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"You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in." - Arlo Guthrie
Good Thursday Morning,
It finally rained in quantity and I have to say it's welcome and it looks as if the sun will return this afternoon with a chance of scattered thunderstorms. Our gardens and lawns and trees were parched from the long period of hot weather and according to the weather reports we're heading back into the upper 80's for the weekend. Expect a welcome surge of growth from your heat loving plants over the next few days.
And don't forget, head on out and look for stormwater problems around your house and your community and report them to your town's Stormwater Management Committee. No one will get in trouble and everyone, especially our lakes and wells, will benefit.
Today the federal minimum wage will increase 70 cents to $6.55 per hour. However, this latest increase is so little that workers will be earning less today than they did in 1997, when the rate is adjusted for inflation. In fact, when compared to the first federal minimum wage rate which kicked in during 1968, workers were earning more then than now. With all things being equal, you would have earned slightly more than $20,000 in 1968 compared with $13,624 today. The richest 1 percent of Americans have increased their share of the nation's income to a higher level than any year since 1928, the eve of the Great Depression, so says the Wall Street Journal.
Southeast Town Supervisor Michael Rights goes to court today. Pick up any copy of the NY Journal News... it's been plastered with the story for days and days and days. It's like there's nothing else going on in this county.
Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi is planning another pull-the-wool-over-the-taxpayers-eyes trip around NY to tell you how great property tax caps are. He's full of malarkey, of course, since tax caps do nothing to solve our property tax problem, they just bury them beneath politically palatable and popular slogans. Sandy Galef supports them and Greg Ball does too, as does pretty much every politician too afraid to loose campaign donations from the Wall Street set who oppose a true solution: a graduated income tax and a state takeover of education funding.
But there are some politicians and candidates out there with guts who either oppose or are questioning the caps. What happens, they ask, if we place a cap on school funding and unforeseen circumstances arise? What happens if a district finds its heating oil or diesel fuel bills exceed budget projections? Listen to those folks and ignore the proponents.
Get ready for another government hand-out to the energy industry. Oh, not to solar or wind or anything like that, but to the oil shale industry which is about to engage in one of the most polluting ventures ever known to man. The government currently charges royalty fees between 12.5% and 18.8% for conventional oil drilling, but oil shale development would be set at around 5%. Sweet! If you think strip mining is bad, just wait until you see what Colorado looks like in 10 years. (two stories beneath the fold)
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| Strip Mining in West Virginia
| Tar Sands Extraction in Colorado
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My apologies for being so late this morning but, as I mentioned yesterday, my DSL Service Sucks. I'm going to head outside in a bit and smack the grounding rod a few times with a sledgehammer and perform a live sacrifice at the fire pit. Rumor has it stranger things have repaired such problems.
And now, the news:
- 750 housing units are planned
- Gouldman on energy conservation
- Great Lakes Compact heads to Congress
- From Garbage to Gas Tank: Trash as Biofuel
- Bush Proposes Lowering Oil Shale Royalties
- The Saudi-Scale U.S. Oil Reserves We Shouldn't Tap
- Of ballast water and zebra mussels
- An Inconvenient Truth: When Film Art and Climate Change Clashed in a Swindle
- Richest Americans See Their Income Share Grow
750 housing units are planned Mix of residential, business envisioned
By Michael Valkys • Poughkeepsie Journal • July 24, 2008
Developers of Hudson River Psychiatric Center's sprawling former campus off Route 9 are expected next week to submit formal plans to the Town of Poughkeepsie calling for construction of 750 housing units and 350,000 square feet of commercial space.
Officials with the development company said the project is expected to cost at least $250 million and take years to complete after town approvals are granted. The approval process is expected to begin this summer and extend into 2010, meaning construction could start sometime that year.
Representatives from New York City-based CPC Re-sources Wednesday made an informal presentation to the town board on their plans for the 156-acre property, which was sold by the state in 2005 for $2.75 million.
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Gouldman on energy conservation July 23 State Assembly candidate William Gouldman announced his Clean/Green Energy Savings Plan this week, a proposal aimed at slashing energy consumption and fostering the transition to environmentally-conscious energy solutions. Louis Buccheri, a colleague here at TJN/LoHud, writes about it after the break.The plan would eliminate sales taxes on products with superior energy efficiency ratings, offering consumers an incentive to buy appliances, electronics and heating and cooling systems approved by agencies like Energy Star. It would also spike sales of these products, Gouldman said.
“It’s a win-win situation,” Gouldman said. “If we can help the economy for the individual and for businesses, everybody will benefit.” Gouldman said embracing energy efficient products and practices could allow homeowners to greatly reduce their energy bills while lessening the impact their homes have on the environment.
The proposal, which would also provide tax exemptions on alternative energy systems and rebates to help seniors heat their homes, is an “incremental approach” to help the average individual get by in what he called “the worst financial situation since the Great Depression.”
