Trial Date Set in Traffic Court Ticket-Fixing Prosecution

The federal judge presiding over the criminal cases of the Philadelphia Traffic Court judges charged with fixing tickets has scheduled their trial for November 12.

Bar Association Won't Rate Traffic Court Judges

While municipal government watchdog group Committee of Seventy suggested that the Philadelphia Bar Association "take responsibility for interviewing and rating all 2013 Traffic Court candidates" in the wake of nine judges being charged with crimes related to alleged ticket-fixing, the association's chancellor said the professional group does not have the jurisdiction to rate Traffic Court judges because they are not required to be lawyers.

Trial Date Set in Traffic Court Ticket-Fixing Prosecution

The federal judge presiding over the criminal cases of the Philadelphia Traffic Court judges charged with fixing tickets has scheduled their trial for November 12.

Trial Set for Indicted Traffic Court Judge

Philadelphia Traffic Court Judge Robert Mulgrew, who has been suspended from his judicial duties until his federal criminal case is resolved, is set to go to trial with two co-defendants June 5, 2013, U.S. District Judge C. Darnell Jones II of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said during a court hearing today.

Traffic Court Legislation on Its Way to Governor

The Pennsylvania Senate unanimously approved the enabling legislation that would eliminate the Philadelphia Traffic Court in the wake of the latest ticket-fixing scandal within that body.

Reporter's Notebook: Pro Bono Program May Help Traffic Court Image

As part of reporting a story on the future of the Philadelphia Traffic Court after allegations of ticket-fixing have become widely publicized, I learned about an upcoming program that is aiming to help ex-convicts set up payment plans for past traffic infractions in order to get their driver's licenses restored.

Trial Date Set in Traffic Court Ticket-Fixing Prosecution

The federal judge presiding over the criminal cases of the Philadelphia Traffic Court judges charged with fixing tickets has scheduled their trial for November 12.

F.A.A. Says Air Traffic Staffing Is Returning to Normal

The back and forth followed the approval of legislation in Congress on Friday to relieve the nation’s air traffic control system from the effects of across-the-board spending cuts. The furloughs for air traffic controllers were among the most visible consequences of the cuts, leading to widespread flight delays.

The F.A.A. said it expected the nation’s air traffic control system to be back to normal by Sunday evening. But in a reflection of the lingering partisan divide over the cuts known as sequestration, neither Mr. Obama nor Congressional Republicans moved closer to a consensus on how to minimize the broader impact.

“This week, the sequester hurt travelers, who were stuck for hours in airports and on planes, and rightly frustrated by it,” Mr. Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address taped in advance and broadcast on Saturday. “Maybe because they fly home each weekend, the members of Congress who insisted these cuts take hold finally realized that they actually apply to them, too.”

In the Republican response, Representative Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, asked why there were furloughs. “Because,” he said, “there are some in the Obama administration who thought inflicting pain on the public would give the president more leverage to avoid making necessary spending cuts and to impose more tax hikes on the American people.”

The measure approved by Congress in response to the flight delays would give the transportation secretary flexibility to shift as much as $253 million to the air traffic control system and return staffing to full strength.

The money will come from airport improvement funds, and officials said they expected it would be enough to allow the F.A.A. to operate the air traffic control system at full strength through Sept. 30, the end of this fiscal year.

Off the Charts: Traffic Backups as a Gauge of an Improving U.S. Economy

And while that is not good news for those facing delays, it is for the economy.

“Traffic is a great indicator of confidence on the ground,” said Bryan Mistele, the chief executive of Inrix, which compiles what it calls the Inrix Gridlock Index. “People hit the road as they return to work, and businesses ship more freight as their orders increase.” The rise in the index, he said on Friday, “shows the pulse of the economy is starting to beat faster.”

Drivers in most European countries, however, do not face the same traffic problem. With some of those economies in recession, travel times are declining.

Inrix, based in Kirkland, Wash., says it has data since 2010 on how long it takes vehicles to travel on roads in 100 metropolitan areas in the United States, as well as abroad. The data is collected from companies that monitor their fleet vehicles through GPS systems, and from cellphones and GPS devices in cars that use some mobile navigation programs.

It says it then calculates the figures for 15-minute intervals throughout the week, and is able to separate out vehicles that stop for other reasons — like a taxi picking up or discharging a passenger.

