News That Matters - December 14, 2009

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The 2009 PlanPutnam Annual Fund Drive Is Coming To A Close Have you helped keep this newsletter coming? If not, please click here today. Your Support Is What Keeps Us Growing! Good Monday Morning, There are only a few shopping days until my birthday Christmas so if you have a cottage business that produces gifts that might be of interest to PlanPutnam and News That Matters reader's, drop me a note so we can get your advert in the newsletter. The YMCA of Western Connecticut is selling off their Great Hollow Wilderness Center which consists of 896  acres of open space, cliffs, waterfalls, fields and streams. It also adjoins the Walter G. Merritt property in Putnam County and was once part of that historical farm. Is there a buyer out there for this most important land? The image to the right, assuming your email program shows it, is a picture of a bobcat spotted there in October of this year. The property also protects the headwaters of some of the cleanest waters entering the Great Swamp in Patterson. It would be a shame to have it subdivided and paved over with McMansions. It's Hanukkah and in Jerusalem last week shoppers were surprised to find a flashmob in their midst. See the video here. Remember, "Oy!" is just "Yo!" backwards. Last week I reported on a woman who was filming a birthday party in a movie theater showing the film, 'New Moon', and found herself arrested, charged with a felony and who then spent two nights in jail. News this past weekend says that the charges have been dropped. 'New Moon' director Chris Weitz said in an email to news organizations, “There is, needless to say, a difference between trying to protect the copyright of a film and making an unfair example of someone who clearly seems not to have any intentions towards video piracy,”. Canadian science-fiction writer Peter Watts was leaving the US the other night on his way back home to Toronto when his car was selected for a random 'special' search by US border agents. He questioned the legality of the search and for his questions, Mr. Watts writes that he was “punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, sh*t-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three (profanity deleted) hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.).” And all that for *leaving* the United States. The initial report from the Border Patrol suggested he was trying to enter the United States, a report corrected in subsequent releases. Yeah, they got north/south wrong. Uganda, the nation that brought us Idi Amin Dada, The last King of Scotland, Entebbe, and an ongoing civil war waged by a deranged fundamentalist psychopath, is now trying to pass a law that makes homosexuality punishable by death. Last week the US State Department issued a bland statement suggesting the law might be a bad idea. On the eve of World AIDS Day (December 1), Hillary Clinton kinda, sorta talked about it. But the Obama administration itself was silent on the matter until last Friday afternoon when it issued a brief press statement on the matter - after the press corps had gone home for the weekend. On the other hand, nations across Europe have threatened sanctions and boycotts. Thirty-Three year old Jeremy Paul Olson was arrested for throwing a tomato at Sarah Palin in Bloomington, MN the other day. The report doesn't make it clear whether he was arrested for throwing the tomato or for missing Ms. Palin by ten feet, or was charged with assault only for getting tomato fragments on two nearby police officers. All three are possibilities. From the "I Love American Style Capitalism" Department: CEO Bank Salary 6-Year Loss Federal Bailout Ralph W Babb Comerica $2,290,000 -6% $2.25 Billion Harris H Simmons Zions Bancorp $1,002,000 -17% $1.4 Billion Henry L Meyer III Keycorp $2,160,000 -12% $2.5 Billion Kenneth D Lewis Bank of America $12,520,000 -16% $15 Billion The 2009 PlanPutnam Annual Fund Drive Is Coming To A Close Have you helped keep this newsletter coming? If not, please click here today. Your Support Is What Keeps Us Growing! And now, The News: Judge: Southeast must use low bidder for garbage collection Cornell team concludes DEC ill-equipped to oversee natural gas drilling Solar power coming to a store near you The State of Vermont Battles Wal*Mart in the Wilderness The Mother of All Green Homes Public barred from federal program on government openness Timber law becomes vast entitlement ACORN Did Nothing Illegal, Independent Probe Finds Judge: Southeast must use low bidder for garbage collection By Michael Risinit • mrisinit@lohud.com SOUTHEAST — The town must do business with the carter that submitted the lowest bid to collect Southeast's garbage and not the company that won the contract with a higher proposal, state Supreme Court Justice Andrew O'Rourke said. In a nine-page decision released Thursday, O'Rourke said the town must void its contract with Sani-Pro Disposal Services of Briarcliff Manor and use AAA Carting of