http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/safety-lapses-raised-risks-in-trailers-for-katrina-victims 5/26/2008. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/24/AR2008052401973_pf.html. By Spencer S. Hsu Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 25, 2008; A01 Within days of Hurricane Katrina's landfall in August 2005, frantic officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/safety-lapses-raised-risks-in-trailers-for-katrina-victims Mon, 26 May 2008 12:53:48 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/running-against-themselves 9/05/2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/opinion/04thu1.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1220760000&en=911c9604f792c501&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin. Three days into the Republican National Convention, it is clear that . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/running-against-themselves Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:54:15 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/is-history-siding-with-obamas-economic-plan 9/04/2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/business/31view.html?em. Clearly, there are major differences between the economic policies of Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. Mr. McCain wants more tax cuts for the rich; Mr. Obama wants tax cuts for the poor and middle class. The two men also disagree on health care, energy and many other topics. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/is-history-siding-with-obamas-economic-plan Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:03:31 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/sad-paradox-exists-in-u.s.-health-care 8/28/2008. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/falkenberg/5971068.html. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/sad-paradox-exists-in-u.s.-health-care Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:30:21 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/why-biden-is-such-an-important-pick-for-those-who-care-about-the-climate 8/26/2008. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/8/25/121024/480. Catastrophic climate change is the primary . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/why-biden-is-such-an-important-pick-for-those-who-care-about-the-climate Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:49:38 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/bush-hustling-the-bureaucracy-to-advance-rightwing-agenda 8/25/2008. http://www.progressive.org/mag/wx081808b.html . Bush has vowed to sprint through the final five months of his Administration, and you better believe him. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/bush-hustling-the-bureaucracy-to-advance-rightwing-agenda Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:44:44 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/mccain-doesnt-remember-how-many-houses-he-owns 8/21/2008. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/21/mccain-doesnt-know-how-ma_n_120322.html. McCain said in an interview with Politico on Wednesday "that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own." . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/mccain-doesnt-remember-how-many-houses-he-owns Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:31:50 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/can-we-do-it-here 8/11/2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/opinion/11krugman.html. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/can-we-do-it-here Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:54:28 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/know-nothing-politics 8/08/2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/know-nothing-politics Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:27:12 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/millions-with-chronic-disease-get-little-to-no-treatment 8/05/2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/business/05health.html. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/millions-with-chronic-disease-get-little-to-no-treatment Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:54:43 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/senate-passes-fisa-bill-gives-telecoms-immunity 7/9/2008. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/09/compromise-fisa-bill-pass_n_111709.html. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/senate-passes-fisa-bill-gives-telecoms-immunity Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:10:09 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/30-billion-fewer-miles-driven-and-counting 7/5/2008. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008034444_gasprices05.html. By Tony Pugh McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Our days as an automobile nation are far from over. But the specter of high gasoline prices becoming permanent has forced the United States to reassess its "Yeah, right" attitude toward public transportation and to reconsider how Americans get from point A to point B. In the 1970s, when gas-station lines snaked around the corner and gas guzzlers ruled Detroit, Asian automakers flooded the nation with fuel-efficient models. Today, after Detroit's long romance with gas-quaffing SUVs, U.S. automakers again are playing catch-up to hot-selling Japanese hybrids. Casual observers see history repeating itself. But transportation experts said the current gasoline crisis, driven by price, is far different from those of the '70s, which were crises of availability. They predict a more lasting impact on what we drive, how we drive and investment in mass transit. According to AAA, the average two-car family now would spend about $6,200 a year to gas up its vehicles. "That's unsustainable. At some point, the math begins to not work," said Stephen Reich, director of the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida. The national average price of regular unleaded hit $4.101 on Friday, and in the Seattle area, it was $4.375, according to AAA. Evidence is mounting of a wholesale change in the way Americans commute. Motorists have driven roughly 30 billion fewer miles in the past six months compared with the same period a year ago, according to federal government estimates. Meanwhile, commuters took 10.3 billion trips on public transportation last year, the most in 50 years — when the population was about 60 percent the current size — according to the American Public Transportation Association. Ridership is up 3.3 percent in the first three months of 2008 and 30 percent since 1995. Those trends suggest growing numbers of Americans are reaching their tipping points in how much they'll spend for the freedom and luxury of personal automobile transportation. "We're definitely entering territory we've never been before," Reich said. "So it's very difficult for me to really understand whether it's a protracted short-term behavioral change that we always see when there's some new [gas-price] threshold or whether this does represent a tipping point." Transportation consultant Alan Pisarski shares Reich's reluctance to declare the nation in the early stages of a commuter revolution. When looking at modes of travel, scale is important, Pisarski said. Mass transit accounts for only 1 percent of U.S. travel, so if it increases 20 percent, "it's still only 1.2 percent of travel," Pisarski said. In addition, the recent decline in automobile travel isn't the result of people leaving their cars for public transportation. People are simply deferring trips, shortening them and driving less because of the cost. The economic slowdown also plays a part, Pisarski said. Fewer people with jobs means fewer people driving to work and less economic activity, which results in less vehicle travel, particularly among trucks, because fewer goods are purchased and shipped. Recreational travel also takes a hit, as fewer people drive to the movies, malls and for vacations. The U.S. House recently passed a bill that would authorize nearly $2 billion worth of investments in public-transportation systems. The extra money would help keep fares down and expand service. In recent years, more cities have embraced public-transit funding as urban sprawl drives traffic congestion and rising energy costs put a damper on home values in suburban and exurban areas. After voters approved a 20-year transit-sales tax in 2000, a 20-mile stretch of light rail linking Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa, Ariz., will begin service this year. In 2004, Phoenix-area voters approved another transportation sales tax to improve highways and add 37 more miles to the light-rail system. Arizona business leaders and the governor are pushing for a statewide ballot initiative this fall to raise $42 billion over 30 years for more road and commuter-rail projects. In the Seattle area, Sound Transit's new Link light-rail line is scheduled to open in late 2009 from downtown to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Last year, voters in urban Snohomish, King and Pierce counties trounced the $38 billion "Roads & Transit" proposition that included a 0.5 percent sales-tax increase to build 50 miles of rail over 20 years. But gas prices are creating new urgency for Sound Transit to try another ballot measure this fall that would expand the light-rail system. Board members are talking about whether they can stretch the rail line to Lynnwood, instead of stopping it at Northgate, and representatives from South King County are seeking support to push the line beyond SeaTac to Federal Way. Denver's $6.1 billion rail system has helped home sales in areas that the line serves, and Salt Lake City has built 92 miles of commuter rail in recent years. In the Kansas City, Mo., area, local leaders are pushing for a $1.2 billion mass transit plan featuring light and commuter rail, streetcars and buses. If nothing else, the psychological effect of rising gas prices will make the public more willing to embrace mass transit funding in the future, Pisarski said. The flurry of activity to pay for transit projects hasn't swayed Elizabeth Deakin, director of the University of California Transportation Research Center in Berkeley. She remains skeptical about signs indicating that mass transit is moving to usurp the automobile's prominence. "We have a long way to go before we would be a transit nation," Deakin said. Most U.S. public-transit riders are based in a few large cities. About half of all transit commuters live in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, according to the Congressional Research Service. Collectively, these cities and surrounding areas make up roughly 70 percent of all public-transportation trips in the United States. That's not surprising, since public transportation works best in areas with at least 15 homes per acre and preferably more, Deakin said. The nation's love for low-density housing development makes mass transit less feasible in areas without large urban cores. If a half-mile radius is the maximum convenient walking distance for a transit station, 7,800 workers would reside in the estimated 400 developed acres encompassing that half-mile radius, Deakin estimated. "If 25 percent take transit to get to work, that is only 2,000 transit commuters, a pretty low number for the transit station ... and work trips tend to be half of all trips made by transit," Deakin said. "Bottom line: We can get people to select transit when it is convenient, comfortable and a good choice, but if we build all low-density neighborhoods, few people will have a reasonable transit option," Deakin said. Material from The Seattle Times archives is included in this report. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/30-billion-fewer-miles-driven-and-counting Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:31:25 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/exxon-has-record-profit-again-on-soaring-oil-prices 7/31/2008. http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSWEN711420080731. NEW YORK (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp said on Thursday soaring oil prices pushed its second-quarter earnings up 14 percent, again breaking its own record for the highest-ever profit by a U.S. company. Net income in the quarter rose to $11.68 billion, or $2.22 a share, from $10.26 billion, or $1.83 a share, last year. Exxon -- the world's largest publicly traded company -- previously set the high-water mark for quarterly earnings in the fourth quarter of last year, when it brought in $11.66 billion. Despite the new record, Exxon's results lagged behind analyst expectations. The company posted operating earnings of $2.27 a share in the quarter, which exclude a $290 million charge related to the recent Supreme Court ruling in the Exxon Valdez case. Analysts, on average, had expected the company to earn $2.53 a share, according to Reuters Estimates. Revenue in the quarter rose about 40 percent to $138.07 billion. Exxon both produces oil and refines it to make gasoline, and profit margins for gasoline were weak during the quarter, holding back earnings slightly. The company said earnings from its exploration and production business rose about 68 percent to $10.01 billion. But its refining and marketing earnings fell about 54 percent to $1.56 billion. U.S. oil prices averaged slightly less than $125 a barrel in the quarter, nearly double prices from a year earlier. Gasoline prices only rose 25 percent during that same period, resulting in weak profit margins for the fuel. Shares of Exxon Mobil fell 2.2 percent in pre-market trade after its earnings were announced. Through Wednesday's close, they were down about 10 percent this year, underperforming the Chicago Board Options Exchange's oil index, which has fallen about 5.2 percent over the same period. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/exxon-has-record-profit-again-on-soaring-oil-prices Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:09:00 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/race-profiling-eyed-for-terror-probes 7/3/2008. