PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

PEMERINTAH BEBASKAN CORBY DEMOKRAT AKAN KENA 'GETAHNYA'

saco-indonesia.com, Berdasarkan hasil telaah dari Tim Pengamat Pemasyarakatan Direktorat Jenderal Pemasyarakatan, terpidana kasus narkotika asal Australia, Schapelle Leigh Corby telah mendapat pembebasan bersyarat.

Direktur Eksekutif LKPM (Lembaga Kajian Politik Univ.Prov.Dr. Moestopo), Didik Triana juga mengatakan partai penguasa, yaitu Partai Demokrat, akan terkena "getah" dari sikap pemerintah.

"Masyarakat kita bisa melihat sikap yang tidak tegas dari Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY). Hal tersebut tentu saja akan dapat berpengaruh terhadap simpati publik terhadap Partai Demokrat pada pemilu 2014," kata Didik, Senin (10/2/2014).

Dia juga telah menilai sikap pemerintah yang tidak komit terhadap pemberantasan narkoba di indonesia. Hal tersebut jauh dari harapan Indonesia bebas dari narkoba. Pembebasan Corby telah terkesan bahwa pemerintah telah memberi sinyal aman bagi bandar narkoba internasional, untuk dapat membuka pasar di Indonesia.

"Sebagai kepala negara, SBY haruslah bersikap komit, apalagi masalah narkoba bisa dibilang permasalahan yang sangat serius. Bisa kita lihat dari jumlah peredarannya dan efek negatifnya yang dari tahun ke tahun jumlahnya sangat meningkat. Saya lihat tidak ada keseriusan dari pemerintah untuk benar-benar memerangi narkoba," paparnya.

Pembebasan bersyarat untuk Corby telah dinilai akan mencoreng nama Indonesia di mata Internasional.

"Jelas sangat mempermalukan Indonesia di mata dunia, sudah jelas melalui inpresnya SBY sudah sangat tegas menyatakan keseriusannya dalam memerangi narkoba. Tapi pada kenyataanya hal itu berbanding terbalik dari kenyataan dan realitanya. Ibarat ucapan dan tindakan yang tidak sama.

Hal inilah yang saya maksud kasus pembebasan bersyarat corby sama saja mempermalukan negara," tutupnya.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

TIPS DALAM MEMBELI LAPTOP

saco-indonesia.com, tips sebelum membeli laptop – Pernahkah anda bingung dalam membeli dan memilih laptop? mungkin artikel tips sebelum membeli laptop ini cukup berguna untuk anda agar laptop yang anda beli tepat dan akurat, jangan sampai anda memilih/membeli laptop yang tidak sesuai dengan kebutuhan anda, karena kesalahan dalam membeli laptop dapat membuat anda kecewa ataupun malahan tidak nyaman menggunakan laptop anda.
tips sebelum membeli laptop

1. Menentukan Prioritas Penggunaan laptop
Sebelum memulai untuk memilih merek/jenis laptop maka terlebih dahulu anda juga harus mengetahui laptop anda dipergunakan untuk apa, ini dikarenakan tiap komputer/laptop telah memiliki berbagai batasan/kapasitas, seperti contoh laptop dengan kualifikasi untuk internetan dan mengetik artikel/dokumen tidak cocok untuk dapat dipergunakan bermain game karena terkadang game yang akan di instal telah memerlukan kualifikasi yang sangat tinggi (Grafik, ram dam kecepatan prosesor) yang tinggi.

tips sebelum membeli laptop

2. Memilih merek yang tepat
merek laptop yang tepat juga akan dapat meningkatkan kepuasan anda dalam menggunakan laptop, karena merek yang juga terkadang tidak tepat dapat membuat anda susah dalam proses perbaikan ataupun mengganti spare part yang rusak. Merek laptop yang baik pada umumnya adalah merek yang mudah dijangkau jika terdapat banyak masalah yang telah terjadi pada laptop yang anda beli.

3. Memastikan spesifikasi laptop yang anda beli
Laptop yang anda beli biasanya telah dilengkapi dengan spesifikasi, kembali pada poin pertama bahwa semua tergantung kepada kebutuhan anda, jika kebutuhan anda untuk desain grafis, maka anda haruslah bisa memilih laptop dengan spesifikasi VGA dan RAM yang sesuai pemilihan spesifikasi laptop yang salah dapat membuat anda jenuh menunggu loading laptop, ataupun laptop anda akan cepat melambat karena spesifikasi yang terdapat didalamnya tidak sesuai dengan kebutuhan anda.

4. Memastikan harga laptop
Poin ke empat ini terkadang juga dapat menjadi kekecewaan yang berat bagi orang yang tidak tahu menahu mengenai harga terbaru laotop karena rawan akan penipuan, cek lah terlebih dahulu harga laptop anda di internet ataupun orang yang anda percayai agar harga yang ditawarkan bisa sesuai dengan kemampuan finansial anda.

5. Memastikan CD Driver dan Kartu Garansi ada
CD Driver dan kartu garansi juga hal yang sangat perlu diperhitungkan, meski tidak dalam waktu dekat, kartu garansi dan CD driver akan sangat diperlukan untuk dapat memperbaiki laptop ataupun dalam menginstal ulang laptop anda.

6. Memastikan komponen lain berjalan dengan baik
Perhatikan dengan teliti bahwa dalam proses boot, dan kinerja perangkat keras ataupun software nya berjalan dengan baik, karena saat membeli peralatan elektronik tidak seperti menjual baju, ketika tampilan sudah cocok maka akan dibeli, dalam memilih komputer haruslah baik dalam segi tampilan (bentuk/disukai) dan performa yang sesuai dengan kebutuhan anda, performa berlebihan akan terkesan membuang-buang uang seperti contoh membeli laptop dengan harga yang mahal dan spesifikasi untuk bermain game (spesifikasi tinggi) namun hanya dipergunakan sebagai alat mengetik dokumen dan lain-lain

Semoga tips sebelum membeli laptop diatas dapat bermanfaat, inti dari tips sebelum membeli laptop di atas adalah Anda hanya perlu mencari informasi dari seseorang yang sudah berpengalaman dalam melihat spesifikasi yang ditawarkan laptop yang akan Anda beli serta harus diingat jangan terburu-buru untuk memilih sebuah laptop.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

DATA TUNGGAL BARU SEKITAR 139 JUTA

Warga yang sudah merekam data untuk KTP elektronik sudah sebanyak 175 juta jiwa. Namun, dari jumlah itu, data yang dipastikan tunggal baru 139 juta, sisanya belum terverifikasi secara daring (online) untuk mengetahui kemungkinan adanya perekaman ganda.

Meskipun begitu, menurut Menteri Dalam Negeri Gamawan Fauzi, Jumat (22/2), di Jakarta, semua data tersebut dimasukkan dalam data penduduk potensial pemilih pemilu (DP4) untuk Pemilihan Umum 2014. Karena itu, data tersebut tidak ditandai sebagai ”tunggal” pada DP4.

”Bagaimana kami menulis itu tunggal kalau masih offline. Sebanyak 175 juta (hasil perekaman KTP elektronik) itu sudah masuk dan kami perkirakan mendekati tunggal. Tapi, yang sudah pasti tunggal 139 juta. Yang lain masih kami uji lagi, mumpung ada waktu 4 bulan,” tutur Gamawan.

