Subaru enhances its Legacy

Still the class leader in affordable all-wheel-drive vehicles and a New England favorite, Subaru has refreshed the Legacy Sport sedan for 2014.

Despite being a "boutique" brand, not one of the automotive powerhouses, Subaru is a must-shop when working your way through the crowded field of mid-sized sedans. The famed all- wheel-drive remains the key selling point, and with each iteration of the Legacy, the Japanese maker chips its way into more market share.

This more stylized offering features a sharpened nose and front fenders, with the headlamps wrapping around to emphasize the new lines. Under the hood the 2.5-liter, horizontally opposed engine produces 173 horsepower and drives the car through a continually variable transmission.

Unlike its little sibling, the Impreza, the bigger engine drives the CVT quietly and efficiently without the incessant whine, which tends to make me cringe, that the smaller 
2-liter produces. This sedan has a sporty feel to it and the front Macpherson strut and rear wishbone suspension make for sure handling and a fun car to toss around. The car tends to plunge a little when pushed, but roll was fairly minimal. It's not the amped-up rally racer WRX, but I appreciated the easy ride.

Subaru has featured Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive for so long they've got the engineering nailed on it. The one drawback I did find was the low-slung four door struggled to get through deeper snow. Dropped lower than the Outback or the Crosstrek, to help handling and fuel efficiency, I hung up on a snowplow drift that I tried punching through. But once clear, the car had no issues confidently maneuvering through the rest of the day.

On the highway the Legacy is quiet and gets on the higher end of good mileage, making the better part of 32-33 miles per gallon, a gas-sipper compared to other cars in its class. It drops to about 24 mpg locally but I found the car to be a bit better on average.

The interior — although upgraded with some leather trim, metal-trimmed pedals and patterned plastics — still suffers compared to its competitors like the Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, Mazda 6 and Ford Fusion. And I found the infotainment screen to be small and dated, like Volkswagen. The driver's position provides good sight lines, and the steering is light and responsive. Controls are well-made and simple enough to use without using the manual. Most controls have steering wheel redundancy, and surprisingly the Bluetooth phone is one of the better ones I've used, providing a clear signal and comfortable levels of hands-free conversation.

So although the interior refinements trail others, a situation I bet is addressed on the next refresh, the all-wheel-drive Legacy at a MSRP of $23,595 looks like a good deal even before adding the $2,500 Sport Equipment Value package for a delivered price of $26,418. That package adds a moonroof, 18-inch alloy wheels, a reverse camera, auto-dim mirror and fog lamps, yet you're still checking out at thousands less than aforementioned competitors.

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Cape Wind blows both ways

Cape Wind and its opponents are both claiming victory after a U.S. District Court judge yesterday upheld the Interior Department's approval of the proposed $2.6 billion offshore wind farm but said two federal agencies violated the Endangered Species Act in their reviews of the project.

Judge Reggie B. Walton ruled against four lawsuits challenging the Interior Department's granting of the nation's first offshore wind lease to Cape Wind after a permitting process that spanned a decade.

"These are incredibly important legal victories for Cape Wind," Jim Gordon, the company's president, said in a statement. "It clears the way for completing the financing of a project that will diversify New England's electricity portfolio."

In his 88-page opinion, Walton rejected a lengthy list of legal claims project opponents had raised, including arguments over sea turtles, Native-American artifacts, navigational safety and the adequacy of the project's environmental impact statement.

In what the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound called a "landmark win for the environment," however, the judge ruled that both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service violated the Endangered Species Act in their reviews of Cape Wind, and he ordered them to revisit its impacts on migrating birds and endangered right whales in Nantucket Sound.

Specifically, Walton remanded the case to the wildlife service to independently evaluate a shutdown of turbines during migratory bird season to reduce bird mortality, and instructed the marine fisheries service to assess whether and how many right whales might be harmed by the wind farm's construction and operation.

"This is good news for environmentalists and for all of us who want to see the fragile and unique environment of Cape Cod protected," said Audra Parker, president and CEO of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. "The court has validated that federal agencies have taken unacceptable shortcuts in their review of Cape Wind."

The NMFS did not return calls yesterday. An FWS spokesman declined to comment, saying the agency needed time to review the court's decision.