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g07mkwmsp4l_Q5H-YBiHq6phbimgD91LTE800. By LARA JAKES JORDAN WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups. Law enforcement officials say the proposed policy would help them do exactly what Congress demanded after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: root out terrorists before they strike. Although President Bush has disavowed targeting suspects based on their race or ethnicity, the new rules would allow the FBI to consider those factors among a number of traits that could trigger a national security investigation. Currently, FBI agents need specific reasons — like evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated — to investigate U.S. citizens and legal residents. The new policy, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press, would let agents open preliminary terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, were deemed suspicious. Among the factors that could make someone subject of an investigation is travel to regions of the world known for terrorist activity, access to weapons or military training, along with the person's race or ethnicity. More than a half-dozen senior FBI, Justice Department and other U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the new policy agreed to discuss it only on condition of anonymity, either because they were not allowed to speak publicly or because the change is not yet final. The change, which is expected later this summer, is part of an update of Justice Department policies known as the attorney general guidelines. They are being overhauled amid the FBI's transition from a traditional crime-fighting agency to one whose top mission is to protect America from terrorist attacks. "We don't know what we don't know. And the object is to cut down on that," said one FBI official who defended the plans. Another official, while also defending the proposed guidelines, raised concerns about criticism during the presidential election year over what he called "the P word" — profiling. If adopted, the guidelines would be put in place in the final months of a presidential administration that has been dogged by criticism that its counterterror programs trample privacy rights and civil liberties. Critics say the presumption of innocence is lost in the proposal. The FBI will be allowed to begin investigations simply "by assuming that everyone's a suspect, and then you weed out the innocent," said Caroline Fredrickson of the American Civil Liberties Union. Attorney General Michael Mukasey acknowledged the overhaul was under way in early June, saying the guidelines sought to ensure regulations for FBI terror investigations don't conflict with ones governing criminal probes. He would not give any details. "It's necessary to put in place regulations that will allow the FBI to transform itself ... into an intelligence gathering organization in addition to just a crime solving organization," Mukasey told reporters. The changes would allow FBI agents to ask open-ended questions about activities of Muslim- or Arab-Americans, or investigate them if their jobs and backgrounds match trends that analysts deem suspect. FBI agents would not be allowed to eavesdrop on phone calls or dig deeply into personal data — such as the content of phone or e-mail records or bank statements — until a full investigation was opened. The guidelines focus on the FBI's domestic operations and run about 40 pages long, several officials said. They do not specifically spell out what traits the FBI should use in building profiles. One senior Justice Department official said agents have been allowed since 2003 to build "threat assessments" of Americans based on public records and information from informants. Such assessments could be used to open a preliminary investigation, the official said. However, another official said the 2003 authorities are limited, tightly monitored by FBI headquarters in Washington and, overall, confusing to agents about how or when they can be used. Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the guidelines are part of a "harmonizing" process that will not give the FBI any more authority than it already has. He and two other senior Justice officials would not deny the changes as they were described to AP by others familiar with the guidelines. "Since we are still in the process of drafting the guidelines, we are unable to comment any further about timing or the specific outcome of the review," Roehrkasse said in a statement. "It is important to note, however, that nothing in the attorney general's guidelines can authorize what is prohibited by any statute or by the Constitution." Although the guidelines do not require congressional approval, House members recently sought to limit such profiling by rejecting an $11 million request for the FBI's security assessment center. Lawmakers wrote it that was unclear how the FBI could compile suspect profiles "in such a way as to avoid needless intrusions into the privacy of innocent citizens" and without wasting time and money chasing down false leads. The denial of funding could limit the FBI's use of profiles, or "predictive models and patterns of behavior" as the government prefers to describe the data-mining results, but would not change the guidelines authorizing them. The guidelines would remain in effect until a new attorney general decided to change them. Courts across the country have overturned criminal convictions when defendants showed they were targeted based on race. Racial profiling generally is considered a civil rights violation, and former Attorney General John Ashcroft condemned it in March 2001 as an "unconstitutional deprivation of equal protection under our Constitution." President Bush also has condemned racial profiling as "wrong in America" and in a December 2001 interview had harsh words for an airline that refused to let one of his Secret Service agents board a commercial flight. The agent was Arab-American. "If he was treated that way because of his ethnicity, that will make me madder than heck," Bush said. Immediately after 9/11, hundreds of Muslims and Arabs were detained, deported and monitored as the government urgently sought information that could prevent another attack. Despite efforts to repair and nurture relationships with those groups, Muslim- and Arab-Americans still complain of being singled out by federal security practices. Martin Redish, a constitutional and civil rights scholar at Northwestern University School of Law, said courts are likely to give the FBI a lot of leeway in deciding how to open national security investigations. "But it's a very fine line to be drawn when the basis of the investigation is dominated by the ethnic background of the subject," Redish said. "And when the investigation results in harassment, you have a serious constitutional concern." Citing Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh — two white Americans — the ACLU's Fredrickson said: "Profiling has sent us in the wrong direction. ... I thought we learned our lesson in that regard." . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/race-profiling-eyed-for-terror-probes Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:10:39 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/motorists-help-gasoline-prices-slide 7/29/2008. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-gas29-2008jul29,0,4637883.story. By Ronald D. White, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Gasoline prices skidded sharply lower during the last week partly because . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/motorists-help-gasoline-prices-slide Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:15:42 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/senate-republicans-block-heating-aid-bill 7/28/2008. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/07/senate_republicans_block_heati.php. Republicans on Saturday blocked the Senate from considering a bill next week . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/senate-republicans-block-heating-aid-bill Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:14:05 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/western-governors-offer-greenhouse-emissions-plan 7/24/2007. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iqGMrzmNKuHg8Hmz_YBFYQvY4J4AD9243OD80. By BRAD CAIN SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Seven Western states are joining four Canadian provinces . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/western-governors-offer-greenhouse-emissions-plan Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:41:21 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/report-says-pentagon-pressured-intimidated-auditors 7/23/2008. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/23/AR2008072301437.html?hpid=topnews. By Dana . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/report-says-pentagon-pressured-intimidated-auditors Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:25:10 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/lawmakers-urge-bush-to-halt-abortion-proposal 7/22/2008. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5421109&page=1. By MATTHEW JAFFE More than 100 members of Congress wrote President Bush today, urging him to . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/lawmakers-urge-bush-to-halt-abortion-proposal Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:39:43 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/another-gop-oil-drilling-myth-is-born 7/21/2008. http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/another_oildrilling_myth_is_bo.php. By Eric Kleefeld As you know, we've been posting here regularly about the GOP's frequent pushing of the myth that China is drilling for oil off American shores. Well here's another outlandish oil-drilling line: If not for the Dems in Congress, gas would cost two bucks a gallon! Here's what Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota had to say in an op-ed for National Review, promoting drilling in ANWR: The fact of the matter is that Congress is standing in the way of $2-a-gallon gas. It is Speaker Pelosi and the House Democrats who are refusing to let commonsense energy legislation come to the floor. That's right: Bachmann says that we can cut the price of gas from over four dollars down to two, a change of more than 50%, by just opening up some new drilling. What wonderful news! The problem, however, is that this just isn't true when you're working on the scale of a vast global marketplace. In the case of ANWR, a Department of Energy study this past May found that drilling there could potentially lower the price of a barrel of oil by a mere 75 cents -- only enough to lower the price of a gallon of gas by about two cents, and it would take until the year 2025. Proposed offshore drilling plans for other areas have yielded similar numbers, too. Oh well. Lowering the price by two dollars, or two cents -- what's the difference? We'll be hearing a lot more of this line over the next few months. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/another-gop-oil-drilling-myth-is-born Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:09:27 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/acceptance-of-gay-people-in-military-grows-dramatically 7/20/2008. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/18/AR2008071802561.html?hpid=moreheadlines. By Kyle Dropp and Jon Cohen Public attitudes about gays in the military have shifted dramatically since President Bill Clinton unveiled what became his administration's "don't ask, don't tell" policy 15 years ago today. Seventy-five percent of Americans in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll said gay people who are open about their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military, up from 62 percent in early 2001 and 44 percent in 1993. Majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents alike now believe it is acceptable for openly gay people to serve in the U.S. armed forces. Shortly after he took office in 1993, Clinton faced strong resistance to his campaign pledge to lift the military's ban on allowing gay people to enlist. At that time, 67 percent of Republicans and 75 percent of conservatives opposed the idea. A majority of independents, 56 percent, and 45 percent of Democrats also opposed changing the policy. Today, Americans have become more supportive of allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the armed forces. Support from Republicans has doubled over the past 15 years, from 32 to 64 percent. More than eight in 10 Democrats and more than three-quarters of independents now support the idea, as did nearly two-thirds of self-described conservatives. Changing attitudes on the issue parallel broader swings in public views about homosexuality. In their recent review of 20 years of polling data, the Pew Research Center reported "a major shift away from highly negative attitudes toward gays and support for punitive actions against gays." In the 2007 Pew data, for example, 28 percent said local school boards should have the right to fire teachers known to be gay; that was down sharply from the 51 percent who said so in 1987. In the new Post-ABC poll, military veterans are less apt than others to say gay people should be allowed in the military. While 71 percent of veterans said gay people who do not declare themselves as such should be allowed to serve, that number drops sharply, to 50 percent, for those who are open about their sexuality. Non-veterans, by contrast, are as likely to support those who "tell" as those who do not. Fifty-seven percent of white evangelical Protestants now support allowing openly gay service members in the military, compared with 82 percent of white Catholics and 80 percent of those with no declared religious affiliation. Three-quarters of both married and single people support the idea, both significantly higher than in 1993. Across all three periodic Post-ABC surveys on the issue, women have been more apt than men to support gays in the military. Today, more than eight in 10 women support allowing openly gay soldiers, compared with nearly two-thirds of men. Fifteen years ago, half of women supported this stance; nearly two-thirds of men opposed it. Furthermore, large majorities across age and education categories now support allowing openly gay individuals to serve in the military. The Post-ABC poll was conducted by telephone July 10 to 13, among a random national sample of 1,119 adults. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. Error margins are larger for subgroups. Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/acceptance-of-gay-people-in-military-grows-dramatically Sun, 20 Jul 2008 10:11:47 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/citing-global-warming-georgia-judge-blocks-coal-plant 7/2/2008. http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/07/02/citing-global-warming-georgia-judge-blocks-coal-plant/. In what is thought to be an unprecedented ruling, a Superior Court judge in Fulton County, Ga., halted the construction of a coal-fired power plant, saying that the plant must limit its emissions of carbon dioxide. Citing an April 2007 US Supreme Court ruling that recognizes carbon dioxide – the primary gas responsible for global warming – as a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act, Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore overturned a lower court’s decision to issue an air-pollution permit to Dynegy’s Longleaf power plant near Columbus, Ga. Her decision is believed to be the first one that links global warming to an air-pollution permit. The case had been brought by the Sierra Club and Friends of the Chattahoochee, a local environmental group. They were represented by GreenLaw, an Atlanta-based public-interest law firm. The coal-fired power plant – the first proposed in Georgia in 20 years – cannot begin construction until it can obtain a valid permit that complies with the court’s ruling. The 19-page ruling [PDF via GreenLaw] says that “[t]here is no dispute that the proposed power plant would be a ‘major emitting facility’ as defined by the [Clean Air] Act,” requiring that the plant must incorporate the “best available control technology” to limit carbon dioxide emissions. GreenLaw says that the proposed plant would emit 9 million tons of CO2 each year – the equivalent of 1.3 million cars. The firm also notes that a typical coal-fired plant emits 3.7 million tons annually, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. The Atlanta-Journal Constitution quotes opponents of the plant who hail the groundbreaking decision: “We think this is the beginning of the end of conventional coal-fired power plants, because of the enormity of their emissions,” said Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club’s national campaign against coal. Of the 80 coal plants in the permitting process nationwide, about 30 are in active litigation, Nilles said. The Sierra Club is fighting coal plants across the country and was one of the petitioners in the Georgia case. “Our state can find other ways to produce cleaner, more economically beneficial energy,” said Patty Durand, director of the Georgia Chapter of the Sierra Club. “Other states are doing it. Why can’t we?” The New York Times says that the impact of the decision for the Longleaf plant, or for other proposed plants in Georgia and around the country, is unclear: Robert Wyman, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Latham & Watkins, the law firm, who has represented power producers in previous cases, said of the decision: “I would be surprised if it had much of an impact. I’m not sure other jurisdictions will pick up that opinion.” He said that, despite the Supreme Court finding, federal regulators had not issued the finding required before a pollutant can be regulated. Vickie Patton, the deputy general counsel at the Environmental Defense Fund, however, argued that the judge’s reasoning might prove persuasive to other courts facing similar issues. The Knight Science Journalism Tracker – an insider blog for science writers – is skeptical that the ruling will stick: Big coal has BIG money, as do the utilities that burn its product, and as does industry and, most important, as does the general public. None are at all resigned to blackouts and rolling brownouts and soaring electricity bills while coal capture and sequestration technologies remain good ideas with absolutely no full-scale prototype operations, anywhere. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/citing-global-warming-georgia-judge-blocks-coal-plant Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:23:38 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/report-u_s_-africa-aid-is-increasingly-military 7/18/2008. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/17/AR2008071702550.html. By Stephanie McCrummen NAIROBI, July 17 -- U.S. aid to Africa is becoming increasingly militarized, resulting in skewed priorities and less attention to longer-term development projects that could lead to greater stability across the continent, according to a report released Thursday by the advocacy group Refugees International. The report warns that the planned U.S. Africa Command, designed to boost America's image and prevent terrorism, is allowing the Defense Department to usurp funds traditionally directed by the State Department and U.S. aid agencies. A Pentagon spokesman did not return a call requesting comment. But Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned this week against the risk of a "creeping militarization" of U.S. foreign policy and said the State Department should lead U.S. engagement with other countries. The Pentagon, which controlled about 3 percent of official aid money a decade ago, now controls 22 percent, while the U.S. Agency for International Development's share has declined from 65 percent to 40 percent, according to the 56-page report. "The danger is this strategy will not achieve the security objectives of addressing the root causes of terrorism," said Mark Malan, author of the report. "And it certainly won't address the developmental objectives of U.S. foreign policy." Refugees International, based in Washington, provides aid to refugees and advocates for solutions to end conditions that create displacement. Malan said the militarization has been driven by the U.S. focus on counterterrorism, though the trend dates to the Cold War era. The more fundamental problem, he said, is a lack of consistent, coherent U.S. foreign policy attention to Africa. For example, the United States has dedicated nearly $50 million to hire contractors to train 2,000 soldiers in post-civil war Liberia, a West African country of 4 million people. Meanwhile, $5.5 million has been dedicated to boosting a weak and unprofessional army of 164,000 soldiers in Congo, a country of 65 million where a decade-long conflict and humanitarian crisis have left an estimated 5 million people dead. The headquarters of the new African command post, known as Africom, has not been determined, and many African leaders have rejected hosting it. A temporary headquarters is being set up in Stuttgart, Germany, and is expected to begin consolidating responsibility for the continent in October. Africom in part aims to better integrate U.S. efforts in Africa by coordinating military activities with the State Department and other agencies, but "the State Department is being overwhelmed by the Pentagon," Malan said. That concern was also raised in a Government Accountability Office report on Africom released this week. The report noted that Africom, which is to have about 1,300 employees, has had difficulty integrating 13 staff members from the State Department and other agencies. "State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development officials have expressed concerns that Africom will become the lead for all U.S. efforts in Africa, rather than just DOD activities," the report said. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/report-u_s_-africa-aid-is-increasingly-military Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:53:05 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/investigators-find-abuse-in-govt-contract-program 7/16/2008. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/07/16/investigators_find_abuse_in_govt_contract_program/?rss_id=Boston.com+--+Latest+news. By Hope Yen Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON—Companies collected tens of millions of dollars in government contracts by claiming to have main offices in poor neighborhoods that were actually empty duplexes, part-time offices and other ineligible locations, congressional investigators charge. Billions more remain at risk because the Small Business Administration doesn't usually check paperwork, rarely conducts audits and is slow to kick out firms that are no longer eligible for the $8 billion in special contract set-asides for small businesses, the Government Accountability Office said. A pair of GAO reports, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, examined SBA's Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) program, which was created in 1997 to help thousands of small firms in distressed areas. To be eligible, companies fill out applications attesting to the fact that their principal office -- where the greatest number of employees work -- is in a designated HUBZone and that at least 35 percent of the firm's full-time employees live in that area. The GAO's review of 125 applications submitted in September 2007 found the SBA asked for supporting evidence of a firm's eligibility claims only one-third of the time; the agency conducted a site visit only once to verify whether an office actually existed. In all, SBA conducted audits on 5 percent of the total 13,000 HUBZone firms from 2004-2007; when it did conduct an audit, more than half of the firms on average were deemed ineligible. In the Washington D.C., area, the GAO found 10 out of 17 certified HUBZone firms it investigated failed to maintain minimum employee requirements or falsely claimed principal locations in places such as a dentist's office. Those firms, providing services from engineering to information technology, were awarded $105 million in preferential contracts in 2006-2007 from the Pentagon, Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services -- based at least in part on their HUBZone status. Also improperly certified were four bogus firms set up by the GAO claiming fake principal locations in HUBZone areas that were actually a Starbucks coffee shop, ineligible P.O. box addresses, or "virtual offices" consisting of part-time space. SBA approved each of the four firms with few questions within two to five weeks. "You have to wonder about the Bush administration and its commitment to disadvantaged communities, when all it takes for wealthy individuals to access billions of dollars in federal contracts is a $10 P.O. Box and a bottle of Wite-out," said Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez, D-N.Y., who chairs the House Committee on Small Business and requested the reports. Her committee plans to hold a hearing Thursday examining the HUBZone program. Responding, the SBA agreed with the GAO's findings and said it was undergoing a complete review of its HUBZone program to identify ineligible companies and suspend those that falsely represented themselves. For example, the agency was asking staff to take a second look at all HUBZone firms that won government contracts and to conduct on-site visits as necessary. Companies are being sent letters notifying them that they may be subject to random checks to recertify status. SBA also will now be requiring firms when they apply for HUBZone status to submit supporting documentation, Fay E. Ott, SBA's associate administrator of government contracting, said in a telephone interview. Ott said the agency would adopt new staff guidance as to when to seek supporting paperwork, hire more people to help conduct checks and conduct a nationwide audit to determine if ineligible firms outside the D.C. area improperly received contracts. "We're holding our staff accountable and holding HUBZone firms accountable," she said. The GAO said it had referred the 10 cases it found ineligible to the SBA's inspector general. Among those cited by the investigators: --Quantum Dynamics Inc.: Army contract worth up to $40 million, $3.9 million obligated so far. Company claimed a principal D.C. address in HUBZone application that was a small room on the upper floor of a dentist's office where no more than two people could work comfortably; the building owner said nobody had worked there "for some time." The company's Web site said its headquarters is in McLean, Va., described by the GAO as one of the wealthiest areas in the U.S.; most of the firm's officers and half the employees worked there. --Platinum One Contracting Inc.: Various government contracts, including the Air Force, worth $12.2 million. Company claimed HUBZone address in Landover, Md., that was one-half of a residential duplex; no employees were found during normal business hours. Only four of its 34 employees, or 12 percent, lived in a HUBZone. Firm declared itself "HUBZone certified" on its Web site even after an officer acknowledged to investigators the firm didn't meet requirements. Main office is actually in Capitol Heights, Md., which isn't a HUBZone. "We found that all 10 of these case-study firms continued to represent themselves ... as eligible to participate in the HUBZone program. Because the 10 case-study examples clearly are not eligible, we consider each firm's continued representation indicative of fraud," investigators wrote. Several phone and e-mail messages left at Quantum Dynamics and Platinum One were not immediately returned Wednesday. The GAO reports are the latest to document problems in the award of contracts and government aid to small businesses Previous audits have highlighted problems in which large companies receiving contracts were improperly coded as small firms, skewing government statistics to suggest a better outcome. A report by the SBA inspector general as early as 2003, meanwhile, reported that the agency's internal controls were inadequate to ensure that only eligible firms were allowed to participate in the HUBZone program. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/investigators-find-abuse-in-govt-contract-program Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:11:53 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/bush-lifts-offshore-drilling-ban 7/14/2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7506346.stm. President George W Bush has lifted an executive ban on drilling for oil in most US coastal waters, and has urged lawmakers to follow suit. He wants Congress to end its separate ban on drilling, in order to reduce US dependence on oil imports. "Now the ball is squarely in Congress' court," he said, adding that it was "time for action". Mr Bush's move comes as high oil prices have pushed US petrol prices to more than $4 (£2) per gallon. Mr Bush added: "The American people are watching the numbers climb higher and higher at the pump and they're waiting to see what the Congress will do." His move will have no effect unless Congress acts as well. On Friday oil prices - which have been rising steeply during 2008 - touched new highs, peaking above $147 a barrel. Coastal concern US energy needs are set to be a key issue in November's presidential election. Republican John McCain is in favour of offshore oil drilling, whereas his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, opposes it. Environmentalists have reacted with alarm to Mr Bush's call, saying offshore drilling would take at least a decade to have any effect on oil supply and would exacerbate climate change. And congressional Democratic leaders oppose ending the drilling ban. They point out that oil companies already have 68 million acres under government leases they can drill. "This proposal is something you'd expect from an oil company CEO, not the president of the United States," said Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate Environment Committee. "The president is taking special-interest government to a new level and threatening our thriving coastal economy." Since 1981, a congressional moratorium has prohibited oil and gas drilling along the east and west coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, an area accounting for some 80% of the US's outer continental shelf. The executive drilling ban was issued in 1990 by the current president's father, President George H W Bush, and then extended by President Bill Clinton. Since then offshore drilling and exploration have only been allowed in the western and central regions of the Gulf of Mexico plus parts of Alaska. The federal bans were enacted in part to protect tourism and lessen the chance of oil spills washing on to beaches. Presidential election Mr Bush wants Congress to pass legislation to allow "responsible offshore exploration" and give states a say about whether drilling should be allowed. But Mr Obama's campaign condemned the move, saying: "It would merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for 30 years." It would be unlikely if Democrats in Congress backed a policy that contradicted their presidential candidate ahead of the November election. Republican contender John McCain, who changed his previous opposition to offshore drilling, said he thought the decision was a "very important signal" and that "states should continue to decide". . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/bush-lifts-offshore-drilling-ban Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:10:23 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/sudan-president-expected-to-face-war-crime-charges 7/11/2008. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gMU9_nxHnfBspo342jYG0nXyx7-gD91RST700. By JOHN HEILPRIN UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The prosecutor of the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal will seek an arrest warrant Monday charging Sudan's president with crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur, a move U.N. diplomats warned could bring a backlash from Sudan's government. U.N. officials and diplomats said the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court would seek an indictment charging Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with orchestrating violence in Darfur that has left hundreds of thousands of people dead. Sudan's government reacted swiftly and angrily. "If you indict our head of state, the symbol of our country, the symbol of our dignity, then the sky's the limit for our reactions," Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamed told The Associated Press on Friday. "We condemn it in the strongest of terms. It will have far-reaching, bad implications for the entire country." China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya, whose nation is an ally of Sudan, expressed concern that bringing charges against al-Bashir could jeopardize peace talks and put peacekeepers and humanitarian aid workers in Darfur at greater risk. "It's one of the implications we have to consider," he said. South Africa's U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo also cautioned that Darfur's embattled people could be left even less secure. "The debate about the balance between justice, peace and development is a very difficult one," he said. The court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, said the prosecutor will present evidence of war crimes in Darfur to judges Monday and one or more new suspects would be named. But court officials refused to identify any of the potential new suspects. U.N. officials and diplomats said they expect lesser charges of helping orchestrate genocide and participating in crimes against humanity to be brought against Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. A spokesman for Sudan's president dismissed the investigation and said his government refuses to hand over any suspects. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack warned the Sudanese government not to resort to violence. "Violence perpetrated by the government against those on the ground performing humanitarian missions, performing duties on behalf of their governments ... certainly does not serve the purposes of the Sudanese government," he said. The court's prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina, has clearly indicated that he is aiming for the top leadership of the Sudanese government, accusing them of sponsoring the janjaweed militias who have unleashed a reign of terror on the country's Darfur region. At least 300,000 people have died since the conflict began in early 2003. The prosecutor has described the probe as relying on investigators based in neighboring Chad and more than 100 witnesses in 18 countries. He told the U.N. Security Council in June that "evidence shows that the commission of such crimes on such a scale, over a period of five years, and throughout Darfur, has required the sustained mobilization of the entire Sudanese state apparatus." An indictment of al-Bashir would mark the first time the International Criminal Court has charged a sitting head of state with war crimes. But there is precedent: Other U.N.-created international tribunals charged Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Liberian President Charles Taylor with war crimes while they were still in office. Milosevic died in his cell in March 2006, shortly before the end of his genocide trail. Taylor is currently on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone. The charges could bring reprisals from Sudan's government, which already has made it difficult for international aid workers and U.N.-African Union peacekeepers to do their work. "If the procedure is going the way it seems it's going to go, of course we have to be aware of the effects it would have on the ground," France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said Friday of the court's expected action. Threats to the peacekeepers — currently about 9,000 soldiers and police officers — were underscored this week by an ambush that killed seven and wounded 19, one of the deadliest attacks on U.N. forces in recent years. But some court experts said the benefits outweigh the risks. "If the prosecutor requests an arrest warrant against the president of Sudan for genocide or crimes against humanity or both, it will a huge step in limiting the impunity for horrific acts committed against innocent people in Darfur," said Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program for Human Rights Watch, a research and advocacy group. "It would send the message that no one is above the law for these kinds of crimes including a sitting president," he said. Sudan does not recognize the court's authority and has for months refused to arrest and hand over for trial a government minister and rebel leader charged with atrocities by Moreno-Ocampo last year. On Friday, a spokesman for the president, Mahjoub Fadul Badry, called the court's prosecutor a "terrorist" whose investigation is based on biased testimony from rebel leaders. Badry said the government would not hand over any suspects, even rebel leaders. "Moreno-Ocampo's report depends on verbal testimony of rebel leaders and organizations that work under a humanitarian cover but in fact are branches of the intelligence apparatuses of other countries," Badry told The Associated Press. "In the end, we don't really care what he says." Associated Press reporters Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/sudan-president-expected-to-face-war-crime-charges Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:06:57 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/bush-to-g8-goodbye-from-the-worlds-biggest-polluter 7/10/2008. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/bush-to-g8-goodbye-from-the-worlds-biggest-polluter-863911.html. By Andrew Grice, Political Editor in Hokkaido Thursday, 10 July 2008 President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit. As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter." President Bush made the private joke in the summit's closing session, senior sources said yesterday. His remarks were taken as a two-fingered salute from the President from Texas who is wedded to the oil industry. He had given some ground at the summit by saying he would "seriously consider" a 50 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2050. But green groups had protested that the meeting was a missed opportunity to secure the radical reductions in carbon emissions that were needed to reduce global warming. China and India, who were among the emerging economies invited to the summit, refused to sign up to binding agreements without firmer commitments from the US and the other industrialised nations to cut their CO2 emissions. However, there was progress towards a deal on the world trade talks in Geneva. On the final day of their three-day summit, the G8 countries agreed to instruct their negotiators to make every effort to secure a deal when talks resume on 21 July. Although a similar call by the G8 summit two years ago failed to break the deadlock in the seven-year trade talks, officials are more confident that this month's negotiations will be successful. They say there is a growing recognition that it will be much harder to secure a deal after a new US President takes office next January because of pressures to protect American farmers during this year's election campaign – and that a new global trade framework may never be struck. Mr Bush gave his strongest support for an immediate agreement to his fellow G8 leaders. "We were looking for a signal from Bush and we got one," one British source said. "It's not in the bag but there is now a real push for a deal." The talks will involve a complicated set of trade-offs between Europe, America, Latin America and India over farming and industrial subsidies and tariffs. Brazil, a possible stumbling block to a deal, raised the prospects of a breakthrough after its President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, met Gordon Brown yesterday on the margins of the summit. They issued a joint statement saying that the "window of opportunity" for an agreement is closing. They added: "The time for technical negotiations is drawing to an end. The key decisions now are political ones. We must act decisively now. If we don't, we will be failing the world's poor and destroying the best basis for continued economic growth in the future. The cost of failure is simply too great." Brazil's willingness to ease restrictions on imports of goods such as cars and chemicals from richer nations could hold the key to a successful deal if European nations accept cuts in support for their farmers in return. Mr Brown told a press conference that a trade agreement could save the average British household £200 a year by bringing down food prices and would also bring greater benefits to the world's poorest countries, notably in Africa. He suggested that another potential obstacle to a deal – Nicolas Sarkozy – appeared to have been removed during the G8 meeting, when the French President rejected protectionist moves despite his criticism of Peter Mandelson, the EU's trade commissioner and negotiator in the talks. The Prime Minister described the Geneva talks as "make or break", adding: "If we fail this month to secure a trade agreement, it will not be easy to resume negotiations... We are at one minute to midnight." The final day of the summit saw tensions over climate change between the G8 and eight other major economies invited to Japan to discuss a new global agreement. The other eight nations, including China and India, failed to sign up to the G8's pledge to cut its carbon emissions by at least 50 per cent by 2050. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/bush-to-g8-goodbye-from-the-worlds-biggest-polluter Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:25:50 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/after-deaths-u_s_-inspects-electric-work-done-in-iraq 7/1/2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/washington/01electrocute.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1214926261-l/Yi0H8HI/SmC0FOcVRHxw. By JAMES RISEN Published: July 1, 2008 WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has ordered electrical inspections of all buildings in Iraq maintained by KBR, a major military contractor, after the electrocutions of several United States service members. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, told Congress of the new inspections while also disclosing that at least 13 Americans had been electrocuted in Iraq since the war began. Previously, the Pentagon said that 12 had been electrocuted. In addition to those killed, many more service members have received painful shocks, Army officials say. General Petraeus’s written statement was made public on Monday afternoon by Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania. The statement said that of the 13 Americans electrocuted, 10 were in the Army, 1 in the Marines, and 2 were contractors. Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, a Green Beret from Pennsylvania, died Jan. 2 when he stepped into a shower and was electrocuted at his base in Baghdad. His death prompted investigations this spring by Congress and the Pentagon’s inspector general into evidence that poor electrical work at facilities used by American personnel had led to other electrocutions. Officials now acknowledge that Army experts warned as early as 2004 that poor electrical work by contractors was creating dangerous conditions for American soldiers. But those warnings were largely ignored. Since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, tens of thousands of American troops have been housed in older Iraqi buildings. KBR and other companies have been paid millions of dollars to repair and upgrade the buildings, including their electrical systems. In February 2007, nearly a year before Sergeant Maseth was killed, KBR issued a technical report to the Defense Contract Management Agency citing safety concerns about the grounding and wiring in the building in the Radwaniya Palace complex in Baghdad being used as housing for Sergeant Maseth’s unit in the Army’s Fifth Special Forces Group. For the next year, neither KBR nor the Pentagon made repairs. Sergeant Maseth’s family has filed a wrongful death suit against KBR. Last week the family filed a motion in Federal District Court in Pittsburgh that included a new statement from another Green Beret, Sgt. Justin Hummer of the 10th Special Forces Group, saying that he suffered electrical shocks four or five times in 2007 in the same shower where Sergeant Maseth died. Another soldier, Specialist Stephan Michael Pabst, of the 19th Special Forces Group, has also provided a statement in the case stating that he suffered electrical shocks while living in the same complex late last year. He said he had issued a repair order to KBR, but the contractor never adequately fixed the problem, and he continued to suffer shocks in his shower. “The Pentagon has a compelling obligation to tell the American people what happened with these deaths, and what they are doing to prevent this from happening again,” Senator Casey said Monday in an interview. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/after-deaths-u_s_-inspects-electric-work-done-in-iraq Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:51:56 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/bush-overstated-iraq-evidence-senators-report 6/6/2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/world/middleeast/06intel.html?bl&ex=1212897600&en=da02c25e6d56b662&ei=5087%0A. A long-delayed Senate committee report endorsed by Democrats and some Republicans concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq’s weapons programs and Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda. The report was released Thursday after years of partisan squabbling, and it represented the close of five years of investigations by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence into the use, abuse and faulty assessments of intelligence leading to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. That some Bush administration claims about the Iraqi threat turned out to be false is hardly new. But the report, based on a detailed review of public statements by Mr. Bush and other officials, was the most comprehensive effort to date to assess whether policy makers systematically painted a more dire picture about Iraq than was justified by the available intelligence. The 170-page report accuses Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials of repeatedly overstating the Iraqi threat in the emotional aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Its findings were endorsed by all eight committee Democrats and two Republicans, Senators Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. In a statement accompanying the report, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the intelligence panel, said, “The president and his advisers undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the attacks to use the war against Al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein.” Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, on Thursday called the report a “selective view” and said that the Bush administration’s public statements were based on the same faulty intelligence given to Congress and endorsed by foreign intelligence services. Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the committee’s top Republican, called the report a “waste of committee time and resources.” The presidential campaigns of Senators John McCain and Barack Obama had not responded by Thursday night to requests for comment on the Senate report. The report on the prewar statements found that on some important issues, most notably on what was believed to be Iraq’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs, the public statements from Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and other senior officials were generally “substantiated” by the best estimates at the time from American intelligence agencies. But it found that the administration officials’ statements usually did not reflect the intelligence agencies’ uncertainties about the evidence or the disputes among them. In a separate report released Wednesday, the intelligence committee provided new details about a series of clandestine meetings in Rome and Paris between Pentagon officials and Iranian dissidents in 2001 and 2003. The meetings included discussions about possible covert actions to destabilize the government in Tehran, and were used by the Pentagon officials to glean information about rivalries in Iran and what was thought to be an Iranian “hit” team intending to attack American troops in Afghanistan, the report said. The report concluded that Stephen J. Hadley, now the national security adviser, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, who was then the deputy defense secretary, “acted within their authorities” to send the Pentagon officials to Rome. But the report criticized the meetings as ill advised, and accused Mr. Hadley and Mr. Wolfowitz of keeping the State Department and intelligence agencies in the dark about the meetings, which the report portrayed as part of a rogue intelligence operation. The two reports were the final parts of the committee’s so-called Phase 2 investigation of prewar intelligence on Iraq and related issues. The first phase of the inquiry, begun in the summer of 2003 and completed in July 2004, identified grave faults in the C.I.A.’s analysis of the threat posed by Mr. Hussein. The report on Iraq on Thursday was especially critical of statements by the president and vice president linking Iraq to Al Qaeda and raising the possibility that Mr. Hussein might supply the terrorist group with unconventional weapons. “Representing to the American people that the two had an operational partnership and posed a single, indistinguishable threat was fundamentally misleading and led the nation to war on false premises,” Mr. Rockefeller wrote. Mr. Bond and four other Republicans on the committee sharply dissented from the report’s findings and suggested that the investigation was a partisan smoke screen to obscure the real story: that the C.I.A. failed the Bush administration by delivering intelligence assessments to policy makers that have since been discredited. In a detailed minority report, four of those Republicans accused Democrats of hypocrisy and of cherry picking, namely by refusing to include misleading public statements by top Democrats like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mr. Rockefeller. As an example, they pointed to an October 2002 speech by Mr. Rockefeller, who declared to his Senate colleagues that he had arrived at the “inescapable conclusion that the threat posed to America by Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction is so serious that despite the risks, and we should not minimize the risks, we must authorize the president to take the necessary steps to deal with the threat.” The report about the Bush administration’s public statements offers some new details about the intelligence information that was available to policy makers as they built a case for war. For instance, in September 2002 Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “the Iraq problem cannot be solved by airstrikes alone,” because Iraqi chemical and biological weapons were so deeply buried that they could not be penetrated by American bombs. Two months later, however, the National Intelligence Council wrote an assessment for Mr. Rumsfeld concluding that the Iraqi underground weapons facilities identified by the intelligence agencies “are vulnerable to conventional, precision-guided, penetrating munitions because they are not deeply buried.” On Thursday, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democratic member of the intelligence committee, said that Congress had never been told about the National Intelligence Council’s assessment. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/bush-overstated-iraq-evidence-senators-report Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:29:13 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/g_m_-shifts-focus-to-small-cars-in-sign-of-sport-utility-demise 6/4/2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/business/04motors.html?em&ex=1212724800&en=2396045e84e29fc3&ei=5087%0A. Even General Motors, the steadfast champion of big sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, is thinking small now. With no end in sight for elevated gas prices, G.M. announced drastic cuts in production of sport utility vehicles and pickups on Tuesday and stepped up plans for smaller cars and engines. G.M.’s chairman and chief executive, Rick Wagoner, said G.M. will cease production at four North American assembly plants that make S.U.V.’s and pickups by 2010. And in a humbling admission that the S.U.V. era is all but over, G.M., Detroit’s leading automaker, said it was considering selling the gas-guzzling Hummer brand it once regarded as a pillar of future growth. In announcing the changes, Mr. Wagoner said $4-a-gallon gas prices had forced a “structural shift” by American consumers away from large vehicles into more fuel-efficient cars. “These prices are changing consumer behavior and changing it rapidly,” Mr. Wagoner said before G.M.’s annual meeting in Wilmington, Del. “We don’t believe it’s a spike or a temporary shift. We believe it is permanent.” While Ford Motor Company already slashed its pickup and S.U.V. output last month, the deep cuts at G.M. seem to be closing a chapter in the domestic auto industry. “I think G.M. is basically declaring the S.U.V. dead,” said John Casesa, managing partner of the auto consulting firm Casesa Shapiro Group in New York. “The trend away from these vehicles is irreversible.” The moves by G.M. underscore the radical transformation of the automotive landscape in recent months. Where large S.U.V.’s like the Chevrolet Tahoe and Ford Expedition ruled the road a few years ago, sales of those vehicles and others like them are plummeting under pressure from high fuel costs. At the same time, small cars and crossovers — car-based all-wheel-drive vehicles that use less gas than S.U.V.’s — are flying out of dealerships, with the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla ranking as the two top-selling vehicles in the United States in May. G.M. unveiled its latest restructuring on the same day that it reported that its United States sales plunged 30 percent in May. But the day of reckoning for the full-size S.U.V. and its 14-miles-per-gallon fuel consumption has been coming for some time. “At the peak in 2002, G.M. sold 600,000 full-size S.U.V.’s, but they’re on pace this year to sell less than 250,000 of them,” said David Healy, an analyst with Burnham Securities. “And the nails in the coffin are getting screwed down a little tighter.” The production cuts will idle an estimated 8,000 workers at the plants in Janesville, Wis.; Moraine, Ohio; Oshawa, Ontario; and Toluca, Mexico. G.M. declined to provide details about what would happen to the workers affected. Mr. Wagoner called the shutdowns “difficult” decisions and said it was unlikely any of the plants would receive new products to stay open. “These moves are all in response to the rapid rise in oil prices and the resulting changes in the U.S.,” he said. G.M. hopes to counter the drop in S.U.V. and truck sales by increasing car production and accelerating the development of more fuel-efficient models. The automaker will add third shifts in September at plants in Michigan and Ohio that make midsize sedans and compact models. G.M.’s board also approved production of two new small cars and a new four-cylinder, 1.4-liter engine, and gave the green light for production of the Chevrolet Volt by 2010. The Volt, which will be powered by batteries augmented by a small gasoline engine, is the centerpiece of G.M.’s push to develop alternative-fuel vehicles. “The Chevy Volt is a go,” Mr. Wagoner said. “We believe this is the biggest step in our industry’s move away from our historic, virtually complete reliance on petroleum to power vehicles.” Over all, G.M. is cutting 500,000 vehicles out of its North American production capacity. By reducing capacity to 3.7 million vehicles a year from the current 4.2 million, the automaker expects to save $1 billion on top of a target of reducing costs by $5 billion by 2011. But even with the cuts, Mr. Wagoner declined to predict when G.M., which lost $3.3 billion in the first quarter this year, will become profitable in North America. On Wall Street, G.M.’s stock rose modestly, closing at $17.58, up 14 cents. Full-size S.U.V.’s and pickups have long been a major source of profits for G.M. and its domestic rivals, Ford and Chrysler. “These are our most profitable vehicles, particularly the full-sized utes,” said Frederick A. Henderson, G.M.’s president. “We need to be able to produce more profitability from our passenger cars because we’ll be under pressure in terms of revenue.” The plant shutdowns were announced days after G.M. said 19,000 of its hourly workers — a quarter of a unionized work force that already has been drastically reduced — had accepted buyouts or early retirement packages. There was no immediate comment from the United Automobile Workers union about the factory closures. But the president of the Canadian Auto Workers, Basil Hargrove, strongly criticized Mr. Wagoner and his management team for shutting the Ontario plant less than a month after G.M. and the C.A.W. agreed to a new contract. “This is a panic decision that really raises a question in my mind for the first time about the leadership at the top of the house for G.M.,” Mr. Hargrove said at a news conference Tuesday in Toronto. Panic or not, G.M. clearly is altering its strategy on the fly in the face of increasingly tough economic conditions. Industry analysts expect overall vehicle sales in the United States to fall below 15 million this year, the lowest point in more than a decade and far below the peak of 17.4 million in 2000. As recently as 2005, sales hit 17 million. “This is tough stuff,” Mr. Wagoner said. “This market has radically changed.” The decision to conduct a “strategic review” of the Hummer brand underscored the painful reality G.M. is facing. Once considered a brand with global potential, the monster-sized Hummer has become a symbol of the decline of the large, gas-guzzling S.U.V. Mr. Wagoner said the review of the brand could result in “a partial or complete sale” of Hummer. That is a far cry from the ambitious goals that G.M. had for Hummer when it acquired rights to the brand nearly a decade ago. When he joined G.M. in 2001, Vice Chairman Robert A. Lutz gushed over the potential for the rugged, military-styled Hummers: “I don’t think the world realizes how big that can get.” When the brand’s sales peaked at 71,000 vehicles in 2006, Mr. Lutz was calling for Hummer to double its two-S.U.V. lineup. But so far this year, Hummer sales have fallen 36 percent to 14,000 vehicles. Advertised heavily as the epitome of the “go anywhere, do anything” S.U.V., the Hummer has been a favorite target of environmentalist criticism of Detroit. “It has come to represent all that is bad about gigantic S.U.V.’s,” said Daniel Becker, a consultant to environmental groups in Washington. “It’s a shame it’s taken G.M. so long to face the reality that people don’t want this thing anymore.” . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/g_m_-shifts-focus-to-small-cars-in-sign-of-sport-utility-demise Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:27:58 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/health-reform-is-working 6/4/2008. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/06/04/health_reform_is_working/. THE 350 PEOPLE who packed into the main conference room of the John F. Kennedy Library yesterday were in a good mood. They were about to hear a report that implementation of the Massachusetts health reform law had, in less than two years, cut the number of uninsured people of working age nearly in half. Then they got the bad news from House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, one of the progenitors of the law: "The third year . . . will be the most difficult." more stories like this The law has resulted in health insurance coverage for 355,000 people, but it is costing more than expected, and it was mainly funded by two uncertain revenue sources: money that would otherwise go to hospitals to treat the uninsured, and a special waiver of federal Medicaid rules. The waiver, which freed up money to expand insurance coverage, expires in less than a month. A renewal seems likely, but it's unclear how much money the state will receive. And the law hasn't done anything to alter treatment patterns that have burdened Massachusetts with some of the nation's highest medical costs. "We must contain costs," said Senate President Therese Murray. "We must stay together and be fully committed to the second phase of healthcare reform." A far-reaching cost containment bill supported by Murray has cleared the Senate and is awaiting House action, which DiMasi promised is coming soon. Among other things, the bill calls for more transparency by insurance companies, a statewide system of electronic health records, better recruitment of primary-care doctors, and a ban on gifts from drug companies to physicians. This last item has provoked opposition from the catering industry. Drug companies would no longer be able to roll out free lunches to attract physicians to informational meetings. But a doctor's prescription patterns should not be swayed, even a little bit, by food or other gifts. Murray's proposal should become law. A ban on free lunches is nothing compared to the other changes that will be required to make health reform work. Hospitals will need to make sure that expensive procedures actually produce results. Insurers will need to devise payment systems that reward quality, not just quantity of care. Patients will need to be more cost-conscious, especially about unnecessary visits to emergency rooms. In 2004, when the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation convened the first meetings to solve the unemployment problem in Massachusetts, few would have thought the state could have advanced so far, so fast. The task is still daunting, but the commitment remains strong. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/health-reform-is-working Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:20:33 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/pentagon-fights-epa-on-pollution-cleanup 6/30/2008. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/29/AR2008062901977.html?nav=rss_nation. The Defense Department, the nation's biggest polluter, is resisting orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up Fort Meade and two other military bases where the EPA says dumped chemicals pose "imminent and substantial" dangers to public health and the environment. The Pentagon has also declined to sign agreements required by law that cover 12 other military sites on the Superfund list of the most polluted places in the country. The contracts would spell out a remediation plan, set schedules, and allow the EPA to oversee the work and assess penalties if milestones are missed. The actions are part of a standoff between the Pentagon and environmental regulators that has been building during the Bush administration, leaving the EPA in a legal limbo as it addresses growing concerns about contaminants on military bases that are seeping into drinking water aquifers and soil. Under executive branch policy, the EPA will not sue the Pentagon, as it would a private polluter. Although the law gives final say to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson in cleanup disputes with other federal agencies, the Pentagon refuses to recognize that provision. Military officials wrote to the Justice Department last month to challenge EPA's authority to issue the orders and asked the Office of Management and Budget to intervene. Experts in environmental law said the Pentagon's stand is unprecedented. "This is stunning," said Rena Steinzor, who helped write the Superfund laws as a congressional staffer and now teaches at the University of Maryland Law School and is president of the nonprofit Center for Progressive Reform. "The idea that they would refuse to sign a final order -- that is the height of amazing nerve." Pentagon officials say they are voluntarily cleaning up the three sites named in the EPA's "final orders" -- Fort Meade in Maryland, Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida and McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. Fort Meade borders residential areas in fast-growing Anne Arundel County; Tyndall and McGuire are in less-populated regions. At all three sites, the military has released toxic chemicals -- some known to cause cancer and other serious health problems -- into the soil and groundwater. But the EPA has been dissatisfied with the extent and progress of the Pentagon's voluntary efforts. "Final orders" are the EPA's most potent enforcement tool. If a polluter does not comply, the agency usually can go to court to force compliance and impose fines up to $28,000 a day for each violation. Cleanup agreements drafted by the EPA for the 12 other sites contain "extensive provisions" that the Pentagon finds unacceptable, officials said. Congress established the Superfund program in 1980 to clean up the country's most contaminated places, and of the 1,255 sites on the list the Pentagon owns 129 -- the most of any entity. Other federal agencies with properties on the list include NASA and the Energy Department, but they have signed EPA cleanup agreements without protest. The law was amended in 1986 to stipulate that polluting government agencies should be treated the same as any private entity. During the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush pledged to direct all federal facilities to comply with environmental laws and "make them accountable." In dealing with cleanup efforts, some military branches have been more cooperative than others. The Navy has signed cleanup agreements for all of its Superfund sites, whereas the Air Force has not signed one in 14 years. But Superfund sites are only one aspect of the Pentagon's environmental problems. It has about 25,000 contaminated properties in all 50 states, and it will cost billions and take decades to clean them up. The Pentagon has a tremendous financial stake in not only how the sites are cleaned but also in which chemicals the government characterizes as toxic. Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is investigating the Pentagon's compliance with environmental regulation. He said it is evading the law through political maneuvers. "I find it troubling, not only that the Department of Defense is in flagrant violation of final orders issued by the EPA, but that DOD is now attempting to circumvent the law and Congress' intent by calling on the Department of Justice and the Office of Management and the Budget to intervene," he said in a statement. "The EPA is the expert agency charged by Congress with enforcing our environmental laws, and the Administration needs to allow them to do their job to protect the public health and safety." EPA spokeswoman Roxanne Smith said final orders were issued because the agency is worried about drinking water and soil contamination at Fort Meade, Tyndall and McGuire. "Under DOD's management, some of these sites have languished for years, with limited or no cleanup underway," she said. Other examples of Pentagon resistance to the EPA include its successful effort this year to get greater influence in the process the agency uses to analyze the risks of industrial chemicals. Congressional Democrats, environmental groups and the Government Accountability Office have criticized the change. The Pentagon has also fought EPA efforts to set new pollution standards on two toxic chemicals widely found on military sites: perchlorate, found in propellant for rockets and missiles, and trichloroethylene (TCE), a degreaser for metal parts. TCE is the most widespread water contaminant in the country, seeping into aquifers across California, New York, Texas, Florida and elsewhere. More than 1,000 military sites are contaminated with TCE. In the late 1990s, EPA scientists found TCE to be much more toxic than earlier believed. In 2001, the EPA prepared tougher new drinking-water standards for TCE to limit human exposure, but the Pentagon challenged those standards and took its case to the White House. The process ground to a halt; seven years later, the EPA still has not issued new TCE limits. Since Bush took office, one military site has been added to the Superfund list -- the Navy bombing range at Vieques Island, off Puerto Rico. The site was added after the Puerto Rican governor exercised a federal statute to force its placement on the list. Maryland has been pushing the EPA to add Fort Detrick in Frederick County to the Superfund list. This month, the state sent a forceful letter to the EPA, suggesting it would follow Puerto Rico's strategy. On Thursday, the EPA informed Maryland that in September it will recommend Fort Detrick be added. Shari T. Wilson, Maryland's secretary of the environment, said the state needs the Superfund designation because of the Army's erratic efforts to clean up Fort Detrick, which for decades served as the service's center for development of chemical and biological weapons. She said the state wants an independent agency that is focused on public health to oversee the effort and hold the Pentagon accountable. In 1992, the state found chemical contamination in private wells just outside Fort Detrick. Under a voluntary agreement with the state, the Army removed chemical-soaked earth and rusting drums filled with toxins, set up monitoring wells and connected nearby residents to the city water supply. Two years later, TCE was detected in a spring outside the base -- the first time it was noticed beyond the facility's boundaries. State officials say that the presence of TCE in the aquifer is a serious concern but that they do not think the contamination poses an immediate health threat. For nearly 10 years, Maryland has asked the Pentagon to analyze the extent and spread of groundwater contamination, a study that will happen as a matter of course if it is added to the Superfund list. "It's frustrating," Wilson said. "We need to move ahead and take the steps necessary to ensure for the public the groundwater is protected." . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/pentagon-fights-epa-on-pollution-cleanup Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:58:22 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/no-ice-at-the-north-pole 6/27/2008. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-no-ice-at-the-north-pole-855406.html. By Steve Connor, Science Editor It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year. The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer. "From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water," said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado. If it happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above. Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally icefreeNorth Pole this summer are greater than 50:50 because the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away and replaced by hugeswathes of thinner ice formed over a single year. This one-year ice is highly vulnerable to melting during thesummer months and satellite data coming in over recent weeksshows that the rate of melting is faster than last year, when therewas an all-time record loss of summer sea ice at the Arctic. "The issue is that, for the first time that I am aware of, the NorthPole is covered with extensive first-year ice – ice that formed last autumn and winter. I'd say it's even-odds whether the North Pole melts out," said Dr Serreze. Each summer the sea ice melts before reforming again during the long Arctic winter but the loss of sea ice last year was so extensive that much of the Arctic Ocean became open water, with the water-ice boundary coming just 700 miles away from the North Pole. This meant that about 70 per cent of the sea ice present this spring was single-year ice formed over last winter. Scientists predict that at least 70 per cent of this single-year ice – and perhaps all of it – will melt completely this summer, Dr Serreze said. "Indeed, for the Arctic as a whole, the melt season startedwith even more thin ice than in 2007, hence concerns that we may even beat last year's sea-ice minimum. We'll see what happens, a great deal depends on the weather patterns in July and August," he said. Ron Lindsay, a polar scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, agreed that much now depends on what happens to the Arctic weather in terms of wind patterns and hours of sunshine. "There's a good chance that it will all melt awayat the North Pole, it's certainly feasible, but it's not guaranteed," Dr Lindsay said. The polar regions are experiencing the most dramatic increase in average temperatures due to global warming and scientists fear that as more sea ice is lost, the darker, open ocean will absorb more heat and raise local temperatures even further. Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, who was one of the first civilian scientists to sail underneath the Arctic sea ice in a Royal Navy submarine, said that the conditions are ripe for an unprecedented melting of the ice at the North Pole. "Last year we saw huge areas of the ocean open up, which hasnever been experienced before. People are expecting this to continuethis year and it is likely to extend over the North Pole. It is quite likely that the North Pole will be exposed this summer – it's not happened before," Professor Wadhams said. There are other indications that the Arctic sea ice is showingsigns of breaking up. Scientists at the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Centre said that the North Water 'polynya' – an expanse of open water surrounded on all sides by ice – that normally forms near Alaska and Banks Island off the Canadian coast, is muchlarger than normal. Polynyas absorb heat from the sun and eat away at the edge of the sea ice. Inuit natives living near Baffin Bay between Canada and Greenland are also reporting thatthe sea ice there is starting to break up much earlier than normal and that they have seen wide cracks appearing in the ice where it normally remains stable. Satellite measurements collected over nearly 30 years show a significant decline in the extent of the Arctic sea ice, which has become more rapid in recent years. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/no-ice-at-the-north-pole Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:30:29 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/75-blame-bushs-policies-for-deteriorating-economy 6/26/2008. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-poll26-2008jun26,0,7304218.story. Three out of four Americans, including large numbers of Republicans, blame President Bush's economic policies for making the country worse off during the last eight years, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released Wednesday, reflecting a sharp increase in public pessimism during the last year. Nine percent of respondents said the country's economic condition had improved since Bush became president, compared with 75% who said conditions had worsened. Among Republicans, 42% said the country was worse off, while 26% said it was about the same, and 22% thought economic conditions had improved. Phillip Thies, a registered Republican and clothing-store owner in Cedar, Mich., who was one of those polled, said the president was doing an able job through the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks but "right after that, it was steadily, steadily downhill." "There has been a lack of leadership and a lack of timeliness of leadership, of not being conscious of the magnitude of the problems," Thies said of Bush in a follow-up interview. "He's always a day late and a dollar short." Said Lois Coleman, 84, of Floyds Knobs, Ind., who described herself as an independent, "I'm not as well off as I was before he was president and that pertains to all my friends, too, everyone I know." Economic pessimism has deepened sharply in the last year, intensified by higher fuel prices, the poll found. When the question was asked in March 2007, 24% of respondents said Bush's policies had improved the nation's economy and 46% said they had made it worse. The increased unhappiness is reflected in an all-time low in Bush's approval rating -- just 23% now, compared with 34% in February. "It is no surprise that Americans are feeling very pessimistic about the economy -- with rising gas and oil prices and food prices affecting their pocketbooks," said Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus. "They don't see an end to the rise in prices. . . . Americans blame the president, along with the oil companies, for not having done enough to stem the tide of rising gas prices." Seventy percent of respondents said the rising cost of fuel had caused hardship for their families, and the pain appeared to be spread across all income groups: 79% of people with incomes of less than $40,000 a year said the higher prices were a hardship, but so did 55% of respondents with incomes above $100,000. Scott White, 47, a registered Republican from Saco, Maine, said he had to get public assistance twice last year to pay for home heating oil. He says he expects things to get worse before they get better. "I'm what I call middle-class poor," said White, who has muscular dystrophy and recently had to stop working because of his disability. "It seems like [President Bush] is not in touch with the American people. . . . I voted for him both elections, but I wouldn't vote for him again." Asked for their view of the cause of the higher prices, respondents blamed the Bush administration and oil company profits in roughly equal measure -- 29% holding the administration responsible and 25% blaming the oil companies, a spread within the poll's margin of error. Thirteen percent of those polled said commodities speculators were responsible for the increases; 14% said they were not sure who was at fault. Amber Guckenberg, a 28-year-old stay-at-home mother in Kalispell, Mont., said she wasn't sure Bush deserved all the blame for rising energy prices, but she wished he had found a way to rein them in. "We've had to scale back on a lot of things -- not going on camping trips, watching what we buy at the grocery store," Guckenberg said, noting that her monthly heating bills now top $300. "This year my kids probably won't be able to take swimming lessons because I can't afford it." The poll also suggested that public support for a foreclosure rescue bill had weakened a bit while opposition had strengthened. Only 25% of respondents in a May Times/Bloomberg poll said they opposed government assistance for homeowners, while 36% oppose it now. Just 55% of respondents said they favored such government assistance now, compared with 60% in the May poll. "I'm totally opposed to government coming to the aid of individuals who made poor decisions," said Thies, the clothing-store owner from Michigan. "It's tough cheese, Charlie." Though respondents had strong opinions about the economy, they were not sure how to make it better. Asked what the top priority for improving the economy should be, 27% said cutting taxes, 20% said reducing the federal deficit, 13% said funding public programs and 13% said addressing the price of energy. All together, 82% of respondents said the economy was doing badly, compared with 71% who felt that way when the question was asked in February. And the pessimism has intensified: Fifty percent of respondents said the economy was doing "very badly," compared with 38% in February. The Times/Bloomberg poll, conducted June 19-23 under Pinkus' supervision, interviewed 1,233 adults nationwide. The poll's margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points. maura.reynolds@latimes.com . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/75-blame-bushs-policies-for-deteriorating-economy Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:52:58 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/court-slashes-judgment-in-exxon-valdez-disaster 6/25/2008. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jxdGO6WXM4Q5uj72dxpmbpl5JrzgD91H5BQO3. By MARK SHERMAN WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday cut the $2.5 billion punitive damages award in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster to $500 million. The court ruled that victims of the worst oil spill in U.S. history may collect punitive damages from Exxon Mobil Corp., but not as much as a federal appeals court determined. Justice David Souter wrote for the court that punitive damages may not exceed what the company already paid to compensate victims for economic losses, about $500 million compensation. Exxon asked the high court to reject the punitive damages judgment, saying it already has spent $3.4 billion in response to the accident that fouled 1,200 miles of Alaska coastline. A jury decided Exxon should pay $5 billion in punitive damages. A federal appeals court cut that verdict in half. The court divided 5-3, with Justice Samuel Alito taking no part in the case because he owns Exxon stock. Exxon has fought vigorously to reduce or erase the punitive damages verdict by a jury in Alaska in 1994 for the accident that dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound. The environmental disaster led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of seabirds and marine animals. Nearly 33,000 Alaskans are in line to share in the award, about $15,000 a person. They would have collected $75,000 each under the $2.5 billion judgment. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/court-slashes-judgment-in-exxon-valdez-disaster Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:37:15 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/reporters-say-networks-put-wars-on-back-burner 6/25/2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/business/media/23logan.html?dpc. By BRIAN STELTER Published: June 23, 2008 Getting a story on the evening news isn’t easy for any correspondent. And for reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is especially hard, according to Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News. So she has devised a solution when she is talking to the network. “Generally what I say is, ‘I’m holding the armor-piercing R.P.G.,’ ” she said last week in an appearance on “The Daily Show,” referring to the initials for rocket-propelled grenade. “ ‘It’s aimed at the bureau chief, and if you don’t put my story on the air, I’m going to pull the trigger.’ ” Ms. Logan let a sly just-kidding smile sneak through as she spoke, but her point was serious. Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever. “If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts,” Ms. Logan said. According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.) CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed. Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television “with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad.” He said CBS correspondents can “get in there very quickly when a story merits it.” In a telephone interview last week, Ms. Logan said the CBS News bureau in Baghdad was “drastically downsized” in the spring. The network now keeps a producer in the country, making it less of a bureau and more of an office. Interviews with executives and correspondents at television news networks suggested that while the CBS cutbacks are the most extensive to date in Baghdad, many journalists shared varying levels of frustration about placing war stories onto newscasts. “I’ve never met a journalist who hasn’t been frustrated about getting his or her stories on the air,” said Terry McCarthy, an ABC News correspondent in Baghdad. By telephone from Baghdad, Mr. McCarthy said he was not as busy as he was a year ago. A decline in the relative amount of violence “is taking the urgency out” of some of the coverage, he said. Still, he gets on ABC’s “World News” and other programs with stories, including one on Friday about American gains in northern Iraq. Anita McNaught, a correspondent for the Fox News Channel, agreed. “The violence itself is not the story anymore,” she said. She counted eight reports she had filed since arriving in Baghdad six weeks ago, noting that cable news channels like Fox News and CNN have considerably more time to fill with news than the networks. CNN and Fox each have two fulltime correspondents in Iraq. Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, who splits his time between Iraq and other countries, said he found his producers “very receptive to stories about Iraq.” He and other journalists noted that the heated presidential primary campaign put other news stories on the back burner earlier this year. Ms. Logan said she begged for months to be embedded with a group of Navy Seals, and when she came back with the story, a CBS producer said to her, “One guy in uniform looks like any other guy in a uniform.” In the follow-up phone interview, Ms. Logan said the producer no longer worked at CBS. And in both interviews, she emphasized that many journalists at CBS News are pushing for war coverage, specifically citing Jeff Fager, the executive producer of “60 Minutes.” CBS News won a Peabody Award last week for a “60 Minutes” report about a Marine charged in the killings at Haditha. On “The Daily Show,” Ms. Logan echoed the comments of other journalists when she said that many Americans seem uninterested in the wars now. Mr. McCarthy said that when he is in the United States, bringing up Baghdad at a dinner party “is like a conversation killer.” Coverage of the war in Afghanistan has increased slightly this year, with 46 minutes of total coverage year-to-date compared with 83 minutes for all of 2007. NBC has spent 25 minutes covering Afghanistan, partly because the anchor Brian Williams visited the country earlier in the month. Through Wednesday, when an ABC correspondent was in the middle of a prolonged visit to the country, ABC had spent 13 minutes covering Afghanistan. CBS has spent eight minutes covering Afghanistan so far this year. Both Ms. Logan and Mr. McCarthy noted that more coalition soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in May than in Iraq. No American television network has a full-time correspondent in Afghanistan, although CNN recently said it would open a bureau in Kabul. “It’s terrible,” Ms. Logan said in the telephone interview. She called it a financial decision. “We can’t afford to maintain operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time,” she said. “It’s so expensive and the security risks are so great that it’s prohibitive.” Mr. Friedman said coverage of Iraq is enormously expensive, mostly due to the security risks. He said meetings with other television networks about sharing the costs of coverage have faltered for logistical reasons. Journalists at all three American television networks with evening newscasts expressed worries that their news organizations would withdraw from the Iraqi capital after the November presidential election. They spoke only on the condition of anonymity in order to avoid offending their employers. . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/reporters-say-networks-put-wars-on-back-burner Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:15:04 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/democrats-in-senate-seek-to-block-deals-for-iraqi-oil 6/24/2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/washington/24contracts.