Sebelumnya, berkali-kali Gamawan mengatakan, data hasil perekaman KTP elektronik sebanyak 175 juta bisa diyakini akurasi dan validitasnya. Karena itu, dari sekitar 190 juta data penduduk pada DP4 yang diserahkan ke KPU, Panitia Pendaftaran Pemilih (Pantarlih) tinggal memutakhirkan data 15 juta penduduk. Apabila jumlah ini dibagi 77.465 kelurahan/desa, rata-rata hanya sekitar 200 penduduk yang masih perlu dicek (Kompas, 7 Februari 2013).

Anggota Komisi II DPR, Arif Wibowo, menengarai DP4 yang disampaikan pemerintah ke KPU masih ”kotor”. ”Dari sekitar 190 juta data penduduk di DP4, masih ada lebih dari 57.000 jiwa yang berusia di bawah 10 tahun. Juga masih ada ribuan data ganda dan ber- NIK (nomor induk kependudukan) sama. Data hasil rekam KTP elektronik hanya sekitar 134 juta,” ujarnya.

Karena itu, Arif meminta KPU menyinkronkan DP4 dengan data hasil pilkada/pemilu terakhir. Setelah itu, data pemilih perlu dimutakhirkan dan diteliti dengan sungguh-sungguh.

Gamawan menilai tidak banyak data yang tidak valid. ”Semua (pembersihan data) masih berjalan sampai Oktober,” katanya. Kemendagri juga akan berkoordinasi dengan KPU terkait hasil pembersihan data.

Anggota KPU, Hadar N Gumay, memastikan Pantarlih akan mengecek semua data warga yang berhak memilih tanpa membedakan kesertaan dalam perekaman KTP elektronik. Dari hasil pencocokan dan penelitian, KPU menyusun daftar pemilih sementara.

Sumber : Kompas

DEKORASI BALON PROMOSI

Salah satu peluang usaha yang lagi trend adalah Peluang usaha bisnis balon dekorasi. Semakin banyak orang yang membuat pesta di negeri ini, maka semakin banyak pula pintu rejeki bagi pengusaha balon dekorasi.

Meningkatnya pertumbuhan ekonomi masyarakat Indonesia mendorong banyaknya di selengggarakan acara acara pesta seperti acar ulang tahun, reoni, presmian dan sebagainya. Nah seiring dengan meningkatnya penyelenggara acara2 pesta maka semakin terbuka pula peluang usaha bisnis balon dekorasi ini.

Pada umumnya konsumen lebih suka memakai jasa dari pengusaha balon dekorasi sebab lebih praktis dan tampilannya juga lebih cantik daripada bikin sendiri. Acara acara pesta sering memakai jasa balon dekorasi ini seperti acara pernikahan, ulang tahun, atau acara komunitas tertentu seperti acara peluncuruan produk terbaru, peresmian kantor baru, atau acara ulang tahun suatu perusahaan.

Biasanya dekorasi yang sering di lihat adalah dekorasi hiasan bunga, namun sekarang banyak yang menambah hiasan hiasan rangkaian aneka balon sebab akan lebih menarik dan rame apalagi jika di tambah dengan hiasan yang lain seperti penghias dinding, plafon ruangan dan sebagainya.

Peluang Usaha Bisnis Balon DekorasiTampilan hiasan balon dekorasi tidak kalah menarik dengan hiasan dekorasi bunga, harganya juga bisa lebih ringan dan konsumen bisa memesan balon dengan berbagai bentuk. Keunggulan lain yang ada pada balon dekorasi adalah balon dekorasi juga bisa di gunakan untuk promosi produk.

Balon promosi umumnya berbeda dengan balon dekorasi, balon promosi ukurannya lebih besar daripada balon dekorasi. Balon promosi juga biasanya tersedia dalam berbagai bentuk seperti bentuk kotak, bentuk oval atau bentuk bentuk sesuai pesanan yang lain.

Di kota-kota besar peluang usaha balon dekorasi ini sangat terbuka khususnya di kota-kota besar yang berada di luar pulau jawa. Tingginya daya beli masyarkat luar pulau jawa mendorong banyaknya didirikan  kantor-kantor baru. Ini tentu sangat menguntungkan bagi pengusaha balon dekorasi.

Faktor lain yang membuat usaha balon dekorasi memiliki prospek bisnis yang bagus adalah meningkatnya jumlah orang yang berduit di negeri ini, dan orang berduit biasanya sering mengadakan acara-acara tertentu yang membutuhkan jasa dekorasi termasuk juga balon dekorasi. Selain itu, budaya merayakan hari ulang tahun masih sangat kental di beberapa daerah di Indonesia.

Para pelaku usaha balon dekorasi biasanya juga menyediakan balon-balon mainan, sebab biasanya dalam suatu pesta yang di selenggarakan oleh perorangan, para tamu sering membawa keluarganya yang termasuk juga anak2 anaknya. Nah, balaon mainan anak-anak sangat pentingn peranannya dalam acara seperti ini. Semakin komplit perlengkapan balon dekorasi yang tersedia, maka semakin besar pula omzet yang akan di dapat.

Usaha balo dekorasi bisa di jalankan dengan skala besar atau skala kecil / usaha modal kecil. Usaha balon dekorasi skala besar biasanya modalnya bisa mencapai ratusan juta Rupiah, namun untuk usaha balon dekorasi skala kecil, Modal kurang dari Rp. 50.000.000 ( lima puluh juta ) pun sudah bisa di jalankan.

Peluang Usaha Bisnis Balon DekorasiUntuk memudahkan konsumen memilih jasa dekorasi, biasanya pemain bisnis ini mengemas jasanya dalam beberapa paket. Balon Indonesia, misalnya, menyiapkan paket sederhana yang terdiri dari dekorasi satu kreasi gapura balon, 10 kreasi bunga, serta 10 kreasi balon lampion. Kedua, paket standar bertarif Rp 1.950.000 dengan fasilitas dua dekorasi balon berdiri, balon satuan dengan luas hiasan delapan meter persegi (m²).

Terakhir, paket meriah dengan harga Rp 2,8 juta hingga Rp 5 juta. Di paket ini, patokan harga bergantung pada tingkat kerumitan dan banyaknya balon. “Namun, biasanya, paket meriah terdiri dari empat dekorasi balon berdiri (standing) satu gapura, satu balon karakter, 20 balon kreasi lampion dan kreasi bunga dengan luas hiasan hingga 20 m²,” jelas Dwi.

Tak jauh berbeda dengan Balon Indonesia, Fimas Balon juga mengemas jasanya dalam dua paket. Pertama, paket sederhana berharga Rp 1,5 juta dengan luas 2,5 x 2 m². Kedua, paket meriah yang harganya disesuaikan dengan permintaan. “Yang pasti luasan ruang yang dihias lebih dari 2,5 x 2 m²,” tambah Ari Setiawan, pemilik Fimas Balon. Dalam sebulan, Ari mampu menangani hingga sepuluh paket balon dekorasi.

Untuk Memulai, Jadilah Agen Balon Dekorasi Terlebih Dahulu

Dengan menjadi nagen terlebih dahulu, maka anda akan tahu dengan pasti berapa besarnya modal yang di perlukan untuk membeli perlengkapan perlengkapannya seperti membeli mesin jahit balon, alat stok gas, pompa angin dan lain-lain.