Cortlandt. The Town Board in September voted 3-2 to go with Sani-Pro over AAA, even though Sani-Pro would charge the town $857,115 more over the three-year contract. AAA sued the town. Councilman Paul Johnson said then and maintained last week the majority selected Sani-Pro because it had better safety and maintenance plans than AAA. O'Rourke said Johnson and Councilman Richard Honeck, who also questioned AAA's safety and maintenance efforts, never presented qualifications to do so. Read More Cornell team concludes DEC ill-equipped to oversee natural gas drilling By Tom Wilber •twilber@gannett.com ITHACA -- The state's new blueprint for Marcellus Shale development proposes 187 new tasks to regulate natural gas drilling with no mention of how they will be completed. That's the assessment of a team of Cornell University lawyers and students who tackled the 800-page regulatory proposal -- called the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement -- as a class project. The pro bono work was done by Cornell Law School's Water Law Clinic to help the Town of Danby and the Upper Susquehanna Coalition -- a nonprofit group chartered to protect water resources -- sort through the dense technical details of Marcellus regulation. The public has until Dec. 31 to submit written comments regarding the state Department of Environmental Conservation's plan to oversee Marcellus development in New York. The shale formation holds the largest natural gas reserve in the country, running from the Southern Tier and parts of the Finger Lakes region down through Pennsylvania and the Appalachian Basin. Read More Solar power coming to a store near you Lowe's will roll out solar panels in stores across the country next year, but do-it-yourselfers beware: Government paperwork must be filled out before installation. By Chris Kahn, Associated Press Solar technology is going where it has never gone before: onto the shelves at retail stores where do-it-yourselfers can now plunk a panel into a shopping cart and bring it home to install.   Lowe's has begun stocking solar panels at its California stores and plans to roll them out across the country next year. This shows how far the highest of the high-tech alternative energy technologies has come. Solar power is now accessible to anyone with a ladder, a power drill, and the gumption to climb up on a roof and install the panels themselves.   For Lowe's, it's an opening into a new and potentially lucrative DIY business. Read More The State of Vermont Battles Wal*Mart in the Wilderness By J. Addision Barnhardt Vermonters love a good fight against Wal-Mart, perhaps more so than any other state in the Union. Vermont has fought the big box store from Bentonville, Arkansas in St. Albans for over fifteen years now. (See Mary Beth Blauser's September 29, 2009 In The News article on www.vjel.org for more information.) On February 13, 2009, the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, the Vermont General Assembly passed a resolution opposing the special use permit application of another Wal-Mart, this located on the border of a Civil War Battlefield in Orange County. While statewide Vermont's opposition against Wal-Mart is by no means abnormal, what is abnormal is that this particular Orange County was in Virginia, five hundred miles south. The armies of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee met for the first time in central Virginia at what became known as the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864. The battle was a bloody affair with over 29,000 total casualties in only two days of fighting. The Vermont First Brigade suffered 1,234 casualties in what would become known as the first battle of Grant's Overland Campaign, or the beginning of the end for the Confederate Army. In 1927 this hallowed ground became a part of the National Park Service. And on August 25, 2009, the Board of Supervisors for Orange County (Board) voted 4-1 to approve a special use permit for a 138,000 square foot Wal-Mart Supercenter to be located adjacent to the Park's border. Read More The Mother of All Green Homes These affordable, high-design homes are taking green building to the next level. Earthships are cutting edge green building designs that require almost no heating and cooling, and boast other renewable features. Dear EarthTalk: I've heard of extremely environmentally friendly homes and communities called "Earthships" popping up across the U.S. What are they exactly? -- Kelsey Kuehn, Kirtland, OH An Earthship is a kind of passive solar home -- or community of homes -- typically made of natural and recycled materials such as old tires and recycled cans. Such homes make use of non-polluting renewable energy sources and smart design to meet most if not all heating, cooling and power needs. The term Earthship, coined by self-proclaimed "biotect" Mike Reynolds, is derived from the homes being in and of the Earth -- that is, constructed responsibly out of earthen materials and built into the ground. It also refers to living in a ship, which