LaHood will resign as Transportation secretary

WASHINGTON — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a former lawmaker from Illinois and the last Republican left in President Obama's first-term Cabinet, announced Tuesday he was stepping down once a replacement was confirmed.

Among those mentioned as a possible successor is Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, whose second and final term ends June 30. He has sought to establish himself as a national leader on transportation and made improving L.A.'s transit system a cornerstone of his tenure.

Villaraigosa played a key role in crafting a provision in last year's federal transportation bill designed to speed up projects around the country, including in Los Angeles. He was also one of the most prominent Latino supporters for Obama, who has been under pressure to appoint Latinos to his Cabinet. The former California Assembly speaker was chairman of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., last summer.

The mayor is traveling in South Korea; his office said he could not be reached for comment about the opening.

A longtime ally and another former Assembly speaker, Fabian Nuñez, would not confirm whether Villaraigosa had been approached about a Cabinet position but said he believed the mayor would, if one was offered, serve his full term.

"He has his two feet solidly placed on the ground," Nuñez said, adding that Villaraigosa feels he would "have an obligation to finish out his term as mayor. That's first and foremost."

The White House declined to discuss potential Cabinet nominees, but former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm also has been mentioned as a replacement. Like Villaraigosa, Granholm was a key surrogate for Obama and a speaker at the last Democratic convention.

In a note to department staff, LaHood said he would remain until he was officially replaced to ensure "a smooth transition for the department and all the important work we still have to do."

The former seven-term congressman from Peoria, Ill., has led the department since 2009, but stated in 2011 that he did not plan to serve in the president's second term and would retire from public service. The president has another Republican on deck for his second term — former Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, whom Obama has nominated to lead the Pentagon. The other Republican in Obama's first-term Cabinet, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, left in 2011.

Despite his party affiliation, LaHood's views were often out of step with those of his former Republican colleagues, and his appointment did little to boost the president's standing with the opposition.

In his note, LaHood named among his top accomplishments his work to reduce distracted driving and combat pilot fatigue. He also listed his support for high-speed rail and more than $50 billion spent on transportation projects as part of the president's stimulus measure, a program reviled by Republicans, who see it as an example of wasteful federal spending.

"We helped jump-start the economy and put our fellow Americans back to work," LaHood wrote. "Our achievements are significant."

In an interview, LaHood said the biggest battle for his successor would not be over policy but money. The new secretary will have to find a way to fund highway construction and maintenance when the federal 18.4-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax isn't bringing in as much as it used to because vehicles are more fuel-efficient. There is strong opposition to raising the tax, which was last increased in 1993.

LaHood had pushed a five-year transportation funding bill, but had to settle for a two-year bill.

"The funding is the big question. Everyone knows what needs to be done in transportation in America. But the debate will be how to pay for it," LaHood said. "The American people are way, way ahead of the politicians on this. They're ready to have their potholes fixed … and they know it takes resources."

kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

Richard Simon in Washington, Jon Hilkevitch in Chicago and Cathleen Decker in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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<em>The Hobbit</em> Earns More in Worldwide Box Office Than <em>Fellowship</em> or <em>Two Towers</em>

Movie critics of America, foreign audiences would just like to remind you that you’re not the boss of them, thank you very much. After all, not only did the critics complain when Peter Jackson expanded J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit into three movies (although, please remember: it could be worse), but the first of those movies failed to make the grade for many professional moviegoers, with this particular parish describing it as “attempting to recreate the Lord of the Rings trilogy with the nostalgic desperation of a college freshman trying to get back together with his high school girlfriend.”

So, you’d think that such a disappointing movie would be a flop at the box office, right? Guess again: As of this last weekend, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has made more money worldwide than either Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring or Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers managed in their entire time in movie theaters.

The international box office total for The Hobbit is currently $939,862,965, with almost 69 percent of that amount coming from non-U.S. audiences ($646,300,000, to be specific), continuing the upwards trend of Jackson’s Middle-earth movies. In comparison, The Fellowship of the Ring made $869,349,688 in terms of worldwide box office ($555,985,574 of which came from moviegoers outside of the U.S.; that’s 64 percent of the total for the less math-inclined amongst you), and The Two Towers collected a total of $923,285,627 from the world’s box office, with 63.2 percent of that amount ($583,495,746) coming from non-domestic release.