Untuk bisa menjadi agen tentu anda harus memiliki relasi dengan pemilik ketiga perlengkapan tersebut, sekaligus pemasok karet untuk bahan balon. Setelah mahir di bidang agen, selanjutnya anda bisa beranjak ke tahap berikutnya yaitu tahap promosi agar mendapatkan klien yang banyak. Promosi yang baik saat ini adalah promosi melalui internet misalnya dengan membuat website atau lewat jejaring sosial seperti facebook, twitter dan jejaring sosial lainnya.

Pada saat mulai berdiri anda bisa menjalin kerja sama dengan pemain-pemain besar dengan  tujuan agar mendapatkan order. Saat mulai membuka usaha balon dekorasi ini, anda juga tidak perlu merekrut banyak karyawan, cukup merekrut karyawan yang sangat di butuhkan saja, selebihnya bisa anda kerjakan sendiri.

Bahan baku balon dekorasi ini adalah karet balon yang banyak dijual pemasok (supplier) karet atau lateks balon lokal. Carilah lateks balon dalam berbagai warna dan ukuran. Harganya berkisar Rp 500 hingga  Rp 1.000 per lembar. Pembentukan dan pencantuman tulisan di balon, biasanya kita lakukan sendiri, karena baru bisa diputuskan setelah bertemu klien.

SYARIAT IBADAH HAJI DARI NABI-NABI

Haji dan umrah adalah ritual keagamaan yang sejak lama sudah dikenal oleh manusia. Meski ibadah tersebut kini identik dengan umat Islam, namun sebenarnya umat nabi-nabi terdahulu sudah lebih dulu melaksanakannya.

Ibadah haji sudah dikenal sejak zaman Nabi Adam AS, namun pelaksanaannya masih sangat sederhana dan jauh berbeda dibandingkan dengan ibadah haji yang dilakukan oleh umat Islam saat ini. Menurut Ibnu Abbas RA, setelah membangun Kabah, Adam AS berputar mengelilinginya hingga tujuh kali putaran.

Menurut Abdullah Ibnu Abi Sulaiman, setelah merampungkan tawaf tujuh kali, Adam mengerjakan shalat dua rakaat di depan pintu Kabah dan kemudian berdoa di pintu Multazam. Dalam berbagai riwayat, doa-doa yang dipanjatkan oleh Nabi Adam AS sangat beragam, namun intinya sama, yaitu permohonan kepada Allah SWT agar bersedia mengampuni dosa-dosanya.

Di samping itu ia juga meminta agar anak-cucunya didatangkan untuk berhaji ke Baitullah, dipenuhi segala kebutuhan hidupnya, diteguhkan imannya, dan dibimbing agar senantiasa ridha menerima cobaan atau musibah yang menimpanya.

Beberapa utusan Allah yang hidup pasca Nabi Adam AS seperti Nuh AS, Hud AS, dan Shaleh AS juga mengerjakan ibadah haji ke Baitullah namun dengan tata cara yang tidak sama. Perbedaan tata cara itu disebabkan oleh latar belakang waktu dan tempat di mana nabi-nabi itu diutus berbeda-beda.

Syariat yang dibawa oleh nabi-nabi terus berkembang menuju titik kesempurnaan, dan di tangan Nabi Muhammad SAW kesempurnaan itu akhirnya terwujud. Meski ritual haji di antara para nabi berbeda-beda, akidah atau keyakinan mereka tetap sama, yaitu beriman kepada Tuhan Yang Mahaesa.

Sumber : Republika.co.id

Baca Artikel Lainnya : TANAH SUCI YNG DAMAI

Ben E. King, Soulful Singer of ‘Stand by Me,’ Dies at 76

Mr. King sang for the Drifters and found success as a solo performer with hits like “Spanish Harlem.”

Jozef Paczynski, Inmate Barber to Auschwitz Commandant, Dies at 95

Mr. Paczynski was one of the concentration camp’s longest surviving inmates and served as the personal barber to its Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss.

Marty Napoleon, 93, Dies; Jazz Pianist Played With Louis Armstrong

Mr. Napoleon was a self-taught musician whose career began in earnest with the orchestra led by Chico Marx of the Marx Brothers.

Dean Skelos, Albany Senate Leader, Aided Son at All Costs, U.S. Says

Over the last five years or so, it seemed there was little that Dean G. Skelos, the majority leader of the New York Senate, would not do for his son.

He pressed a powerful real estate executive to provide commissions to his son, a 32-year-old title insurance salesman, according to a federal criminal complaint. He helped get him a job at an environmental company and employed his influence to help the company get government work. He used his office to push natural gas drilling regulations that would have increased his son’s commissions.

He even tried to direct part of a $5.4 billion state budget windfall to fund government contracts that the company was seeking. And when the company was close to securing a storm-water contract from Nassau County, the senator, through an intermediary, pressured the company to pay his son more — or risk having the senator subvert the bid.

The criminal complaint, unsealed on Monday, lays out corruption charges against Senator Skelos and his son, Adam B. Skelos, the latest scandal to seize Albany, and potentially alter its power structure.

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The repeated and diverse efforts by Senator Skelos, a Long Island Republican, to use what prosecutors said was his political influence to find work, or at least income, for his son could send both men to federal prison. If they are convicted of all six charges against them, they face up to 20 years in prison for each of four of the six counts and up to 10 years for the remaining two.

Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, of Long Island, who serves as chairman of the Republican conference, emerged from a closed-door meeting Monday night to say that conference members agreed that Mr. Skelos should be benefited the “presumption of innocence,” and would stay in his leadership role.

“The leader has indicated he would like to remain as leader,” said Mr. LaValle, “and he has the support of the conference.” The case against Mr. Skelos and his son grew out of a broader inquiry into political corruption by the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, that has already changed the face of the state capital. It is based in part, according to the six-count complaint, on conversations secretly recorded by one of two cooperating witnesses, and wiretaps on the cellphones of the senator and his son. Those recordings revealed that both men were concerned about electronic surveillance, and illustrated the son’s unsuccessful efforts to thwart it.

Adam Skelos took to using a “burner” phone, the complaint says, and told his father he wanted them to speak through a FaceTime video call in an apparent effort to avoid detection. They also used coded language at times.

At one point, Adam Skelos was recorded telling a Senate staff member of his frustration in not being able to speak openly to his father on the phone, noting that he could not “just send smoke signals or a little pigeon” carrying a message.

The 43-page complaint, sworn out by Paul M. Takla, a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, outlines a five-year scheme to “monetize” the senator’s official position; it also lays bare the extent to which a father sought to use his position to help his son.

The charges accuse the two men of extorting payments through a real estate developer, Glenwood Management, based on Long Island, and the environmental company, AbTech Industries, in Scottsdale, Ariz., with the expectation that the money paid to Adam Skelos — nearly $220,000 in total — would influence his father’s actions.

Glenwood, one of the state’s most prolific campaign donors, had ties to AbTech through investments in the environmental firm’s parent company by Glenwood’s founding family and a senior executive.

The accusations in the complaint portray Senator Skelos as a man who, when it came to his son, was not shy about twisting arms, even in situations that might give other arm-twisters pause.

