“The fact remains that AIG's rescue broke all the rules, and each rule that was broken poses a question that must be answered.” - Ms. Elizabeth Warren, Congressional TARP oversight panel chairwoman

PUBLIC TRUST LIEN: $137 BILLION AIG OWES THE NATION

CLOSE THE CASINO & ABOLISH SLAVERY - PRICELESS

HOLD OF THE WARDEN - MORMAER OF THE ARMANSHIRE

INSTITUTIONAL SYSTEMIC SOCIOPATHIC FRAUD

T.W. ARMAN FACES EVICTION AS A.I.G. LOOTS BILLIONS

States may make whatever laws they wish (consistent with their State Constitutions) except as prohibited by the US Constitution. Only Laws made by Congress, which are pursuant to the Constitution, qualify as part of the General Government Law of the Land.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof … shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State  to the Contrary notwithstanding. [emphasis added]

Federal sovereign immunity

"Though this was the intent of the Congress [to waive sovereign immunity] in passing the 1972 Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments, the Supreme Court, encouraged by Federal agencies, has misconstrued the original intent." S. Rep. No. 370, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. 67 (1977), reprinted in 1977 U.S.C.C.A.N. 4326, 4392. See Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977, Pub. L. No. 95-95, [section] 116, 91 Stat. 711 (1977); see also Clean Water Act Amendments of 1977, Pub. L. 217, [subsection] 60, 61(a), 91 Stat. 1597, 1598 (1977).

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.
James Madison

From such a gentle thing, from such a fountain of all delight, my every pain is born.
Michelangelo

Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.
John Locke

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
Marcus Aurelius

Words that everyone once used are now obsolete, and so are the men whose names were once on everyone's lips: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus, and to a lesser degree Scipio and Cato, and yes, even Augustus, Hadrian, and Antoninus are less spoken of now than they were in their own days. For all things fade away, become the stuff of legend, and are soon buried in oblivion. Mind you, this is true only for those who blazed once like bright stars in the firmament, but for the rest, as soon as a few clods of earth cover their corpses, they are 'out of sight, out of mind.' In the end, what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself. (IV. 33, trans. Scot and David Hicks)

errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum

'to err is human, but to persist is diabolical.'

extra territorium jus dicenti impune non paretur

BP, Obama, and the EPA

BP's Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill has caused environmental and economic damage and a political circus. Have you ever heard of the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Contingency Plan Act ? This law was passed in 1994 and it specifically charges the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with mitigating damage from major oil spills. In response to that act, the EPA, itself, says , “When a major oil spill occurs in the United States, coordinated teams of local, state, and national personnel are called upon to help contain the spill, clean it up, and ensure that damage to human health and the environment is minimized. Without careful planning and clear organization, efforts to deal with large oil spills could be slow, ineffective, and potentially harmful to response personnel and the environment. In the United States, the system for organizing responses to major oil spills is called the National Response System.” The Act makes a prompt and effective response to a major oil spill a national priority. So how are they doing?

Some (mainly conservative) columnists have attributed Obama's Nero-like lack of concern to ulterior motives . For instance, Obama's refusal to accept aid from the Dutch government is said to be a sop to the labor unions. And, Obama is using to oil spill disaster to renew his push for Cap & Trade climate legislation .

Maybe there are ulterior motives, but more likely, the less-than-prompt and effective response is probably due to incompetence by Obama and his bureaucracies, just like FEMA's failure after Katrina. For instance the EPA dithered while considering the possible toxic effects of an oil dispersant that BP wanted to use. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is incensed with the Coast Guard because they stopped cleanup efforts to check whether the crews had proper fire extinguishers and life vests.

Meanwhile, Congress is holding hearings, with all their sound and fury, in a feigned effort to investigate BP (and give “face time” to legislators). Such hearings have no practical value in mitigating the oil spill.

Obama used the oil spill as an excuse to impose a six-month moratorium of deep water drilling, possibly to promote more “alternative energy” schemes. Obama said is was for “safety” concerns by the Department of the Interior, but analysis by the Wall Street Journal shows that this was all about politics . Another possible ulterior motive: the oil spill and Obama's moratorium will aid Obama contributor George Soros who is heavily involved in Brazilian oil. Brazil stands to benefit from the BP oil spill catastrophe as the US moratorium makes more rigs available for other countries.

Yes, BP should be held responsible for the loss of economic activity caused by the accident. But government action, and inaction, is making things worse. They are not letting a good crisis go to waste.

EPA cites concern for endangered species as feds ponder selling NY …

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Strengthening National Capacity—A Whole of Government Approach
To succeed, we must update, balance, and integrate all of the tools of American power and work with our allies and partners to do the same. Our military must maintain its conventional superiority and, as long as nuclear weapons exist, our nuclear deterrent capability, while continuing to enhance its capacity to defeat asymmetric threats, preserve access to the global commons, and strengthen partners. We must invest in diplomacy and development capabilities and institutions in a way that complements and reinforces our global partners. Our intelligence capabilities must continuously evolve to identify and characterize conventional and asymmetric threats and provide timely insight. And we must integrate our approach to homeland security with our broader national security approach.
We are improving the integration of skills and capabilities within our military and civilian institutions, so they complement each other and operate seamlessly. We are also improving coordinated planning and policymaking and must build our capacity in key areas where we fall short. This requires close cooperation
with Congress and a deliberate and inclusive interagency process, so that we achieve integration of our efforts to implement and monitor operations, policies, and strategies. To initiate this effort, the White House merged the staffs of the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council.
However, work remains to foster coordination across departments and agencies. Key steps include more effectively ensuring alignment of resources with our national security strategy, adapting the education and training of national security professionals to equip them to meet modern challenges, reviewing authorities and mechanisms to implement and coordinate assistance programs, and other policies and programs that strengthen coordination.
• Defense: We are strengthening our military to ensure that it can prevail in today’s wars; to prevent and deter threats against the United States, its interests, and our allies and partners; and prepare to defend the United States in a wide range of contingencies against state and nonstate actors. We will continue to rebalance our military capabilities to excel at counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, stability operations, and meeting increasingly sophisticated security threats, while ensuring our force is ready to address the full range of military operations. This includes preparing for increasingly sophisticated adversaries, deterring and defeating aggression in anti-access environments, and defending the United States and supporting civil authorities at home. The most valuable component of our national defense is the men and women who make up America’s all-volunteer force. They have shown tremendous resilience, adaptability,
and capacity for innovation, and we will provide our service members with the resources that they need to succeed and rededicate ourselves to providing support and care for wounded warriors, veterans, and military families. We must set the force on a path to sustainable deployment cycles and preserve and enhance the long-term viability of our force through successful recruitment, retention, and recognition of those who serve.Table of C onte nts15 ★ ★
diplomatic personnel and missions must be expanded at home and abroad to support the increasingly transnational nature of 21st century security challenges. And we must provide the appropriate authorities
and mechanisms to implement and coordinate assistance programs and grow the civilian expeditionary
capacity required to assist governments on a diverse array of issues.
• Economic: Our economic institutions are crucial components of our national capacity and our economic instruments are the bedrock of sustainable national growth, prosperity and influence. The Office of Management and Budget, Departments of the Treasury, State, Commerce, Energy, and Agriculture, United States Trade Representative, Federal Reserve Board, and other institutions help manage our currency, trade, foreign investment, deficit, inflation, productivity, and national competitiveness. Remaining a vibrant 21st century economic power also requires close cooperation between and among developed nations and emerging markets because of the interdependent nature of the global economy. America—like other nations—is dependent upon overseas markets to sell its exports and maintain access to scarce commodities and resources. Thus, finding overlapping mutual economic interests with other nations and maintaining those economic relationships are key elements of our national security strategy.
• Development: Development is a strategic, economic, and moral imperative. We are focusing on assisting
developing countries and their people to manage security threats, reap the benefits of global economic expansion, and set in place accountable and democratic institutions that serve basic human needs. Through an aggressive and affirmative development agenda and commensurate resources, we can strengthen the regional partners we need to help us stop conflicts and counter global criminal networks; build a stable, inclusive global economy with new sources of prosperity; advance democracy and human rights; and ultimately position ourselves to better address key global challenges by growing the ranks of prosperous, capable, and democratic states that can be our partners in the decades ahead. To do this, we are expanding our civilian development capability; engaging with international financial institutions that leverage our resources and advance our objectives; pursuing a development budget that more deliberately reflects our policies and our strategy, not sector earmarks; and ensuring that our policy instruments are aligned in support of development objectives.
• Homeland Security: Homeland security traces its roots to traditional and historic functions of government
and society, such as civil defense, emergency response, law enforcement, customs, border patrol, and immigration. In the aftermath of 9/11 and the foundation of the Department of Homeland Security, these functions have taken on new organization and urgency. Homeland security, therefore, strives to adapt these traditional functions to confront new threats and evolving hazards. It is not simply about government action alone, but rather about the collective strength of the entire country. Our approach relies on our shared efforts to identify and interdict threats; deny hostile actors the ability to operate within our borders; maintain effective control of our physical borders; safeguard lawful trade and travel into and out of the United States; disrupt and dismantle transnational terrorist, and criminal organizations;
and ensure our national resilience in the face of the threat and hazards. Taken together, these efforts must support a homeland that is safe and secure from terrorism and other hazards and in which American interests, aspirations, and way of life can thrive.
• Intelligence: Our country’s safety and prosperity depend on the quality of the intelligence we collect and the analysis we produce, our ability to evaluate and share this information in a timely manner, and our ability to counter intelligence threats. This is as true for the strategic intelligence that informs executive decisions as it is for intelligence support to homeland security, state, local, and tribal govern
for engagement, coordination, transparency, and information sharing.

Strengthen Education and Human Capital
In a global economy of vastly increased mobility and interdependence, our own prosperity and leadership
depends increasingly on our ability to provide our citizens with the education that they need to succeed, while attracting the premier human capital for our workforce. We must ensure that the most innovative ideas take root in America, while providing our people with the skills that they need to compete. That means we must:
Improve Education at All Levels: The United States has lost ground in education, even as our competitiveness
depends on educating our children to succeed in a global economy based on knowledge and innovation. We are working to provide a complete and competitive education for all Americans, to include supporting high standards for early learning, reforming public schools, increasing access to higher education and job training, and promoting high-demand skills and education for emerging industries. We will also restore U.S. leadership in higher education by seeking the goal of leading the world in the proportion of college graduates by 2020.
Invest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education (STEM): America’s long-term leadership
depends on educating and producing future scientists and innovators. We will invest more in STEM education so students can learn to think critically in science, math, engineering, and technology; improve the quality of math and science teaching so American students are no longer outperformed by those in other nations; and expand STEM education and career opportunities for underrepresented groups, including women and girls. We will work with partners—from the private-sector and nonprofit organizations to universities—to promote education and careers in science and technology.
Increase International Education and Exchange: The pervasiveness of the English language and American cultural influence are great advantages to Americans traveling, working, and negotiating in foreign countries. But we must develop skills to help us succeed in a dynamic and diverse global economy. We will support programs that cultivate interest and scholarship in foreign languages and intercultural affairs, including international exchange programs. This will allow our citizens to build connections with peoples overseas and to develop skills and contacts that will help them thrive in the global economy. We must also welcome more foreign exchange students to our shores, recognizing the benefits that can result from deeper ties with foreign publics and increased understanding of American society.
Pursue Comprehensive Immigration Reform: The United States is a nation of immigrants. Our ability to innovate, our ties to the world, and our economic prosperity depend on our nation’s capacity to welcome and assimilate immigrants, and a visa system which welcomes skilled professionals from around the
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world. At the same time, effective border security and immigration enforcement must keep the country safe and deter unlawful entry. Indeed, persistent problems in immigration policy consume valuable resources needed to advance other security objectives and make it harder to focus on the most dangerous
threats facing our country. Ultimately, our national security depends on striking a balance between security and openness. To advance this goal, we must pursue comprehensive immigration reform that effectively secures our borders, while repairing a broken system that fails to serve the needs of our nation.
Enhance Science, Technology, and Innovation
Reaffirming America’s role as the global engine of scientific discovery and technological innovation has never been more critical. Challenges like climate change, pandemic disease, and resource scarcity demand new innovation. Meanwhile, the nation that leads the world in building a clean energy economy will enjoy a substantial economic and security advantage. That is why the Administration is investing heavily in research, improving education in science and math, promoting developments in energy, and expanding international cooperation.
Transform our Energy Economy: As long as we are dependent on fossil fuels, we need to ensure the security and free flow of global energy resources. But without significant and timely adjustments, our energy dependence will continue to undermine our security and prosperity. This will leave us vulnerable to energy supply disruptions and manipulation and to changes in the environment on an unprecedented scale.
The United States has a window of opportunity to lead in the development of clean energy technology. If successful, the United States will lead in this new Industrial Revolution in clean energy that will be a major contributor to our economic prosperity. If we do not develop the policies that encourage the private sector to seize the opportunity, the United States will fall behind and increasingly become an importer of these new energy technologies.
We have already made the largest investment in clean energy in history, but there is much more to do to build on this foundation. We must continue to transform our energy economy, leveraging private capital to accelerate deployment of clean energy technologies that will cut greenhouse gas emissions, improve energy efficiency, increase use of renewable and nuclear power, reduce the dependence of vehicles on oil, and diversify energy sources and suppliers. We will invest in research and next-generation technology, modernize the way we distribute electricity, and encourage the usage of transitional fuels, while moving towards clean energy produced at home.
Invest in Research: Research and development is central to our broader national capacity. Incidents like the outbreak of H1N1 influenza and the challenge of identifying new, renewable sources of energy highlight the importance of research in basic and applied science. We are reversing the decades-long decline in federal funding for research, including the single largest infusion to basic science research in American history. Research and innovation is not something government can do on its own, which is why we will support and create incentives to encourage private initiatives. The United States has always excelled in our ability to turn science and technology into engineering and products, and we must continue to do so in the future.

