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"... Oh, I don't remember. Now there's Secret Service protection. But I've done it for many, many years. I don't recall and frankly, I don't see how it matters." - John McCain answering the question, "When was the last time you pumped your own gas and how much did it cost?"
Good Monday Morning,
The Big News Story this Monday morning is that according to news reports we're apparently at some level of war with Iran and have been so for some time. Though it is unlikely US troops are on Iranian soil, the CIA has been running covert operations to weaken Iran's physical infrastructure and undermine its political system. But this time we've really stepped in the manure. Iran is not Iraq and unless the administration pulls a quick reversal we will likely see the entirety of the Middle East in flames and that is not - regardless of what Armageddon-wishing Christians and the State Department may believe - a good thing. It's just bad. Really bad. Not bad like missing the Lotto by one number bad. But bad like root canal without painkillers bad.
The Feds have put a freeze on new solar energy ventures that are placed on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands. These are the millions of acres we collectively own, mostly in the southwest, where the sun strikes the planet in just the right way to produce copious amounts of free solar energy. The problem, says the government, is that the environment may be damaged by solar power's infrastructure needs and two years - at a minimum - are required for additional study before new applications for solar powered plants can proceed.
But it's the BLM land thing that is really the corker here. These are the lands which Congress leases to cattle ranchers with few environmental restrictions and on which ranchers place more cattle than the land can safely feed thus stripping away vegetation, destroying sensitive eco-systems, compacting the soil and polluting vital water resources.
Yet, according to the government, putting solar panels on BLM lands requires two years of additional study.
Just a few months ago Congress awarded oil industries, already raking in monumental profits, billions in corporate welfare handouts then slashed tax credits for the alternative energy industry making it difficult to find venture capitalists willing to invest in these startups. Then the government pulls the plug on siting these new, clean, renewable energy plants on BLM lands.
What's really happening is this:
The oil and gas industries are doing everything they can to hold off new, alternative energies (read: competition) and they and Congress are willing to place the nation into an irreparable energy situation to maintain their profits. What happens to the economy if Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz in retaliation for our meddling in her affairs and we have nothing to fall back on and nothing in the pipeline? Does this policy encourage US energy independence or does it smack of profiteering?
Luckily for us, our current Congressman has not been bought and sold by the oil and gas lobbies nor the corporate farm lobby. But for others in this nation and for the nation as a whole, the picture painted here is not a pretty one and short of some sort of meaningful citizen rebellion I really don't see how this will change and electing more Democrats to Congress (as was done in 2006) has not solved the problem.
Looking closer to home, County Executive Bondi is schedule to make some sort of decision on the Domestic Partner Registry bill that is currently awaiting his signature or veto. There's a tiny rumble out there that he may decide to hold a second public hearing. But what was remarkable about the first was that once the call to arms was placed, people took the time off from their lives seeing the importance of the issue. And though the County Executive specifically invited those he thought would speak against it, by the time we were done organizing we had a packed room with every seat occupied with people standing in the rear and spoke in favor of this legislation 4-1.
It is true that legislative bodies should not hold public hearings during the day when the public-at-large cannot easily attend and I look forward to Mr. Bondi changing the time of future public hearings. But calling a second hearing on this issue would do naught but delay implementation of the Registry and there's no good that can come of that. Not for Mr. Bondi, not for those who stand against civil rights and not for Putnam County at large. We need to be facing the future as a united county not as one divided over an issue like this and especially not one divided by political gamesmanship.
Mr. Bondi needs to sign the bill and bring us all one step closer to equality. Please put together a short note and send it by fax (if someone has the County Executive's email address please send it along!) to his office at (845) 225-0294 or call the office at (845) 225-641 x200 and let them know that you support the Registry and urge him to sign it into law today.
Finally this morning, Senators Larry Craig and David Vitter, both exemplars of moral sexual (mis)behavior, have co-sponsored a proposed amendment to the Constitution which would ban same-sex marriages. It does not, as far as I can tell, ban soliciting gay sex in public mens rooms nor of visiting prostitutes. All in all, it's business as usual in Washington, DC.
And that's the News That Matters.
- Apology demanded of Assemblyman Ball
- Citing Need for Assessments, U.S. Freezes Solar Energy Projects
- Storm Runoff Carries Filth into Beach Water
- Gas Drillers in Race for Hearts and Land
- Homebuilders fined for polluting Ga. waterways
- The School Bus May Not Come for Your Kid This Year
- Art Review: Cascades, Sing the City Energetic
- From: "If Terrorists Rock the Vote in 2008"
Apology demanded of Assemblyman Ball Michael Risinit
The Journal News
A lawyer has sent a letter to Assemblyman Greg Ball demanding that Ball reprint and republish a political mailer and advertisement that features a photograph of his client wrongly captioned as John Degnan, Ball's Republican opponent.
The photograph actually shows Peter Hansen of Patterson, who is the Brewster village clerk and a frequent critic of Ball's. The letter, written by attorney Christopher Maher of Carmel, was sent out last week to the assemblyman.
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Citing Need for Assessments, U.S. Freezes Solar Energy Projects By DAN FROSCH
DENVER — Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.
The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.
But the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”
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Storm Runoff Carries Filth into Beach Water HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- The summer season along Connecticut's shoreline and lakes is being marred by beach closings due to bacteria and contaminants.
Many swimming areas, coastal and inland, are well-groomed and well-managed. But on any given summer day, dozens of swimming spots are one good rainfall away from being shut.
The problem is that storm water runoff carries into the water feces from wild animals or pets and contaminants from highways, subdivisions, malls and farms.
Over the last decade, swimmers have lost at least 3,000 days to bacteria-related closings, based on a review by The Hartford Courant of 10 years of closure data for Long Island Sound beaches and state parks, and four years of records for lakes and ponds.