Seeking to help his son, Senator Skelos turned to the executive at Glenwood, which develops rental apartments in New York City and has much at stake when it comes to real estate legislation in Albany. The senator urged him to direct business to his son, who sold title insurance.

After much prodding, the executive, Charles C. Dorego, engineered a $20,000 payment to Adam Skelos from a title insurance company even though he did no work for the money. But far more lucrative was a consultant position that Mr. Dorego arranged for Adam Skelos at AbTech, which seeks government contracts to treat storm water. (Mr. Dorego is not identified by name in the complaint, but referred to only as CW-1, for Cooperating Witness 1.)

Senator Skelos appeared to take an active interest in his son’s new line of work. Adam Skelos sent him several drafts of his consulting agreement with AbTech, the complaint says, as well as the final deal that was struck.

“Mazel tov,” his father replied.

Senator Skelos sent relevant news articles to his son, including one about a sewage leak near Albany. When AbTech wanted to seek government contracts after Hurricane Sandy, the senator got on a conference call with his son and an AbTech executive, Bjornulf White, and offered advice. (Like Mr. Dorego, Mr. White is not named in the complaint, but referred to as CW-2.)

The assistance paid off: With the senator’s help, AbTech secured a contract worth up to $12 million from Nassau County, a big break for a struggling small business.

But the money was slow to materialize. The senator expressed impatience with county officials.

Adam Skelos, in a phone call with Mr. White in late December, suggested that his father would seek to punish the county. “I tell you this, the state is not going to do a [expletive] thing for the county,” he said.

Three days later, Senator Skelos pressed his case with the Nassau County executive, Edward P. Mangano, a fellow Republican. “Somebody feels like they’re just getting jerked around the last two years,” the senator said, referring to his son in what the complaint described as “coded language.”

The next day, the senator pursued the matter, as he and Mr. Mangano attended a wake for a slain New York City police officer. Senator Skelos then reassured his son, who called him while he was still at the wake. “All claims that are in will be taken care of,” the senator said.

AbTech’s fortunes appeared to weigh on his son. At one point in January, Adam Skelos told his father that if the company did not succeed, he would “lose the ability to pay for things.”

Making matters worse, in recent months, Senator Skelos and his son appeared to grow wary about who was watching them. In addition to making calls on the burner phone, Adam Skelos said he used the FaceTime video calling “because that doesn’t show up on the phone bill,” as he told Mr. White.

In late February, Adam Skelos arranged a pair of meetings between Mr. White and state senators; AbTech needed to win state legislation that would allow its contract to move beyond its initial stages. But Senator Skelos deemed the plan too risky and caused one of the meetings to be canceled.

In another recorded call, Adam Skelos, promising to be “very, very vague” on the phone, urged his father to allow the meeting. The senator offered a warning. “Right now we are in dangerous times, Adam,” he told him.

A month later, in another phone call that was recorded by the authorities, Adam Skelos complained that his father could not give him “real advice” about AbTech while the two men were speaking over the telephone.

“You can’t talk normally,” he told his father, “because it’s like [expletive] Preet Bharara is listening to every [expletive] phone call. It’s just [expletive] frustrating.”

“It is,” his father agreed.

Baltimore Residents Away From Turmoil Consider Their Role

BALTIMORE — In the afternoons, the streets of Locust Point are clean and nearly silent. In front of the rowhouses, potted plants rest next to steps of brick or concrete. There is a shopping center nearby with restaurants, and a grocery store filled with fresh foods.

And the National Guard and the police are largely absent. So, too, residents say, are worries about what happened a few miles away on April 27 when, in a space of hours, parts of this city became riot zones.

“They’re not our reality,” Ashley Fowler, 30, said on Monday at the restaurant where she works. “They’re not what we’re living right now. We live in, not to be racist, white America.”

As Baltimore considers its way forward after the violent unrest brought by the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died of injuries he suffered while in police custody, residents in its predominantly white neighborhoods acknowledge that they are sometimes struggling to understand what beyond Mr. Gray’s death spurred the turmoil here. For many, the poverty and troubled schools of gritty West Baltimore are distant troubles, glimpsed only when they pass through the area on their way somewhere else.

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And so neighborhoods of Baltimore are facing altogether different reckonings after Mr. Gray’s death. In mostly black communities like Sandtown-Winchester, where some of the most destructive rioting played out last week, residents are hoping businesses will reopen and that the police will change their strategies. But in mostly white areas like Canton and Locust Point, some residents wonder what role, if any, they should play in reimagining stretches of Baltimore where they do not live.

“Most of the people are kind of at a loss as to what they’re supposed to do,” said Dr. Richard Lamb, a dentist who has practiced in the same Locust Point office for nearly 39 years. “I listen to the news reports. I listen to the clergymen. I listen to the facts of the rampant unemployment and the lack of opportunities in the area. Listen, I pay my taxes. Exactly what can I do?”

And in Canton, where the restaurants have clever names like Nacho Mama’s and Holy Crepe Bakery and Café, Sara Bahr said solutions seemed out of reach for a proudly liberal city.

“I can only imagine how frustrated they must be,” said Ms. Bahr, 36, a nurse who was out with her 3-year-old daughter, Sally. “I just wish I knew how to solve poverty. I don’t know what to do to make it better.”

The day of unrest and the overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations that followed led to hundreds of arrests, often for violations of the curfew imposed on the city for five consecutive nights while National Guard soldiers patrolled the streets. Although there were isolated instances of trouble in Canton, the neighborhood association said on its website, many parts of southeast Baltimore were physically untouched by the tumult.

Tensions in the city bubbled anew on Monday after reports that the police had wounded a black man in Northwest Baltimore. The authorities denied those reports and sent officers to talk with the crowds that gathered while other officers clutching shields blocked traffic at Pennsylvania and West North Avenues.

Lt. Col. Melvin Russell, a community police officer, said officers had stopped a man suspected of carrying a handgun and that “one of those rounds was spent.”

Colonel Russell said officers had not opened fire, “so we couldn’t have shot him.”

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The colonel said the man had not been injured but was taken to a hospital as a precaution. Nearby, many people stood in disbelief, despite the efforts by the authorities to quash reports they described as “unfounded.”

Monday’s episode was a brief moment in a larger drama that has yielded anger and confusion. Although many people said they were familiar with accounts of the police harassing or intimidating residents, many in Canton and Locust Point said they had never experienced it themselves. When they watched the unrest, which many protesters said was fueled by feelings that they lived only on Baltimore’s margins, even those like Ms. Bahr who were pained by what they saw said they could scarcely comprehend the emotions associated with it.

But others, like Lambi Vasilakopoulos, who runs a casual restaurant in Canton, said they were incensed by what unfolded last week.

“What happened wasn’t called for. Protests are one thing; looting is another thing,” he said, adding, “We’re very frustrated because we’re the ones who are going to pay for this.”

There were pockets of optimism, though, that Baltimore would enter a period of reconciliation.

“I’m just hoping for peace,” Natalie Boies, 53, said in front of the Locust Point home where she has lived for 50 years. “Learn to love each other; be patient with each other; find justice; and care.”

A skeptical Mr. Vasilakopoulos predicted tensions would worsen.

“It cannot be fixed,” he said. “It’s going to get worse. Why? Because people don’t obey the laws. They don’t want to obey them.”