requires inhabitants to be autonomous from outside help (such as a power grid). The concept has spread well beyond its roots in the desert surrounding Taos, New Mexico. Besides being the headquarters for Reynolds' Earthship Biotecture business, the Taos area is also home to several Earthship communities, which generate their own power without contributing to the atmosphere's growing carbon load and make use of local recycled materials to minimize resource use. Construction materials in Earthship homes vary according to what particular recycled items are plentiful and useful in a given locale. The New Mexico versions usually consist of exterior walls made from earth-filled tires stacked like bricks and covered in stucco or adobe. These thick outer walls employ "thermal mass construction" to naturally regulate indoor temperatures. Wintertime heating is provided primarily by the Earthship's layout and orientation, with windows on the sunny sides of the building letting in light and heat. A properly constructed Earthship can maintain a comfortable indoor air temperature with plentiful natural ventilation all year-round with little or no help from power-hungry heating or cooling equipment. Read More Public barred from federal program on government openness The public and the news media are barred from attending a workshop designed to teach federal employees about a new government office that resolves open records disputes, The Associated Press reports. Federal public liasons attended the closed training session to learn about the new U.S. Office of Government Information Services, which the Obama administration created to help resolve disputes between freedom of information requesters and the government. But some freedom of information advocates felt holding the Justice Department workshop behind closed doors conflicted with the administration’s promises for increased transparency and raised questions about whether liaisons receive the same messages in public and in private, according to the AP. The Justice Department’s Melanie Ann Pustay, who was in charge of the program, said the meeting was held in private so that federal attendees could speak candidly during the training session. The program’s presentation materials have already been released. Read More Timber law becomes vast entitlement AP analysis: 4-year renewal of the law authorizes billions of dollars for any state with federal forests, even those with no spotted owls or history of logging. By Matthew Daly and Shannon Dininny, Associated Press A federal program that began as a safety net for Pacific Northwest logging communities hard-hit by battles over the spotted owl in the 1990s has morphed into a sprawling entitlement — one that ships vast amounts of money to states with little or no historic connection to timber, an analysis by The Associated Press shows.   Nicknamed "county payments," the timber program was supposed to assist counties shortchanged when national forests limited logging to protect the northern spotted owl and other endangered species. The federal largesse initially focused on a handful of Western states, with Oregon alone receiving nearly $2 billion.   Spending of that magnitude, though, sparked a new timber war — this one among politicians eager to get their hands on some of the logging money. Read More ACORN Did Nothing Illegal, Independent Probe Finds Tuesday 08 December 2009 by: Mary Susan Littlepage, t r u t h o u t | Report The Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) doesn't show a pattern of intentional and illegal behavior in undercover videos that conservatives shot of ACORN staffers. That's according to an independent, two-month review of ACORN released Monday. Scott Harshbarger, senior counsel at Proskauer and former Massachusetts attorney general, created the findings of the report. The independent review is the result of two months of research and interviews by Harshbarger and lawyer Amy Crafts working in Proskauer's Boston, Washington and New York offices. It shows the independent analysis requested by ACORN on September 21 in the wake of the video controversies, significant negative news coverage and lost support among some funders, allies and supporters. The independent report makes clear that the controversy involving hidden-camera videos, which were edited before being partially released to the public, showed fundamental problems in the organization and structure of ACORN that date back to its founders. Also, the report notes that the video controversy was seen largely as ACORN's "third strike" after the disclosure in June 2008 of an embezzlement cover-up, which triggered the firing of ACORN's founder, and allegations of voter registration fraud during the 2008 election. Read More The 2009 PlanPutnam Annual Fund Drive Is Coming To A Close Have you helped keep this newsletter coming? If not, please click here today. Your Support Is What Keeps Us Growing!	Sign up to have News That Matters Delivered to your email inbox! 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