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Expand International Science Partnerships: America’s scientific leadership has always been widely admired around the world, and we must continue to expand cooperation and partnership in science and technology. We have launched a number of Science Envoys around the globe and are promoting stronger relationships between American scientists, universities, and researchers and their counterparts abroad. We will reestablish a commitment to science and technology in our foreign assistance efforts and develop a strategy for international science and national security.
Employ Technology to Protect our Nation: Our renewed commitment to science and technology—and our ability to apply the ingenuity of our public and private sectors toward the most difficult foreign policy and security challenges of our time—will help us protect our citizens and advance U.S. national security priorities. These include, for example, protecting U.S. and allied forces from asymmetric attacks; supporting
arms control and nonproliferation agreements; preventing terrorists from attacking our homeland; preventing and managing widespread disease outbreaks; securing the supply chain; detecting weapons of mass destruction before they reach our borders; and protecting our information, communication, and transportation infrastructure.
Leverage and Grow our Space Capabilities: For over 50 years, our space community has been a catalyst for innovation and a hallmark of U.S. technological leadership. Our space capabilities underpin global commerce and scientific advancements and bolster our national security strengths and those of our allies and partners. To promote security and stability in space, we will pursue activities consistent with the inherent right of self-defense, deepen cooperation with allies and friends, and work with all nations toward the responsible and peaceful use of space. To maintain the advantages afforded to the United States by space, we must also take several actions. We must continue to encourage cutting-edge space technology by investing in the people and industrial base that develops them. We will invest in the research and development of next-generation space technologies and capabilities that benefit our commercial, civil, scientific exploration, and national security communities, in order to maintain the viability of space for future generations. And we will promote a unified effort to strengthen our space industrial base and work with universities to encourage students to pursue space-related careers.
Achieve Balanced and Sustainable Growth
Balanced and sustainable growth, at home and throughout the global economy, drives the momentum of the U.S. economy and underpins our prosperity. A steadily growing global economy means an expanding
market for exports of our goods and services. Over time, deepening linkages among markets and businesses will provide the setting in which the energies and entrepreneurship of our private sector can flourish, generating technologies, business growth, and job creation that will boost living standards for Americans. United States economic leadership now has to adapt to the rising prominence of emerging economies; the growing size, speed, and sophistication of financial markets; the multiplicity of market participants around the globe; and the struggling economies that have so far failed to integrate into the global system.
To promote prosperity for all Americans, we will need to lead the international community to expand the inclusive growth of the integrated, global economy. At the same time, we will need to lead international efforts to prevent a recurrence of economic imbalances and financial excesses, while managing the
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trade agreements work for Americans, we will take steps to restore confidence, with realistic programs to deal with transition costs, and promote innovation, infrastructure, healthcare reform and education. Our agreements will contain achievable enforcement mechanisms to ensure that the gains we negotiate are in fact realized and will be structured to reflect U.S. interests, especially on labor and environment.
Build Cooperation with Our International Partners: The United States has supported the G-20’s emergence
as the premier forum for international economic cooperation. This flows from the recognition that we need a broader and more inclusive engagement with the countries responsible for most of global output and trade. U.S. leadership in the G-20 will be focused on securing sustainable and balanced growth, coordinating reform of financial sector regulation, fostering global economic development, and promoting energy security. We also need official international financial institutions to be as modern and agile as the global economy they serve. Through the G-20, we will pursue governance reform at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. We will also broaden our leadership in other international financial institutions so that the rapidly growing countries of the world see their representation
increase and are willing to invest those institutions with the authority they need to promote the stability and growth of global output and trade.
Deterring Threats to the International Financial System: Today’s open and global financial system also exposes us to global financial threats. Just as we work to make the most of the opportunities that globalization
brings, the actors that pose a threat to our national security—terrorists, proliferators, narcotics traffickers, corrupt officials, and others—are abusing the global financial system to raise, move, and safeguard
funds that support their illicit activities or from which they derive profit. Their support networks have global reach and are not contained by national borders. Our strategy to attack these networks must respond in kind and target their illicit resources and access to the global financial system through financial measures, administration and enforcement of regulatory authorities, outreach to the private sector and our foreign partners, and collaboration on international standards and information sharing.
Accelerate Sustainable Development
The growth of emerging economies in recent decades has lifted people out of poverty and forged a more interconnected and vibrant global economy. But development has been uneven, progress is fragile, and too many of the world’s people still live without the benefits that development affords. While some countries are growing, many lag behind—mired in insecurity, constrained by poor governance, or overly dependent upon commodity prices. But sustained economic progress requires faster, sustainable, and more inclusive development. That is why we are pursuing a range of specific initiatives in areas such as food security and global health that will be essential to the future security and prosperity of nations and peoples around the globe.
Increase Investments in Development: The United States has an interest in working with our allies to help the world’s poorest countries grow into productive and prosperous economies governed by capable, democratic, and accountable state institutions. We will ensure a greater and more deliberate focus on a global development agenda across the United States Government, from policy analysis through policy implementation. We are increasing our foreign assistance, expanding our investments in effective multilateral development institutions, and leveraging the engagement of others to share the burden.

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Invest in the Foundations of Long-Term Development: The United States will initiate long-term investments
that recognize and reward governments that demonstrate the capacity and political will to pursue sustainable development strategies and ensure that all policy instruments at our disposal are harnessed to these ends. And we will provide our support in multiple ways—by strengthening the ability of governments
and communities to manage development challenges and investing in strong institutions that foster the democratic accountability that helps sustain development. This will expand the circle of nations—particularly in Africa—who are capable of reaping the benefits of the global economy, while contributing to global security and prosperity.
Exercise Leadership in the Provision of Global Public Goods: Our approach needs to reflect the fact that there are a set of development challenges that strongly affect the likelihood of progress, but cannot be addressed by individual countries acting alone. Particularly in Africa, these challenges—such as adaptation
to global warming, the control of epidemic disease, and the knowledge to increase agricultural productivity—are not adequately addressed in bilateral efforts. We will shape the international architecture
and work with our global partners to address these challenges, and increase our investments and engagement to transition to a low-carbon growth trajectory, support the resilience of the poorest nations to the effects of climate change, and strengthen food security. We must also pursue potential “game changers” for development such as new vaccines, weather-resistant seed varieties, and green energy technologies.
Spend Taxpayers’ Dollars Wisely
The United States Government has an obligation to make the best use of taxpayer money, and our ability to achieve long-term goals depends upon our fiscal responsibility. A responsible budget involves making
tough choices to live within our means; holding departments and agencies accountable for their spending and their performance; harnessing technology to improve government performance; and being open and honest with the American people. A responsible budget also depends upon working with our global partners and institutions to share burdens and leverage U.S. investments to achieve global goals. Our national security goals can only be reached if we make hard choices and work with international partners to share burdens.
Reduce the Deficit: We cannot grow our economy in the long term unless we put the United States back on a sustainable fiscal path. To begin this effort, the Administration has proposed a 3-year freeze in nonsecurity discretionary spending, a new fee on the largest financial services companies to recoup taxpayer losses for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and the closing of tax loopholes and unnecessary subsidies. The Administration has created a bipartisan fiscal commission to suggest further steps for medium-term deficit reduction and will work for fiscally responsible health insurance reform that will bring down the rate of growth in health care costs, a key driver of the country’s fiscal future.
Reform Acquisition and Contracting Processes: Wasteful spending, duplicative programs, and contracts with poor oversight have no place in the United States Government. Cost-effective and efficient processes
are particularly important for the Department of Defense, which accounts for approximately 70 percent of all Federal procurement spending. We will scrutinize our programs and terminate or restructure those that are outdated, duplicative, ineffective, or wasteful. The result will be more relevant,
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The United States supports those who seek to exercise universal rights around the world. We promote our values above all by living them at home. We continue to engage nations, institutions, and peoples in pursuit of these values abroad. And we recognize the link between development and political progress. In doing so, our goals are realistic, as we recognize that different cultures and traditions give life to these values in distinct ways. Moreover, America’s influence comes not from perfection, but from our striving to overcome our imperfections. The constant struggle to perfect our union is what makes the American story inspiring. That is why acknowledging our past shortcomings—
and highlighting our efforts to remedy them—is a means of promoting our values.
America will not impose any system of government on another country, but our long-term security and prosperity depends on our steady support for universal values, which sets us apart from our enemies, adversarial governments, and many potential competitors for influence. We will do so through a variety of means—by speaking out for universal rights, supporting fragile democracies and civil society, and supporting the dignity that comes with development.
Strengthen the Power of Our Example
More than any other action that we have taken, the power of America’s example has helped spread freedom and democracy abroad. That is why we must always seek to uphold these values not just when it is easy, but when it is hard. Advancing our interests may involve new arrangements to confront threats like terrorism, but these practices and structures must always be in line with our Constitution, preserve our people’s privacy and civil liberties, and withstand the checks and balances that have served us so well. To sustain our fidelity to our values—and our credibility to promote them around the world—we will continue to:
Prohibit Torture without Exception or Equivocation: Brutal methods of interrogation are inconsistent with our values, undermine the rule of law, and are not effective means of obtaining information. They alienate the United States from the world. They serve as a recruitment and propaganda tool for terrorists.
They increase the will of our enemies to fight against us, and endanger our troops when they are captured. The United States will not use or support these methods.
Legal Aspects of Countering Terrorism: The increased risk of terrorism necessitates a capacity to detain and interrogate suspected violent extremists, but that framework must align with our laws to be effective and sustainable. When we are able, we will prosecute terrorists in Federal courts or in reformed military commissions that are fair, legitimate, and effective. For detainees who cannot be prosecuted—but pose a danger to the American people—we must have clear, defensible, and lawful standards. We must have fair procedures and a thorough process of periodic review, so that any prolonged detention is carefully evaluated and justified. And keeping with our Constitutional system, it will be subject to checks and balances. The goal is an approach that can be sustained by future Administrations, with support from both political parties and all three branches of government.
Balance the Imperatives of Secrecy and Transparency: For the sake of our security, some information must be protected from public disclosure—for instance, to protect our troops, our sources and methods of intelligence-gathering or confidential actions that keep the American people safe. Yet our democracy
depends upon transparency, and whenever possible, we are making information available to the
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The United States supports those who seek to exercise universal rights around the world. We promote our values above all by living them at home. We continue to engage nations, institutions, and peoples in pursuit of these values abroad. And we recognize the link between development and political progress. In doing so, our goals are realistic, as we recognize that different cultures and traditions give life to these values in distinct ways. Moreover, America’s influence comes not from perfection, but from our striving to overcome our imperfections. The constant struggle to perfect our union is what makes the American story inspiring. That is why acknowledging our past shortcomings—
and highlighting our efforts to remedy them—is a means of promoting our values.
America will not impose any system of government on another country, but our long-term security and prosperity depends on our steady support for universal values, which sets us apart from our enemies, adversarial governments, and many potential competitors for influence. We will do so through a variety of means—by speaking out for universal rights, supporting fragile democracies and civil society, and supporting the dignity that comes with development.
Strengthen the Power of Our Example
More than any other action that we have taken, the power of America’s example has helped spread freedom and democracy abroad. That is why we must always seek to uphold these values not just when it is easy, but when it is hard. Advancing our interests may involve new arrangements to confront threats like terrorism, but these practices and structures must always be in line with our Constitution, preserve our people’s privacy and civil liberties, and withstand the checks and balances that have served us so well. To sustain our fidelity to our values—and our credibility to promote them around the world—we will continue to:
Prohibit Torture without Exception or Equivocation: Brutal methods of interrogation are inconsistent with our values, undermine the rule of law, and are not effective means of obtaining information. They alienate the United States from the world. They serve as a recruitment and propaganda tool for terrorists.
They increase the will of our enemies to fight against us, and endanger our troops when they are captured. The United States will not use or support these methods.
Legal Aspects of Countering Terrorism: The increased risk of terrorism necessitates a capacity to detain and interrogate suspected violent extremists, but that framework must align with our laws to be effective and sustainable. When we are able, we will prosecute terrorists in Federal courts or in reformed military commissions that are fair, legitimate, and effective. For detainees who cannot be prosecuted—but pose a danger to the American people—we must have clear, defensible, and lawful standards. We must have fair procedures and a thorough process of periodic review, so that any prolonged detention is carefully evaluated and justified. And keeping with our Constitutional system, it will be subject to checks and balances. The goal is an approach that can be sustained by future Administrations, with support from both political parties and all three branches of government.
Balance the Imperatives of Secrecy and Transparency: For the sake of our security, some information must be protected from public disclosure—for instance, to protect our troops, our sources and methods of intelligence-gathering or confidential actions that keep the American people safe. Yet our democracy
depends upon transparency, and whenever possible, we are making information available to the
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American people so that they can make informed judgments and hold their leaders accountable. For instance, when we invoke the State Secrets privilege, we will follow clear procedures so as to provide greater accountability and to ensure the privilege is invoked only when necessary and in the narrowest way possible. We will never invoke the privilege to hide a violation of law or to avoid embarrassment to the government.
Protect Civil Liberties, Privacy, and Oversight: Protecting civil liberties and privacy are integral to the vibrancy of our democracy and the exercise of freedom. We are balancing our solemn commitments to these virtues with the mandate to provide security for the American people. Vigorous oversight of national security activities by our three branches of government and vigilant compliance with the rule of law allow us to maintain this balance, affirm to our friends and allies the constitutional ideals we uphold.
Uphold the Rule of Law: The rule of law—and our capacity to enforce it—advances our national security and strengthens our leadership. At home, fidelity to our laws and support for our law enforcement community
safeguards American citizens and interests, while protecting and advancing our values. Around the globe, it allows us to hold actors accountable, while supporting both international security and the stability of the global economy. America’s commitment to the rule of law is fundamental to our efforts to build an international order that is capable of confronting the emerging challenges of the 21st century.
Draw Strength from Diversity: The United States has benefited throughout our history when we have drawn strength from our diversity. While those who advocate on behalf of extremist ideologies seek to sow discord among ethnic and religious groups, America stands as an example of how people from different backgrounds can be united through their commitment to shared values. Within our own communities, those who seek to recruit and radicalize individuals will often try to prey upon isolation and alienation. Our own commitment to extending the promise of America will both draw a contrast with those who try to drive people apart, while countering attempts to enlist individuals in ideological, religious, or ethnic extremism.
Promote Democracy and Human Rights Abroad
The United States supports the expansion of democracy and human rights abroad because governments that respect these values are more just, peaceful, and legitimate. We also do so because their success abroad fosters an environment that supports America’s national interests. Political systems that protect universal rights are ultimately more stable, successful, and secure. As our history shows, the United States can more effectively forge consensus to tackle shared challenges when working with governments that reflect the will and respect the rights of their people, rather than just the narrow interests of those in power. The United States is advancing universal values by:
Ensuring that New and Fragile Democracies Deliver Tangible Improvements for Their Citizens: The United States must support democracy, human rights, and development together, as they are mutually reinforcing. We are working closely with citizens, communities, and political and civil society leaders to strengthen key institutions of democratic accountability—free and fair electoral processes, strong legislatures, civilian control of militaries, honest police forces, independent and fair judiciaries, a free and independent press, a vibrant private sector, and a robust civil society. To do so, we are harnessing
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our bilateral and multilateral capabilities to help nascent democracies deliver services that respond to the needs and preferences of their citizens, since democracies without development rarely survive.
Practicing Principled Engagement with Non-Democratic Regimes: Even when we are focused on interests such as counterterrorism, nonproliferation, or enhancing economic ties, we will always seek in parallel to expand individual rights and opportunities through our bilateral engagement. The United States is pursuing a dual-track approach in which we seek to improve government-to-government relations and use this dialogue to advance human rights, while engaging civil society and peaceful political opposition, and encouraging U.S. nongovernmental actors to do the same. More substantive government-to-government relations can create permissive conditions for civil society to operate and for more extensive people-to-people exchanges. But when our overtures are rebuffed, we must lead the international community in using public and private diplomacy, and drawing on incentives and disincentives, in an effort to change repressive behavior.
Recognizing the Legitimacy of All Peaceful Democratic Movements: America respects the right of all peaceful, law-abiding, and nonviolent voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them. Support for democracy must not be about support for specific candidates or movements. America will welcome all legitimately elected, peaceful governments, provided they govern with respect for the rights and dignity of all their people and consistent with their international obligations. Those who seek democracy to obtain power, but are ruthless once they do, will forfeit the support of the United States. Governments must maintain power through consent, not coercion, and place legitimate political processes above party or narrow interest.
Supporting the Rights of Women and Girls: Women should have access to the same opportunities and be able to make the same choices as men. Experience shows that countries are more peaceful and prosperous when women are accorded full and equal rights and opportunity. When those rights and opportunities are denied, countries often lag behind. Furthermore, women and girls often disproportionally
bear the burden of crises and conflict. Therefore the United States is working with regional and international organizations to prevent violence against women and girls, especially in conflict zones. We are supporting women’s equal access to justice and their participation in the political process. We are promoting child and maternal health. We are combating human trafficking, especially in women and girls, through domestic and international law enforcement. And we are supporting education, employment, and micro-finance to empower women globally.
Strengthening International Norms Against Corruption: We are working within the broader international system, including the U.N., G-20, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the international financial institutions, to promote the recognition that pervasive corruption is a violation of basic human rights and a severe impediment to development and global security. We will work with governments and civil society organizations to bring greater transparency and accountability to government budgets, expenditures, and the assets of public officials. And we will institutionalize transparent practices in international aid flows, international banking and tax policy, and private sector
engagement around natural resources to make it harder for officials to steal and to strengthen the efforts of citizens to hold their governments accountable.