But there were few fears that the violence that plagued West Baltimore last week would play out on these relaxed streets. The authorities, Ms. Fowler said, would make sure of that.

“They kept us safe here,” she said. “I didn’t feel uncomfortable when I was in my house three blocks away from here. I knew I was going to be O.K. because I knew they weren’t going to let anyone come and loot our properties or our businesses or burn our cars.”

The Uphill Battle to Better Regulate Formaldehyde

WASHINGTON — A decade after emergency trailers meant to shelter Hurricane Katrina victims instead caused burning eyes, sore throats and other more serious ailments, the Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of regulating the culprit: formaldehyde, a chemical that can be found in commonplace things like clothes and furniture.

But an unusual assortment of players, including furniture makers, the Chinese government, Republicans from states with a large base of furniture manufacturing and even some Democrats who championed early regulatory efforts, have questioned the E.P.A. proposal. The sustained opposition has held sway, as the agency is now preparing to ease key testing requirements before it releases the landmark federal health standard.

The E.P.A.’s five-year effort to adopt this rule offers another example of how industry opposition can delay and hamper attempts by the federal government to issue regulations, even to control substances known to be harmful to human health.

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Document: The Formaldehyde Fight

Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen that can also cause respiratory ailments like asthma, but the potential of long-term exposure to cause cancers like myeloid leukemia is less well understood.

The E.P.A.’s decision would be the first time that the federal government has regulated formaldehyde inside most American homes.

“The stakes are high for public health,” said Tom Neltner, senior adviser for regulatory affairs at the National Center for Healthy Housing, who has closely monitored the debate over the rules. “What we can’t have here is an outcome that fails to confront the health threat we all know exists.”

The proposal would not ban formaldehyde — commonly used as an ingredient in wood glue in furniture and flooring — but it would impose rules that prevent dangerous levels of the chemical’s vapors from those products, and would set testing standards to ensure that products sold in the United States comply with those limits. The debate has sharpened in the face of growing concern about the safety of formaldehyde-treated flooring imported from Asia, especially China.

What is certain is that a lot of money is at stake: American companies sell billions of dollars’ worth of wood products each year that contain formaldehyde, and some argue that the proposed regulation would impose unfair costs and restrictions.

Determined to block the agency’s rule as proposed, these industry players have turned to the White House, members of Congress and top E.P.A. officials, pressing them to roll back the testing requirements in particular, calling them redundant and too expensive.

“There are potentially over a million manufacturing jobs that will be impacted if the proposed rule is finalized without changes,” wrote Bill Perdue, the chief lobbyist at the American Home Furnishings Alliance, a leading critic of the testing requirements in the proposed regulation, in one letter to the E.P.A.

Industry opposition helped create an odd alignment of forces working to thwart the rule. The White House moved to strike out key aspects of the proposal. Subsequent appeals for more changes were voiced by players as varied as Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, and Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi, as well as furniture industry lobbyists.

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 helped ignite the public debate over formaldehyde, after the deadly storm destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of homes along the Gulf of Mexico, forcing families into temporary trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The displaced storm victims quickly began reporting respiratory problems, burning eyes and other issues, and tests then confirmed high levels of formaldehyde fumes leaking into the air inside the trailers, which in many cases had been hastily constructed.

Public health advocates petitioned the E.P.A. to issue limits on formaldehyde in building materials and furniture used in homes, given that limits already existed for exposure in workplaces. But three years after the storm, only California had issued such limits.

Industry groups like the American Chemistry Council have repeatedly challenged the science linking formaldehyde to cancer, a position championed by David Vitter, the Republican senator from Louisiana, who is a major recipient of chemical industry campaign contributions, and whom environmental groups have mockingly nicknamed “Senator Formaldehyde.”

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Typical

laminate

flooring

CLEAR FINISH LAYER

Often made of melamine resin

PATTERN LAYER

Paper printed to resemble wood,

or a thin wood veneer

GLUE

Layers may be bound using

formaldehyde-based glues

CORE LAYER

Fiberboard or other

composite, formed using

formaldehyde-based adhesives

BASE LAYER

Moisture-resistant vapor barrier

What is formaldehyde?

Formaldehyde is a common chemical used in many industrial and household products as an adhesive, bonding agent or preservative. It is classified as a volatile organic compound. The term volatile means that, at room temperature, formaldehyde will vaporize, or become a gas. Products made with formaldehyde tend to release this gas into the air. If breathed in large quantities, it may cause health problems.

WHERE IT IS COMMONLY FOUND

POTENTIAL HEALTH RISKS

Pressed-wood and composite wood products

Wallpaper and paints

Spray foam insulation used in construction

Commercial wood floor finishes

Crease-resistant fabrics

In cigarette smoke, or in the fumes from combustion of other materials, including wood, oil and gasoline.

Exposure to formaldehyde in sufficient amounts may cause eye, throat or skin irritation, allergic reactions, and respiratory problems like coughing, wheezing or asthma.

Long-term exposure to high levels has been associated with cancer in humans and laboratory animals.

Exposure to formaldehyde may affect some people more severely than others.

Sources: Consumer Product Safety Commission; Minnesota Department of Health

 

By The New York Times

By 2010, public health advocates and some industry groups secured bipartisan support in Congress for legislation that ordered the E.P.A. to issue federal rules that largely mirrored California’s restrictions. At the time, concerns were rising over the growing number of lower-priced furniture imports from Asia that might include contaminated products, while also hurting sales of American-made products.

Maneuvering began almost immediately after the E.P.A. prepared draft rules to formally enact the new standards.

White House records show at least five meetings in mid-2012 with industry executives — kitchen cabinet makers, chemical manufacturers, furniture trade associations and their lobbyists, like Brock R. Landry, of the Venable law firm. These parties, along with Senator Vitter’s office, appealed to top administration officials, asking them to intervene to roll back the E.P.A. proposal.

The White House Office of Management and Budget, which reviews major federal regulations before they are adopted, apparently agreed. After the White House review, the E.P.A. “redlined” many of the estimates of the monetary benefits that would be gained by reductions in related health ailments, like asthma and fertility issues, documents reviewed by The New York Times show.

As a result, the estimated benefit of the proposed rule dropped to $48 million a year, from as much as $278 million a year. The much-reduced amount deeply weakened the agency’s justification for the sometimes costly new testing that would be required under the new rules, a federal official involved in the effort said.

“It’s a redlining blood bath,” said Lisa Heinzerling, a Georgetown University Law School professor and a former E.P.A. official, using the Washington phrase to describe when language is stricken from a proposed rule. “Almost the entire discussion of these potential benefits was excised.”

Senator Vitter’s staff was pleased.

“That’s a huge difference,” said Luke Bolar, a spokesman for Mr. Vitter, of the reduced estimated financial benefits, saying the change was “clearly highlighting more mismanagement” at the E.P.A.

The review’s outcome galvanized opponents in the furniture industry. They then targeted a provision that mandated new testing of laminated wood, a cheaper alternative to hardwood. (The California standard on which the law was based did not require such testing.)

But E.P.A. scientists had concluded that these laminate products — millions of which are sold annually in the United States — posed a particular risk. They said that when thin layers of wood, also known as laminate or veneer, are added to furniture or flooring in the final stages of manufacturing, the resulting product can generate dangerous levels of fumes from often-used formaldehyde-based glues.

