacked Sony emails.

She has begun writing stories for the site, though she declined to reveal details about them. She has also been contacting other writers and said she has gathered dozens of potential contributors.

In Hollywood, said Patrick Goldstein, a former Los Angeles Times film industry columnist who has known Ms. Finke for decades, people are “scared of their own shadows.”

“I would say that everyone is secretly full of trepidation about what Nikki’s new site will be like,” he said. “Will it be literary short stories, or will it be fiction as a thin disguise for the truth?”

On a recent day, surrounded by paintings and photographs, some made by friends, and a library of books on Hollywood, Ms. Finke was an energetic presence. She asked what a reporter thought of her appearance (whether it matched the public perception) and expounded on topics ranging from marriage (“never again,” she said after being divorced in the 1980s) to movies (she grew up on Long Island and in New York City, watching mostly subtitled European films). She said she had been tempted to write a book on the craft of journalism, her way. It might include what she describes as a common technique — calling a source, telling him he is a bad person and demanding he justify, by providing fresh news, why he is not.

Mr. Goldstein said Ms. Finke had significantly swayed entertainment reporting, for better and worse: It became more aggressive and rigorous, but also more vicious and relentless.

“It’s fascinating to see that since she left Deadline, the trades have again by and large gone back to that same very respectful reporting, and that the hard edges have been buffed away.”

Ms. Finke’s have not. Asked why she consistently used to describe an executive with a phallic expletive, she said she did so because he fit the description. “Most of my career I’ve talked to incredibly powerful, rich people,” she said. “How can I bully someone like that?”

She learned from those she covered, she said. “I mean, they play rough. I have to play rough, too.”