It then determines how long trips take versus how long they would take if there were no traffic to contend with, and calculates the average increase in trip length for each area, expressed as a percentage of the minimum time.

The accompanying charts show how much those delays increased, or decreased, in each month compared with the same month a year earlier. A figure above zero indicates that traffic delays are getting worse; one below zero indicates that traffic is speeding up.

For the United States as a whole, said Jim Bak, an Inrix official, “the data shows a double-dip,” plateauing in 2011 and then falling again last autumn. “We saw things improve again after the election,” he said. By improving, he means that delays are increasing.

For the United States as a whole, December was the first month since the data became available to show that delays were getting longer on a year-over-year basis. That continued in January and grew in February.

There are, of course, other reasons than the health of the economy for traffic moving faster or slower. Weather is an obvious one, but by reporting the data as monthly averages that are compared with the same month of the previous year, that is at least partly adjusted for.

In Europe, delays have recently been declining at only a slow rate in France and Britain, perhaps indicating that economic downturns in those countries are stabilizing. But the delays are all but vanishing in Italy and Spain, and have also been falling in Germany.

Honolulu, which has some of the worst traffic delays in the United States, has seen them getting worse in recent months, as have Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. But delays seem to be getting shorter in both Seattle and Washington.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy on nytimes.com/economix.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 29, 2013

An earlier version of this column misspelled the surname of an Inrix official. He is Jim Bak, not Bax.

Bar Association Won't Rate Traffic Court Judges

While municipal government watchdog group Committee of Seventy suggested that the Philadelphia Bar Association "take responsibility for interviewing and rating all 2013 Traffic Court candidates" in the wake of nine judges being charged with crimes related to alleged ticket-fixing, the association's chancellor said the professional group does not have the jurisdiction to rate Traffic Court judges because they are not required to be lawyers.

Trial Set for Indicted Traffic Court Judge

Philadelphia Traffic Court Judge Robert Mulgrew, who has been suspended from his judicial duties until his federal criminal case is resolved, is set to go to trial with two co-defendants June 5, 2013, U.S. District Judge C. Darnell Jones II of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said during a court hearing today.

Trial Set for Indicted Traffic Court Judge

Philadelphia Traffic Court Judge Robert Mulgrew, who has been suspended from his judicial duties until his federal criminal case is resolved, is set to go to trial with two co-defendants June 5, 2013, U.S. District Judge C. Darnell Jones II of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said during a court hearing today.

Reporter's Notebook: Pro Bono Program May Help Traffic Court Image

As part of reporting a story on the future of the Philadelphia Traffic Court after allegations of ticket-fixing have become widely publicized, I learned about an upcoming program that is aiming to help ex-convicts set up payment plans for past traffic infractions in order to get their driver's licenses restored.

Pa. Justices Weigh Future of Philadelphia's Traffic Court

When a new Traffic Court opened in Philadelphia in 1957, it was heralded as a place where ticket-fixing would be impossible.

Trial Set for Indicted Traffic Court Judge

Philadelphia Traffic Court Judge Robert Mulgrew, who has been suspended from his judicial duties until his federal criminal case is resolved, is set to go to trial with two co-defendants June 5, 2013, U.S. District Judge C. Darnell Jones II of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said during a court hearing today.

Shopping Sites Pay Contributors Who Drive Traffic to Retailers

Ms. Medeiros is not a style pro; her day job is at a talent agency in Manhattan. But in a little-known practice, social media shopping sites are offering payments to shoppers who post product links that drive Web traffic and sales to retailers.

In the case of Ms. Medeiros, it is the sneakers and lipstick she added to Pinterest and the night life collection she posted on the shopping site Beso.

Favorable mentions on blogs have been for sale for years. Product reviews can also be bought. Now social media sites are taking citizen marketing to a new extreme, turning anyone’s Twitter message, Facebook post, Pinterest image or e-mail into a possible paid promotion.

The shopping sites are open about the moneymaking mechanics and argue that readers no longer expect everything online to be commercial-free. But the Federal Trade Commission says the practice blurs the line between a recommendation and a paid endorsement and needs to be flagged to readers.

“It’s turning word of mouth into a revenue opportunity,” said Mary Engle, who directs the commission’s division of advertising practices. “Since they’re getting compensated, in a sense, for their endorsement, then they should disclose that.”

