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Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

Today, at long last, legislation to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) hit the streets. A bill, the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010, was introduced by Senator Lautenberg in the U.S. Senate. And just to keep things interesting and all of us on our toes, Congressmen Rush and Waxman today released the Toxic Chemicals Safety Act of 2010 that is similar but not identical and is in the form of a discussion draft, rather than a bill.

It’s been a long road to get here, but of course this is only the end of the beginning.

EDF and the Safer Chemicals Healthy Families coalition support the new legislative language and believe it includes most of the elements needed to move our outdated and broken chemical safety system into the 21^st century. We also will be seeking improvements in several areas as the bill moves forward.

For our coalition's initial perspective on the positive aspects as well as some of the shortcomings of the legislative proposals, see the news release we issued today. We will also soon be posting an analysis that aligns the bill’s and discussion draft’s provisions with the planks of our platform, and I’ll provide an update with a link here.

I’ll certainly be posting frequently going forward on specific aspects of the legislation, but what can be said at the outset? I’ll start with the obvious question: How would life under this rewrite compare with life under current TSCA?

It simply must be said that, relative to the status quo, the legislation and discussion draft would represent a major sea change in the way we manage chemical safety in the U.S. 

The table below highlights some of the big changes. Over the coming days, I’ll explore these and other issues in more detail, comparing and contrasting the Senate and House versions, and identifying a number of areas where I think improvements are needed to ensure the legislation adequately protects people and the environment.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) took to the Senate floor today to decry the crippling effect of federal income taxes on families and the economy.

“While we continue to spend and spend and spend here in Washington,” he said, “the tax burden carried by the average American gets heavier and heavier and heavier.”

He must not have seen the this new study from the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the nonpartisan Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. Crunching numbers from the Congressional Budget Office, another nonpartisan group, analysts there found that the median middle-class family of four will owe just 4.6 percent in federal income tax today — about half of what they owed in Ronald Reagan’s lowest tax year.

Much of the reason, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes, is the generous tax break offered in the Democrats’ stimulus bill, passed a year ago.

Don’t try to convince McCain. Our tax-paying ritual, he said, “is a painful, complicated and uniquely American exercise.” As if the Belgians are taking home everything.

Still holding out for a better deal on a Palm webOS smartphone? How does forking over one penny and a two year service commitment sound?

If that sounds like a reasonable offer, then prepare click your way on over to Amazon.com where they will sell you a brand new Palm Pre Plus or Pixi Plus on Verizon for a single shinny penny.

You read that right, Amazon has essentially dropped the price as low as it can go on Palm’s top of the line models. Simply sign a new 2 year service plan and the webOS model of your choice (with the free hotspot app in tow) can be had for as little as $0.01 with free 2-day shipping.

The Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull has erupted for the second time this month, sending a long plume of ash across the north Atlantic into the UK, enough to disrupt air traffic there!

NASA’s Terra satellite caught the plume:

You can easily see the plume extending from Iceland across the ocean. Boston.com’s The Big Picture has dramatic and beautiful shots of the volcano as well.

I’ve seen a few volcanoes in my time, but I’ve never witnessed an actual eruption. I’d really like to… from a safe distance. This particular eruption is likely to be a big pain to a lot of people for quite some time; there have already been floods and evacuations due to the activity. I feel badly for those folks affected, but I also can’t help but gasp in awe at the beauty of events like these. It always amazes me that violence on such a large scale — volcanoes, solar flares, supernovae, galactic collisions — can also be so beautiful.

President Obama and First Lady released their 2009 federal and State of Illinois income tax returns on Thursday; they reported adjusted gross income of $ 5,505,409. They donated $329,100 to 40 different charities.

Their return was prepared by the Chicago firm of Wineberg Solheim Howell & Shain, PC and signed by the Obamas on April 7.

Main link to the returns is here,where you can find links to the charities Obama donated his $1.4 million Nobel Peace Prize to.

below, from the White House….

President Obama and Vice President Biden’s Tax Returns
Posted by Norm Eisen on April 15, 2010 at 12:20 PM EDT

Today, the President released his 2009 federal income and gift tax returns. He and the First Lady filed their income tax return jointly and reported an adjusted gross income of $ 5,505,409. The vast majority of the family’s 2009 income is the proceeds from the sale of the President’s books. The Obamas paid $1,792,414 in federal income tax. The President and First Lady also reported donating $329,100 to 40 different charities. The largest reported gifts to charity were $50,000 contributions to CARE and the United Negro College Fund. In addition, the President donated his $1.4 million Nobel Prize funds to 10 charities. The President and First Lady also released their Illinois income tax return and reported paying $163,303 in state income taxes.

