Ceilings

Greg Cantori plans to downsize when he retires. Really, really downsize. His retirement home is 238 square feet — one-tenth the size of the average new American house — and sits in his Anne Arundel County yard. He and wife Renee can hitch it to a truck and take it with them wherever they go. "It's so cheap — that's what's so cool about this," said Cantori, 52, who envisions a surf-and-turf future, alternating between the house and a sailboat. "We bought the house for $19,000.

A week before his inauguration, President Barack Obama said he wouldn't negotiate with Republicans over raising the federal debt limit. At an unexpected news conference Jan. 14, the president asserted that he won't trade cuts in government spending in exchange for raising the borrowing limit. "If the goal is to make sure that we are being responsible about our debt and our deficit, if that's the conversation we're having, I'm happy to have that conversation," Mr. Obama said. "What I will not do is to have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people.

Q: I want to turn the top floor of an old Victorian into a separate apartment, but I'm confused by the ceilings, which slant down beside the dormer windows. Should I just paint them the same color as the walls and hope they disappear?A: You have the right idea if you want to make light of your eccentric ceilings. One color, used overall, will camouflage architectural oddments and practically eliminate the negative.However, you could take the other lyric from the song and accentuate the positive: Play up the architectural characteristics that will give your apartment added personality.

Your view of the debt ceiling crisis has a lot of merit, except that the current administration (and, to some extent, the last one as well) has shown no inclination to manage the finances of this country in a responsible manner ("Just say no to financial insanity," Jan. 16). From no budgets passed by the Senate in at least three years (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should be impeached) to President Barack Obama commissioning the Bowles-Simpson team and then not doing any of its recommendations, the country is marching toward a much greater "fiscal cliff" than the small one just averted.

IN WHAT IS being called one of the most important business decisions of its 1997-1998 term, the Supreme Court last week unanimously ruled that manufacturers and wholesalers in some instances may set ceilings on retail prices.The decision overturned its 1968 ruling that such price ceilings were illegal under the federal antitrust law.Whether such a ceiling is legal should be analyzed under the commonly used "rule of reason" governing antitrust cases, the court said.The ruling represented a major victory for the Justice Department, which had argued that maximum-price restrictions are likely to be pro-competitive and should be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Traditional and understated outside, this Roland Park home is distinguished by its unexpected interior. The ceilings soar to show a grand foyer with a slate floor and a wood plank ceiling. Sunlight permeates the home's three levels with large skylights, picture windows, interior windows and French doors. All take advantage of the dappled shade of tall trees and terraced patios. An unusual spark is a loft library, a cozy nook that's in contrast to the expansive beamed living room. The owners, Laura Burrows and A. Michael Jackson, are selling because "it's time to move on," Burrows said, noting that she wants to downsize.

More and more Americans are living the high life.Until recently, ample vertical space was found almost exclusively in old town houses and in lofts that had been converted for residential use. The vast majority of dwellings built since the 1950s were outfitted with 8-foot ceilings. Initially seen as fashionable, the low ceilings soon became a standard feature, especially in apartments. It didn't take builders long to realize that they could squeeze more units into a given structure by limiting ceiling heights.

Custom builder Steve Hill said that when it comes to today's cathedral ceilings, most of his customers just can't resist the "wow" factor. They love it when guests arrive at their front door and are impressed by the two-story ceilings and grandiose windows. But Hill, whose Artery Homes builds houses throughout the Baltimore, Washington and Eastern Shore areas, said those dramatic elements can cause the homeowner problems with increased building costs, higher energy bills and wasted space.

WASHINGTON -- Congress is beginning to get a close look at the price of keeping the federal budget in balance -- it would mean squeezing everybody's favorite programs -- and signs are that the lawmakers won't pay it.As for the much-heralded budget surplus: Forget about it.Would-be budget-cutters are unnerved by dire scenarios: Scientific research canceled. Homeless AIDS patients left on the streets. Poor children turned away from Head Start programs. Emergency heating aid to the elderly denied.

WASHINGTON -- In a case that President Clinton and campaign finance reform advocates hope will lead the Supreme Court to change its mind about spending ceilings, a federal appeals court struck down yesterday a Cincinnati mandatory ceilings law passed explicitly to put the justices to a test.A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, rebuffing the pleas of 24 states and a host of activist organizations who want to curb spending, said that the arguments in favor of caps on campaign outlays have been rejected by the Supreme Court for more than 20 years.