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Building a Broader Coalition of Actors to Advance Universal Values: We are working to build support for democracy, rule of law, and human rights by working with other governments, nongovernmental organizations, and multilateral fora. The United States is committed to working to shape and strengthen existing institutions that are not delivering on their potential, such as the United Nations Human Rights Council. We are working within the broader U.N. system and through regional mechanisms to strengthen human rights monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, so that individuals and countries are held accountable for their violation of international human rights norms. And we will actively support the leadership of emerging democracies as they assume a more active role in advancing basic human rights and democratic values in their regions and on the global stage.
Marshalling New Technologies and Promoting the Right to Access Information: The emergence of technologies
such as the Internet, wireless networks, mobile smart-phones, investigative forensics, satellite and aerial imagery, and distributed remote sensing infrastructure has created powerful new opportunities
to advance democracy and human rights. These technologies have fueled people-powered political movements, made it possible to shine a spotlight on human rights abuses nearly instantaneously, and increased avenues for free speech and unrestricted communication around the world. We support the dissemination and use of these technologies to facilitate freedom of expression, expand access to information,
increase governmental transparency and accountability, and counter restrictions on their use. We will also better utilize such technologies to effectively communicate our own messages to the world.
Promote Dignity by Meeting Basic Needs
The freedom that America stands for includes freedom from want. Basic human rights cannot thrive in places where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive. The United States has embraced the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals and is working with others in pursuit of the eradication of extreme poverty—efforts that are particularly critical to the future of nations and peoples of Africa. And we will continue to promote the dignity that comes through development efforts such as:
Pursuing a Comprehensive Global Health Strategy: The United States has a moral and strategic interest in promoting global health. When a child dies of a preventable disease, it offends our conscience; when a disease goes unchecked, it can endanger our own health; when children are sick, development is stalled. That is why we are continuing to invest in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Through the Global Health Initiative, we will strengthen health systems and invest in interventions to address areas where progress has lagged, including maternal and child health. And we are also pursuing the goal of reducing the burden of malaria and tuberculosis and seeking the elimination of important neglected tropical diseases.
Promoting Food Security: The United States is working with partners around the world to advance a food security initiative that combats hunger and builds the capacity of countries to feed their people. Instead of simply providing aid for developing countries, we are focusing on new methods and technologies for agricultural development. This is consistent with an approach in which aid is not an end in itself—the purpose of our foreign assistance will be to create the conditions where it is no longer needed.
Leading Efforts to Address Humanitarian Crises: Together with the American people and the international community, we will continue to respond to humanitarian crises to ensure that those in need have the
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protection and assistance they need. In such circumstances, we are also placing a greater emphasis on fostering long-term recovery. Haiti’s devastating earthquake is only the most recent reminder of the human and material consequences of natural disasters, and a changing climate portends a future in which the United States must be better prepared and resourced to exercise robust leadership to help meet critical humanitarian needs.
International Order
“As President of the United States, I will work tirelessly to protect America’s security and to advance our interests. But no one nation can meet the challenges of the 21st century on its own, nor dictate its terms to the world. That is why America seeks an international system that lets nations pursue their interests peacefully, especially when those interests diverge; a system where the universal rights of human beings are respected, and violations of those rights are opposed; a system where we hold ourselves to the same standards that we apply to other nations, with clear rights and responsibilities for all.”
—President Barack Obama, Moscow, Russia, July 7, 2009
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The United States will protect its people and advance our prosperity irrespective of the actions of any other nation, but we have an interest in a just and sustainable international order that can foster collective
action to confront common challenges. This international order will support our efforts to advance security, prosperity, and universal values, but it is also an end that we seek in its own right. Because without such an international order, the forces of instability and disorder will undermine global security.
And without effective mechanisms to forge international cooperation, challenges that recognize no borders—such as climate change, pandemic disease, and transnational crime—will persist and potentially spread.
International institutions—most prominently NATO and the United Nations—have been at the center of our international order since the mid 20th century. Yet, an international architecture that was largely forged in the wake of World War II is buckling under the weight of new threats, making us less able to seize new opportunities. Even though many defining trends of the 21st century affect all nations and peoples, too often, the mutual interests of nations and peoples are ignored in favor of suspicion and self-defeating competition.
What is needed, therefore, is a realignment of national actions and international institutions with shared interests. And when national interests do collide—or countries prioritize their interests in different ways—those nations that defy international norms or fail to meet their sovereign responsibilities will be denied the incentives that come with greater integration and collaboration with the international community.
No international order can be supported by international institutions alone. Our mutual interests must be underpinned by bilateral, multilateral, and global strategies that address underlying sources of insecurity and build new spheres of cooperation. To that end, strengthening bilateral and multilateral
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cooperation cannot be accomplished simply by working inside formal institutions and frameworks. It requires sustained outreach to foreign governments, political leaderships, and other critical constituencies
that must commit the necessary capabilities and resources to enable effective, collective action. And it means building upon our traditional alliances, while also cultivating partnerships with new centers of influence. Taken together, these approaches will allow us to foster more effective global cooperation to confront challenges that know no borders and affect every nation.
Ensure Strong Alliances
The foundation of United States, regional, and global security will remain America’s relations with our allies, and our commitment to their security is unshakable. These relationships must be constantly cultivated, not just because they are indispensible for U.S. interests and national security objectives, but because they are fundamental to our collective security. Alliances are force multipliers: through multinational cooperation and coordination, the sum of our actions is always greater than if we act alone. We will continue to maintain the capacity to defend our allies against old and new threats. We will also continue to closely consult with our allies as well as newly emerging partners and organizations so that we revitalize and expand our cooperation to achieve common objectives. And we will continue to mutually benefit from the collective security provided by strong alliances.
Although the United States and our allies and partners may sometimes disagree on specific issues, we will act based upon mutual respect and in a manner that continues to strengthen an international order that benefits all responsible international actors.
Strengthening Security Relationships: Our ability to sustain these alliances, and to build coalitions of support toward common objectives, depends in part on the capabilities of America’s Armed Forces. Similarly, the relationships our Armed Forces have developed with foreign militaries are a critical component
of our global engagement and support our collective security.
We will continue to ensure that we can prevail against a wide range of potential adversaries—to include hostile states and nonstate actors—while broadly shaping the strategic environment using all tools to advance our common security. We will continue to reassure our allies and partners by retaining our ability
to bring precise, sustained, and effective capabilities to bear against a wide range of military threats and decisively defeat the forces of hostile regional powers. We will work with our allies and partners to enhance the resilience of U.S. forward posture and facilities against potential attacks. Finally, we will strengthen our regional deterrence postures—for example, through phased, adaptive missile defense architectures—in order to make certain that regional adversaries gain no advantages from their acquisition
of new, offensive military capabilities.
European Allies: Our relationship with our European allies remains the cornerstone for U.S. engagement
with the world, and a catalyst for international action. We will engage with our allies bilaterally, and pursue close consultation on a broad range of security and economic issues. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the pre-eminent security alliance in the world today. With our 27 NATO allies, and the many partners with which NATO cooperates, we will strengthen our collective ability to promote security, deter vital threats, and defend our people. NATO’s new Strategic Concept will provide an opportunity to revitalize and reform the Alliance. We are committed to ensuring that NATO is able to
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address the full range of 21st century challenges, while serving as a foundation of European security. And we will continue to anchor our commitment in Article V, which is fundamental to our collective security.
Building on European aspirations for greater integration, we are committed to partnering with a stronger European Union to advance our shared goals, especially in promoting democracy and prosperity in Eastern European countries that are still completing their democratic transition and in responding to pressing issues of mutual concern. We will remain dedicated to advancing stability and democracy in the Balkans and to resolving conflicts in the Caucasus and in Cyprus. We will continue to engage with Turkey on a broad range of mutual goals, especially with regard to pursuit of stability in its region. And we will seek to strengthen existing European institutions so that they are more inclusive and more effective in building confidence, reducing tensions, and protecting freedom.
Asian Allies: Our alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand are the bedrock of security in Asia and a foundation of prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region. We will continue to deepen and update these alliances to reflect the dynamism of the region and strategic trends of the 21st century. Japan and South Korea are increasingly important leaders in addressing regional and global issues, as well as in embodying and promoting our common democratic values. We are modernizing our security relationships with both countries to face evolving 21st century global security challenges and to reflect the principle of equal partnership with the United States and to ensure a sustainable foundation
for the U.S. military presence there. We are working together with our allies to develop a positive security agenda for the region, focused on regional security, combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, climate change, international piracy, epidemics, and cybersecurity, while achieving balanced growth and human rights.
In partnership with our allies, the United States is helping to offer a future of security and integration to all Asian nations and to uphold and extend fundamental rights and dignity to all of its people. These alliances have preserved a hard-earned peace and strengthened the bridges of understanding across the Pacific Ocean in the second half of the 20th century, and it is essential to U.S., Asian, and global security that they are as dynamic and effective in the 21st century.
North America: The strategic partnerships and unique relationships we maintain with Canada and Mexico are critical to U.S. national security and have a direct effect on the security of our homeland. With billions of dollars in trade, shared critical infrastructure, and millions of our citizens moving across our common borders, no two countries are more directly connected to our daily lives. We must change the way we think about our shared borders, in order to secure and expedite the lawful and legitimate flow of people and goods while interdicting transnational threat that threaten our open societies.
Canada is our closest trading partner, a steadfast security ally, and an important partner in regional and global efforts. Our mutual prosperity is closely interconnected, including through our trade relationship
with Mexico through NAFTA. With Canada, our security cooperation includes our defense of North America and our efforts through NATO overseas. And our cooperation is critical to the success of international efforts on issues ranging from international climate negotiations to economic cooperation through the G-20.
With Mexico, in addition to trade cooperation, we are working together to identify and interdict threats at the earliest opportunity, even before they reach North America. Stability and security in Mexico are
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on a wide array of global issues, through groups such as the G-20, and will seek to work with India to promote stability in South Asia and elsewhere in the world.
Russia: We seek to build a stable, substantive, multidimensional relationship with Russia, based on mutual interests. The United States has an interest in a strong, peaceful, and prosperous Russia that respects international norms. As the two nations possessing the majority of the world’s nuclear weapons,
we are working together to advance nonproliferation, both by reducing our nuclear arsenals and by cooperating to ensure that other countries meet their international commitments to reducing the spread of nuclear weapons around the world. We will seek greater partnership with Russia in confronting violent extremism, especially in Afghanistan. We also will seek new trade and investment arrangements for increasing the prosperity of our peoples. We support efforts within Russia to promote the rule of law, accountable government, and universal values. While actively seeking Russia’s cooperation to act as a responsible partner in Europe and Asia, we will support the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia’s neighbors.
Emerging Centers of Influence: Due to increased economic growth and political stability, individual nations are increasingly taking on powerful regional and global roles and changing the landscape of international cooperation. To achieve a just and sustainable order that advances our shared security and prosperity, we are, therefore, deepening our partnerships with emerging powers and encouraging them to play a greater role in strengthening international norms and advancing shared interests.
The rise of the G-20, for example, as the premier international economic forum, represents a distinct shift in our global international order toward greater cooperation between traditional major economies and emerging centers of influence. The nations composing the G-20—from South Korea to South Africa, Saudi Arabia to Argentina—represent at least 80 percent of global gross national product, making it an influential body on the world stage. Stabilizing our global economy, increasing energy efficiency around the globe, and addressing chronic hunger in poor countries are only three examples of the broad global challenges that cannot be solved by a few countries alone.
Indonesia—as the world’s fourth most populous country, a member of the G-20, and a democracy—will become an increasingly important partner on regional and transnational issues such as climate change, counterterrorism, maritime security, peacekeeping, and disaster relief. With tolerance, resilience, and multiculturalism as core values, and a flourishing civil society, Indonesia is uniquely positioned to help address challenges facing the developing world.
In the Americas, we are bound by proximity, integrated markets, energy interdependence, a broadly shared commitment to democracy, and the rule of law. Our deep historical, familial, and cultural ties make our alliances and partnerships critical to U.S. interests. We will work in equal partnership to advance economic and social inclusion, safeguard citizen safety and security, promote clean energy, and defend universal values of the people of the hemisphere.
We welcome Brazil’s leadership and seek to move beyond dated North-South divisions to pursue progress on bilateral, hemispheric, and global issues. Brazil’s macroeconomic success, coupled with its steps to narrow socioeconomic gaps, provide important lessons for countries throughout the Americas and Africa. We will encourage Brazilian efforts against illicit transnational networks. As guardian of a unique national environmental patrimony and a leader in renewable fuels, Brazil is an important partner
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on a wide array of global issues, through groups such as the G-20, and will seek to work with India to promote stability in South Asia and elsewhere in the world.
Russia: We seek to build a stable, substantive, multidimensional relationship with Russia, based on mutual interests. The United States has an interest in a strong, peaceful, and prosperous Russia that respects international norms. As the two nations possessing the majority of the world’s nuclear weapons,
we are working together to advance nonproliferation, both by reducing our nuclear arsenals and by cooperating to ensure that other countries meet their international commitments to reducing the spread of nuclear weapons around the world. We will seek greater partnership with Russia in confronting violent extremism, especially in Afghanistan. We also will seek new trade and investment arrangements for increasing the prosperity of our peoples. We support efforts within Russia to promote the rule of law, accountable government, and universal values. While actively seeking Russia’s cooperation to act as a responsible partner in Europe and Asia, we will support the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia’s neighbors.
Emerging Centers of Influence: Due to increased economic growth and political stability, individual nations are increasingly taking on powerful regional and global roles and changing the landscape of international cooperation. To achieve a just and sustainable order that advances our shared security and prosperity, we are, therefore, deepening our partnerships with emerging powers and encouraging them to play a greater role in strengthening international norms and advancing shared interests.
The rise of the G-20, for example, as the premier international economic forum, represents a distinct shift in our global international order toward greater cooperation between traditional major economies and emerging centers of influence. The nations composing the G-20—from South Korea to South Africa, Saudi Arabia to Argentina—represent at least 80 percent of global gross national product, making it an influential body on the world stage. Stabilizing our global economy, increasing energy efficiency around the globe, and addressing chronic hunger in poor countries are only three examples of the broad global challenges that cannot be solved by a few countries alone.
Indonesia—as the world’s fourth most populous country, a member of the G-20, and a democracy—will become an increasingly important partner on regional and transnational issues such as climate change, counterterrorism, maritime security, peacekeeping, and disaster relief. With tolerance, resilience, and multiculturalism as core values, and a flourishing civil society, Indonesia is uniquely positioned to help address challenges facing the developing world.
In the Americas, we are bound by proximity, integrated markets, energy interdependence, a broadly shared commitment to democracy, and the rule of law. Our deep historical, familial, and cultural ties make our alliances and partnerships critical to U.S. interests. We will work in equal partnership to advance economic and social inclusion, safeguard citizen safety and security, promote clean energy, and defend universal values of the people of the hemisphere.
We welcome Brazil’s leadership and seek to move beyond dated North-South divisions to pursue progress on bilateral, hemispheric, and global issues. Brazil’s macroeconomic success, coupled with its steps to narrow socioeconomic gaps, provide important lessons for countries throughout the Americas and Africa. We will encourage Brazilian efforts against illicit transnational networks. As guardian of a unique national environmental patrimony and a leader in renewable fuels, Brazil is an important partner
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in confronting global climate change and promoting energy security. And in the context of the G-20 and the Doha round, we will work with Brazil to ensure that economic development and prosperity is broadly shared.
We have an array of enduring interests, longstanding commitments and new opportunities for broadening
and deepening relationships in the greater Middle East. This includes maintaining a strong partnership
with Israel while supporting Israel’s lasting integration into the region. The U.S. also will continue to develop our key security relationships in the region with such Arab states as with Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries—partnerships that enable our militaries and defense systems to work together more effectively.
We have a strategic interest in ensuring that the social and economic needs and political rights of people in this region, who represent one of the world’s youngest populations, are met. We will continue to press governments in the region to undertake political reforms and to loosen restrictions on speech, assembly and media. We will maintain our strong support for civil society groups and those individuals who stand up for universal rights. And we will continue to foster partnerships in areas like education, economic growth, science, and health to help expand opportunity. On a multilateral basis, we seek to advance shared security interests, such as through NATO’s Istanbul Cooperation Initiative with the GCC, and common interests in promoting governance and institutional reform through participating in the Forum for the Future and other regional dialogues.
The diversity and complexity of the African continent offer the United States opportunities and challenges.
As African states grow their economies and strengthen their democratic institutions and governance,
America will continue to embrace effective partnerships. Our economic, security, and political cooperation will be consultative and encompass global, regional, and national priorities including access to open markets, conflict prevention, global peacekeeping, counterterrorism, and the protection of vital carbon sinks. The Administration will refocus its priorities on strategic interventions that can promote job creation and economic growth; combat corruption while strengthening good governance and accountability;
responsibly improve the capacity of African security and rule of law sectors; and work through diplomatic dialogue to mitigate local and regional tensions before they become crises. We will also reinforce sustainable stability in key states like Nigeria and Kenya that are essential subregional linchpins.
The United States will work to remain an attractive and influential partner by ensuring that African priorities such as infrastructure development, improving reliable access to power, and increased trade and investment remain high on our agenda. South Africa’s inclusion in the G-20 should be followed by a growing number of emerging African nations who are charting a course toward improved governance and meaningful development. South Africa’s vibrant democracy, combined with its regional and global leadership roles, is a critical partner. From peacemaking to climate change to capacity-building, South Africa brings unique value and perspective to international initiatives. With its strong, diversified, well-managed economy, it often serves as a springboard to the entire African continent, and we will work to pursue shared interests in Africa’s security, growth, and the development of Africa’s human capital.