The President and First Lady’s federal and state tax returns
The Internal Revenue Code provides that if the recipient of the Nobel Prize directs the Nobel Committee to donate the prize income directly to charity, as the President did, the recipient does not have to recognize the prize as income on his federal income tax return. The President is not permitted to take a charitable deduction on the value of the prize since it is not included in his income.

Portion of the President and First Lady’s returns related to the Nobel Prize
The Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden also released their 2009 federal income tax returns, as well as state income tax returns for both Delaware and Virginia. They filed joint federal and Delaware income tax returns. Dr. Biden filed a separate non-resident tax return for the state of Virginia. Together, they reported an adjusted gross income of $333,182. The Bidens paid $71,147 in federal income taxes for 2009. They paid $12,420 in Delaware income taxes and $1,477 in Virginia income taxes. The Bidens contributed $4,820 to charity, in both monetary and in-kind donations.

The Vice President and Dr. Biden’s federal and state tax returns (PDF)
Norm Eisen is Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform

###

During a recession, cutting discretionary spending is one step consumers take to deal with their uneasiness. Since it’s just a matter of will and not need, cutting non-necessity expenditures is one of the last temporary behaviors to change once the recovery begins. Dining at restaurants is perhaps the quintessential kind of discretionary spending that gets hit when consumers pull back: for most Americans, it’s easy enough to get cheaper food at the grocery store and cook. Yet recent data shows that even the market for dining out appears to be improving.

Yesterday’s retail spending numbers showed that expenditures at “food services and drinking places” increased in March. Spending was up 0.3% from February and increased 3.2% compared to a year earlier. Granted, the weather may have had something to do with it: no one wants to go out to eat when it’s cold and awful outside, and March provided unusually delightful weather to much of the U.S.

But the New York Times reports on some additional data that shows March’s improvement for restaurants might be more than a blip. One industry analyst the article quotes says that the month’s sales gain may seem small, but it reversed 10 months of negative sales. It’s hard to believe that only weather would have driven such a substantial change. The Times additionally notes that hiring began in the first three months of 2010 in the food service industry, after layoffs plagued the sector for all but three the 25 months of the recession prior to this year.

Yet the restaurant recovery might not be felt everywhere. The Times also reports:

Buddy McClain, who owns 71 Sonic stores in the South, said that while sales were not growing, they had finally stopped falling in March at his Mississippi and Alabama outlets.

But in Florida, a state hit hard by the recession and the collapse of the real estate market, year-to-year sales comparisons have been negative for 17 consecutive months. In March, he said, sales at his Florida stores were 15 percent below the already reduced levels of a year ago.

This could imply that regional economies will come out of the recession at differently times. Indeed, as March’s foreclosure data shows, a handful of states are doing far worse than the others. The top 10 states account for more than two-thirds of foreclosures. March’s state-by-state unemployment data, which will be released tomorrow, may shed additional light on this possibility. But in February, some of the usual suspects most damaged by the housing market’s collapse did suffer from additional unemployed residents, including 21,600 more in Florida — a larger increase than in any other state. Arizona, Nevada and California also saw gains.

Simmons, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, has more than $1.4 million on hand, according to a statement from his campaign manager Jim Barnett.

“Our FEC report will show us with over $1.4 million cash on hand raised from nearly 14,000 donors, including nearly $550,000 raised this quarter – a very respectable sum considering the Senate campaign’s lower profile given Dodd’s departure, and the intense competition for money by so many Republican candidates for governor and Congress,” Barnett wrote in an email to reporters.

“We have made significant investments this quarter as we approach the GOP convention — mail to prospective delegates, survey research and our field program.  Most importantly, our cash on hand allows us to have a significant media presence approaching primary day, at which point McMahon will finally have to contend with a competing message on television, inevitably leading to a much tighter race.”

The Simmons campaign will need every penny as it goes up against the enormously wealthy Linda McMahon, who is largely self-funding her Senate campaign. Barnett said McMahon, who has been running TV commercials for months, has already spent $14 million. 