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin. A group of Democratic senators led by Charles E. Schumer of New York is appealing to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to block a set of contentious no-bid oil contracts that Iraq has decided to award to the Western oil giants Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP. And if that appeal, which Mr. Schumer’s office said it faxed in the form of a letter to the State Department on Monday afternoon, is not heeded, the senators will try to cut off financing for as-yet-unspecified programs in Iraq that are not directly in support of American troops, Mr. Schumer said in an interview on Monday. The letter is scheduled to be made public on Tuesday at a news conference in Washington by several senators: Mr. Schumer, vice chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus; John Kerry of Massachusetts, the former presidential candidate who is a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee; and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who serves on the Armed Services Committee. The New York Times reported last week that the oil companies were in the latter stages of negotiating service contracts that would return them to Iraq 36 years after they were forced out by Saddam Hussein. The contracts, which have not been put out for bid, are modest in size but would also grant the companies advantages in later bidding for much more lucrative agreements to exploit Iraq’s richest oil fields. No deals should be signed, particularly without bidding, until Iraq enacts a long-delayed law that would regulate its oil industry, the letter says. “It is our fear that this action by the Iraqi government could further deepen political tensions in Iraq and put our service members in even greater danger,” the letter says. A spokesman for the State Department, Karl Duckworth, said he could not confirm that the department had received the letter, but said that such messages could take some time to work their way through the system. “But we treat all correspondence with Congress as important, and if and when we receive it, we will respond directly to the senator,” Mr. Duckworth said. Mr. Schumer said: “It’s hard to believe. When this war started one of the promises was: there’ll be plenty of oil for everybody. Now it looks like you could end up with Iraq being one of these petro-feudal states with different factions warring for the oil.” . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/democrats-in-senate-seek-to-block-deals-for-iraqi-oil Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:19:25 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/cities-green-building-catching-on 6/20/2008. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laurie-david/rebuilding-green-after-fl_b_108328.html. Our hearts go out to the people living in cities hit by the devastation in the Midwest. Unfortunately, the scene of record-breaking rain and massive floods is becoming all too common. This spring ranked in the top 10 wettest ever recorded. We are seeing the face of global warming with growing frequency, a scenario that scientists have been warning us about for three decades. But there's hope in the aftermath of disaster too. After suffering a devastating tornado last year, Greensboro, Kansas is rebuilding green and sustainable so there can be a brighter future for their town (check out the town's efforts in a new series on Planet Green). So this week our shout-out goes to American cities for taking the initiative to think green! For those rebuilding green after the devastation of extreme weather and those who are looking for ways to protect their city's future by going green - we salute you. Cities have taken bold steps to do their part while improving the quality of life in their communities. A perfect example is Chicago. Green roofs, great recycling and sustainability programs, and last year's Cool Globes outdoor art exhibit are just a few of the Windy City's recent greening efforts. Little known fact: Chicago has more alleys than any other city in the country - a whopping 2,000 miles of alleys - all lined with the pavement equivalent of five midsize airports. So some clever Chicagoan came up with the idea to retrofit them. The city will rip up the old concrete and replace it with environmentally sustainable road building materials that will allow water to penetrate the soil through the alley surface itself. That means rainwater will recharge the underground water table instead of ending up as polluted runoff flowing into rivers and streams. What a perfect example of rethinking old ways! Another city taking action is Minneapolis. The city recently approved an ordinance that will limit idling in the city to three minutes, except in traffic. Cutting down on idling is one easy thing that everyone can do, and while we hope that the ordinance will be pushed to 30 seconds, we think it is a great step in the right direction and hope other cities will follow suit! Kudos to Mayor Michael Bloomberg for experimenting with the Summer Streets program in New York City this summer. On three Saturdays during the month of August, all vehicles will be banned along a 6.9 mile route in an effort to promote walking, cycling and mass transit use among Gotham City's visitors and residents. Three cheers to the beautiful city of Denver and Mayor John Hickenlooper who is hosting the Green Frontier Fest on August 24, the day before the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Green Frontier Fest will be a celebration of everyday positive choices that individuals, families and organizations can make now to address global warming. The Fest will also include a special presentation by green jobs advocate Van Jones. Go Denver! When the federal government doesn't act, it's the cities and states that can lead the way. What's your hometown doing? My favorite action tip for the week is to stop idling. On average, a car will burn more than half a gallon of fuel for every hour spent idling. In general, 10 seconds of idling uses more fuel than restarting the car, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Signing off from the Green Zone, Laurie David . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/cities-green-building-catching-on Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:20:38 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/after-caesareans-some-see-higher-insurance-cost 6/2/2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/health/01insure.html. By DENISE GRADY . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/after-caesareans-some-see-higher-insurance-cost Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:39:08 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/ge-says-tax-incentive-for-wind-power-pays-for-itself 6/19/2008. http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/16245. GE Energy Financial Services, a unit of GE (NYSE: GE), released a study estimating that a federal tax incentive set to expire Dec. 31 for wind energy projects more than pays for itself through tax revenues from the projects' income, vendors' profits and individual workers' wages. This is significant in that U.S. Congressional Democrats have failed five times to pass extensions to tax incentives for wind, solar and other renewable energies, because they insist on paying for the incentives by reducing spending in other areas. First they tried to reduce tax incentives for oiland natural gas companies, and then they tried to close a tax loophole for hedge fund managers. Congressional Republicans objected to both measures and blocked the incentive extensions. The GE study estimates that wind farms built in 2007, supported by the production tax credit, carry a net present value benefit to the US Treasury of $250 million. "Congress is debating how to pay for the wind tax credits perhaps without realizing that, over time, wind farms pump more money into the US Treasury and state and local coffers than they take out," Kevin Walsh, Managing Director of renewable energy at GE Energy Financial Services, said. "Our study shows that the wind farms more than pay for themselves through existing tax revenues, so it's time to renew the incentives immediately." The production tax credit for wind--as well as similar incentives for solar and other renewable energy sources - has expired three times in the past nine years, each time causing a 76-90% drop in installed capacity from the previous year. "Too often, politics, rather than economics, has shaped the debate about extending the production tax credit," said Michael Eckhart, President of the American Council on Renewable Energy. "GE's new study identifying additional economic benefits of the wind industry should bring all parties together, all supporting a proposition that is good for the environment, good for the economy, and even good for the federal treasury." According to the study by GE Energy Financial Services, wind projects that went into operation last year generate federal income tax revenues from the projects, individual workers' wages, vendors' profits, and land leases. And they also provide federal tax revenue after 10 years, when the production tax credits expire. In addition to those federal tax revenues, the wind projects generate an estimated $6 million per year in local property taxes, $15 million annually in state income taxes on wages and profits during construction and $1.5 million per year in taxes while operating. "Congress' repeated failure to act could derail the wind energy industry at the worst possible time for the economy, placing 76,000 jobs and more than $11.5 billion in investment at risk," said Randall Swisher, Executive Director of the American Wind Energy Association. Congress Daily reported that Senate Democrats and Republicans are working on a compromise to extend the long-awaited incentives. Republicans are saying that only new tax provisions should require offsets under the Democrats "pay-as-you-go" philosophy, not extensions of existing credits. If Democrats bite on this compromise, it could mean smoother sailing for the tax incentives. However House Democrats are holding firm on the notion that the entire tax package be offset. "I don't know how many times I have to say it, but let me repeat for my Republican colleagues in the Senate: This legislation will not be considered in the House unless its costs are offset," House Majority Leader Hoyer said in a statement. Website: http://www.geenergyfinancialservices.com/press_room/PTC_release.asp . . . http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/ge-says-tax-incentive-for-wind-power-pays-for-itself Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:06:33 -0500 http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/bill-promotes-universal-college-loans 6/18/2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/business/18loan.html. Responding to reports that some lenders have stopped offering federal loans at community and other colleges, two Democratic senators introduced legislation Tuesday to prohibit lenders from picking and choosing among institutions. Under the proposal, lenders that participate in the federal loan program would have to extend credit to any eligible student, regardless of such things as income or the number of years of education, as long as the college is part of the program. The government already guarantees the loans at nearly full value. Senators Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, and Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, introduced the proposal after an article in The New York Times identified several lenders that had stopped offering federally guaranteed loans at community colleges and some four-year institutions. “Lenders offering loans backed by taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be able to discriminate against certain schools or students,” Ms. Murray said in a statement. “Denying loans based on school, program length, or income level locks the door for far too many.” Lenders have said they were responding to the small number of borrowers and the small amounts borrowed at certain institutions. Financial aid administrators countered that selective lending could make it harder for poorer students to pay for higher education. They argued that lenders participating in the program should not be allowed to cherry-pick. “If they’re in the business, they’re in the business, and it’s the entire business,” said Kristin Shear, president of the California Community College Student Financial Aid Administrators Association and director of student financial services at Santa Rosa Junior College. She called the legislation a logical step. “To me, this ensures access,” said Korey Compaan, director of financial aid at William Jessup University in Rocklin, Calif., who supported the proposal, “at any size university.” But other financial aid officials worried that it could have the undesirable effect of pushing lenders out of the Federal Family Education Loan Program, as the guaranteed loan program is officially named. “Banks are not philanthropic agencies,” said Pat Watkins, director of financial aid at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla. The institution was recently informed by Wells Fargo that the bank would not extend loans to its students anymore, Dr. Watkins said. If lenders cannot make the profit they require on loans, she said, “a lot of the banks will just say, we’re out of the business completely, you pushed us out.” A Wells Fargo spokeswoman said it made changes in eligibility because of new laws governing federal loans that “prevent us from making a reasonable rate of return.” Student lending has become a volatile business over the last year. As credit has tightened across the country, investors have shunned securities backed by student loans (though there are some recent signs that the market is thawing), creating a problem for those companies dependent on sales of their loans to raise capital. And in September, legislation took effect that effectively reduced the profit margin on federally guaranteed loans, by lowering the subsidy that lenders collect from the government. Congress sets the maximum rate that students pay on federal loans separately. Kevin Bruns, executive director of America’s Student Loan Providers, a trade group, said the latest legislation not only could have unintended consequences but could be a problem for lenders of modest size or with a regional scope that do not wish to be national loan providers. “The problem is entirely theoretical right now,” he said. “There are enough lenders to serve the federal student loan needs” of students. Joe Belew, president of the Consumer Bankers Association, said Tuesday: “C.B.A. is anxious to review the details of the new legislation introduced by the senators. We hope to work with them to craft legislation that achieves the goal of av