Industry executives, outraged by what they considered an unnecessary and financially burdensome level of testing, turned every lever within reach to get the requirement removed. It would be particularly onerous, they argued, for small manufacturers that would have to repeatedly interrupt their work to do expensive new testing. The E.P.A. estimated that the expanded requirements for laminate products would cost the furniture industry tens of millions of dollars annually, while the industry said that the proposed rule over all would cost its 7,000 American manufacturing facilities over $200 million each year.

“A lot of people don’t seem to appreciate what a lot of these requirements do to a small operation,” said Dick Titus, executive vice president of the Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association, whose members are predominantly small businesses. “A 10-person shop, for example, just really isn’t equipped to handle that type of thing.”

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Big industry players also weighed in. Executives from companies including La-Z-Boy, Hooker Furniture and Ashley Furniture all flew to Washington for a series of meetings with the offices of lawmakers including House Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, and about a dozen other lawmakers, asking several of them to sign a letter prepared by the industry to press the E.P.A. to back down, according to an industry report describing the lobbying visit.

Within a matter of weeks, two letters — using nearly identical language — were sent by House and Senate lawmakers to the E.P.A. — with the industry group forwarding copies of the letters to the agency as well, and then posting them on its website.

The industry lobbyists also held their own meeting at E.P.A. headquarters, and they urged Jim Jones, who oversaw the rule-making process as the assistant administrator for the agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, to visit a North Carolina furniture manufacturing plant. According to the trade group, Mr. Jones told them that the visit had “helped the agency shift its thinking” about the rules and how laminated products should be treated.

The resistance was particularly intense from lawmakers like Mr. Wicker of Mississippi, whose state is home to major manufacturing plants owned by Ashley Furniture Industries, the world’s largest furniture maker, and who is one of the biggest recipients in Congress of donations from the industry’s trade association. Asked if the political support played a role, a spokesman for Mr. Wicker replied: “Thousands of Mississippians depend on the furniture manufacturing industry for their livelihoods. Senator Wicker is committed to defending all Mississippians from government overreach.”

Individual companies like Ikea also intervened, as did the Chinese government, which claimed that the new rule would create a “great barrier” to the import of Chinese products because of higher costs.

Perhaps the most surprising objection came from Senator Boxer, of California, a longtime environmental advocate, whose office questioned why the E.P.A.’s rule went further than her home state’s in seeking testing on laminated products. “We did not advocate an outcome, other than safety,” her office said in a statement about why the senator raised concerns. “We said ‘Take a look to see if you have it right.’ ”

Safety advocates say that tighter restrictions — like the ones Ms. Boxer and Mr. Wicker, along with Representative Doris Matsui, a California Democrat, have questioned — are necessary, particularly for products coming from China, where items as varied as toys and Christmas lights have been found to violate American safety standards.

While Mr. Neltner, the environmental advocate who has been most involved in the review process, has been open to compromise, he has pressed the E.P.A. not to back down entirely, and to maintain a requirement that laminators verify that their products are safe.

An episode of CBS’s “60 Minutes” in March brought attention to the issue when it accused Lumber Liquidators, the discount flooring retailer, of selling laminate products with dangerous levels of formaldehyde. The company has disputed the show’s findings and test methods, maintaining that its products are safe.

“People think that just because Congress passed the legislation five years ago, the problem has been fixed,” said Becky Gillette, who then lived in coastal Mississippi, in the area hit by Hurricane Katrina, and was among the first to notice a pattern of complaints from people living in the trailers. “Real people’s faces and names come up in front of me when I think of the thousands of people who could get sick if this rule is not done right.”

An aide to Ms. Matsui rejected any suggestion that she was bending to industry pressure.

“From the beginning the public health has been our No. 1 concern,” said Kyle J. Victor, an aide to Ms. Matsui.

But further changes to the rule are likely, agency officials concede, as they say they are searching for a way to reduce the cost of complying with any final rule while maintaining public health goals. The question is just how radically the agency will revamp the testing requirement for laminated products — if it keeps it at all.

“It’s not a secret to anybody that is the most challenging issue,” said Mr. Jones, the E.P.A. official overseeing the process, adding that the health consequences from formaldehyde are real. “We have to reduce those exposures so that people can live healthy lives and not have to worry about being in their homes.”

Tribute for a Roller Hockey Warrior

Hockey is not exactly known as a city game, but played on roller skates, it once held sway as the sport of choice in many New York neighborhoods.

“City kids had no rinks, no ice, but they would do anything to play hockey,” said Edward Moffett, former director of the Long Island City Y.M.C.A. Roller Hockey League, in Queens, whose games were played in city playgrounds going back to the 1940s.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, the league had more than 60 teams, he said. Players included the Mullen brothers of Hell’s Kitchen and Dan Dorion of Astoria, Queens, who would later play on ice for the National Hockey League.

One street legend from the heyday of New York roller hockey was Craig Allen, who lived in the Woodside Houses projects and became one of the city’s hardest hitters and top scorers.

“Craig was a warrior, one of the best roller hockey players in the city in the ’70s,” said Dave Garmendia, 60, a retired New York police officer who grew up playing with Mr. Allen. “His teammates loved him and his opponents feared him.”

Young Craig took up hockey on the streets of Queens in the 1960s, playing pickup games between sewer covers, wearing steel-wheeled skates clamped onto school shoes and using a roll of electrical tape as the puck.

His skill and ferocity drew attention, Mr. Garmendia said, but so did his skin color. He was black, in a sport made up almost entirely by white players.

“Roller hockey was a white kid’s game, plain and simple, but Craig broke the color barrier,” Mr. Garmendia said. “We used to say Craig did more for race relations than the N.A.A.C.P.”

Mr. Allen went on to coach and referee roller hockey in New York before moving several years ago to South Carolina. But he continued to organize an annual alumni game at Dutch Kills Playground in Long Island City, the same site that held the local championship games.

The reunion this year was on Saturday, but Mr. Allen never made it. On April 26, just before boarding the bus to New York, he died of an asthma attack at age 61.

Word of his death spread rapidly among hundreds of his old hockey colleagues who resolved to continue with the event, now renamed the Craig Allen Memorial Roller Hockey Reunion.

The turnout on Saturday was the largest ever, with players pulling on their old equipment, choosing sides and taking once again to the rink of cracked blacktop with faded lines and circles. They wore no helmets, although one player wore a fedora.

Another, Vinnie Juliano, 77, of Long Island City, wore his hearing aids, along with his 50-year-old taped-up quads, or four-wheeled skates with a leather boot. Many players here never converted to in-line skates, and neither did Mr. Allen, whose photograph appeared on a poster hanging behind the players’ bench.

“I’m seeing people walking by wondering why all these rusty, grizzly old guys are here playing hockey,” one player, Tommy Dominguez, said. “We’re here for Craig, and let me tell you, these old guys still play hard.”

Everyone seemed to have a Craig Allen story, from his earliest teams at Public School 151 to the Bryant Rangers, the Woodside Wings, the Woodside Blues and more.

Mr. Allen, who became a yellow-cab driver, was always recruiting new talent. He gained the nickname Cabby for his habit of stopping at playgrounds all over the city to scout players.