The Simmons campaign has not gone on TV yet. Instead, it has invested its cash in mailings to Republican delegates, polls and establishing field operations.

McMahon now leads in the latest Q poll, but Barnett said the contest is far from over.

“The bottom line is this remains an extremely fluid race,” Barnett said. “Near daily revelations about McMahon’s record at WWE continue to dog her campaign and it is likely that there are more shoes to drop.  The more voters learn about McMahon, the more her negatives rise.  Once we amplify our message with television advertising, expect a brand new ball game.”

Simmons fully expects to win the GOP nomination at next month’s convention, setting the stage for an August primary. His campaign clearly hopes the steady drip of news stories about McMahon’s tenure as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment turns into a torrent that ultimately sweeps away her candidacy.

“This past week alone produced no fewer than four groundbreaking and deeply troubling stories that threaten McMahon’s long-term viability – 1. lying on her BOE application; 2. spending millions on lobbyists, undercutting her “outsider” claims; 3. employing adult film stars and calling them “role models”;  and, finally, the New London Day’s reporting on McMahon’s attempts to interfere in the federal criminal probe of the WWE’s steroid dealer,” Barnett wrote.

“Any one of these could be enough to severely undercut her candidacy.  All of them together, on top of other damaging reports over the past several months, make her a fairly easy general election target for the Democrats.  In the short term, this reality will be masked as she continues to have the airwaves to herself.  But support earned in a vacuum is fragile because it is built on one-sided information.  Once advertising dollars are spent taking our case to the voters it will be a new ballgame altogether.”

Consumerist reader Chris wrote in because Bank of America somehow decided that the best way to get money from his father’s business was to simply take it from his parents’ joint bank account.

As Chris tells the story:

My dad owns a small business. A few years ago Bank of America called and offered him a line of credit and he took their offer. Last year my dad’s business wasn’t doing so good and the company fell behind on the line of credit. At the same time both of my parents were also doing their personal banking through Bank of America. So without consent, Bank of America removed the past due balance on the line of credit from my parents’ joint bank account.

Since then he’s been in an endless phone battle trying to get this money put back. They keep passing him around and every department says it’s not their responsibility. The most recent person he talked to said that he would have to file a lawsuit just to get a copy of his file.

Chris says that his father’s business is incorporated and there were never any promissory notes signed with Bank of America. So even though both accounts were at the same bank, BofA had no right to take the money out of the joint account.

As in most situations where consumers believe their bank is at fault, we suggest the following:
• Contact the bank, not just the branch, with a formal complaint. You can do this in writing, or by email. Keep a copy of this complaint for your records.
• Figure out which agency regulates your bank by calling or using FDIC’s Bank Find.
• Write a formal complaint letter to the bank’s regulatory agency. Follow the FTC’s instructions for writing a complaint.

This document also has the correct contact information for the various regulatory agencies. Keep a copy of this complaint for your records.

According to the FDIC, “The regulatory agencies will be able to help resolve the complaint if the financial institution has violated a banking law or regulation. They may not be able to help where the consumer is not satisfied with an institution’s policy or practices, even though no law or regulation was violated. Additionally, the regulatory agencies do not resolve factual or most contractual disputes.”

By filing a complaint, the regulating agency will investigate whether the bank actually violated any banking regulations.

If you are considering pursuing legal action, here is a site with some very helpful information about filing a suit in small claims court.

FAQ’s

Can academic credit be awarded to the students involved in the program?
Academic credit for the NASCAR Diversity Mentorship Program is solely based on the discretion of the professors and faculty involved. Although the internship is unique in its short and condensed format, students often use their experiences as the basis for term papers and other academic projects. In many instances, students trade contact information with valuable professionals they meet and are encouraged to add their experience in the program to their resume’.

What qualifies a student as “diverse”?
For the purposes of the NASCAR Diversity Mentorship Program, the definition of a diverse student is any student who has a diverse ethnic background (Black/African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian American, Native American, Atlantic or Pacific Islander).

Does NASCAR have other internship opportunities other than the NDMP?
Yes, NASCAR has a summer internship program also dedicated to reaching out to diverse students. It is a 10-week, full-time, paid internship program that is designed to expose diverse college students to the many career opportunities within the motorsports industry. In addition to NASCAR, this program involves several NASCAR sponsors and licensees, NASCAR teams and tracks, and other motorsports-related companies. Over 170 interns from across the country have participated in this program, some of whom later accepted full-time positions in the industry. All the information regarding the program, including important application dates and deadlines can be found at www.diversityinternships.com.