The only Tolkien movie to have made more money worldwide than The Hobbit is 2005′s Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, which grossed a total of $1,119,110,941 internationally during its time in theaters, with 66.3 percent of that – or $742,083,616 in practical terms – coming from non-American theaters.

In the U.S. alone, things are a little different. Currently, The Hobbit is lagging behind all three of Jackson’s earlier Tolkien movies, with “just” $293,562,965 in domestic box office, although there are all manner of reasons for that, not least of which is the fact that it is still in the middle of its theater run, only in release for 46 days versus the 243 days, 250 days and 170 days that Fellowship, Towers and Return enjoyed, respectively.

At current rate — it made $8,948,729 last week alone, and remains in the box office top 10 more than a month after release — it’s likely that The Hobbit will end up eclipsing The Fellowship of the Ring (Total domestic gross: $313,364,114) at least before leaving theaters, if not also The Two Towers (Total domestic gross: $339,789,881). Return of the King, however, can likely relax on its throne made of the $377,027,325 it brought in from American audiences during its time in theaters.

So, what can be learned from this? Perhaps we should chalk it up to the power of a recognizable brand; note that each successive Lord of the Rings movie was more financially successful than the one before, and that The Hobbit was seemingly unaffected by poor reviews ahead of release. In fact, it had the most impressive U.S. opening weekend, with $84,617,303 — significantly higher than even Return of the King‘s $72,629,713 and almost twice that of Fellowship of the Ring‘s $47,211,490.

Some things may simply be critic-proof, which likely comes as a relief to Warner Bros. with two more Hobbits waiting in the wings for 2013 and 2014 respectively. If the box office returns hold up, maybe talk of a final trilogy based upon material in The Silmarillion won’t seem as outlandish after all.

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Muse to play anniversary gig for War Child charity

LONDON (Reuters) – British rock band Muse will headline a gig in London next month to mark the 20th anniversary of War Child, a charity that aims to protect young victims of conflicts around the world.

The gig on February 18 at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire will be the fifth time War Child has staged a concert in association with the BRIT Awards, Britain’s top pop honors which take place this year at the O2 Arena on February 20.

War Child is to receive the inaugural Special Recognition Award at the ceremony, while Muse has been nominated for best British group and best British live act.

Muse’s song “Survival” was chosen as the official song for the Olympic Games in London last year.

The BRIT Awards Concerts at the 2,000-capacity Empire have raised more than 600,000 pounds ($ 945,000) for War Child and included performances from Coldplay, The Killers, Blur and Kasabian.

“We are proud to have a continuing association with War Child, who have been doing amazing work over the last 20 years,” said Muse lead singer Matt Bellamy.

“It’s great to see their efforts being recognized at this year’s BRITs and we are really looking forward to playing this special show for them,” he added in a statement.

War Child UK says it has changed and saved the lives of some 800,000 children in war-affected countries including Bosnia, Rwanda, Afghanistan and Iraq.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White)

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Super Bowl — At Media Day, Spotlight on Head Injuries Grows

NEW ORLEANS — It has become a staple of Super Bowl week, as much a part of the pregame to the N.F.L.’s biggest event as the annual media day: a discussion of how football is being affected by head injuries and the mounting evidence that long-term brain damage can be linked to injuries sustained on the field.

Years ago, players rarely spoke about the issue and league officials dismissed suggestions that on-field injuries could lead to life-altering health problems. Now, however, the league is facing lawsuits from thousands of former players, rules are being instituted in an attempt to diminish injuries on the field and even President Obama has said that the way football is played will have to change. This week, Bernard Pollard, a hard-hitting safety for the Baltimore Ravens, created a stir by saying that the N.F.L. would not exist in 30 years because of the rules changes designed with safety in mind, but that he also believed there would be a death on the field at some point.

At media day Tuesday, players reacted to the comments made by Pollard and Obama, with some agreeing with Pollard that recent rules changes would change the sport to such an extent that it would be less entertaining and lead to a loss of popularity. Pollard stood by his comments. He added, however, that while he was comfortable with the physical risk he was taking by playing football, he was not sure he would want future generations, including his 4-year-old son, to follow his example.

“My whole stance right now is that I don’t want him to play football,” Pollard said. “Football has been good to me. It has been my outlet. God has blessed me with a tremendous talent to be able to play this game. But we want our kids to have things better than us.”

