"We try to start the process early," said Grace Guerrero Zwit, who handles visa issues as senior director for minor league operations for the Chicago White Sox, "but filing for the visa is like filing taxes: if you miss one box, it gets sent back; but they don't call you, they'll send it in the mail.
At the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonprofit institution that specializes in energy and pollution issues, Joe Kruger, the director for energy and environment, said, "E.P.A.'s efforts to reduce the cost of cutting pollution by using market trading keep running up against the limitations of the statute".
Indeed, the one person expected to raise the issue, Alan Reuther, legislative director for the United Automobile Workers, did not show up.
After the ruling was issued, Dennis O'Shea, communications director for Johns Hopkins, estimated that compliance could cost the university millions of dollars a year.
"It's funny, I work on a lot of different issues, like spotted owls—highly controversial issues," said Bob Sallinger, conservation director for the Audubon Society of Portland.
"One of the things I really like about this report is that education is not just a civil rights issue, it's an economic issue," said Claudia Peña, statewide director for the California Civil Rights Coalition.
The Calvin Klein company bought a few issues after Michael Berkowitz, design director for the men's underwear division, discovered the collection.
"It's not that they are not going to talk about gun issues," said Joe Sudbay, political director for Handgun Control Inc., a nonprofit advocacy group.
"We don't talk social issues," said Mary Ann Carter, policy director for the Young Guns Network, who manages the pavilion, as several young women from the convention milled about sipping coffee and shopping for souvenirs.
"I think often they are uninformed, not making good decisions, clear decisions about discipline, not schooled in psychology or therapeutic issues," said Ruth Ehresman, policy director for Citizens for Missouri's Children, a public interest group.