Teams were organized around neighborhoods and churches, and often sponsored by local bars. Mr. Allen, for one, played for bars, including Garry Owen’s and on the Fiddler’s Green Jokers team in Inwood, Manhattan.

Play was tough and fights were frequent.

“We were basically street gangs on skates,” said Steve Rogg, 56, a mail clerk who grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens, and who on Saturday wore his Riedell Classic quads from 1972. “If another team caught up with you the night before a game, they tossed you a beating so you couldn’t play the next day.”

Mr. Garmendia said Mr. Allen’s skin color provoked many fights.

“When we’d go to some ignorant neighborhoods, a lot of players would use slurs,” Mr. Garmendia said, recalling a game in Ozone Park, Queens, where local fans parked motorcycles in a lineup next to the blacktop and taunted Mr. Allen. Mr. Garmendia said he checked a player into the motorcycles, “and the bikes went down like dominoes, which started a serious brawl.”

A group of fans at a game in Brooklyn once stuck a pole through the rink fence as Mr. Allen skated by and broke his jaw, Mr. Garmendia said, adding that carloads of reinforcements soon arrived to defend Mr. Allen.

And at another racially incited brawl, the police responded with six patrol cars and a helicopter.

Before play began on Saturday, the players gathered at center rink to honor Mr. Allen. Billy Barnwell, 59, of Woodside, recalled once how an all-white, all-star squad snubbed Mr. Allen by playing him third string. He scored seven goals in the first game and made first string immediately.

“He’d always hear racial stuff before the game, and I’d ask him, ‘How do you put up with that?’” Mr. Barnwell recalled. “Craig would say, ‘We’ll take care of it,’ and by the end of the game, he’d win guys over. They’d say, ‘This guy’s good.’”

G.O.P. Hopefuls Now Aiming to Woo the Middle Class

WASHINGTON — The last three men to win the Republican nomination have been the prosperous son of a president (George W. Bush), a senator who could not recall how many homes his family owned (John McCain of Arizona; it was seven) and a private equity executive worth an estimated $200 million (Mitt Romney).

The candidates hoping to be the party’s nominee in 2016 are trying to create a very different set of associations. On Sunday, Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, joined the presidential field.

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida praises his parents, a bartender and a Kmart stock clerk, as he urges audiences not to forget “the workers in our hotel kitchens, the landscaping crews in our neighborhoods, the late-night janitorial staff that clean our offices.”

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a preacher’s son, posts on Twitter about his ham-and-cheese sandwiches and boasts of his coupon-clipping frugality. His $1 Kohl’s sweater has become a campaign celebrity in its own right.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky laments the existence of “two Americas,” borrowing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s phrase to describe economically and racially troubled communities like Ferguson, Mo., and Detroit.

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“Some say, ‘But Democrats care more about the poor,’ ” Mr. Paul likes to say. “If that’s true, why is black unemployment still twice white unemployment? Why has household income declined by $3,500 over the past six years?”

We are in the midst of the Empathy Primary — the rhetorical battleground shaping the Republican presidential field of 2016.

Harmed by the perception that they favor the wealthy at the expense of middle-of-the-road Americans, the party’s contenders are each trying their hardest to get across what the elder George Bush once inelegantly told recession-battered voters in 1992: “Message: I care.”

Their ability to do so — less bluntly, more sincerely — could prove decisive in an election year when power, privilege and family connections will loom large for both parties.

Questions of understanding and compassion cost Republicans in the last election. Mr. Romney, who memorably dismissed the “47 percent” of Americans as freeloaders, lost to President Obama by 63 percentage points among voters who cast their ballots for the candidate who “cares about people like me,” according to exit polls.

And a Pew poll from February showed that people still believe Republicans are indifferent to working Americans: 54 percent said the Republican Party does not care about the middle class.

That taint of callousness explains why Senator Ted Cruz of Texas declared last week that Republicans “are and should be the party of the 47 percent” — and why another son of a president, Jeb Bush, has made economic opportunity the centerpiece of his message.

With his pedigree and considerable wealth — since he left the Florida governor’s office almost a decade ago he has earned millions of dollars sitting on corporate boards and advising banks — Mr. Bush probably has the most complicated task making the argument to voters that he understands their concerns.

On a visit last week to Puerto Rico, Mr. Bush sounded every bit the populist, railing against “elites” who have stifled economic growth and innovation. In the kind of economy he envisions leading, he said: “We wouldn’t have the middle being squeezed. People in poverty would have a chance to rise up. And the social strains that exist — because the haves and have-nots is the big debate in our country today — would subside.”

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Who Is Running for President (and Who’s Not)?

Republicans’ emphasis on poorer and working-class Americans now represents a shift from the party’s longstanding focus on business owners and “job creators” as the drivers of economic opportunity.

This is intentional, Republican operatives said.

In the last presidential election, Republicans rushed to defend business owners against what they saw as hostility by Democrats to successful, wealthy entrepreneurs.

“Part of what you had was a reaction to the Democrats’ dehumanization of business owners: ‘Oh, you think you started your plumbing company? No you didn’t,’ ” said Grover Norquist, the conservative activist and president of Americans for Tax Reform.

But now, Mr. Norquist said, Republicans should move past that. “Focus on the people in the room who know someone who couldn’t get a job, or a promotion, or a raise because taxes are too high or regulations eat up companies’ time,” he said. “The rich guy can take care of himself.”

Democrats argue that the public will ultimately see through such an approach because Republican positions like opposing a minimum-wage increase and giving private banks a larger role in student loans would hurt working Americans.

“If Republican candidates are just repeating the same tired policies, I’m not sure that smiling while saying it is going to be enough,” said Guy Cecil, a Democratic strategist who is joining a “super PAC” working on behalf of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Republicans have already attacked Mrs. Clinton over the wealth and power she and her husband have accumulated, caricaturing her as an out-of-touch multimillionaire who earns hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech and has not driven a car since 1996.

Mr. Walker hit this theme recently on Fox News, pointing to Mrs. Clinton’s lucrative book deals and her multiple residences. “This is not someone who is connected with everyday Americans,” he said. His own net worth, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is less than a half-million dollars; Mr. Walker also owes tens of thousands of dollars on his credit cards.

But showing off a cheap sweater or boasting of a bootstraps family background not only helps draw a contrast with Mrs. Clinton’s latter-day affluence, it is also an implicit argument against Mr. Bush.

Mr. Walker, who featured a 1998 Saturn with more than 100,000 miles on the odometer in a 2010 campaign ad during his first run for governor, likes to talk about flipping burgers at McDonald’s as a young person. His mother, he has said, grew up on a farm with no indoor plumbing until she was in high school.

Mr. Rubio, among the least wealthy members of the Senate, with an estimated net worth of around a half-million dollars, uses his working-class upbringing as evidence of the “exceptionalism” of America, “where even the son of a bartender and a maid can have the same dreams and the same future as those who come from power and privilege.”

Mr. Cruz alludes to his family’s dysfunction — his parents, he says, were heavy drinkers — and recounts his father’s tale of fleeing Cuba with $100 sewn into his underwear.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey notes that his father paid his way through college working nights at an ice cream plant.

But sometimes the attempts at projecting authenticity can seem forced. Mr. Christie recently found himself on the defensive after telling a New Hampshire audience, “I don’t consider myself a wealthy man.” Tax returns showed that he and his wife, a longtime Wall Street executive, earned nearly $700,000 in 2013.