He said he did not want his son to go through the aches and pains caused by the physicality of the game.

“You keep playing football, you’re going to have your injuries, no one is exempt from that,” he said. “You’re going to have concussions. You’re going to have broken bones. That’s going to happen. But I think for the most part, we know what we signed up for.”

The sentiment was echoed by Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco. “I play the game and I understand that I’m going to get hit,” Flacco said. “Just because they fine the guys is not going to stop them from hitting me. I find it tough to fine people who are doing their job.”

In a recent interview with The New Republic, Obama expressed concern about on-field injuries, though he added that N.F.L. players were grown men who are “well-compensated for the violence they do to their bodies.”

The president added: “I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence. In some cases, that may make it a little bit less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won’t have to examine our consciences quite as much.”

While many current players seem focused on rules changes and how they will affect the nature of the game, more than 4,000 former N.F.L. players have filed a lawsuit against the league, contending that it knew hits to the head could lead to long-term brain damage but did not share that information with players. The judge in the case said Tuesday that she would hear oral arguments April 9 regarding the league’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The family of Junior Seau, a former star linebacker who shot and killed himself last year, has also sued the N.F.L., claiming it failed to inform players about the risks of brain injury.

Pollard’s counterparts on the San Francisco 49ers, safeties Dashon Goldson and Donte Whitner, considered one of the hardest-hitting tandems in the N.F.L., thought the key was not removing big hits, but making sure the hits that are delivered are legal.

“You can be vicious and you can hit people hard, but do it the right way,” Whitner said. “For the most part, you know what you can and cannot do. Do you want to go out there and do the right things or do you want to make that big hit to gain a big name? That’s what it comes down to.”

Ravens guard Marshal Yanda said he thought the topic was so personal for Pollard because of the unique nature of being a hard-hitting defensive back, one of the positions most affected by the league’s attempts to increase player safety.

“I think Bernard is frustrated because he plays a tough position where it’s a bang-bang play and he’s getting fined,” Yanda said. “That’s a tough deal as far as him playing football his whole life knowing how to play one way and then all of a sudden you have to change.”

One of the few people to disagree entirely with Pollard’s view that skewing the rules to protect offensive players would harm the league was Warren Sapp, a retired defensive tackle who at one point went by the Twitter handle @QBKilla. He said a desire for points would always result in defenses being limited.

“They like points,” Sapp said. “I like it too. You’re going to have to make some key stops here and there but it’s an offensive game, no doubt about it.”

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Media Decoder Blog: CNN President Tries to Repeat Success in A.M. News

Two decades ago, a young producer named Jeff Zucker helped a down-on-its-luck “Today” show regain its ratings mojo and start what became a 16-year winning streak. More recently, he was a sounding board for Ben Sherwood, the president of ABC News, as Mr. Sherwood’s “Good Morning America” finally ended the “Today” show’s streak.

Now, Mr. Zucker is assembling a new morning show for CNN, the first of several building blocks for the ailing cable news channel. On Tuesday, he hired Chris Cuomo, a former news anchor on “G.M.A.,” to be a co-anchor of the new unnamed show, and is expected to begin in the spring. Mr. Zucker wants to pair Mr. Cuomo with Erin Burnett, another veteran of the morning shift.

Mr. Zucker, who formally took over CNN Worldwide last week after his appointment as president last November, declined an interview request. But his decision to scrap “Starting Point,” CNN’s morning show, and start over turned heads in the television industry on Tuesday. Agents and anchors said it conveyed the message that “he’s not wasting any time.”

CNN is one of the most valuable brands in the world, but its ratings in the United States have collapsed in the face of competition from other cable channels and the Internet. “Starting Point,” for example, had just 234,000 viewers on a typical morning in 2012, the channel’s lowest total viewer number in that time slot in more than a decade. Of those, just 96,000 were between the ages of 25 and 54, the group that cable news advertisers try to reach.

For Mr. Zucker, who rose from “Today” to run all of NBC Universal in the 2000s, before being replaced when Comcast took control of the company two years ago, the chance to turn around CNN’s morning ratings represents a test: long after leaving “Today,” can he revitalize another morning show for another network?

TMZ first reported Mr. Cuomo’s impending move on Monday night. He wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, “I have a great chance to be the first word on what matters to you every morning.”