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Strengthen Institutions and Mechanisms for Cooperation
Just as U.S. foresight and leadership were essential to forging the architecture for international cooperation
after World War II, we must again lead global efforts to modernize the infrastructure for international cooperation in the 21st century. Indeed, our ability to advance peace, security, and opportunity will turn on our ability to strengthen both our national and our multilateral capabilities. To solve problems, we will pursue modes of cooperation that reflect evolving distributions of power and responsibility. We need to assist existing institutions to perform effectively. When they come up short, we must seek meaningful changes and develop alternative mechanisms.
Enhance Cooperation with and Strengthen the United Nations: We are enhancing our coordination with the U.N. and its agencies. We need a U.N. capable of fulfilling its founding purpose—maintaining international peace and security, promoting global cooperation, and advancing human rights. To this end, we are paying our bills. We are intensifying efforts with partners on and outside the U.N. Security Council to ensure timely, robust, and credible Council action to address threats to peace and security. We favor Security Council reform that enhances the U.N.’s overall performance, credibility, and legitimacy. Across the broader U.N. system we support reforms that promote effective and efficient leadership and management of the U.N.’s international civil service, and we are working with U.N. personnel and member
states to strengthen the U.N.’s leadership and operational capacity in peacekeeping, humanitarian relief, post-disaster recovery, development assistance, and the promotion of human rights. And we are supporting new U.N. frameworks and capacities for combating transnational threats like proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, infectious disease, drug-trafficking, and counterterrorism.
Pursue Decisions though a Wide Range of Frameworks and Coalitions: We need to spur and harness a new diversity of instruments, alliances, and institutions in which a division of labor emerges on the basis of effectiveness, competency, and long-term reliability. This requires enhanced coordination among the United Nations, regional organizations, international financial institutions, specialized agencies, and other actors that are better placed or equipped to manage certain threats and challenges. We are attempting to forge new agreement on common global challenges among the world’s leading and emerging powers to ensure that multilateral cooperation reflects the sustained commitment of influential
countries. While we are pursuing G-8 initiatives with proven and long-standing partners, have begun to shift the focus of our economic coordination to the G-20, which is more reflective of today’s diffusion of power and the need to enlist the efforts of a broader spectrum of countries across Asia to Europe, Africa to the Middle East, and our neighbors in the Americas. We are also renewing U.S. leadership in the multilateral development banks and the IMF, and leveraging our engagement and investments in these institutions to strengthen the global economy, lift people out of poverty, advance food security, address climate and pandemics, and secure fragile states such as Afghanistan and Haiti.
Invest in Regional Capabilities: Regional organizations can be particularly effective at mobilizing and legitimating cooperation among countries closest to the problem. Regional organizations—whether NATO, the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the African Union, Organization of American States, or ASEAN, and the Gulf Cooperation Council—vary widely in their membership, constitutions, histories, orientation, and operational capabilities. That variety needs to inform a strategic approach to their evolving roles and relative contributions to global security.

