The Washington Post - 20.10.2019

BY KATHY ORTON

The marks on the living room window

frame gave it away. William Hart re-

members seeing those scratches when

he sat in his cubicle, gazing out the

window as he tried to puzzle out a

particularly thorny problem with the

IRS’s acquisition software.

When he and his wife were shown the

apartment, Hart examined the window.

There was no doubt. The software devel-

oper’s new home would be where his

cubicle once was. After spending 10

years working for the IRS in the Oxon

Hill, Md., office building, Hart returned

in June to live there with his wife.

“When I visited this apartment, I

already knew that I used to work on the

eighth floor,” Hart said. “To see this, it

was like, wow, you worked right here in

this very same apartment.”

In a city overrun with Ty pe A worka-

holics who spend so much time in their

SEE APARTMENTS ON G5

BILL O'LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST

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For toddlers,

sweet excess

New foods and beverages marketed to parents and

in on-the-go containers are often high in sugar

Your new home: Your old o∞ce

With the region awash in underused workspaces, some are being made into apartments

BY LAURA REILEY

stronger a nd smarter:

Dietary supplements said to boost the immune

system. Squeezy pouches boasting three grams of

protein and three grams of fiber. Oven-baked stone-

ground wheat “wafflez,” superfood puffs and a baf-

fling a rray o f toddler milks purported t o aid brain and

eye development.

Billy Roberts, senior analyst of food and drink at

market research firm Mintel, says there were four

times m ore product launches i n the baby a nd t oddler

food aisle in 2018 than in 2005, with a huge surge in

new toddler foods and drinks, most of which are

extremely high i n sugar.

What’s driving this surge? Experts point to several

factors. Parents are demanding convenient, on-the-

SEE TODDLERS ON G4

A milk-based toddler drink contains 3^1 / 2 teaspoons of sugar per serving. A 2015 report found that

29 percent of toddlers’ calories were coming from snacks, mostly salty or sweet processed foods.

L

eading health organizations recently re-

leased their first consensus recommenda-

tions about what young children should be

drinking: only breast milk or, if necessary,

infant formula until a baby is 6 months old,

with water introduced around then and plain cow’s

milk around their first birthday.

That’s i t. No j uice, no flavored or plant-based m ilks,

no caffeinated b everages or sodas.

The good news is parents of infants seem to be on

the right track — breast-feeding is on the rise. But

once children get into the toddler zone, it’s p andemo-

nium.

There’s b een a boom in unhealthy foods a nd bever-

ages for children 6 months t o 3 years old, packaged for

convenience and often promising to make children

KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST

The space formerly occupied by William Hart’s cubicle when he worked

for the IRS is now part of the apartment he shares with his wife, Sheila.

THE COLOR OF MONEY

A nurse worked 30 years at the same hospital. Then the pension plan went bust. G2

TECHNOLOGY

For kids and teens, circumventing Apple’s Screen Time controls is child’s play. G3

For 40 years, the all-
purpose elixir peddled by
Republicans for any
economic malady —
declining
competitiveness,
financial crises,
unemployment, stagnant
wages, poverty, soaring
costs of health care, housing and college
education — has been some form of tax
cut. We now see the result of that folly
in a loophole-ridden tax system that
distorts economic behavior, coddles the
rich and can’t raise enough revenue to
finance the government Americans
want and need.
Now, progressive Democrats seem
determined to make the same kind of
mistake, with sweeping soak-the-rich
tax plans designed to punish greed,
break up the concentration of economic
and political power and raise vast sums
SEE PEARLSTEIN ON G2

Punitive taxes

on the wealthy

make no sense

Steven
Pearlstein

BY ELI ROSENBERG

detroit — Todd Piroch, 47, is from a

General Motors family. His parents

worked at t he company for d ecades, start-

ing in the 1960s.

And Piroch and his two brothers

worked at the company’s plant in Lords-

town, Ohio, for more than 20 years —

until GM abruptly announced its closure

last year, shipping his brothers off to

Michigan and To ledo and To dd to another

plant in Bowling Green, Ky., a 7^1 / 2 -hour

drive from the home he shares with his

wife and two high school-aged children.

So as union officials met about a con-

tract deal t hat, if approved, would end the

five-week strike of some 46,000 United

Automobile Workers members — one of

the longest private-sector strikes in re-

cent years — Piroch was here with three

vanfuls of other displaced workers from

the Lordstown plant to voice dissent.

SEE GM ON G3

Long GM strike

may embolden

other unions