His brother, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, said in a radio interview that CNN was a better fit than ABC. “He’ll be on every day, so there will be a certain relevance to what he’s doing,” Governor Cuomo said.

Chris Cuomo has been a co-anchor of the weekly ABC newsmagazine “20/20” for the last three years. David Muir, the anchor of ABC’s weekend “World News,” will add “20/20” to his duties now. Mr. Cuomo, who previously spent three years as the news anchor on “G.M.A.,” was in the running for the co-host job on that show when Diane Sawyer left for the evening newscast “World News” in 2009. But the job went instead to George Stephanopoulos.

At CNN, a unit of Time Warner, Mr. Cuomo will have a new opportunity to lead a morning newscast. As it seeks a bigger audience in the mornings, however, CNN risks irritating the audience it already has by making sweeping changes. That happened 12 months ago when it gave up on a 10-year-old show, “American Morning,” and created “Starting Point.”

Soledad O’Brien, the anchor for the last 12 months, has been widely praised for her political interviews despite the program’s relatively low ratings. The show’s defenders say it never received the internal support and the external marketing it had been promised. They imply that it was not given a chance to succeed. Its detractors, however, say it was a bland copy of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” a show that, coincidentally, Mr. Zucker supported when he ran NBC Universal.

A CNN spokeswoman said in an e-mail Tuesday, “Soledad is very important to the network, and we’re discussing various options with her.”

Pairing Ms. Burnett with Mr. Cuomo would create another hole in CNN’s weekday schedule. Ms. Burnett is best known for her years at CNBC, where she and Mark Haines were at the helm of the midmorning markets newscast “Squawk on the Street” from 2005 to 2011. She is now the anchor of the 7 p.m. hour on CNN. But the hour has suffered like “Starting Point” and the rest of the channel’s schedule. CNN declined to comment on Ms. Burnett’s status on Tuesday.

Mr. Cuomo is the third prominent name from ABC to be hired by CNN in the last year. The first was John Berman, a longtime ABC correspondent, who now co-hosts “Early Start,” the predawn newscast that precedes “Starting Point.” The second was Jake Tapper, the chief White House correspondent for ABC.

Mr. Zucker had a role in signing Mr. Tapper, who will begin anchoring a daily program for CNN this year. Now Mr. Zucker is figuring out where Mr. Tapper and CNN’s other hosts belong on the schedule. Associates say Mr. Zucker wants both the daytime and prime time programs to be more entertaining and less dependent on the daily drip-drip-drip of stories about politics and overseas conflicts.

On Tuesday, Mark Whitaker, the managing editor of CNN Worldwide, stepped down, stating in an e-mail to staff members that Mr. Zucker “deserves his own team and management structure and the freedom to communicate one clear vision to the staff.” Mr. Whitaker was a top lieutenant of Jim Walton, Mr. Zucker’s predecessor.

The announcement last week of the hiring of the sports reporter Rachel Nichols from ESPN was a hint of what is to come under Mr. Zucker. He said in a statement then that Ms. Nichols would host a weekend sports program and called her hiring “an important step in expanding the range of programming and storytelling on CNN.”

Thomas Kaplan contributed reporting.

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Reporters tweet the Los Angeles mayoral debate

About L.A. Now

L.A. Now is the Los Angeles Times’ breaking news section for Southern California. It is produced by more than 80 reporters and editors in The Times’ Metro section, reporting from the paper’s downtown Los Angeles headquarters as well as bureaus in Costa Mesa, Long Beach, San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, Riverside, Ventura and West Los Angeles.

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Supernova Remnants: Dazzling Entrails of Violent Stellar Death

Even in death, there can be great beauty. Consider supernova remnants, the results of massive stars dying in great explosions, creating some of the most spectacular cosmic objects around.

Every 50 years or so, a star in our galaxy with more than 10 times the mass of our sun will expire. When such stars die, they go supernova, one of the most violent events in our universe. These explosions shoot off tons of material from the central star at up to 10 percent the speed of light.

Though the area surrounding stars seems empty, it is usually home to vast amounts of interstellar gas and dust. The supernova’s outburst runs into this surrounding material, creating a shockwave and heating it to temperatures greater than 10,000 Celsius. Over thousands of years, the local structure of the gas and dust shapes the stellar outpouring into shells, filaments, and other diffuse forms. Astronomers call these objects supernova remnants.