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can or should shoulder the burden for managing or resolving the world’s armed conflicts. To this end, we will place renewed emphasis on deterrence and prevention by mobilizing diplomatic action, and use development and security sector assistance to build the capacity of at-risk nations and reduce the appeal of violent extremism. But when international forces are needed to respond to threats and keep the peace, we will work with international partners to ensure they are ready, able, and willing. We will continue to build support in other countries to contribute to sustaining global peace and stability operations, through U.N. peacekeeping and regional organizations, such as NATO and the African Union. We will continue to broaden the pool of troop and police contributors, working to ensure that they are properly trained and equipped, that their mandates are matched to means, and that their missions are backed by the political action necessary to build and sustain peace.
In Sudan, which has been marred by violent conflict for decades, the United States remains committed to working with the international community to support implementation of outstanding elements of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and ensure that the referendum on the future of Southern Sudan in 2011 happens on time and that its results are respected. In addition, we will continue to engage in the efforts necessary to support peace and stability after the referendum, and continue to work to secure peace, dignity, and accountability in Darfur.
••Prevent Genocide and Mass Atrocities: The United States and all member states of the U.N. have endorsed the concept of the “Responsibility to Protect.” In so doing, we have recognized that the primary responsibility for preventing genocide and mass atrocity rests with sovereign governments, but that this responsibility passes to the broader international community when sovereign governments themselves commit genocide or mass atrocities, or when they prove unable or unwilling to take necessary action to prevent or respond to such crimes inside their borders. The United States is committed to working with our allies, and to strengthening our own internal capabilities, in order to ensure that the United States and the international community
are proactively engaged in a strategic effort to prevent mass atrocities and genocide. In the event that prevention fails, the United States will work both multilaterally and bilaterally to mobilize diplomatic, humanitarian, financial, and—in certain instances—military means to prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities.
••International Justice: From Nuremberg to Yugoslavia to Liberia, the United States has seen that the end of impunity and the promotion of justice are not just moral imperatives; they are stabilizing forces in international affairs. The United States is thus working to strengthen national justice systems and is maintaining our support for ad hoc international tribunals and hybrid courts. Those who intentionally target innocent civilians must be held accountable, and we will continue to support institutions and prosecutions that advance this important interest. Although the United States is not at present a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and will always protect U.S. personnel, we are engaging with State Parties to the Rome Statute on issues of concern and are supporting the ICC’s prosecution of those cases that advance U.S. interests and values, consistent with the requirements of U.S. law.
Pandemics and Infectious Disease: The threat of contagious disease transcends political boundaries, and the ability to prevent, quickly detect and contain outbreaks with pandemic potential has never been so
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important. An epidemic that begins in a single community can quickly evolve into a multinational health crisis that causes millions to suffer, as well as spark major disruptions to travel and trade. Addressing these transnational risks requires advance preparation, extensive collaboration with the global community, and the development of a resilient population at home.
Recognizing that the health of the world’s population has never been more interdependent, we are improving our public health and medical capabilities on the front lines, including domestic and international disease surveillance, situational awareness, rapid and reliable development of medical countermeasures to respond to public health threats, preparedness education and training, and surge capacity of the domestic health care system to respond to an influx of patients due to a disaster or emergency. These capabilities include our ability to work with international partners to mitigate and contain disease when necessary.
We are enhancing international collaboration and strengthening multilateral institutions in order to improve global surveillance and early warning capabilities and quickly enact control and containment measures against the next pandemic threat. We continue to improve our understanding of emerging diseases and help develop environments that are less conducive to epidemic emergence. We depend on U.S. overseas laboratories, relationships with host nation governments, and the willingness of states to share health data with nongovernmental and international organizations. In this regard, we need to continue to work to overcome the lack of openness and a general reluctance to share health information. Finally, we seek to mitigate other problem areas, including limited global vaccine production capacity, and the threat of emergent and reemergent disease in poorly governed states.
Transnational Criminal Threats and Threats to Governance: Transnational criminal threats and illicit trafficking networks continue to expand dramatically in size, scope, and influence—posing significant national security challenges for the United States and our partner countries. These threats cross borders and continents and undermine the stability of nations, subverting government institutions through corruption and harming citizens worldwide. Transnational criminal organizations have accumulated unprecedented wealth and power through trafficking and other illicit activities, penetrating legitimate financial systems and destabilizing commercial markets. They extend their reach by forming alliances with government officials and some state security services. The crime-terror nexus is a serious concern as terrorists use criminal networks for logistical support and funding. Increasingly, these networks are involved in cyber crime, which cost consumers billions of dollars annually, while undermining global confidence in the international financial system.
Combating transnational criminal and trafficking networks requires a multidimensional strategy that safeguards citizens, breaks the financial strength of criminal and terrorist networks, disrupts illicit trafficking
networks, defeats transnational criminal organizations, fights government corruption, strengthens the rule of law, bolsters judicial systems, and improves transparency. While these are major challenges, the United States will be able to devise and execute a collective strategy with other nations facing the same threats.
Safeguarding the Global Commons: Across the globe, we must work in concert with allies and partners to optimize the use of shared sea, air, and space domains. These shared areas, which exist outside exclusive national jurisdictions, are the connective tissue around our globe upon which all nations’ security

important. An epidemic that begins in a single community can quickly evolve into a multinational health crisis that causes millions to suffer, as well as spark major disruptions to travel and trade. Addressing these transnational risks requires advance preparation, extensive collaboration with the global community, and the development of a resilient population at home.
Recognizing that the health of the world’s population has never been more interdependent, we are improving our public health and medical capabilities on the front lines, including domestic and international disease surveillance, situational awareness, rapid and reliable development of medical countermeasures to respond to public health threats, preparedness education and training, and surge capacity of the domestic health care system to respond to an influx of patients due to a disaster or emergency. These capabilities include our ability to work with international partners to mitigate and contain disease when necessary.
We are enhancing international collaboration and strengthening multilateral institutions in order to improve global surveillance and early warning capabilities and quickly enact control and containment measures against the next pandemic threat. We continue to improve our understanding of emerging diseases and help develop environments that are less conducive to epidemic emergence. We depend on U.S. overseas laboratories, relationships with host nation governments, and the willingness of states to share health data with nongovernmental and international organizations. In this regard, we need to continue to work to overcome the lack of openness and a general reluctance to share health information. Finally, we seek to mitigate other problem areas, including limited global vaccine production capacity, and the threat of emergent and reemergent disease in poorly governed states.
Transnational Criminal Threats and Threats to Governance: Transnational criminal threats and illicit trafficking networks continue to expand dramatically in size, scope, and influence—posing significant national security challenges for the United States and our partner countries. These threats cross borders and continents and undermine the stability of nations, subverting government institutions through corruption and harming citizens worldwide. Transnational criminal organizations have accumulated unprecedented wealth and power through trafficking and other illicit activities, penetrating legitimate financial systems and destabilizing commercial markets. They extend their reach by forming alliances with government officials and some state security services. The crime-terror nexus is a serious concern as terrorists use criminal networks for logistical support and funding. Increasingly, these networks are involved in cyber crime, which cost consumers billions of dollars annually, while undermining global confidence in the international financial system.
Combating transnational criminal and trafficking networks requires a multidimensional strategy that safeguards citizens, breaks the financial strength of criminal and terrorist networks, disrupts illicit trafficking networks, defeats transnational criminal organizations, fights government corruption, strengthens the rule of law, bolsters judicial systems, and improves transparency. While these are major challenges, the United States will be able to devise and execute a collective strategy with other nations facing the same threats.
Safeguarding the Global Commons: Across the globe, we must work in concert with allies and partners to optimize the use of shared sea, air, and space domains. These shared areas, which exist outside exclusive national jurisdictions, are the connective tissue around our globe upon which all nations’ security

and prosperity depend. The United States will continue to help safeguard access, promote security, and ensure the sustainable use of resources in these domains. These efforts require strong multilateral cooperation, enhanced domain awareness and monitoring, and the strengthening of international norms and standards.
We must work together to ensure the constant flow of commerce, facilitate safe and secure air travel, and prevent disruptions to critical communications. We must also safeguard the sea, air, and space domains from those who would deny access or use them for hostile purposes. This includes keeping strategic straits and vital sea lanes open, improving the early detection of emerging maritime threats, denying adversaries hostile use of the air domain, and ensuring the responsible use of space. As one key effort in the sea domain, for example, we will pursue ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Many of these goals are equally applicable to cyberspace. While cyberspace relies on the digital infrastructure
of individual countries, such infrastructure is globally connected, and securing it requires global cooperation. We will push for the recognition of norms of behavior in cyberspace, and otherwise work with global partners to ensure the protection of the free flow of information and our continued access. At all times, we will continue to defend our digital networks from intrusion and harmful disruption.
Arctic Interests: The United States is an Arctic Nation with broad and fundamental interests in the Arctic region, where we seek to meet our national security needs, protect the environment, responsibly manage resources, account for indigenous communities, support scientific research, and strengthen international cooperation on a wide range of issues.

IV. Conclusion
“It’s easy to forget that, when this war began, we were united, bound together by the fresh memory of a horrific attack and by the determination to defend our homeland and the values we hold dear. I refuse to accept the notion that we cannot summon that unity again. I believe with every fiber of my being that we, as Americans, can still come together behind a common purpose, for our values are not simply words written into parchment. They are a creed that calls us together and that has carried us through the darkest of storms as one nation, as one people.”
—President Barack Obama, West Point, New York, December 2, 2009
—
This strategy calls for a comprehensive range of national actions, and a broad conception of what constitutes
our national security. Above all, it is about renewing our leadership by calling upon what is best about America—our innovation and capacity; our openness and moral imagination.
Success will require approaches that can be sustained and achieve results. One of the reasons that this nation succeeded in the second half of the 20th century was its capacity to pursue policies and build institutions that endured across multiple Administrations, while also preserving the flexibility to endure setbacks and to make necessary adjustments. In some instances, the United States has been able to carry forward this example in the years since the Cold War. But there are also many open questions, unfinished reforms, and deep divisions—at home and abroad—that constrain our ability to advance our interests and renew our leadership.
To effectively craft and implement a sustainable, results-oriented national security strategy, there must be effective cooperation between the branches of government. This Administration believes that we are strong when we act in line with our laws, as the Constitution itself demands. This Administration is also committed to active consultation with Congress, and welcomes robust and effective oversight of its national security policies. We welcome Congress as a full partner in forging durable solutions to tough challenges, looking beyond the headlines to take a long view of America’s interests. And we encourage
Congress to pursue oversight in line with the reforms that have been enacted through legislation, particularly in the years since 9/11.
The executive branch must do its part by developing integrated plans and approaches that leverage the capabilities across its departments and agencies to deal with the issues we confront. Collaboration across the government—and with our partners at the state, local, and tribal levels of government, in industry, and abroad—must guide our actions.
This kind of effective cooperation will depend upon broad and bipartisan cooperation. Throughout the Cold War, even as there were intense disagreements about certain courses of action, there remained a belief that America’s political leaders shared common goals, even if they differed about how to reach them. In today’s political environment, due to the actions of both parties that sense of common purpose is at times lacking in our national security dialogue. This division places the United States at a strategic
disadvantage. It sets back our ability to deal with difficult challenges and injects a sense of anxiety and polarization into our politics that can affect our policies and our posture around the world. It must be replaced by a renewed sense of civility and a commitment to embrace our common purpose as Americans.
Americans are by nature a confident and optimistic people. We would not have achieved our position of leadership in the world without the extraordinary strength of our founding documents and the capability and courage of generations of Americans who gave life to those values—through their service, through their sacrifices, through their aspirations, and through their pursuit of a more perfect union. We see those same qualities today, particularly in our young men and women in uniform who have served tour after tour of duty to defend our nation in harm’s way, and their civilian counterparts.
This responsibility cannot be theirs alone. And there is no question that we, as a nation, can meet our responsibility as Americans once more. Even in a world of enormous challenges, no threat is bigger than the American peoples’ capacity to meet it, and no opportunity exceeds our reach. We continue to draw strength from those founding documents that established the creed that binds us together. We, too, can demonstrate the capability and courage to pursue a more perfect union and—in doing so—renew American leadership in the world.

EPA Coal Ash Rule Sends Mixed Signal on Strong, Federally Enforceable Safeguards

Leaves open the possibility that at least half of all toxic ash will remain unregulated

Today, the Agency published the proposed federal regulation of coal ash -- the first of its kind -- in the Federal Register . The plan seeks comment on two separate proposals: one that regulates coal ash as a "special waste," with strong, federally enforceable requirements for monitoring and cleanup, and another that treats coal ash as a "non-hazardous waste" and offers only guidelines that leave many communities at risk of exposure to toxic contaminants found in coal ash. Under the weaker option, the EPA assumes that in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wyoming, coal ash dumps and waste ponds will retain their current status quo: poorly regulated, unprotected and unsafe. Thus even in Tennessee, where the largest environmental disaster occurred short of the Gulf oil spill, the EPA predicts that protections will not be put in place.

The two-rule option demonstrates the power and influence of lobbyists for the coal and power industries who continue to block the EPA attempts at strong coal ash safeguards that protect communities. The EPA's 'special waste' proposal is the only way to guarantee the closure of the most dangerous waste ponds, ensure strong federal oversight and cleanup of contaminated streams, rivers and drinking water supplies, and protect communities across the country from coal ash contamination. The EPA itself admits that under its weaker option, many states will not adopt strict federal guidelines and that approximately 50% of the coal ash generated in the U.S. will continue to be managed under state programs that do not require basic disposal safeguards. Power plants in the U.S. produce enough coal ash annually to fill train cars stretching from the North Pole to the South Pole.

Below is a brief summary the EPA provided of its two regulatory options for coal ash:

Regulating coal ash as a "special waste":

• Requires phase out of waste ponds within five years.
• Eliminates health risks from groundwater and surface water contamination for both coal ash dumps and waste ponds, and avoids damages from uncontrolled ground "fill" operations and attendant environmental remediation costs.
• Eliminates the future threat of catastrophic failures of waste ponds.
• Provides for corrective action, including at closed units at facilities with waste ponds or dumps regulated under the rule, and imposes groundwater monitoring requirements.
• Provides for Federal oversight, which EPA experience has shown is necessary for successful implementation of…industrial waste regulations, especially as it relates to groundwater monitoring and corrective action, when needed.

Regulating coal ash as a "non-hazardous waste" (emphasis added):

• Requirements would not be enforceable by the EPA or the states (unless states had similar requirements under state law). Lack of enforcement and Federal oversight may significantly reduce compliance and effective implementation of regulatory requirements.
• Liners required for all coal ash waste ponds but only for new landfills. This option sets national criteria for landfills and waste ponds that manage coal ash after the rule goes into effect. For any coal ash dumps and waste ponds that closed before the effective date, there would be no regulatory controls over those units, unless the states choose to adopt controls over such units.
• Eliminates some ground-water contamination over the current situation (e.g., because of waste pond retrofitting), thus avoiding some damage cases, again assuming effective implementation.
• Requires review of waste ponds for stability by independent experts, but because these ponds could remain in operation (because they are currently lined or owners choose to retrofit line them rather than phase them out), there would still be a risk of future structural failures of waste ponds.

"Only one road leads to protecting public health and the environment from toxic coal ash and collapsing ponds -- and the EPA has clearly laid out this option," said Lisa Evans, Senior Administrative Counsel at Earthjustice. "If the EPA predicts that the dangerous conditions will persist under the weaker option, that option must be left by the wayside."

"If the ongoing BP oil disaster and the Tennessee coal ash tragedy taught us anything, it's that we can no longer ignore scientific and safety concerns without a very high cost," said Lyndsay Moseley, Sierra Club coal ash analyst and Tennessee native. "EPA should issue enforceable federal safeguards quickly before more communities are exposed to toxic coal ash."