At the Connecticut shore's 144 beaches that report testing data to the state, 65 closed for one or more days in 2007.
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Gas Drillers in Race for Hearts and Land By PETER APPLEBOME
WALTON, N.Y.
You could have taken a nostalgic drive through the past on Thursday night, through the dreamy green landscape at the outer edges of the Catskills, past sleepy fishing towns like Roscoe and Downsville, to the lovingly restored Walton Theater, built in 1914 for vaudeville acts, honored guests like Theodore Roosevelt and community events of all shapes and sizes.
And, if you got there, you would have received a distinctly less dreamy glimpse of the future. You would have heard an overheated mix of fear and greed, caution and paranoia, of million-dollar gas leases that could enrich struggling farmers, of polluted wells, pastures turned to industrial sites and ozone pollution at urban levels. You would have heard anguished landowners from Wyoming and Colorado, facing issues now improbably appropriate to the Catskills, present their cautionary view of an environment dominated by huge energy companies where some will get rich while their neighbors might just see a hundredfold increase in truck traffic without much else to show for it.
Such gatherings are being repeated throughout a swath of upstate New York, from Walton to Liberty to New Berlin, as thousands of landowners, many of whom have already signed leases with landmen fanning out across the state, contemplate a new era of gas production now hovering almost inevitably over New York’s horizon.
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Homebuilders fined for polluting Ga. waterways Sweeping federal probe found violations at 71 of state's construction sites
By STACY SHELTON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/12/08
Four of the nation's largest homebuilders agreed Wednesday to pay $4.3 million in fines for allegedly polluting streams and lakes with dirt from their construction sites carried in stormwater runoff.
Seventy-one of the sites were in Georgia. Muddy runoff is among the biggest threats to the state's rivers and lakes. It also harms wildlife and vegetation dependent on those waterways, including fish and river otters.
The consent decree, filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., and jointly announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice, ended a sweeping, six-year federal investigation of hundreds of subdivision construction sites in Georgia and 33 other states.
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The School Bus May Not Come for Your Kid This Year High Oil Prices Force Cost-Cutting Nationwide
Families aren't the only ones examining their driving habits as gas prices climb. Municipal governments, police departments and school districts are also tightening their belts, as the budgets local taxpayers fill get stretched by high fuel costs, the Los Angeles Times reports today.
Expect to be hearing about the issue now, as your local governments cut back ... or later, when they ask you to increase their budgets at tax time.
In suburban school districts like Seattle's Northshore district, the Times reports, school bus routes are being cut, or children are being asked to walk farther to their bus stops so the bus has to make fewer stops and squeeze a few more miles to the gallon.
Diesel, which runs most school buses, has been at or near all-time high prices per gallon, and currently sits at an average of about $4.76 a gallon. Gasoline prices hit a new record, of nearly $4.09 a gallon, and that has some police departments eliminating patrols or even putting its beat cops in golf carts to save on fuel.
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Art Review
Cascades, Sing the City Energetic By ROBERTA SMITH
When Walt Whitman crossed the East River on the Brooklyn Ferry, the sheer ecstasy of the trip made him see the future. It was us, the coming generations of urban dwellers who would draw the same energy he did from his wonderful town and its waterways.
Whitman imagined an essence of city life that is still palpable — and intoxicating — no matter how many changes we lament. But I doubt he could have conjured one thing that we can see for the next three and a half months: the waterfalls in our midst.
Four of them, to be exact. Together they form a mammoth work of shoreline land art called “The New York City Waterfalls.” It is the brainchild of the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson working with the tireless Public Art Fund and a host of public and private organizations and donors. Between 90 and a 120 feet high and up to 80 feet across, they cascade into Whitman’s beloved East River from four dense, plumbed scaffolding structures on or just off the coasts of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Governors Island, making some of New York’s most thrilling waterside vistas more so.
Sometimes Mr. Eliasson’s falls are almost miragelike, especially after dark, when unobtrusive lighting makes them shimmer white against the muffled cityscape. It is at night that you have the greatest chance of hearing them from a distance, otherwise the rush of water is drowned out by the city. But their quiet heightens their strangeness, day or night. It is as if they were in their own movie, a silent one. And in a way they are. They could almost fool King Kong into thinking he is back home. They are the remnants of a primordial Eden, beautiful, uncanny signs of a natural nonurban past that the city never had.
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From: If Terrorists Rock the Vote in 2008 NY Times
If there’s another 9/11, it’s hard to argue that this gang could have prevented it. At least Mr. Obama, however limited his experience, has called for America to act on actionable terrorist intelligence in Pakistan if Pervez Musharraf won’t. Mr. McCain angrily disagreed with that idea. The relatively passive Pakistan policy he offers instead could well come back to haunt him if a new 9/11 is launched from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Should there be no new terrorist attack, the McCain camp’s efforts to play the old Rove 9/11 fear card may quickly become as laughable as the Giuliani presidential campaign. These days Americans are more frightened of losing their jobs, homes and savings.
But you can’t blame the McCain campaign for clinging to terrorism as a political crutch. The other Rove fear card is even more tattered. In the wake of Larry Craig and Mark Foley, it’s a double-edged sword for the G.O.P. to trot out gay blades cavorting in pride parades in homosexual-panic ads.
Some on the right still hold out hope otherwise. After the California Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage, The Weekly Standard suggested that a brewing backlash could put that state’s “electoral votes in play.” But few others believe so, including the state’s Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has vowed to enforce the law and opposes a ballot initiative to overturn it. Even Bill O’Reilly recently chastised a family-values advocate for mounting politically ineffectual arguments against same-sex marriage.
Read the full article
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