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Penn breaks ground on Plainridge slots parlor

Penn National Gaming broke ground on its $225 million slots parlor at the Plainridge harness racetrack in Plainville, which is expected to open in "a little over a year," company officials said.

Plainridge Park Casino will be an integrated gaming and racing operation, and the 106,000-square feet facility will have several bars and restaurants along with more than 1,200 slot machines.

"We are elated to begin construction on our 27th property and look forward to opening Plainridge Park Casino," said Jay Snowden, Penn National's chief operating officer.

Penn National was awarded the state's only slots parlor license last month by the state Gaming Commission.

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‘Dynamic’ $hift for Green Monster

Prices for seats and standing-room tickets for Fenway Park's Green Monster will be based on what the market will bear this season.

The Red Sox have adopted so-called "dynamic" pricing for the tickets, which means prices — much like those for airline tickets — will increase or decrease in real time based on demand and market conditions including the date of a game, the opponent and the weather.

The pricing model — a form of which is used by about 80 percent of Major League Baseball teams — is the latest Red Sox move to better align tickets with their market value, according to Red Sox chief operating officer Sam Kennedy.

"There's a lot of research ... that (shows) fans in other markets respond very well to it," he said.

Tickets for the 269 Green Monster seats were $165 last season, and the 150 standing-room tickets were $35. On Tuesday, when the tickets go on sale, initial prices could range from $30 for standing-room to as much as $300 for an Opening

Day seat, the team said.

It has no current plans to expand dynamic pricing to other parts of the ballpark next year, according to Kennedy. "We'll see how it goes and evaluate that middle to end of season or even next off-season," he said. "This is a big shift for us in 2014 for our ticket pricing in general."

The Sox moved to "variable" pricing for the rest of its regular-season tickets this season. Prices were organized into five tiers based on expected demand for each game, but were set in advance of the season. That led to a reduction in average prices for 32 games, according to the team.

The San Francisco Giants was the first MLB team to use dynamic pricing when it started testing it in 2009, according to MLB spokesman Matthew Gould. "Variable (pricing), in some capacity, dates back to at least 2002," he said. "Every MLB club currently does some form of price-shifting."

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Obama touts overhaul of rules on who gets overtime

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says it's not right that businesses that treat their employers fairly can be undercut by competitors who don't.

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama is promoting his plan to update rules about which workers are eligible for overtime pay. Obama says he wants to restore the principle that if you have to work more, you should earn more.

Businesses can avoid paying overtime for some workers who earn above a certain threshold. Obama says under the current rules, some salaried workers are actually paid less than the minimum wage.

In the Republican address, Rep. Bill Johnson of Ohio says seniors deserve better than what Obama's health care is delivering. He says if Obama won't help Republicans repeal the law, Obama should at least protect seniors.

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Online:

Obama address: www.whitehouse.gov

GOP address: www.speaker.gov

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Obama overtime plan already stirring controversy

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's move to make more workers eligible for time-and-a-half overtime pay is being hailed by Democrats who see it as a potent midterm election issue and condemned by Republicans and business leaders as presidential overreach. Supporters say it will help the still fragile economy, critics say it will damage it further.

It is likely to affect millions of American workers.

"From my perspective, they have to be pulling numbers out of the air right now," said Washington labor lawyer Tammy McCutchen, referring to the conflicting claims by partisans that it would either help or hurt the economy. "We don't even know what the policy is going to be."

She's closer to the process than most. As administrator of the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division during the George W. Bush administration, McCutchen oversaw the last rewrite of the program in 2004.

Currently, salaried workers making more than $455 a week, or $23,660 a year, aren't eligible for time-and-a-half overtime if some of their work is considered supervisory, even though many spend most of their day doing manual, clerical or technical work with few management duties.

Obama signed a presidential memorandum on Thursday directing the Labor Department to devise new overtime rules "to ensure that workers are paid fairly for a hard day's work." He's tossing out most of the rules McCutchen wrote in the process.

"Well, it's going to be bad for business," she said in an interview. "It's going to be good for my bottom line. Lawyers all over the country are going to be making a lot of money."

She called the rules "my babies. I spent two years of my life working on them. It's personal for me. It's going to be very sad to see them taking out a lot of the stuff I put in," she said.