"The voluntary guidance EPA has proposed as a second option just kicks the ball back to state agencies, which have already been overwhelmed and outmatched by the coal lobby," said Jeff Stant, Director of the Coal Combustion Waste Initiative at the Environmental Integrity Project. "The states' failure to enforce standards has led to at least 71 sites where EPA admits coal ash has contaminated drinking water, injured wildlife, or caused other environmental or property damage, as well as untold other damaged sites that we do not know about because so many coal ash dumps do no monitoring at all. EPA needs to do the right thing by getting uniform standards in place, and having the guts to enforce them."

"Coal ash that is being disposed meets the chemical definition of a hazardous waste. As a hazardous waste, coal ash needs to be disposed in a properly engineered landfill so deadly chemicals do not leach into our drinking water sources or threaten our environment and wildlife," said Scott Slesinger, Legislative Director, Natural Resources Defense Council. "All other industrial hazardous waste must meet these requirements; there is no rationale for treating this waste differently. We expect the EPA to finalize this rule so it protects human health and the environment."

Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.

Deficit Terrorists Strike in U.K.: Is U.S. Next?

Ellen Brown Last week, England's new government said it would abandon the previous government's stimulus program and introduce the austerity measures required to pay down its estimated $1 trillion in debts. That means cutting public spending, laying off workers, reducing consumption, and increasing unemployment and bankruptcies. It also means shrinking the money supply, since virtually all “money” today originates as loans or debt. Reducing the outstanding debt will reduce the amount of money available to pay workers and buy goods, precipitating depression and further economic pain.

The financial sector has sometimes been accused of shrinking the money supply intentionally, in order to increase the demand for its own products. Bankers are in the debt business, and if governments are allowed to create enough money to keep themselves and their constituents out of debt, lenders will be out of business. The central banks charged with maintaining the banking business therefore insist on a “stable currency” at all costs, even if it means slashing services, laying off workers, and soaring debt and interest burdens. For the financial business to continue to boom, governments must not be allowed to create money themselves, either by printing it outright or by borrowing it into existence from their own government-owned banks.

Today this financial goal has largely been achieved. In most countries, 95% or more of the money supply is created by banks as loans (or “credit”). The small portion issued by the government is usually created just to replace lost or worn out bills or coins, not to fund new government programs. Early in the twentieth century, about 30% of the British currency was issued by the government as pounds sterling or coins, versus only about 3% today. In the U.S., only coins are now issued by the government. Dollar bills (Federal Reserve Notes) are issued by the Federal Reserve, which is privately owned by a consortium of banks.

Banks advance the principal but not the interest necessary to pay off their loans; and since bank loans are now virtually the only source of new money in the economy, the interest can only come from additional debt. For the banks, that means business continues to boom; while for the rest of the economy, it means cutbacks, belt-tightening and austerity. Since more must always be paid back than was advanced as credit, however, the system is inherently unstable. When the debt bubble becomes too large to be sustained, a recession or depression is precipitated, wiping out a major portion of the debt and allowing the whole process to begin again. This is called the “business cycle,” and it causes markets to vacillate wildly, allowing the monied interests that triggered the cycle to pick up real estate and other assets very cheaply on the down-swing.

The financial sector, which controls the money supply and can easily capture the media, cajoles the populace into compliance by selling its agenda as a “balanced budget,” “fiscal responsibility,” and saving future generations from a massive debt burden by suffering austerity measures now. Bill Mitchell, Professor of Economics at the University of New Castle in Australia, calls this “ deficit terrorism .” Bank-created debt becomes more important than schools, medical care or infrastructure. Rather than “providing for the general welfare,” the purpose of government becomes to maintain the value of the investments of the government's creditors.

England Dons the Hair Shirt

England's new coalition government has just bought into this agenda, imposing on itself the sort of fiscal austerity that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has long imposed on Third World countries, and has more recently imposed on European countries, including Latvia, Iceland, Ireland and Greece. Where those countries were forced into compliance by their creditors, however, England has tightened the screws voluntarily, having succumbed to the argument that it must pay down its debts to maintain the market for its bonds.

Deficit hawks point ominously to Greece, which has been virtually squeezed out of the private bond market because nobody wants its bonds. Greece has been forced to borrow from the IMF and the European Monetary Union (EMU), which has imposed draconian austerity measures as conditions for the loans. Like a Third World country owing money in a foreign currency, Greece cannot print Euros or borrow them from its own central bank, since those alternatives are forbidden under EMU rules. In a desperate attempt to save the Euro, the European Central Bank recently bent the rules by buying Greek bonds on the secondary market rather than lending to the Greek government directly, but the ECB has said it would “sterilize” these purchases by withdrawing an equivalent amount of liquidity from the market, making the deal a wash. (More on that below.)

Greece is stuck in the debt trap, but the UK is not a member of the EMU. Although it belongs to the European Union, it still trades in its own national currency, which it has the power to issue directly or to borrow from its own central bank. Like all central banks, the Bank of England is a “lender of last resort,” which means it can create money on its books without borrowing first. The government owns the Bank of England, so loans from the bank to the government would effectively be interest-free; and as long as the Bank of England is available to buy the bonds that don't get sold on the private market, there need be no fear of a collapse of the value of the UK's bonds.

The “deficit terrorists,” however, will have none of this obvious solution, ostensibly because of the fear of “hyperinflation.” A June 9 guest post by “Cameroni” on Rick Ackerman's financial website takes this position. Titled “ Britain Becomes the First to Choose Deflation ,” it begins:

David Cameron's new Government in England announced Tuesday that it will introduce austerity measures to begin paying down the estimated one trillion (U.S. value) in debts held by the British Government. . . . [T]hat being said, we have just received the signal to an end to global stimulus measures -- one that puts a nail in the coffin of the debate on whether or not Britain would ‘print' her way out of the debt crisis. . . . This is actually a celebratory moment although it will not feel like it for most. . . . Debts will have to be paid. . . . [S]tandards of living will decline . . . [but] it is a better future than what a hyperinflation would bring us all .

Hyperinflation or Deflation?

The dreaded threat of hyperinflation is invariably trotted out to defeat proposals to solve the budget crises of governments by simply issuing the necessary funds, whether as debt (bonds) or as currency. What the deficit terrorists generally fail to mention is that before an economy can be threatened with hyperinflation, it has to pass through simple inflation; and governments everywhere have failed to get to that stage today, although trying mightily. Cameroni observes:

[G]overnments all over the globe have already tried stimulating their way out of the recent credit crisis and recession to little avail. They have attempted fruitlessly to generate even mild inflation despite huge stimulus efforts and pointless spending .

In fact, the money supply has been shrinking at an alarming rate. In a May 26 article in The Financial Times titled “US Money Supply Plunges at 1930s Pace as Obama Eyes Fresh Stimulus,” Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes:

The stock of money fell from $14.2 trillion to $13.9 trillion in the three months to April, amounting to an annual rate of contraction of 9.6pc. The assets of institutional money market funds fell at a 37pc rate, the sharpest drop ever.

'It's frightening,' said Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research. ‘The plunge in M3 has no precedent since the Great Depression. The dominant reason for this is that regulators across the world are pressing banks to raise capital asset ratios and to shrink their risk assets. This is why the US is not recovering properly,' he said.”

Too much money can hardly have been pumped into an economy in which the money supply is shrinking. But Cameroni concludes that since the stimulus efforts have failed to put needed money back into the money supply, the stimulus program should be abandoned in favor of its diametrical opposite -- belt-tightening austerity. He admits that the result will be devastating:

“[I]t will mean a long, slow and deliberate winding down until solvency is within reach. It will mean cities, states and counties will go bankrupt and not be rescued. And it will be painful. Public spending will be cut. Consumption could decline precipitously. Unemployment numbers may skyrocket and bankruptcies will stun readers of daily blogs like this one. It will put the brakes on growth around the world. . . . The Dow will crash and there will be ripple effects across the European union and eventually the globe. . . . Aid programs to the Third world will be gutted, and I cannot yet imagine the consequences that will bring to the poorest people on earth.

But it will be “worth it,” says Cameroni, because it beats the inevitable hyperinflationary alternative, which “is just too distressing to consider.”

Hyperinflation, however, is a bogus threat, and before we reject the stimulus idea, we might ask why these programs have failed. Perhaps because they have been stimulating the wrong sector of the economy, the non-producing financial middlemen who precipitated the crisis in the first place. Governments have tried to “reflate” their flagging economies by throwing budget-crippling sums at the banks, but the banks have not deigned to pass those funds on to businesses and consumers as loans. Instead, they have used the cheap funds to speculate, buy up smaller banks, or buy safe government bonds, collecting a tidy interest from the very taxpayers who provided them with this cheap bailout money. Indeed, banks are required by their business models to pursue those profits over risky loans. Like all private corporations, they are there not to serve the public interest but to make money for their shareholders.

Seeking Solutions

The alternative to throwing massive amounts of money at the banks is not to further starve and punish businesses and individuals but to feed some stimulus to them directly, with public projects that provide needed services while creating jobs. There are many successful precedents for this approach, including the public works programs of England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, which were funded with government-issued money either borrowed from their central banks or printed directly. The Bank of England was nationalized in 1946 by a strong Labor government that funded the National Health Service, a national railway service, and many other cost-effective public programs that served the economy well for decades afterwards.

In Australia during the current crisis, a stimulus package in which a cash handout was given directly to the people has worked temporarily, with no negative growth (recession) for two quarters, and unemployment held at around 5%. The government, however, borrowed the extra money privately rather than issuing it publicly, out of a misguided fear of hyperinflation. Better would have been to give interest-free credit through its own government-owned central bank to individuals and businesses agreeing to invest the money productively.

The Chinese have done better, expanding their economy at over 9% throughout the crisis by creating extra money that was mainly invested in public infrastructure.

The EMU countries are trapped in a deadly pyramid scheme, because they have abandoned their sovereign currencies for a euro controlled by the ECB. Their deficits can only be funded with more debt, which is interest-bearing, so more must always be paid back than was borrowed. The ECB could provide some relief by engaging in “quantitative easing” (creating new Euros), but it has insisted it would do so only with “sterilization” – taking as much money out of the system as it puts back in. The EMU model is mathematically unsustainable and doomed to fail unless it is modified in some way, either by returning economic sovereignty to its member countries, or by consolidating them into one country with one government.

A third possibility, suggested by Professor Randall Wray and Jan Kregel, would be to assign the ECB the role of “ employer of last resort ,” using “quantitative easing” to hire the unemployed at a basic wage.

A fourth possibility would be for member countries to set up publicly-owned “development banks” on the Chinese model . These banks could issue credit in Euros for public projects, creating jobs and expanding the money supply in the same way that private banks do every day when they make loans. Private banks today are limited in their loan-generating potential by the capital requirement, toxic assets cluttering their books, a lack of creditworthy borrowers, and a business model that puts shareholder profit over the public interest. Publicly-owned banks would have the assets of the state to draw on for capital, a clean set of books, a mandate to serve the public, and a creditworthy borrower in the form of the nation itself, backed by the power to tax.

Unlike the EMU countries, the governments of England, the United States, and other sovereign nations can still borrow from their own central banks, funding much-needed programs essentially interest-free. They can but they probably won't, because they have been deceived into relinquishing that sovereign power to an overreaching financial sector bent on controlling the money systems of the world privately and autocratically. Professor Carroll Quigley, an insider groomed by the international bankers, revealed this plan in 1966, writing in Tragedy and Hope :

[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.

Just as the EMU appeared to be on the verge of achieving that goal, however, it has started to come apart at the seams. Sovereignty may yet prevail.

California and Oregon Senators caught lying at EPA hearings!! Should they be impeached?

Should Boxer and Merkley be investigated along with ‘Hockey-Stick' Mann and Phil Jones, for global warming fraud?? Your thoughts??

Senators Boxer and Merkley Owe Apology, says SPPI
Source: SPPI

In Senate EPA hearings today false claims were made by Senators Boxer (D-CA) and Merkley (D-OR) that the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) is Exxon Mobil funded, implying its work and findings should be cast aside.

Says SPPI president, Robert Ferguson, “SPPI has never been offered or accepted funds or support in any form from Exxon Mobil. Senators Boxer and Merkley owe an apology and a correction in the record.” Added Ferguson, “It is rather simple for any senate staffer to call Exxon Mobil to verify the facts, or examine public filings for Exxon Mobil's Contributions and Community Investments.

The intended slurs came as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson faced stern questioning from Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) and Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) about recent revelations of the shoddiness of the science underpinning the EPA's CO2 ‘endangerment' finding.

Senator Barrasso referenced a recent study by SPPI indicating that NASA and NOAA temperature records had been manipulated, and asked the Administrator if she'd be willing to have the EPA IG investigate and review the allegations.

http://sppiblog.org/news/senators-boxer-and-merkley-owe-apology-says-sppi-2

ROTFLMAO!

"Crying Tears" (first post at the top) dismisses the SPPI as "biased" (why, because they don't agree with your narrow world view?) and gives absolutely no evidence to back up their assertion.

They then claim "Logic" as their source, when even if it were true is a matter of fact and attribution, not logic.

And to cap it all off, the alarmists give that post 7 thumbs-up (they've got their thumbs up alright. Right up their . . .).

Decide for yourself who is really biased here.

Washington (CNN) – The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is painting a grim picture of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, insists that the effort must continue.

“Failure is not an option,” Feinstein said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN's “State of the Union.”

Related: Success must be defined, Lugar says

Feinstein agreed that the training of the Afghan army continues to face significant challenges, but she said the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater is too strategically important to U.S interests not to continue the U.S. military operation.

“Also, there's one, I think, irreversible truth - the Taliban is on a march,” Feinstein also told CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley. “If you lose Afghanistan, Pakistan is the next step.”