What schools have participated in the NASCAR Diversity Mentorship Program in the past?
Since the NDMP began in 2008, colleges and universities from all across the country have participated in the initiative. Schools involved include: Clark Atlanta University, Arizona State University, Columbia College (Chicago), Delaware State, Florida A&M University, Morehouse College, Paul Quinn College, Cal State San Bernadino, and Virginia State University.

Does this program cost anything for the students involved?
No. In the week leading into the event the students are provided with a packet that contains all the necessities they will need for the program (credentials, parking passes, informational materials, maps, contact information, etc.). Students are only required to provide their own transportation to and from the event each day.

Many students have part-time jobs during the school year. How will that affect their ability to participate in the program?
One of the best attributes of the NDMP is that every race weekend is a different entity and has its own unique features. Every racetrack is different, every race market is different, and furthermore, every race schedule is different. For each event that hosts the NDMP, a customized weekend itinerary is developed to cater the students’ scheduling needs. A typical event weekend will request students to be available for two full days to experience the program.

Tom Toles cartoon yesterday is on our new plan for dealing with climate change:

Good thing nothing like that is possible (see Rep. Shimkus: “Man will not destroy this Earth. This Earth will not be destroyed by a flood.” Rep. Barton: “I wish I had another dozen John Shimkuses on the committee.”)

Related Post:

• Science: CO2 levels haven’t been this high for 15 million years, when it was 5° to 10°F warmer and seas were 75 to 120 feet higher — “We have shown that this dramatic rise in sea level is associated with an increase in CO2 levels of about 100 ppm.”

With thousands of airplanes grounded across Europe due to the eruption of a volcano beneath Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull glacier yesterday, we’ve reached out to two GE teams to help explain the danger that volcanic ash presents to jet engines. In the audio clips below, we first get the perspective of GE Aviation’s Leslie McVey, an engineer and one of our commercial flight safety investigators working on everything from bird strikes, to weather events to the rare cases of volcanic ash. We also talked to Narendra Joshi, who works on advanced propulsion systems at GE Global Research, to get a perspective from the lab.

Steer clear: “It just looks like a normal cloud to the crew,” says Leslie about volcanic ash plumes in general. “They can’t tell that it’s ash as opposed to a normal cumulus cloud.” And, as MarketWatch.com notes, when it comes to volcanic ash, “visibility is not the issue, as all aircraft are equipped with systems allowing them to navigate through heavy clouds. The fear is that the tiny particles of rock, glass and sand in the ash could jam engines.” Photo: Icelandic Coast Guard.

As Leslie says about the ash in the audio clip below: “It goes through the combustor and it melts — becomes a liquid — and as it exits the combustor, it starts landing on metal surfaces and re-solidifying.”

Leslie McVey

Narendra Joshi

“Ash can [also] clog up the very fine cooling holes that are used in the turbo-machinery to keep the components cool in a very, very aggressive, hot environment,” says Narendra in the audio clip below. “So if you plug up those holes, then there’s a second level of problems… that will affect the machinery down the road.”

Plane scary: Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull Volcano burst into life for the first time in 190 years on March 20, 2010, according to NASA’s website. This image was acquired on April 4, 2010, by the Advanced Land Imager aboard NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite. Photo: NASA.

* See a map of the ash cloud in The Telegraph
* Read CNN’s coverage of the eruption
* Visit NASA’s page on the volcano
* See more photos and maps in The Washington Post

[JURIST] Victims of paramilitary violence in Colombia filed suit Wednesday against Chiquita Banana International, which has admitted to funding Marxist rebels in Colombia. In the complaint filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, 242 Colombians alleged that they had been seriously injured or had family members killed by the right-wing paramilitary group, United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). The AUC has been accused of mass killings during the Colombia guerrilla warfare movement before disarmament in 2003. The plaintiffs, who are seeking over $1 billion in damages, brought suit under a 1992 law that allows US citizens to sue for terrorist acts committed by US firms abroad. The complaint alleges that Chiquita aided and abetted in the murders and provided material support and resources to terrorists.
In February, a federal judge ruled that a lawsuit accusing Chiquita of assisting Marxist rebels who killed Colombian missionaries may go forward. The suit was brought by family members of five North American missionaries who had worked for the New Tribes Mission (NTM) in South America and were killed in separate incidents between 1995 and 1996. Chiquita admitted it had paid paramilitary group, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), for protection of its workers but it argued that it did not condone the killings. In 2007, Chiquita was fined $25 million after it admitted to making payments of around $1.7 million from 1997 to 2004 to FARC and AUC. Following that admission, hundreds of family members of Colombians killed by FARC filed lawsuits in the US against Chiquita under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA). In January, Chiquita settled a shareholder lawsuit over the illegal payments.