Supernova explosions and the remnants they leave behind have wide-ranging effects. They heat up the interstellar medium, creating complex chemistry out in space, and are responsible for accelerating protons and other atomic nuclei, which go zipping around the universe as cosmic rays. Perhaps most importantly, supernova explosions generate and liberate heavy elements, such as oxygen, carbon, and all metals, distributing them out into the wider cosmos. These elements eventually find their way into planetary systems, making life possible on at least one world that we know of.

Here, we take a look at some of the most famous and beautiful supernova remnants, giving you a chance to contemplate life, death, and cycles of renewal in the universe.

Above:

The supernova remnant N186 D appears as a bright pink spot at the top of this new image released by NASA on Jan. 28, spewing off tremendous amounts of X-rays. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud about 160,000 light-years away, the remnant is blowing a huge bubble (the giant structure below the bright spot) as hot wind carves out a shock wave in the surrounding material.

Image: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Michigan/A.E.Jaskot, Optical: NOAO/CTIO/MCELS

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Conference suggests ways Broadway can be better

NEW YORK (AP) — A conference on how to make the Broadway experience better for theatergoers has come up with some prescriptions: Be brave in the stories that are told onstage and embrace youth and technology.

“Broadway, I don’t think, has boldly gone where it needs to,” said “Star Trek” actor George Takei, riffing off his old show’s motto. “I have a sense that Broadway hasn’t entered into the 21st century.”

The second TEDxBroadway conference on Monday brought together 16 speakers — producers, marketers, entrepreneurs, academics and artists — to try to answer the question: “What is the best Broadway can be?”

“We use the word ‘best’ because the goal of today is to go right past better all the way to the extent of what is possible, even if it seems a little bit outlandish,” said co-organizer Jim McCarthy, the CEO of Goldstar, a ticket retailer.

TEDx events are independently organized but inspired by the nonprofit group TED — standing for Technology, Entertainment, Design — that started in 1984 as a conference dedicated to “ideas worth spreading.” Video of the Broadway event will be made available to the public.

While the health of Broadway is good, with shows yielding a record $ 1.14 billion in grosses last season, some speakers noted that total attendance — 12.3 million last season — hasn’t kept pace, meaning Broadway isn’t always attracting new customers.

Three speakers — one the sister of Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg — argued that new technology means the stage experience doesn’t need to be confined to the four walls of the theater and so can grow new audiences.

David Sabel, who has helped drive the National Theatre of Great Britain into the digital age, pointed out that broadcasts of his stage shows on movie screens across the world haven’t dampened demand at the box office and have actually have themselves become profitable.

“I think in our business, digital is uniquely not a threat but an opportunity,” he said. “What if we could open it up and invite a much greater audience in to speak with us?”

Randi Zuckerberg said the Broadway community could increase visibility by having auditions for minor parts via YouTube, have live tweeters backstage, offer crowd funding to knit people to productions, give walk-on parts for influential figures or even make the Playbills electronic.

“Why should Broadway be limited by physical space? By ticket prices? By the same shows, over and over?” she asked. “Instead of having just a small sliver of the world come to Broadway, why not bring a small piece of Broadway to the entire world?”

And Internet guru Josh Harris said producers need to open the entire process to the outside world, including video cameras backstage to capture actors getting ready and even having the orchestra pit filled with people interacting with the audience via their electronic devices.

The annual gathering centered on Broadway is the brainchild of three men: McCarthy; Ken Davenport, a writer and producer; and Damian Bazadona, the founder of Situation Interactive. It drew 400 people to the off-Broadway complex New World Stages and into the theater where “Avenue Q” usually plays.

Takei in the past few years has grown 3.3 million Facebook friends and leveraged them into audience members to “Allegiance,” his new musical about Japanese-Americans during World War II,

“If I can do it, Broadway certainly can,” the 65-year-old said. “Broadway is at its best when it embraces all of the technological advancements of the time and starts making a lot of friends on social media. Then, as we say on ‘Star Trek,’ Broadway will live long and prosper.”

Thomas Schumacher, the president of the Disney Theatrical Group, slammed the pretentious way some in the theatrical community look at more mainstream shows and scoffed at their disdain for making the audience experience more fun.

“Populism has its own manifest destiny and we need to embrace that,” said Schumacher, who called for a big tent of theatrical options on Broadway and especially shows for children who will return as adults. “What I ask you to do is embrace this audience and maybe even embrace the sippy cup.”