The story of success against the odds is a political classic, even if it is one the Republican Party has not been able to tell for a long time. Ronald Reagan liked to say that while he had not been born on the wrong side of the tracks, he could always hear the whistle. Richard Nixon was fond of reminding voters how he was born in a house his father had built.

“Probably the idea that is most attractive to an average voter, and an idea that both Republicans and Democrats try to craft into their messages, is this idea that you can rise from nothing,” said Charles C. W. Cooke, a writer for National Review.

There is a certain delight Republicans take in turning that message to their advantage now.

“That’s what Obama did with Hillary,” Mr. Cooke said. “He acknowledged it openly: ‘This is ridiculous. Look at me, this one-term senator with dark skin and all of America’s unsolved racial problems, running against the wife of the last Democratic president.”

Take the Money and Run

The career criminals in genre novels don’t have money problems. If they need some, they just go out and steal it. But such financial transactions can backfire, which is what happened back in 2004 when the Texas gang in Michael

Rhapsody, a Lofty Literary Journal, Perused at 39,000 Feet

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Last summer at a writers’ workshop in Oregon, the novelists Anthony Doerr, Karen Russell and Elissa Schappell were chatting over cocktails when they realized they had all published work in the same magazine. It wasn’t one of the usual literary outlets, like Tin House, The Paris Review or The New Yorker. It was Rhapsody, an in-flight magazine for United Airlines.

It seemed like a weird coincidence. Then again, considering Rhapsody’s growing roster of A-list fiction writers, maybe not. Since its first issue hit plane cabins a year and a half ago, Rhapsody has published original works by literary stars like Joyce Carol Oates, Rick Moody, Amy Bloom, Emma Straub and Mr. Doerr, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction two weeks ago.

As airlines try to distinguish their high-end service with luxuries like private sleeping chambers, showers, butler service and meals from five-star chefs, United Airlines is offering a loftier, more cerebral amenity to its first-class and business-class passengers: elegant prose by prominent novelists. There are no airport maps or disheartening lists of in-flight meal and entertainment options in Rhapsody. Instead, the magazine has published ruminative first-person travel accounts, cultural dispatches and probing essays about flight by more than 30 literary fiction writers.

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An airline might seem like an odd literary patron. But as publishers and writers look for new ways to reach readers in a shaky retail climate, many have formed corporate alliances with transit companies, including American Airlines, JetBlue and Amtrak, that provide a captive audience.

Mark Krolick, United Airlines’ managing director of marketing and product development, said the quality of the writing in Rhapsody brings a patina of sophistication to its first-class service, along with other opulent touches like mood lighting, soft music and a branded scent.

“The high-end leisure or business-class traveler has higher expectations, even in the entertainment we provide,” he said.

Some of Rhapsody’s contributing writers say they were lured by the promise of free airfare and luxury accommodations provided by United, as well as exposure to an elite audience of some two million first-class and business-class travelers.

“It’s not your normal Park Slope Community Bookstore types who read Rhapsody,” Mr. Moody, author of the 1994 novel “The Ice Storm,” who wrote an introspective, philosophical piece about traveling to the Aran Islands of Ireland for Rhapsody, said in an email. “I’m not sure I myself am in that Rhapsody demographic, but I would like them to buy my books one day.”

In addition to offering travel perks, the magazine pays well and gives writers freedom, within reason, to choose their subject matter and write with style. Certain genres of flight stories are off limits, naturally: no plane crashes or woeful tales of lost luggage or rude flight attendants, and nothing too risqué.

“We’re not going to have someone write about joining the mile-high club,” said Jordan Heller, the editor in chief of Rhapsody. “Despite those restrictions, we’ve managed to come up with a lot of high-minded literary content.”

Guiding writers toward the right idea occasionally requires some gentle prodding. When Rhapsody’s executive editor asked Ms. Russell to contribute an essay about a memorable flight experience, she first pitched a story about the time she was chaperoning a group of teenagers on a trip to Europe, and their delayed plane sat at the airport in New York for several hours while other passengers got progressively drunker.

“He pointed out that disaster flights are not what people want to read about when they’re in transit, and very diplomatically suggested that maybe people want to read something that casts air travel in a more positive light,” said Ms. Russell, whose novel “Swamplandia!” was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize.

She turned in a nostalgia-tinged essay about her first flight on a trip to Disney World when she was 6. “The Magic Kingdom was an anticlimax,” she wrote. “What ride could compare to that first flight?”

Ms. Oates also wrote about her first flight, in a tiny yellow propeller plane piloted by her father. The novelist Joyce Maynard told of the constant disappointment of never seeing her books in airport bookstores and the thrill of finally spotting a fellow plane passenger reading her novel “Labor Day.” Emily St. John Mandel, who was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction last year, wrote about agonizing over which books to bring on a long flight.

“There’s nobody that’s looked down their noses at us as an in-flight magazine,” said Sean Manning, the magazine’s executive editor. “As big as these people are in the literary world, there’s still this untapped audience for them of luxury travelers.”

United is one of a handful of companies showcasing work by literary writers as a way to elevate their brands and engage customers. Chipotle has printed original work from writers like Toni Morrison, Jeffrey Eugenides and Barbara Kingsolver on its disposable cups and paper bags. The eyeglass company Warby Parker hosts parties for authors and sells books from 14 independent publishers in its stores.

JetBlue offers around 40 e-books from HarperCollins and Penguin Random House on its free wireless network, allowing passengers to read free samples and buy and download books. JetBlue will start offering 11 digital titles from Simon & Schuster soon. Amtrak recently forged an alliance with Penguin Random House to provide free digital samples from 28 popular titles, which passengers can buy and download over Amtrak’s admittedly spotty wireless service.

Amtrak is becoming an incubator for literary talent in its own right. Last year, it started a residency program, offering writers a free long-distance train trip and complimentary food. More than 16,000 writers applied and 24 made the cut.

Like Amtrak, Rhapsody has found that writers are eager to get onboard. On a rainy spring afternoon, Rhapsody’s editorial staff sat around a conference table discussing the June issue, which will feature an essay by the novelist Hannah Pittard and an unpublished short story by the late Elmore Leonard.

“Do you have that photo of Elmore Leonard? Can I see it?” Mr. Heller, the editor in chief, asked Rhapsody’s design director, Christos Hannides. Mr. Hannides slid it across the table and noted that they also had a photograph of cowboy spurs. “It’s very simple; it won’t take away from the literature,” he said.

Rhapsody’s office, an open space with exposed pipes and a vaulted brick ceiling, sits in Dumbo at the epicenter of literary Brooklyn, in the same converted tea warehouse as the literary journal N+1 and the digital publisher Atavist. Two of the magazine’s seven staff members hold graduate degrees in creative writing. Mr. Manning, the executive editor, has published a memoir and edited five literary anthologies.

Mr. Manning said Rhapsody was conceived from the start as a place for literary novelists to write with voice and style, and nobody had been put off that their work would live in plane cabins and airport lounges.

Still, some contributors say they wish the magazine were more widely circulated.

“I would love it if I could read it,” said Ms. Schappell, a Brooklyn-based novelist who wrote a feature story for Rhapsody’s inaugural issue. “But I never fly first class.”

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