The New York Post says that a state worker in charge of running a corrections department food facility took Fridays off… for 17 years. Now they’re going after him for $230,000 worth of Friday pay, as well as other “ill-gotten” gains.

From the NYP:

[The worker] “freely admitted” to playing hooky from the state’s Food Production Center in Rome, the report found.

“This certainly gives new meaning to the phrase ‘casual Fridays,’ ” [the state comptroller] told reporters yesterday.

“He not only dressed down, he didn’t even bother to show up. Quite simply, this is outrageous.”
The watchdogs blasted correction officials for either approving — or failing to catch — a host of perks that appeared intended to compensate [The worker] for taking on a new responsibility for a food facility in 1992 without getting a raise.

Other perks mentioned in the article include billing taxpayers for “75 stays at the local Quality Inn on nights E-ZPass records suggest he was at home.”

Oh, E-Z Pass.

State employee took every Friday off for 17 yearsI [NYP] (Thanks, LiveCheap!)

By Matt Holdridge

Lately I’ve found myself struggling to understand the devotion Republicans/conservatives have to war and anything remotely related to the military. 

I’ve had numerous conversations regarding this topic with friends and family members who are regular talk-radio type conservatives that believe in small government yet promote war; the great state centralizer. 

I know they’re good people who mean well but I can’t logically square their ideals. How can you want lower taxes, less regulation, and fewer government programs but get upset when NASA is cut? 

The best explanation I’ve seen was on blogcritics.org in an article called, Understanding Pro-War Republicans. In the piece the author says,

While there are a small number of Stalinistic, pro-war expansionists in the GOP, their viewpoint is alien to the party and is not shared by most Republicans. Most Republicans who support our current wars do not do so because they are in favor of war or of imperialism, but because they are unquestioningly pro-America. They may believe in a strong national defense, but they do not believe in wars of conquest and occupation. They oppose the anti-war position, not because they like war, but because they dislike those who take issue with the actions of America as a nation no matter what the reason.

They operate from the perspective that our government is good, not because government is good, but because our government is American and America is good. They therefore assume that the actions of our government, including making war, must be good and right actions because they are the actions of an American government.

While I take issue with some of the author’s points, I think he may be correct on that particular item; it’s an irrational devotion to anything quote “American” that drives what appears to be rank-and-file Republicans’ support of current US foreign policy; not a desire to make war for the sake of empire.  

This assessment brings to mind Sean Hannity’s proclivity to call people “great Americans” or the wild chants of “USA” at rallies. Logic doesn’t play a part in this phenomenon, it’s strictly based on emotion and years of thought conditioning. 

What is your opinion? 

Even the man at the top has to pay Uncle Sam.

Obama paid a whopping $1.8 million income tax, which means his income is much higher than the $400,000 they talk about in civics class. That’s because this guy is a best-selling author.

We’ve found all kinds of somewhat interesting details in the president’s tax return.

Here’s The Tax Return Highlights >

Barack Obama earned $5.5 million last year… most of it from book sales

He wrote off $866 in office expenses for his book project

Obama paid $59 thousand to foreign governments! (Taxes on book sales)

He also earned money from a diversified portfolio

Obama inherited several hundred thousand dollars from his grandmother… on which he paid around 33% in taxes

They still get their taxes done by a Chicago firm

Obama received $1.4 million from the Nobel Committee… and gave it all to charity

Obama gave 6% of his income to charity (not counting Nobel Prize money), while most people give only 3.3%

Source: Fox Business

Obama gives disproportionately (25%) to charities located in Chicago

Assuming a 32% rate, Obama will pay 1.79 million in income tax

He also paid $160,000 in state income tax to Illinois

Illinois Governor Patt Quinn

Source: MSNBC

Don’t miss…

Image: davitydave on flickr

20 Tax Facts That Will Make Your Head Explode

Join the conversation about this story »

On April 23, The Chronicle of Higher Education will feature an article by Dr. Jill Biden about the significance of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 investments in community colleges.