But she also warned that the Obama administration should expect a rocky road ahead in implementing whatever new policy emerges — just as the Bush administration faced last time around.

Those close to the process suggest it will take 12 months to 18 months for the agency to complete its new assignment.

The move clearly has angered business groups and congressional Republicans, but it fits in with the overall Democratic midterm election game plan of focusing on income inequality and the middle class at the same time the stock market has soared.

"This will help to build an economy that honors work, not one that steals from workers," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. "While workers are denied overtime pay that they have earned, compounding flat and falling wages, the bonus pool for Wall Street grew from $1.9 billion in 1985 to $26.7 billion in 2013 — an average annual increase of 14 percent in nominal terms."

Business and conservative groups argue that Obama's order will have the opposite effect of what is intended and could lead businesses to reduce the number of employees or cut pay, resulting in a drag on national economic growth.

"The federal government, in particular, shouldn't be involved in labor markets in any way, shape or form," said Jeffrey Miron, director of economic studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, and a Harvard University economics professor. "It shouldn't be setting hours legislation and it shouldn't be providing union protection."

The order was the latest in a series of executive actions Obama has taken in an end run around congressional Republicans, who have blocked many of his proposals. With Congress blocking his attempt to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour, he used his executive powers to raise it to that level for government contractors.

Thursday's presidential memorandum is aimed at workers who make more than the federal minimum but are ineligible for overtime pay under present law because they are designated as management, even when they have little or no supervisory responsibilities.

"If you're making $23,000, typically you're not high in management," Obama said in unveiling the initiative.

The White House contends the 2004 revisions to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act are outdated and allow employers to exempt too many workers from overtime pay.

Despite the contrary claims of Democrats and Republicans as to the economic impact of Obama's move, economists suggest any such impact will be minimal.

"Be a boom to employment among lawyers, but otherwise not a big deal," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics.

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Follow Tom Raum on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tomraum

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Firm to help find cures for children

Although their stories differed in detail, they shared a passion and a purpose no parent would envy: finding a cure for the diseases that afflict — and, in some instances, might one day kill — their children.

At the ribbon-cutting yesterday for Intellimedix, the newest member of the Cambridge biotech cluster, a group of men spoke from personal experience about parent-driven innovation in the high-stakes world of scientific research.

Motivated by his daughter's Dravet syndrome, a severe seizure disorder that doctors told him couldn't be cured, Daniel Fischer co-founded Intellimedix to accelerate the discovery of new drugs, as well as repurpose old ones, to treat neurological diseases. His daughter recently started a new drug and has been seizure-free for a month.

"My advice to parents is don't accept whatever you hear from doctors," he said. "My other message is don't do it alone. You need academia. You need big pharma."

Eleven years ago, Brad Margus learned that two of his sons had a rare, lethal genetic disease that combined a loss of muscle control with cancer and immune deficiency.

While running his company, Margus studied molecular genetics, formed a nonprofit, raised $30 million, set up a clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital and coordinated clinical trials.

"The good news is the science is not really predictable," he said. "A lot of (the breakthroughs) are based on serendipity."

When Harvey Lodish and seven other MIT professors founded Genzyme in 1981, he never imagined that Cerezyme, a drug he helped develop, would one day be used to treat his grandson for Gaucher disease.

"You never know who's going to benefit from what you do in the lab," said Lodish, chairman of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center's Scientific Advisory Board.

Parents, he said, play an "enormous" role in raising money to support early-stage research.

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Jury deliberations near in Madoff worker trial

NEW YORK — After a five-month-long look at what the government learned about Bernard Madoff's epic fraud, jurors are close to beginning to weigh whether five of his former employees were his conspirators or his dupes.

A Manhattan federal jury could start deliberating as soon as Friday in the first criminal trial to result from one of history's biggest frauds. Closing arguments were expected to wrap up, followed by lengthy legal instructions and possibly some deliberations before the weekend.

Madoff has said he acted alone in cheating thousands of investors out of nearly $20 billion in a decades-long Ponzi scheme. But federal prosecutors say five back-office subordinates gave him vital help in weaving his financial fiction.

"Each of these defendants played a crucial role in the fraud," Assistant U.S. Attorney John Zach told jurors in a summation last week. He said the five told thousands of lies to customers, financial institutions, regulators and the Internal Revenue Service.