Terry Teachout, drama critic at The Wall Street Journal, soberly pointed out that 75 percent of all Broadway shows fail and then asked that more producers roll the dice on quality.

“If you can’t count on getting rich, then forget playing it safe. Why not take a shot at being great?” he asked. “If there’s ever a time for you to shoot high, this is it. Don’t start out settling for safe. Gamble on great.”

Kristoffer Diaz, the playwright of the Pulitzer Prize finalist “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity,” urged producers to embrace different voices, as they did with “In the Heights” and “Rent.”

“Women, writers of color, transgender, lesbian, gay and bisexual — we need to keep hearing these stories. We need to hear them on Broadway,” he said. “It becomes a lot harder to dismiss somebody out of hand if you’ve spent a couple of hours investing in their story.”

Two speakers with specialty knowledge outside Broadway urged the community to not just focus on putting on a great show.

Susan Reilly Salgado, who has worked with famed restaurant owner Danny Meyer, said his success is not only about creating tasty dishes. Meyer, she said, makes the whole evening fun.

“To say that, in a restaurant, it’s all about the food discounts everyone else who touches the customer experience,” she said. “The best way to get people to come back to you over and over is to create an all-encompassing experience.”

Erin Hoover, the vice president of design for Westin and Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, said Broadway theaters could take a page out of the innovations brought to hotel lobbies, which are now comfortable, inviting and offer new sources of revenue. “The experience for the show really starts at the door.”

Customer service was also a theme touched on by Zachary A. Schmahl, an actor-turned-baker who created Schmackary’s Cookies in his apartment and has watched it grow into a thriving business.

“Customer service is something that people are missing in New York,” he said. “It’s so important in our single-serving culture to be that business that has a heart and a soul alongside a quality product.”

One returning speaker was Vincent Gassetto, the principal of a high-performing public middle school in a tough area of the Bronx, who urged those in attendance to make sure Broadway was on the radar of his best and brightest students.

“It’s in everybody in this room’s best interest that they have an awareness of this industry or we’re never going to win that talent war,” he said. “We’re all going to be competing for them.”

Though the speakers came from different backgrounds and emphasized different prescriptions, they did seem to agree with Daryl Roth, the Pulitzer Prize-winning producer of seven plays, including “Clybourne Park.” She challenged the crowd to think of Broadway in more than just dollars and cents.

“If we share the deep belief that theater matters, that theater can change us and ultimately change the world, then isn’t that the best Broadway can be?” Roth asked.

___

Online:

http://www.goldstar.com/tedxbroadway

___

Follow Mark Kennedy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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Personal Health: Keeping Blood Pressure in Check

Since the start of the 21st century, Americans have made great progress in controlling high blood pressure, though it remains a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.

Now 48 percent of the more than 76 million adults with hypertension have it under control, up from 29 percent in 2000.

But that means more than half, including many receiving treatment, have blood pressure that remains too high to be healthy. (A normal blood pressure is lower than 120 over 80.) With a plethora of drugs available to normalize blood pressure, why are so many people still at increased risk of disease, disability and premature death? Hypertension experts offer a few common, and correctable, reasons:

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Jane Brody speaks about hypertension.

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¶ About 20 percent of affected adults don’t know they have high blood pressure, perhaps because they never or rarely see a doctor who checks their pressure.

¶ Of the 80 percent who are aware of their condition, some don’t appreciate how serious it can be and fail to get treated, even when their doctors say they should.

¶ Some who have been treated develop bothersome side effects, causing them to abandon therapy or to use it haphazardly.

¶ Many others do little to change lifestyle factors, like obesity, lack of exercise and a high-salt diet, that can make hypertension harder to control.

Dr. Samuel J. Mann, a hypertension specialist and professor of clinical medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, adds another factor that may be the most important. Of the 71 percent of people with hypertension who are currently being treated, too many are taking the wrong drugs or the wrong dosages of the right ones.

Dr. Mann, author of “Hypertension and You: Old Drugs, New Drugs, and the Right Drugs for Your High Blood Pressure,” says that doctors should take into account the underlying causes of each patient’s blood pressure problem and the side effects that may prompt patients to abandon therapy. He has found that when treatment is tailored to the individual, nearly all cases of high blood pressure can be brought and kept under control with available drugs.