As a community college instructor and former teacher, Dr. Biden has “seen firsthand the power of community colleges to change lives.” She discusses the commitment of the Administration to shine a spotlight on community colleges, which she refers to as “the best-kept secrets of higher education.”

»Read the entire blog entry at www.whitehouse.gov.

BLOOMBERG: Greece schedules emergency meeting with IMF to finalize aid package.

Join the conversation about this story »

We expected Adobe would release an Android beta of Flash 10.1 at last year’s MAX conference, but it never materialized. In a recent interview with Fox Business, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said we should now see Flash 10.1 released in the second half of this year.

“We have a number of excited partners who are working aggressively with us to bring Flash to their devices, whether they be smartphones as well as handsets, and so companies like Google or RIM or Palm are going to be releasing versions of Flash on smartphones and tablets in the second half of the year.”Shantanu NarayenAdobe CEO

Flash 10.1 will require an ARM Cortex-A8 based processor or higher, which rules out all first generation Android phones. The Motorola Droid and Nexus One are the only Andriod phones currently available in the United States that will have enough power to pump out Flash 10.1 content.

Related Posts

• Adobe taunts Android fans with another cool Flash 10.1 demo
• Adobe details Flash 10.1 installations
• Video of Nexus One running Adobe Flash
• It’s a Droid, It’s Incredible, It goes on pre-order April 19th
• StudyDroid flashcards: Absolutely perfect for the student on the go

THIS MAY NOT BE TAKEN FOR ACADEMIC CREDIT!

What: NASCAR Diversity Mentorship Program
When: April 30th – May 1st
Where: Richmond International Raceway
Who: Students from ethnically diverse backgrounds with an interest in sports marketing, event coordinating, NASCAR, public relations, business development, television or radio.
How: Email J.C. Blass ([email protected]) to confirm your interest.
The NASCAR Diversity Mentorship Program is a joint effort between NASCAR’s Series Operations and Diversity Affairs departments that aims to select two (2) students to take part in a weekend-long internship at Richmond International Raceway. Selected students will be paired up with a NASCAR Series Operations representative, who will act as the on-site liaison assisting in all of the student’s needs throughout the weekend. Students are given a detailed itinerary that outlines their scheduled events which often includes shadowing industry professionals, tours of the facility, sitting-in on industry meetings, as well as assisting NASCAR in pre-race and post-race activities. In many cases, the agenda for the students is customized to fit their degree program and interests, as the program reaches many areas of our sport including sports marketing, communications, event coordination, sales, public relations, television, and radio.

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa standing in front of the building they designed for the Zollverein School, Essen, Germany, 2006 (Thomas Mayer/arcspace.com)

A usually melancholy springtime ritual for lovers of the building art is the announcement of the latest winner of the Pritzker Prize for Architecture. Thus the revelation of this year’s surprise winners—Kazuyo Sejima, 53, and Ryue Nishizawa, 43, principals of the Tokyo firm SANAA (Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates)—has been cause for rejoicing among those who treasure the honorees’ delicately calibrated and deeply humane sensibility. They are further unusual in architecture as a female-male pairing not married to one another, and rarer still, one in which the senior partner is a woman.

The $100,000 Pritzker was instituted in 1978 by the Chicago-based Pritzker family, owners of the Hyatt hotel chain, whose claim that this would become the Nobel of architecture struck some observers as rather presumptuous, to say nothing of quite ironic, given that the donors have erected so many banal structures in cities around the world. That skepticism seemed hardly misplaced when in 1979 Philip Johnson, the dark prince of Modernism, was named the first Pritzker recipient, a choice that hinted at a certain cynicism and want of imagination.

New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 2007 (Hisao Suzuki/SANAA)

More admirable figures immediately followed: Luis Barragán (1980) and James Stirling (1981). But thereafter (with intermittent happy exceptions) the Pritzker went either to stars with overinflated reputations—Kevin Roche (1982), Hans Hollein (1985), Gordon Bunshaft (1988), and Jørn Utzon (2003)—or lesser-known architects whose reputations could not be inflated by any accolade—Gottfried Böhm (1986), Christian de Portzamparc (1994), Sverre Fehn (1997), and Paulo Mendes de Rocha (2006).