The defendants are Annette Bongiorno, Madoff's longtime secretary; Daniel Bonventre, his director of operations for investments; JoAnn Crupi, an account manager; and computer programmers Jerome O'Hara and George Perez. They say they, like Madoff's investors, were fooled by a master at deceit.

Madoff and his former finance chief, star prosecution witness Frank DiPascali, made it their business "to keep the fraud as contained and cabined as humanly possible because it if gets out, we are done — we are spending 150 years in jail, as Mr. Madoff is now," one of Perez' attorneys, Larry Krantz, said in his closing argument last week.

Prosecutors say Perez and O'Hara developed computer programs to manufacture false books and records that made the fraud work. But O'Hara's lawyer, Gordon Mehler, told jurors his client was just an everyday tech worker who was "used, abused, manipulated, lied to, snookered and bamboozled" by Madoff and DiPascali.

Bonventre oversaw the account in which investors poured money, cloaked it from auditors and regulators and tapped it to help plump up the brokerage side of Madoff's business, Zach said. He said Crupi was a key player in the accounting fraud, while Bongiorno — Madoff's secretary for 40 years — was responsible for billions of dollars in fake trades and oversaw a massive rewriting of customer accounts while making more than $18 million herself.

Bongiorno's lawyer, Roland Riopelle, said she believed all the money she made was legitimate.

"She herself is a victim of the fraud," he said in his summation, adding that she saw millions "of what she thought was her own money but was really Bernie Madoff's monopoly money go up in smoke."

The fraud collapsed in December 2008 when Madoff ran out of money and confessed to FBI agents that his business was a sham. Now 75, he pleaded guilty and is serving a 150-year prison sentence.

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Reach Jennifer Peltz on Twitter @ jennpeltz.

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BP regains ability to do work for government

WASHINGTON — The oil company behind the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history can once again perform work for the federal government.

Under an agreement reached Thursday with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, more than two dozen BP entities and its Houston-based oil production and exploration arm can secure new government contracts.

The company had been suspended from performing any new government work since November 2012, after BP agreed to plead guilty and to pay a $4.5 billion fine for criminal charges involving the death of 11 workers and lying to Congress about how much oil was spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.

The temporary ban barred the oil company for 16 months from leasing more offshore oil and gas properties and renewing fuel contracts with the U.S. military. The decision comes just before the Department of Interior will offer more than 40 million acres for oil and gas exploration and development in the Gulf of Mexico in March lease sales.

For five years, BP will have to abide by a series of ethics, safety and other requirements. An independent auditor will also verify its compliance with the deal.

The company also agreed Thursday to drop its lawsuit challenging the suspension.

"Today's agreement will allow America's largest energy investor to compete again for federal contracts and leases," said John Minge, chairman and president of BP America, Inc., in a statement.

The new chair of the Senate Energy Committee, Sen. Mary Landrieu, praised the agreement.

"BP has rightly been held responsible in a court of law and should continue to make whole the individuals and businesses that were impacted by the oil spill, but barring them from entering new contracts on top of that amounted to double jeopardy and set a terrible precedent that I hope will not be repeated," said Landrieu, D-La. "The good news is that BP will now be able to participate in next week's lease sale that will bring much-needed revenue to Louisiana and other oil-producing states along the Gulf Coast."

Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, criticized the move for letting BP "off the hook." The company "has failed to prove that it is a responsible contractor deserving of lucrative taxpayer deals," he said.

The April 2010 spill occurred after BP's Macondo well blew out, causing the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to explode, killing 11 workers. Millions of gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf, with crude soiling shoreline and beaches from Louisiana to Florida.

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Follow Dina Cappiello on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/dinacappiello

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Dems grapple with dilemma on Keystone XL pipeline

WASHINGTON — Democrats are grappling with an election-year dilemma posed by the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Wealthy party donors are funding candidates who oppose the project — a high-profile symbol of the political debate over climate change. But some of the party's most vulnerable incumbents are pipeline boosters, and whether Democrats retain control of the Senate after the 2014 midterm elections may hinge on them.