Plus, he said in an interview, it can be done with minimal, if any, side effects and at a reasonable cost.

“For most people, no new drugs need to be developed,” Dr. Mann said. “What we need, in terms of medication, is already out there. We just need to use it better.”

But many doctors who are generalists do not understand the “intricacies and nuances” of the dozens of available medications to determine which is appropriate to a certain patient.

“Prescribing the same medication to patient after patient just does not cut it,” Dr. Mann wrote in his book.

The trick to prescribing the best treatment for each patient is to first determine which of three mechanisms, or combination of mechanisms, is responsible for a patient’s hypertension, he said.

¶ Salt-sensitive hypertension, more common in older people and African-Americans, responds well to diuretics and calcium channel blockers.

¶ Hypertension driven by the kidney hormone renin responds best to ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, as well as direct renin inhibitors and beta-blockers.

¶ Neurogenic hypertension is a product of the sympathetic nervous system and is best treated with beta-blockers, alpha-blockers and drugs like clonidine.

According to Dr. Mann, neurogenic hypertension results from repressed emotions. He has found that many patients with it suffered trauma early in life or abuse. They seem calm and content on the surface but continually suppress their distress, he said.

One of Dr. Mann’s patients had had high blood pressure since her late 20s that remained well-controlled by the three drugs her family doctor prescribed. Then in her 40s, periodic checks showed it was often too high. When taking more of the prescribed medication did not result in lasting control, she sought Dr. Mann’s help.

After a thorough work-up, he said she had a textbook case of neurogenic hypertension, was taking too much medication and needed different drugs. Her condition soon became far better managed, with side effects she could easily tolerate, and she no longer feared she would die young of a heart attack or stroke.

But most patients should not have to consult a specialist. They can be well-treated by an internist or family physician who approaches the condition systematically, Dr. Mann said. Patients should be started on low doses of one or more drugs, including a diuretic; the dosage or number of drugs can be slowly increased as needed to achieve a normal pressure.

Specialists, he said, are most useful for treating the 10 percent to 15 percent of patients with so-called resistant hypertension that remains uncontrolled despite treatment with three drugs, including a diuretic, and for those whose treatment is effective but causing distressing side effects.

Hypertension sometimes fails to respond to routine care, he noted, because it results from an underlying medical problem that needs to be addressed.

“Some patients are on a lot of blood pressure drugs — four or five — who probably don’t need so many, and if they do, the question is why,” Dr. Mann said.

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How to Measure Your Blood Pressure

Mistaken readings, which can occur in doctors’ offices as well as at home, can result in misdiagnosis of hypertension and improper treatment. Dr. Samuel J. Mann, of Weill Cornell Medical College, suggests these guidelines to reduce the risk of errors:

¶ Use an automatic monitor rather than a manual one, and check the accuracy of your home monitor at the doctor’s office.

¶ Use a monitor with an arm cuff, not a wrist or finger cuff, and use a large cuff if you have a large arm.

¶ Sit quietly for a few minutes, without talking, after putting on the cuff and before checking your pressure.

¶ Check your pressure in one arm only, and take three readings (not more) one or two minutes apart.

¶ Measure your blood pressure no more than twice a week unless you have severe hypertension or are changing medications.

¶ Check your pressure at random, ordinary times of the day, not just when you think it is high.

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DealBook Column: Mary Jo White, Nominee for S.E.C.'s 'New Sherrif,' Has Worn Banks' Hat

“You don’t want to mess with Mary Jo.”

That’s what President Obama said about his pick to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Jo White. The nomination of Ms. White, a former prosecutor who took on the terrorists behind the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Mafia boss John Gotti, was meant to signal that the S.E.C. would be getting tough on Wall Street. CBS called her “Wall Street’s new sheriff.” The Wall Street Journal said she would be “putting a tougher face on an agency still tainted by embarrassing enforcement missteps in the run-up to the financial crisis.” The New York Times said her appointment represented a “renewed resolve to hold Wall Street accountable.”

Hold on.