She added, “So the question becomes, either the Taliban becomes a force for good, participates in government - we're not there yet - or it has to be defeated.”

Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the Ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who joined Feinstein during the interview, agreed that training Afghan security forces remains a challenge.

“Well, we don't say good-bye [to the Afghans], we say right now to the Afghans that we want to train you so that you are able to police your own territory in order to govern,” Lugar told Crowley. “Now, as Dianne Feinstein has said, this is tough to do. You have almost everybody who is an illiterate to begin with. The allies that we had hoped for to send trainers haven't sent very many. Our own trainers are - are too few.

“So, as a result, this is going more slowly. I sympathize with General McChrystal and General Petraeus, as people press them for dates. They're saying ‘one thing at a time.' We've really got to get the training done. It's going more slowly.”

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, recently said that American-led operations against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan will happen "more slowly than we had originally anticipated."

And testifying before a congressional committee late last week, Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the U.S. Central Command, said "The conduct of a counterinsurgency operation is a roller-coaster experience. There are setbacks as well as areas of progress or successes. But the trajectory in my view has generally been upward, despite the tough losses, despite the setbacks."

Filed under: Afghanistan  •  Dianne Feinstein  •  Dick Lugar  •  State of the Union

GAME ON

After an eight-month hiatus from Sunday Morning talk, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel speaks. Despite all the hefty issues floating through the White House, he remains an aficionado of raw politics. Ratcheting up the political noise over Rep. Joe Barton's (R-Texas) apology to BP, Emanuel said Barton's now retracted words were “not a political gaffe… (but) a philosophy.”

As close as Democrats try to tie all Republicans to Barton's remarks, that's how far away Republicans want to get.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska): “The statement that Representative Barton made was wrong. Absolutely wrong.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Kentucky): “I couldn't disagree with Joe Barton more.”

Coming soon to a campaign trail near you.

MEANWHILE

In the 62 days since 11 men were killed on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig, more than 70 members of the U.S. military were killed in Afghanistan. Taking stock of the war, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Chairwoman, Senate Intelligence Committee) called Afghanistan a “difficult situation.” Sen. Richard Lugar says the question is what's the mission, …”the President is going to have to redefine the plan.

Amid signs that June may be the deadliest month so far this year in Afghanistan and against the backdrop of a U.N. report saying roadside bomb attacks in Afghanistan are up 94 percent in the first four months of this year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates blames the media and argues that people are “losing context.” Gates says the plan to begin withdrawing troops in 2011 still stands.

To all Dads, wherever you are this day, Happy Father's Day.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) Alaska on CNN's “State of the Union”
“The statement that Representative Barton made was wrong, absolutely wrong. He has since apologized for it. But for - for the White House, for the administration to be, kind of, running with this as the issue - let's not forget; we had 11 people die. We have an environmental disaster unfolding. We have an economic disaster that is unfolding. Let's not be distracted by saying, you know, Joe Barton made this gaffe or this - this inappropriate comment. Let's focus on what we need to do, which is getting relief to the Gulf, making sure that they have every asset possible, making sure that we've got a claims compensation system that works for them. Let's focus on providing what the people of the Gulf need, not pointing fingers back and forth and saying, oh, you know, what you said was wrong.”

Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff on ABC's “This Week”
“The approach here expressed and supported by others in the Republican Party sees the aggrieved party as BP, not the communities down there and the fishermen affected. And that would be the government philosophy. I think what Joe Barton did, was remind the American people, in case they forgot, that this is how the Republicans would govern.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) Minority Leader, on “Fox News Sunday”
“I couldn't disagree with Joe Barton more. BP doesn't need an apology, they need to apologize to us, and they certainly need to cover all of the costs of the cleanup and the economic damages as well, and they're going to.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) California, on CNN's “State of the Union”
FEINSTEIN: “There is one, I think, irreversible truth. The Taliban is on a march. If you lose Afghanistan, Pakistan is the next step. And so what that bodes, is nothing but ill because Pakistan is a nuclear...
CROWLEY: “Failure is not an option is what you are saying.”
FEINSTEIN: “Failure is not an option.”

Sen. Richard Lugar (R) Indiana, CNN's “State of the Union”
“The President and his plan said that we would begin to withdraw in July of next year, 2011. Now, this was to satisfy in part critics in the United States saying why are we there and how long are we going to be there? Likewise, to reassure the people in Afghanistan, that we were not there permanently, and some didn't like to see us around. I think the President is going to have to redefine the plan, and when the proper time comes for that, he will have to make a decision.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) California and Sen. Richard Lugar (R) Indiana, on CNN's “State of the Union”
CROWLEY: “Jonathan Alter wrote a book called "The Promise," in which he quotes Vice President Joe Biden about July of 2011, when these troops are supposed to start leaving. ‘In July of 2011, you're going to see a whole lot of people moving out. Bet on it.' Do you bet on it?”
FEINSTEIN : “A nice thought."
LUGAR: “I think that Senator Biden - or Joe Biden has many thoughts about this. Jonathan Alter may have caught him at a moment there, not really fair. Essentially, the vice president is going to follow the lead of the president, and that may mean we have a lot of troops still there after July 1.”

Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense, on “Fox News Sunday”
“People are losing context. This policy, this strategy has been in place and working for only about 4 or 5 months. We have yet to put in a third of the surge forces into Afghanistan. The President has said we'll wait until December to evaluate how we're doing. So I think there's a rush to judgment frankly, that loses sight of the fact we are still in the middle of getting all of the right components into place and giving us a little time to have this work.”

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I) Connecticut, on CNN's “State of the Union”
CROWLEY: “Does comprehensive energy reform even have a chance this year?”
LIEBERMAN: “Yes, it does have a chance. And it needs to be done. And really it needs to be not just a kind of false energy bill, that is one that gets a few good things done, but doesn't change the equation, doesn't break our dependence on oil, particularly foreign oil, doesn't create new jobs, doesn't clean up the environment, and that's the judgment we have. I'll tell you what my count is in the Senate. There are 50 – in my opinion, there are about 50 senators who want to vote for a strong comprehensive energy bill that puts a price on carbon pollution. There are 30 who are set against it and there are 20 undecided. You have got to get to 60 to pass anything in the Senate. We need half of the undecided and we can do it.”

Filed under: Energy  •  Joe Barton  •  Joe Lieberman  •  Lisa Murkowski  •  Popular Posts  •  State of the Union

Global Warming, the EPA, and Good Ideas Gone Bad

June 21, 4:09 PM Boston Environmental Policy Examiner Thomas Richard

The other day I was having a conversation with a friend, whom I'll brand a climate change on-the-fencer, about the EPA's latest foray into politics. I mentioned to him that when the EPA gets involved in directing social policy to repay their party's benefactors, in this case the Democrats, problems invariably ensue.

Originally created by President Richard Nixon in 1970 with the best of intentions, the EPA was an overly drastic response to the loud, still-fledgling environmental movement. Concern over our water and air was artificially inflated by the release of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in the early '60s, a scathing, poorly researched book about the detrimental effects of pesticides, specifically DDT. In a nutshell, Carson's book claimed DDT was responsible for "harming and killing not only birds and animals, but also humans." This despite study after study showed the exact opposite.

After the EPA banned DDT in 1972 using the most spurious of science, the World Health Organization (WHO) followed suit and malaria made a roaring comeback in Africa, having almost been eliminated by the use of this pesticide. Since DDT was banned, it has been estimated that 40 million people have died from malaria. Only recently has the WHO reinstated its use in limited circumstances.

Another example of the EPA driving social policy is second-hand smoke. While non-smokers don't particularly care for a cigarette's malodorous aroma, the EPA once again used its powers to manipulate the science toward "better" community policy. As the late Michael Crichton, a medical doctor and famed writer, said in one of his numerous speeches on junk science, the science supporting the bans of second-hand smoke was openly fraudulent science:

In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was "responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in non-smoking adults," and that it "impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of thousands of people." In a 1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven studies it based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive, and that they collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of 1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action by the EPA, or for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical association at the 95% confidence limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They then classified second-hand smoke as a Group A Carcinogen.

This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans on smoking in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the Christian Science Monitor was saying that "Second-hand smoke is the nation's third-leading preventable cause of death." The American Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is non-existent.

In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had "committed to a conclusion before research had begun", and had "disregarded information and made findings on selective information." The reaction of Carol Browner, head of the EPA then, was: "We stand by our science….there's wide agreement. The American people certainly recognize that exposure to second-hand smoke brings…a whole host of health problems." Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps science. In this case, it isn't even a consensus of scientists that Browner evokes! It's the consensus of the American people.

Meanwhile, ever-larger studies failed to confirm any association. A large, seven-country WHO study in 1998 found no association. Nor have well-controlled subsequent studies, to my knowledge. Yet we now read, for example, that second-hand smoke is a cause of breast cancer. At this point you can say pretty much anything you want about second-hand smoke.

As with nuclear winter, bad science is used to promote what most people would consider good policy. I certainly think it is. I don't want people smoking around me. So who will speak out against banning second-hand smoke? Nobody, and if you do, you'll be branded a shill of RJ Reynolds. A big tobacco flunky. But the truth is that we now have a social policy supported by the grossest of superstitions. And we've given the EPA a bad lesson in how to behave in the future. We've told them that cheating is the way to succeed.

Note who was in charge when the EPA made these determinations: Carol Browner. The same Carol Browner who is now Obama's climate change czar. To hear her speak about global warming is like listening to the same rationalizations she used with second-hand smoke. "We stand by our science. There's wide agreement."

Not only is this history repeating itself, but Browner has handed off the duplicitous bayonet to Lisa Jackson, the EPA's current head. Not only is Jackson using the same unscrupulous playbook, she is adding new chapters in her attempts to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2).

This is not how a scientific organization works. But when a scientist is appointed by a politician, he or she is beholden to that party's pet peeves. In this case, crippling the U.S. economy through cap and tax schemes while China and India continue to spew as much CO2 as their countries deem necessary. These countries don't operate under a dome. Their CO2 expirations are worldwide.

And if CO2 does indeed cause global warming as the EPA would have us believe, it's contribution is so minuscule on a planetary scale that they have only consensus to fall back on. Just like DDT, second-hand smoke, and a host of other causes du jour, the EPA has shown us something that we can all agree on: it is a bureaucracy that has outlived its original purpose and should be dismantled and replaced with a truly scientific organization.

EPA Delays Enforcing Lead-Paint Rule

June 21, 2010 — U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe declared victory in his months-long effort to provide relief to home renovators and others still scrambling to meet a federal agency's certification rules on lead-paint removal, reports Tulsa World .

"I am very happy right now,'' the Oklahoma Republican said. "We won.''

Inhofe based his comments on a memo apparently from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) delaying enforcement of its own rule targeting work on homes built before 1978, according to the article.

"Since the RRP (Renovation, Repair, and Painting) Rule became effective on April 22, 2010, concerns have been raised by the regulated community regarding difficulties experienced in obtaining the rule required firm certification and renovation worker training,'' Assistant Administrator Cynthia Giles states in the memo provided by Senate staff.

Giles explained that the agency will not take enforcement action for violations of the certification rule until Oct. 1.

Enforcement, she writes, also will be put off for renovation workers who have applied or enrolled in a class by Sept. 30 and who complete that training by Dec. 31, according to Tulsa World .

"In view of the paramount importance of ensuring that all contractors follow the lead-safe work practices in the RRP rule, EPA will continue to enforce the work practice requirements in the rule, which protect children and reduce lead exposure,'' the memo states.

EPA's rule had its beginning several years ago.

Still, Inhofe and others believe EPA botched its implementation, specifically by not ensuring there would be enough classes for renovators and others who work on older homes to become certified, reports the article.

Fines for not complying could be as high as $37,500 per day, states Tulsa World .

In May, the U.S. Senate, in a bipartisan vote, passed legislation to block the fines temporarily, reports the article.

"I am pleased that the EPA listened to the clear bipartisan message sent by the Senate that the implementation of the lead-based paint rule was a disaster,'' said Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

"EPA has finally recognized the extreme difficulty in obtaining firm certification and worker renovation training.''

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who sponsored the May legislation, said efforts to rid lead-based paint from homes must continue, according to the article.

"Maine children are at particularly high risk for lead poisoning because more than 60 percent of our state's homes were built before lead-based paint was banned in 1978,'' Collins said.

"I appreciate that the EPA recognizes that it must boost the number of certified trainers in each state and that small contractors need more time to comply with EPA's rule.''

EPA's memo represents an about face, and the agency appeared to have been caught flatfooted by the senators' announcement, according to Tulsa World .

Inhofe believes the agency agreed to the delay in enforcement after it became clear Congress would continue using its leverage on the matter, reports the article.

EPA delays enforcing lead-paint removal rule

by: JIM MYERS World Washington Bureau
Saturday, June 19, 2010
6/19/2010 5:55:26 AM

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe declared victory Friday in his months-long effort to provide relief to home renovators and others still scrambling to meet a federal agency's certification rules on lead-paint removal.

"I am very happy right now,'' the Oklahoma Republican said. "We won.''

Inhofe based his comments on a memo apparently from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency delaying enforcement of its own rule targeting work on homes built before 1978.

"Since the RRP (Renovation, Repair and Painting) Rule became effective on April 22, 2010, concerns have been raised by the regulated community regarding difficulties experienced in obtaining the rule required firm certification and renovation worker training,'' Assistant Administrator Cynthia Giles states in the memo provided by Senate staff.

Giles explained that the agency will not take enforcement action for violations of the certification rule until Oct. 1.

Enforcement, she writes, also will be put off for renovation workers who have applied or enrolled in a class by Sept. 30 and who complete that training by Dec. 31.