The dilemma was highlighted Thursday as President Barack Obama's former national security adviser — and now a consultant to the oil industry — said Obama should approve the pipeline to send Russian President Vladimir Putin a message that "international bullies" can't use energy security as a weapon.

The comments by retired Gen. James Jones came as a top Democratic donor again urged that the pipeline be rejected.

Tom Steyer, a billionaire environmentalist, has vowed to spend $100 million —$50 million of his own money and $50 million from other donors — to make climate change a top-tier issue in the 2014 elections.

Steyer, who opposes Keystone, declined to say whether he would contribute to Democrats who support the pipeline, including Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and John Walsh of Montana. All face strong challenges from Republicans in energy-producing states where Obama lost to Mitt Romney in 2012.

Still, a spokesman said Steyer believes Democratic control of the Senate is important from a climate perspective.

Jones told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Canada-to-Texas pipeline is a litmus test of whether the U.S. is serious about national and global energy security. Approval of the pipeline would help ensure that North America becomes a global energy hub and a reliable energy source to the U.S and its allies, Jones said. Rejecting the pipeline would "make Mr. Putin's day and strengthen his hand," he said.

Jones, who left the Obama administration in 2010, now heads a consulting firm that has done work for the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry's chief trade group, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Both groups support the pipeline.

Landrieu, who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, pressed Secretary of State John Kerry on the pipeline issue Thursday at an appropriations hearing. Landrieu called approval of the pipeline "critical" to the national interest and said that in Louisiana, "it's hard for us to even understand why there is a question" whether it should be approved. The State Department has jurisdiction over the pipeline because it crosses a U.S. border.

Kerry told Landrieu he was "not at liberty to go into my thinking at this point," but added: "I am approaching this, you know, tabula rasa. I'm going to look at all the arguments, both sides, all sides, whatever, evaluate them and make the best judgment I can about what is in the national interest."

Polls show Americans support the pipeline, with 65 percent saying they approved of it in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Twenty-two percent of those polled opposed the pipeline.

Steyer, a former hedge fudge manager, spent more than $10 million to help elect Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., last year. In a conference call with reporters Thursday, Steyer declined to comment on where his advocacy group, NextGen Climate Action, would spend money this fall. But he noted the views of Landrieu and other endangered Democratic incumbents were well known.

"I think those senators voted on this long before 2014," he said, "so I don't think there's any real change here."

Steyer hosted a fundraiser last month at his San Francisco home attended by at least six Democratic senators, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. The event, which raised $400,000 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, also was attended by former Vice President Al Gore, who said the party needs to make global warming a central issue in the midterm elections.

Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist who advises Steyer, has said the group would not go after Democrats, even those who support the pipeline.

"We're certainly not subscribing to what I would call the tea party theory of politics," Lehane said. "We do think it's really, really important from a climate perspective that we maintain control of the Senate for Democrats."

Steyer said Thursday he has not decided whether to spend money in Colorado, where Democratic Sen. Mark Udall is likely to be challenged by GOP Rep. Cory Gardner. Udall was among more than 30 Democratic senators who engaged in a talkathon urging action on climate change this week, but he has largely stayed out of the Keystone fight. Udall voted against budget amendments urging both support and rejection of the pipeline, arguing that they injected politics into a process that should remain at the State Department.

Udall wants to evaluate the project "on the merits and using objective, scientific analysis," said spokesman Mike Saccone.

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said he hoped Thursday's hearing would offer "a balanced, thoughtful" approach that "puts aside some of the politics that have surrounded this debate" over the pipeline.

"We are here to find answers and shed more light than heat on the issue," Menendez said, although the hearing soon devolved into a series of claims and counterclaims.

The $5.3 billion pipeline would carry oil derived from tar sands in western Canada through the U.S. heartland to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Pipeline supporters, including lawmakers from both parties and many business and labor groups, say the project would create thousands of jobs and reduce the need for oil imports from Venezuela and other politically turbulent countries.

Opponents say the pipeline would carry "dirty oil" that contributes to global warming. They also worry about possible spills.

The State Department said in a Jan. 31 report that building the pipeline would not significantly boost carbon emissions because the oil was likely to find its way to market no matter what. Transporting the oil by rail or truck would cause greater environmental problems than the pipeline, the report said.

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Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

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Follow Matthew Daly on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewDalyWDC

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