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Great Lakes Compact heads to Congress MILWAUKEE, July 23 (UPI) -- Leaders of eight Great Lakes states gathered Wednesday in Milwaukee to present Congress with an agreement to prevent water diversions from the lakes.
The multi-state agreement, or compact, was ratified by the Legislatures of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania and New York, and now must gain Congressional approval to become law, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle joined members of Congress to make the case for the Great Lakes Compact, saying that, if enacted, it would bolster the legal standing of the Great Lakes states' efforts to prevent water diversions by outside parties.
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From Garbage to Gas Tank: Trash as Biofuel Jessica Marshall, Discovery News
July 23, 2008 -- Within the next two years, some of us may be running our cars on trash.
Two companies -- INEOS bio of Lyndhurst, U.K., and Coskata of Warrenville, Ill. -- claim to be within reach of producing ethanol from garbage on a commercial scale.
INEOS bio announced this week that they plan to produce commercial quantities of waste-derived ethanol within two years. Coskata plans to have a commercial demonstration facility by mid-2009.
The companies use similar processes to turn municipal waste into ethanol. The first step is gasification, in which the waste is heated with limited oxygen to create carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
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Bush Proposes Lowering Oil Shale Royalties Battle Over Dirty, Expensive Fossil Fuel Heats Up
Oil shale, not popular with most environmentalists, is back in the news again, as Bush & Co. take advantage over gas price anxiety to float another crack at the dirty source of energy. Now, the Prez has proposed lowering the royalties charged to companies who process oil shale.
As the Associated Press reports, the Interior Department's draft rules recommend reduced royalty rates for the extraction of oil from shale on 2 million acres of public property in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. While the government currently charges 12.5% to 18.8% for conventional oil drilling, oil shale development would be set at around 5%.
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The Saudi-Scale U.S. Oil Reserves We Shouldn't Tap The Problem with Oil Shale
As the old saying goes, a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. A twist on that aphorism might be that a conservative is a liberal who paid $80 to fill up the Volvo.
Polls show that more Americans, even liberal Democrats, support expanded domestic oil production. What if the poll respondents learned that a vast pool of oil sits untapped? It’s three times the size of Saudi Arabia’s reserves and is emphatically within U.S. borders.
What are we waiting for? the poll respondents might exclaim.
Except that there’s a catch. Before the oil can be used, we have to wait 100 million years.
In an age when immediate gratification is considered a virtue, that simply won’t do. Shell is bringing technology to the rescue, to speed things up and tap the estimated 800 billion barrels of shale oil lying beneath the scrubby uplands of the central Rockies.
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Of ballast water and zebra mussels New York and five other Great Lakes states, along with several environmental groups, won a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today over commercial ships dumping contaminated ballast water into the lakes. The court decision prohibits large vessels and other oceangoing freight ships from discharging water without a permit from the EPA, starting Sept. 30. The federal agency previously had exempted ships that dumped untreated water from having to comply with the federal Clean Water Act.
One of the legacies of the polluted ballast water was the introduction of the zebra mussel invasive species into American waters in the late 1980s. The zebra mussel is now found in all five Great Lakes and other waterways in North America, according to state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office. In some areas, there are up to 1 million of them per square yard, and they clog intake pipes at water and power plants. The discharges have introduced more than 180 aquatic invasive species into the Great Lakes and have affected other American bodies of water. Some native species are nearly extinct as a result
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An Inconvenient Truth: When Film Art and Climate Change Clashed in a Swindle Written by Sam Aola Ooko
Published on July 24th, 2008Posted in Global, Great Britain, United States of America
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The British Media regulator, Office of Communications or Ofcom has affirmed that a documentary on UK’s Channel 4 last year debunking Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and the theory about human influence on climate change was out of touch with reality.
The watchdog this week ruled The Great Global Warming Swindle unfairly portrays several scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and that it broke rules in the Broadcasting Code.
Ofcom’s investigation found that the IPCC, the former government chief scientist, Sir David King, and Professor Carl Wunsch, were treated unfairly in the documentary that attempted to use a cast of the world’s top scientists to debunk the global warming theory.
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Richest Americans See Their Income Share Grow By Jesse Drucker / Wall Street Journal
In a new sign of increasing inequality in the U.S., the richest 1% of Americans in 2006 garnered the highest share of the nation's adjusted gross income for two decades, and possibly the highest since 1929, according to Internal Revenue Service data.
Meanwhile, the average tax rate of the wealthiest 1% fell to its lowest level in at least 18 years. The group's share of the tax burden has risen, though not as quickly as its share of income.
The figures are from the IRS's income-statistics division and were posted on the agency's Web site last week. The 2006 data are the most recent available.
The figures about the relative income and tax rates of the wealthiest Americans come as the presumptive presidential candidates are in a debate about taxes. Congress and the next president will have to decide whether to extend several Bush-era tax cuts, including the 2003 reduction in tax rates on capital gains and dividends. Experts said those tax cuts in particular are playing a major role in falling tax rates for the very wealthy.
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