While Ms. White is a decorated prosecutor, she has spent the last decade vigorously defending — and billing by the hour — Wall Street’s biggest banks, as a rainmaking partner at the white-shoe law firm Debevoise & Plimpton. The average partner at the firm was paid $2.1 million a year, according to American Lawyer; but she was no average partner, very likely being paid at least double that. Her husband, John W. White, is a corporate partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He counts JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse and UBS as clients. The average partner at Cravath makes $3.1 million. He, too, was a former official at the S.E.C. — he left Cravath to run the corporate division of the S.E.C. starting in 2006 just in time for the run-up to the financial crisis. He left in November 2008, a month after the bank bailouts, to return to Cravath.

It seems Mr. and Ms. White have made a fine art of the revolving door between government and private practice.

So how conflicted is Ms. White? Let’s count the ways.

They are well documented: she was JPMorgan Chase’s go-to lawyer for many of the cases brought against it relating to the financial crisis. She was arm-in-arm with Kenneth D. Lewis, Bank of America’s former chief executive, keeping him out of trouble when the New York attorney general accused Mr. Lewis of defrauding investors by not disclosing the losses at Merrill Lynch before completing Bank of America’s acquisition of the firm. (And empirically, Mr. Lewis did keep crucial information about the deal from investors.)

This is what she had to say about Mr. Lewis, in a court filing submitted on his behalf: “Some have looked to assign blame for every aspect of the financial crisis, even where there is no evidence of misconduct. This case is a product of that dynamic and does not withstand either legal or factual scrutiny.” It was a refrain she often made about her clients related to the financial crisis.

And then there was Senator Bill Frist, the Republican from Tennessee, whom she successfully represented when the S.E.C. and the Justice Department started an investigation into whether he was involved in insider trading in shares of HCA, the hospital chain. She persuaded them to shut down the investigation.

She also worked with Siemens, the German industrial giant, when it pleaded guilty to charges of bribery, paying a record $1.6 billion penalty.

And then, of course, there was John Mack. She worked for the board of Morgan Stanley during a now well-publicized 2005 investigation into insider trading that ended soon after she made a phone call to the S.E.C. Using her connections at the top of the agency, she dialed up Linda Thomsen, then the commission’s head of enforcement, to find out whether Mr. Mack, who was being considered for Morgan Stanley’s chief executive position, was being implicated. He ultimately wasn’t. As the Huffington Post pointed out in a recent article about Ms. White, Robert Hanson, an S.E.C. supervisor, later testified, “It is a little out of the ordinary for Mary Jo White to contact Linda Thomsen directly, but that White is very prestigious and it isn’t uncommon for someone prominent to have someone intervene on their behalf.”

All of Ms. White’s previous engagements create not only an “optics” problem, but a practical, on-the-job problem. She will most likely need to recuse herself from just about anything related to her previous work.

“I will not for a period of two years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts,” is the language in an ethics pledge that she will have to agree to follow.

Some appointees, including Mary L. Schapiro, the former chairwoman of the S.E.C., recused themselves from any involvement in work that was related to a previous employer even after the two-year moratorium. Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, recused himself from the investigation into MF Global because of his previous employment at Goldman Sachs, where Jon Corzine was the firm’s head, even though it had been years since the two had worked together.

And then there is the issue of Mr. White’s husband, who will have a continuing role at Cravath, one of the most pre-eminent firms in the country, whose clients include some of the nation’s largest corporations.

“This president has adopted the toughest ethics rules of any administration in history,” said Amy Brundage, a White House spokeswoman, “and this nominee is no exception. As S.E.C. chair, Mary Jo White will be in complete compliance with all ethics rules.”

None of these conflicts gets at another potential problem for Ms. White. The job of chairwoman of S.E.C. isn’t simply about enforcement; she has a deputy for that. The biggest challenge anyone who takes the job will have to confront over the next several years will be executing and enforcing provisions of Dodd-Frank and working to regulate electronic trading — something that even the most sophisticated financial professionals, let alone a lawyer, often have a tough time understanding. She has zero experience in this area.

Of course, there can always be a value to inviting a onetime rival onto the team.

“I believe she is one of those people who will understand that her public role will be very, very different than her role as a defense lawyer,” Dennis M. Kelleher of Better Markets, a watchdog group, told me. “I don’t think she’s going to be like so many others who don’t get that they have a very different role when they hold high public office.

“No question, she’s said some things that are controversial and questionable,” Mr. Kelleher said. “Moreover, I hope and expect that she will be asked publicly about them in the confirmation process and that she will have convincing answers.”

Of course, if she is confirmed, we must all hope that she can put her previous client relationships behind her and work for her new client — us.

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