Republicans in Washington seem to have recognized that refusing to raise the debt ceiling and putting the nation on the brink of default in a trumped-up "crisis" isn't playing well with the general public, so they're switching tactics. Now, instead of blindly driving off the cliff of fiscal Armageddon, they are pushing for the Obama administration to prioritize federal obligations - so the country can be late on some bills but not on debt payments, Social Security checks and pay for active-duty members of the military.

I just read your editorial, "Another cliff ahead?" (Jan. 4). Please understand Washington does not do anything these days unless it's forced to. The only leverage to get Democrats on board to have a serious discussion on our debt and the slowing of spending growth (calling it cuts is a joke) in the future are issues like the debt ceiling. You agree that we have a debt problem (as do most Americans), but do not want the Republicans to use the debt ceiling as leverage, then I have a question for you and your colleagues.

You state that the Republicans' "demanding spending cuts to reduce our deficit is holding the debt ceiling increase hostage" ("Another cliff ahead?" Jan. 4). Really? Most American citizens would have the common sense to cut spending if confronted with a problem of paying creditors! This would be done to ensure that the problem would not have to be dealt with in the future. Cut future spending and pay future bills! Republicans and Democrats should also hold themselves accountable and prior to raising "our" debt ceiling should demand spending cuts.

With the fiscal cliff surmounted, at least temporarily, a new Congress sworn in and Republicans licking their self-inflicted wounds, it is tempting to theorize that a new political reality has taken hold in the nation's capital - one where the American economy won't be taken hostage by the House GOP and Washington won't bounce around from one trumped-up crisis to another. The best evidence of this would be the lopsided and bipartisan votes in favor of the final tax package approved by both the House and Senate.

The announcement that House Speaker John Boehner has offered to take the debt ceiling off the table in the current "fiscal cliff" negotiations is, in one sense, a welcome development. If the Senate agrees, we will temporarily be spared the sort of embarrassing brinkmanship that accompanied the last increase, in August 2011. But a year from now, we will likely be back in the same place, where the debt ceiling is being held hostage by people who have no qualms about using the good credit of the United States as a negotiating ploy.

The U.S. Senate hasn't passed a budget in four years, during which time our budget deficits have averaged $1.1 trillion a year. The national debt is $16 trillion and rising, and it is now more than 70 percent of GDP. Meanwhile, unfunded mandates for Social Security and Medicare exceed tens of trillions of dollars. Yet according to The Sun, Republicans are the ones who are being irresponsible by attempting to use the debt ceiling to restore fiscal sanity to the nation's budget chaos ("The GOP's cynical debt limit ploy," Dec. 10)

When Anne and Jayant add the finishing touches to dishes for a dinner party, they don't feel isolated from their guests. Instead they are center stage, working in the expansive open kitchen of their Baltimore County home while chatting with friends who are mingling in the surrounding living area of the great room."

When Jeanne and Sean St. Martin bought an old house on a hill above Historic Ellicott City's Main Street, they became the owners of a building that had been turned into three apartments and had been rented for decades. They could see the sky through numerous places in the roof. That was 22 years and many improvements ago. The couple, both accountants, removed walls, created rooms, dumped three work kitchens in favor of one airy eat-in and stripped the black paint off the pine floors in a home that already had a few additions to the original house.

GrandView, a condominium highrise in the heart of Annapolis Towne Centre, certainly lives up to its name, especially in the 12th-floor penthouse of Barry and Olga Scher. In this three-bedroom, 3½-bath unit with a den, living room, dining room, open kitchen and two balconies, the couple marvels at the views of the Bay Bridge and the sailboats, cruise and cargo ships that pass beneath it daily. Former residents of Washington's Georgetown/Palisades neighborhood, the Schers, tired of climbing the stairs in their four-story home, set about searching the area for the perfect condo, even checking out the Capital's infamous Watergate complex.

If Mitt Romney wins the presidential election this fall, he'll have Harry Reid partly to thank. The Republican presidential nominee and the Senate Democratic leader don't have much in common politically. But they're both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - that is, they're both Mormons. So whenever officials of the LDS church are asked about the once-common concern that a Mormon president might take orders from Salt Lake City, they have a ready answer: Just look at Harry Reid.