Paycheck

Michelle Wie returns to high school today with $73,227 from her first LPGA paycheck and a diamond-encrusted watch from her latest endorsement deal. The 16-year-old junior at Punahou School was particularly enamored with the Omega watch she was given before the final round Saturday at the Fields Open in Kapolei, Hawaii, where she dazzled a hometown gallery with seven birdies in a round of 66 that left her one shot out of a playoff. Starting the final round of the 54-hole tournament six shots behind, Wie pulled into a tie for the lead with a birdie on the 17th hole before missing an 18-foot birdie on the last hole and finishing at 13-under 203. Meena Lee birdied the 18th hole to finish at 14-under 202, and Seon Hwa Lee birdied the 14th and finished with no mistakes to join the playoff.

One more venerable institution, Strawbridge's, is about to disappear. It will take with it a chunk of my history. The name Strawbridge's conjures up sweet memories of the days I stood at the brink of adulthood. In early 1964, I was all of 19 years old. I had a great job as a secretary at a large corporation in Pennsauken and was about to embark on a career (when it was considered a career) as a new wife. My fiance was in the Navy, stationed in Charleston, S.C. I had nothing to do in the evenings or on weekends, so I took a part-time job at Strawbridge & Clothier in the almost new Cherry Hill Mall.

Faced with a projected $9 million budget deficit, the Willingboro school board last night voted to eliminate 11 jobs, lay off 16 employees, and cut 22 other positions not included in the current budget. By a 5-3 vote, the board approved the cuts recommended by interim Superintendent Melindo Persi. The positions that would be cut or affected were not immediately identified. Persi said he plans to meet with the affected employees today. The cuts would save about $1.4 million, Persi said.

Business was booming last year at Toll Bros. Inc., and chief executive officer Robert I. Toll was well-rewarded for that success. The Horsham-based home builder's revenue and net income soared, and so did its stock price. And Robert Toll's total compensation - $44 million, more than double his take in 2003 - was the highest among executives of local companies, according to data compiled for The Inquirer by Equilar Inc. It was not quite as good a year at Merck & Co. Inc. Net income at the pharmaceutical firm that employs 12,000 in Montgomery County was down 15 percent, and the company's stock price fell 30 percent amid withdrawal from the market of the blockbuster pain medicine Vioxx.

DOES anybody care about the little guy? The guy who's just getting by, paycheck to paycheck, trying to make ends meet? I don't think so. He's paying higher prices for cars, appliances and other necessities. Huge amounts of interest on a variety of loans, including his mortgage. I'm sure predatory-lender lobbyists are at this very moment pushing a bill making pay-day lending in Philadelphia legal at an annual rate of 450 percent and higher! Some even as high as 900 percent.

He's the right man The March 10 editorial "Wrong man for the job" concerning John Bolton's nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations is a classic example of wrongheaded liberal/leftist thinking, always fearful of offending our enemies and adversaries. It begins with your belief that the United Nations "is the institution best positioned to act on issues from environmental degradation to the financing of terrorism. " Where is there a record of such success? It ends with the advice to a Senate committee that it "need not settle for" Bolton.

IT'S HARD to be a working family in Pennsylvania. More than half earn less than $27,000 a year; in many families, bread winners toil at minimum-wage and low-wage jobs. Homeownership is elusive. Thousands have no health insurance and don't know how to, or can't, save money. They're ripe targets for predatory lenders and live in neighborhoods where supermarkets are rare, but quick cash/loan businesses are plentiful. A report in the hands of Gov. Rendell, titled "Dollars and Sense: Realistic Ways Policymakers Can Help Pennsylvania's Working Families," lays out the problems these families face.

Listen up, city workers: You might have no contract come July 1. And your next paycheck when that time rolls around could arrive a little late. But Mayor Street expects you - all 23,737 city employees - to report to work anyway. Speaking yesterday about the worst of worst-case scenarios, under which the city faces the possibility of starting the 2005 fiscal year with expired municipal contracts and no approved budget plan, Street predicted that the city would not stop running.

POOR PGW, crying again! Well, I don't want to hear it or pay more for it! My bill is already $250 a month! I am sick and tired of PGW. Granted, there are some PGW customers who could care less about paying their bill. I do my best to pay as much as I can every month. What about the people who do not qualify for any kind of assistance because they are not below poverty level but are middle-class and finding it hard to keep up? PGW, PECO and the Water Revenue Bureau are raising rates.

WHATEVER demons Ben Affleck may be wrestling with within himself, you have to admire his good-natured courage in facing the outer imps that have been tormenting him all year: entertainment journalists. Personable, if obviously well-PR-prepared, the 31-year-old actor conversed cordially with people who spent a good deal of the summer dishing about called-off weddings, movie meltdowns, snarky off-Broadway plays about him, strip-club visits and anything else they could think of related to his relationship with fellow superstar Jennifer Lopez.