Social media shopping sites let users select items from across the Web and share and comment on other users’ selections. They don’t sell anything themselves but make money by taking a cut from retailers on their sites.

Beso formally introduced a program on Tuesday that Ms. Medeiros has been trying, which pays users to send clicks to hundreds of major retailers, like Target and Gap.

“If they drop a link onto Twitter about a pair of shoes that they’re dying for, or a new handbag they’re coveting, and they refer users to Neiman’s or whoever sells that item,” said David Weinrot, the chief marketing officer for Shopzilla, the parent company of Beso, “they could actually be rewarded.”

Other large social shopping sites and apps, including the Fancy and Pose, recently introduced similar programs, and Referly, a site introduced in May, is entirely based on people referring products to friends and receiving money in return. Referly says 10,000 people have already signed up. The programs are too new to evaluate their financial success, but Web marketers say consumers should expect more similar programs, in part because visitors are no longer offended by the idea.

“The economic maturity of consumers is, businesses need to make money somehow if they’re going to survive — it’s so ubiquitous now that it’s expected,” said Alicia Navarro, co-founder and chief executive of Skimlinks, which automates referral links for publishers.

The sites determine who gets paid through unique links created for each participant. When someone uses a link to visit a retailer’s site, or buys a product, a payment is deposited into the referring user’s account. The practice is known as affiliate marketing. Bloggers already use the system and almost all major online retailers are willing to pay for traffic or purchases, Ms. Navarro said.

Links can be tracked no matter where a post occurs, meaning a Twitter message, a photo on Pinterest or a Facebook entry can all generate revenue. The social media shopping sites act as a middle man, collecting fees from the retailers and depositing payments into the users’ online accounts — after taking a cut. (Sometimes, sites cut out consumers, too. Earlier this year, Pinterest got into hot water when it quietly adjusted some users’ links to become affiliate-marketing links, and seemed to be collecting all the revenue for itself. It says it has ceased using affiliate links and declined to comment on whether it would offer users fees from such links in the future.)

Beso pays users an average of 14 cents for each click they send to participating retailers, while other companies, like Pose, pay only when a purchase is associated with a link. Payments for purchases average about 5 percent of the price, Ms. Navarro said. The sites and the retailers monitor for spamlike behavior, like tons of clicks from a single I.P. address, and do not pay in those cases.

Lynsey Eaton, a Pose user who runs the blog Law of Fashion, said switching to the paid model for Pose images had made her more likely to post Pose links, and had made the service more useful. “Instead of just making it an Instagram for fashion, it’s now shoppable as well,” she said.

The Federal Trade Commission issued guidelines in 2009 saying bloggers must disclose any paid endorsements, and recently updated them. The guidelines apply to these commission-based links, Ms. Engle of the commission’s advertising division said, whether they are in a post or a 140-character Twitter post. “They can use a hashtag and then ‘ad,’ and that’s only three characters,” Ms. Engle said.

But there is some disagreement about whether a Twitter post should be treated like a blogger’s recommendation and about the changing expectations of financial disclosure on the Web.

Linda Goldstein, a lawyer specializing in advertising, said when the F.T.C. issued its blogger guidelines, “consumers were much less sophisticated” than they are today. “Consumers are now being used to generate leads — I don’t know if that raises the same concerns as an endorsement,” said Ms. Goldstein of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. “You’re not expressing an opinion about the product, you’re sending it to someone you think might be interested.”

Twitter and Facebook policies allow individuals to post referral-based links, but both companies say users should disclose that they are getting paid.

So far, the social media companies and their users seem to be largely unaware of how the guidelines apply to them.

Dustin Rosen, chief executive of Pose, said he was not clear on whether the guidelines would apply. Beso says its users should add hashtags like #spon, for sponsored, or #paid to links, but stops short of requiring it. Ms. Eaton, the Pose user, says she follows disclosure guidelines on her blog but has not yet done so on Pose. “I think this is so new that I haven’t really honestly thought about how users perceive the fact that people are making money,” she said.

Ms. Medeiros, who signed up for the Beso pilot program about a month ago, says she doubts that her friends will mind that she makes money from her links.

“It’s extra cash for something that I like doing,” she said. “It’s sort of rewarding to be able to make a few cents from sharing your personal life.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 2, 2012

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misstated the name of a social media shopping site that is offering payments to users who drive Web traffic to some retailers. It is Beso, not Bezos.