This year’s selection of Sejima and Nishizawa, however, marks a significant departure from past Pritzker practices-–including those that adversely affected the prize’s credibility. In 1994 the award went to Robert Venturi but not his collaborator and wife, Denise Scott Brown, with the specious explanation that it is bestowed on individual practitioners, not firms. Persistent rumblings about that gratuitous snub—made worse because there were thirteen male winners before Venturi but no women whatsoever—evidently prompted the Pritzker to play catch-up ball by selecting the team of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron (2001) and the first female recipient, Zaha Hadid (2004).

With Sejima and Nishizawa, in contrast, there is not a hint of remedial tokenism or backpedaling for the award’s prior lapses. SANAA richly deserves an honor that now takes on new luster thanks to the current Pritzker jury, which is headed by the British arts patron Peter Palumbo and includes one earlier laureate, Renzo Piano (1998).

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan, 2004 (Hisao Suzuki/SANAA)

SANAA is best known in the United States for two exceptional museum commissions: their Glass Pavilion (2001–2006) at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, and the New Museum (2003–2007) on New York City’s Bowery. Along with their 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan (1999-2004), this nearly contemporaneous trio of public galleries offers an impressive demonstration of the designers’ virtuosity within one functional category, and shows the remarkable breadth of expression they are able to wrest from the restricted Minimalist palette.

The Kanazawa museum is a low-rise circular structure meant to serve as a unifying center for a small provincial city that, like most Japanese communities of all sizes, is sorely bereft of non-commercial civic cynosures. The building’s round ground plan was adopted to make it inviting and accessible from all approaches, and the nearly invisible curving glass elevations are intended to eliminate an off-putting official aura and attract ordinary townspeople with little experience of museum-going.

The Toledo Museum’s freestanding exhibition building, which houses its noteworthy glass collection, makes similar use of literal transparency. But more than being just an extra-large vitrine, this gently contoured, intriguingly layered, and teasingly reflective display space takes a high place in the long line of variations on one of classic Modernism’s enduring themes, the glass pavilion.

Glass Pavilion, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, 2006 (Thomas Mayer/arcspace.com)

Minimalist architecture is thought to require an extraordinary degree of perfection in materials, finish, and detailing in order to compensate for the lack of range inherent in this severely reductive aesthetic. Yet SANAA’s repeated (though never repetitive) use of pure geometric forms, unadorned white surfaces, and large expanses of clear glass (seemingly held in place by little more than the designers’ willpower) is not in the least dependent on the top-of-the-line specifications characteristic of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s early and late Minimalist masterpieces: his jewel-like German Pavilion at the Barcelona International Exposition (1928-1929) and the majestic Seagram Building (1954–1958) in New York City.

Instead, Sejima and Nishizawa focus our attention through masterful handling of light and space. Unlike many other high-style architects, they pay little obvious attention to the finer points of joints and surfaces. Their uncanny ability to triumph over physical and financial limitations is most apparent in their New Museum in Manhattan, a slender, off-kilter high rise shoehorned into an improbably tiny midblock site that the architects exploit with all the cunning of urban planners inured to the impossibly tight building lots of Tokyo.

Though the New Museum is far from flawless—the lighting is often infelicitous and the galleries are not ideally proportioned—it is nonetheless miraculous in its economy. It cost a thrifty $50 million, in contrast to big-city museums that easily run four or five times as much.

Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima (Takashi Okamoto/SANAA)

Personal presentation plays an important role in architects’ advancement. Philip Johnson’s access to corporate boardrooms unquestionably benefitted from his impeccable navy pinstriped suits and commanding black Corbusier spectacles. Zaha Hadid’s outsized éclat derives in large measure from her dramatic dress sense and tempestuous demeanor, which make her seem the prima donna in her own private Aïda.

Thus a recent photograph of Sejima and Nishizawa is refreshingly antithetical to architectural power portraiture. Nishizawa resembles an amiable novice yoga instructor in his rumpled white shirt, while the adorably dorky Sejima, wearing a doll-like frock and droopy eyeglasses, brings to mind a Roz Chast character in the flesh, bemused and a bit bewildered. So, for that matter, are those of us who had long given up the Pritzker for dead, as it now springs back to life thanks to these worthy beneficiaries.