"In view of the paramount importance of ensuring that all contractors follow the lead-safe work practices in the RRP rule, EPA will continue to enforce the work practice requirements in the rule, which protect children and reduce lead exposure,'' the memo states.

EPA's rule had its beginning several years ago.

Still, Inhofe and others believe EPA botched its implementation, specifically by not ensuring there would be enough classes for renovators and others who work on older homes to become certified.

Fines for not complying could be as high as $37,500 per day.

In May, the U.S. Senate, in a bipartisan vote, passed legislation to block the fines temporarily.

"I am pleased that the EPA listened to the clear bipartisan message sent by the Senate that the implementation of the lead-based paint rule was a disaster,'' said Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

"EPA has finally recognized the extreme difficulty in obtaining firm certification and worker renovation training.''

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who sponsored the May legislation, said efforts to rid lead-based paint from homes must continue.

"Maine children are at particularly high risk for lead poisoning because more than 60 percent of our state's homes were built before lead-based paint was banned in 1978,'' Collins said.

"I appreciate that the EPA recognizes that it must boost the number of certified trainers in each state and that small contractors need more time to comply with EPA's rule.''

EPA's memo represents an about face, and the agency appeared to have been caught flatfooted by the senators' announcement.

It could not provide a comment or respond to questions.

In earlier comments, the agency had stressed the dangers of lead, the number of American children still poisoned by lead-based paint, as well as the timeline for developing the rule and implementing it.

Inhofe believes the agency agreed to the delay in enforcement after it became clear Congress would continue using its leverage on the matter.

CERCLA - PRPs Not Party to a Settlement Can Still Intervene in Settlement Approval

Authored By: James P. Ryan
06/21/10

Following the Eighth and Tenth Circuits, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently ruled that non-settling potentially responsible parties (PRPs) can be heard on the fairness of a settlement reached by other PRPs of claims brought by the government pursuant to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).  In U.S. v. Aerojet General Corp. , No. 08-55996 (9th Cir. June 2, 2010), the Ninth Circuit, relying upon section 113(i) of CERCLA and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(a)(2), held that non-settling PRPs have a right to intervene in actions filed seeking court approval of consent decrees. 

The action involved a CERCLA (or Superfund) site in California, in which a group of PRPs entered into a consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reimburse past costs in connection with activities undertaken by the EPA at the site and for implementation of the remedy prescribed in an Interim Record of Decision.  The EPA filed a "friendly" suit against the settling PRPs as a means to lodge a proposed consent decree that incorporated the settlement agreement.  Once approved by the court, the consent decree would insulate the settling PRPs from contribution claims from non-settling PRPs.  The non-settling PRPs filed a motion to intervene, which the district court denied.  The court then proceeded to enter the consent decree.  The non-settling PRPs appealed to the Ninth Circuit. 

The Ninth Circuit applied the four-part test for intervention required by Rule 24(a)(2) -- (1) timeliness, (2) a sufficiently protectable interest, (3) impairment of that interest, and (4) whether the intervener's interest are otherwise adequately protected -- which the Court noted was almost identical to the test set forth in CERCLA section 113(i).  The Ninth Circuit's analysis focused on the second and third elements. 

The Ninth Circuit first discussed the nature of a PRP's right to seek contribution, which is granted by CERCLA section 113(f).  It dismissed the conclusion reached by several district courts that such a right is contingent or speculative and, therefore, not sufficiently protectable to meet the requirement of a both Rule 24(a)(2) and section 113(i) that a party seeking to intervene have a sufficiently protectable interest.  In finding a sufficiently protectable interest at stake, the Ninth Circuit relied upon the statutory language of CERCLA section 113(f), which plainly provides a party with a right to contribution during or following a civil action under sections 106 or 107.  It buttressed this conclusion by noting that a finding of liability is not required before the right to contribution arises; the only necessary prerequisite is for the contribution claim to be made during or following the Section 106 or 107 action.   The Ninth Circuit further noted that CERCLA also requires that consent decrees be substantively fair, reasonable and consistent with the objectives of CERCLA.  The Ninth Circuit brushed aside policy arguments that intervention would hinder  early settlement of CERCLA actions and noted instead that intervention would further CERCLA's goal of requiring those responsible for the contamination to pay for the cleanup, by ensuring that settlements reflect a fair and reasonable allocation of liability.  Therefore, while the Court found the potential for impairment of CERCLA contribution rights to be the key to open the door for intervention, once in the tent non-settling PRPs will also be able to address the more immediate and perhaps more important consideration: whether the proposed settlement potentially would operate to foist disproportionate residual liability on the non-settling PRPs.

The Ninth Circuit next considered whether the interests of the non-settling PRPs would be impaired by the disposition of the EPA's consent decree.  The Court reasoned that the non-settling PRPs' contribution claims could be significantly affected by the resolution of action in which they were seeking to intervene.  The amount the non-settling PRPs would be able to recover under their contribution claims would definitely be impacted by the contribution bar upon the resolution of the EPA's claims against the settling PRPs.  Once the non-settling PRPs' contribution claims against the settling PRPs are barred, the value of those contribution claims is reduced to nothing.  The Ninth Circuit dismissed the assertion that CERCLA's notice and comment procedures adequately protect the non-settling PRPs' interests and concluded that, at least on the facts of this case, it was unlikely the government would substantially modify the consent decree given that the non-settling PRPs had already objected to the settlement before the comment period.  The Ninth Circuit also concluded that CERCLA section 113(i) evidenced a Congressional intent to have the federal courts evaluate whether proposed consent decrees were fair and reasonable. 

The most significant impact of the Ninth Circuit's Aerojet decision is to confirm that non-settling PRPs must have an opportunity to be heard when the government seeks judicial approval of settlements with some but not all PRPs.  Judicial review will necessarily focus on the amount the settling PRP pays in comparison to its appropriate allocable share to help ensure the settlement does not foist upon the non-settling PRPs a disproportionate share of the costs.  The Aerojet decision will not likely result in very many settlements being rejected by the courts; however, settling PRPs and the government will need to ensure that their settlements reflect a fair and reasonable allocation of liability and costs and should not view the act of seeking judicial approval of a settlement, in matters where there are non-settling PRPs, as a rubber stamp. 

James P. Ryan focuses his environmental practice on Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, And Liability Act (CERCLA) and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) matters and their state analogs.  His clients include large multi-national corporations in a variety of sectors, including the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries.  He can be reached at jryan@nossaman.com or 202.887.1478.

Frank E. Deale on "Jurisdiction, Transfer, and Pretrial: Using Fed. R. Civ. P. 16 to Resolve Forum Convenience Disputes"

Frank E. Deale of CUNY School of Law has a new post on SSRN entitled: " Jurisdiction, Transfer, and Pretrial: Using Fed. R. Civ. P. 16 to Resolve Forum Convenience Disputes " Howard Law Journal , Vol. 53, No. 1, 2009 . Here is the abstract:
The article argues that Federal District Judges should exercise their managerial powers under Rule 16 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to resolve forum convenience disputes, (i.e., challenges to the personal jurisdiction or venue of a court), in early pre-trial conference negotiation meetings rather than through the normal, but extremely wasteful, expensive, and time consuming, route of motion practice. The article suggests that the extremely complex multi-factored analyses for making forum convenience decisions, especially those ascertaining personal jurisdiction, has resulted in a body of decisional law that makes it difficult to predict reasonable outcomes, and that is moreover inconsistent with settled understandings regarding the adjudication of constitutional and statutory claims. These unfortunate results are compounded by the ability of defendants to secure interlocutory appeals to challenge District Judge decisions to honor plaintiff's initial choice of forum, adding substantial expense and significant delay to the adjudication of the merits of a plaintiff's claim. In cases targeted by the proposal, federal diversity cases filed against non-residents defendants, the use of early Rule 16 conferences could substantially reduce the judicial resources necessary to adjudicate the large volume of such cases that appear on the federal docket.

June 21, 2010, 3:55 p.m. EDT · Recommend · Post:

CNH Announces $1.0 Billion Senior Notes Offering

BURR RIDGE, IL, Jun 21, 2010 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- CNH Global N.V. /quotes/comstock/13*!cnh ( CNH 26.55 , +0.22 , +0.84% ) today announced its wholly owned subsidiary, Case New Holland Inc., plans to offer approximately $1.0 billion of senior notes due in 2017. The notes will be guaranteed by CNH Global N.V. and certain other direct and indirect equipment subsidiaries of CNH Global N.V. The company expects to complete the transaction in the next few days.

Case New Holland, Inc. intends to use the proceeds from the offering primarily for the repayment of debt, including redemption of the outstanding $500 million aggregate principal amount of its 7.125% Senior Notes due 2014 and repayment of debt owed to Fiat. Any remaining proceeds would be used for general corporate purposes. Pending application of the net proceeds, Case New Holland, Inc. would expect to hold some or all of the proceeds in the form of cash, cash equivalents or deposits under cash management pools with Fiat affiliates.

The notes will only be offered and sold to qualified institutional buyers in accordance with Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act") and in offshore transactions in accordance with Regulation S under the Securities Act. The notes being offered will not be and have not been registered under the Securities Act or the securities laws of any other jurisdiction. The notes may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration requirements. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the notes, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

Forward-looking statements. We can give no assurance that the contemplated offering will be completed.

Remote Gaming Regulations in Kahnawake and Antigua Agree to Create Inter-Jurisdiction Authorization Regime

Press Releases
June 18, 2010
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17 JUNE 2010 – The Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC) and  Financial Services Regulatory Commission for Antigua and Barbuda (FSRC) announced today that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (2010 MOU) that establishes an innovative regulatory relationship between the two Commissions.

The 2010 MOU builds and expands on the relationship first established between the KGC and the FSRC when in 2005 they signed a Memorandum of Understanding (2005 MOU) that facilitated the exchange of information regarding their respective licensees.

The 2010 MOU will enable a process under which an operator that holds a “Primary Licence” in either jurisdiction can apply to the other jurisdiction for an “Inter-Jurisdictional Authorization”. The holder of an “Inter-Jurisdictional Authorization” will be entitled to be hosted in either jurisdiction. The regulatory body that issues the “Primary Licence” will regulate and supervise all of the operator's activities within both jurisdictions.

The 2010 MOU is designed to recognize the inter-connectedness of remote gaming regulators – providing operators an unprecedented degree of flexibility for their licensing and hosting needs – while respecting the independence and international obligations of each jurisdiction.

The 2010 MOU comes into effect 90 days from the date of signature, to allow each jurisdiction the time to complete the necessary amendments to their regulations.

A copy of the signed 2010 MOU can be obtained from the KGC's website: www.gamingcommission.ca and www.antiguagaming.gov.ag

About Kahnawake

The Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake is a sovereign jurisdiction located just outside Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Kahnawake Gaming Commission was established in 1996 and has been continuously licensing and regulating online gaming since July, 1999 – longer than almost any other jurisdiction in the world.

Operators that are licensed by the Commission host their equipment at Mohawk Internet Technologies, a world class ISP and data centre located within the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake: www.mohawk.ca

For more information about the Commission go to: www.gamingcommission.ca or contact:
Murray Marshall
General Counsel
Kahnawake Gaming Commission
murray.marshall@gamingcommission.ca

About Antigua and Barbuda Financial Services Regulatory Commission

Antigua and Barbuda, Financial Services Regulatory Commission (FSRC) was established in 2002 following a series of amendments to the International Business Corporations Act, Cap 222, as amended.

The FSRC license, regulate and supervise a range of financial services and activities, to include interactive gaming and interactive wagering. The legal and regulatory framework for internet gaming companies is provided in the International Business Corporations Act, Cap 222, as amended, the Interactive Gaming and Interactive Wagering Regulations, 2007 and the ancillary control systems guidelines.

The jurisdiction's gaming regulatory model is founded on five distinct pillars: prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing; licensee integrity, transparency and accountability; and, above all, safeguarding the interests and well-being of the players.

On November 21, 2008, the United Kingdom formally designated Antigua a trusted, “white listed” jurisdiction, a designation that recognizes the jurisdictions robust licensing and oversight controls. The white-listed status enables Antiguan licensees to advertise their gaming services within the UK. In December 2009 the jurisdiction was white-listed after having substantially implemented the internationally agreed tax standards of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

For more information about the Financial Services Regulatory Commission visit www.fsrc.gov.ag or contact director@antiguagaming.gov.ag

Climate Bureaucracies Are The Choice Because They Perpetuate Problems

Written by Dr. Tim Ball, Canada Free Press | 15 April 2010

The power behind Obama doesn't care if he is a one term President. He would prefer it otherwise and an interesting battle looms as the Democratic Party rejects the incumbent African American President. Total government control is a far more important agenda than any individual political career. Many think it's good that Obama is showing his left wing agenda too quickly and too openly. They argue it will arouse reaction and this will cause a dramatic shift to the right in the November elections and beyond. It will, but it doesn't matter. While the pundits are distracted by political battles, Obama and the gang are bypassing elected officials and thereby the people by putting all the power in bureaucracies. They will guarantee the agenda and prevent any future politicians rescinding or reversing the major pattern.

CO2 was the vehicle chosen to destroy the industrialized nations by ‘proving' this byproduct was causing catastrophic global warming and climate change.  Cap and Trade has evolved as the ideal legislation because it controls energy and industry while creating revenue. It has survived exposure of the corrupt science, however, it isn't necessary because it likely won't get Senate approval. It doesn't matter because of the administrative power given to the EPA by the Supreme Court ruling that CO2 is a pollutant. This gives them complete control of energy and industry.  Growth of bureaucracies is a hallmark of totalitarianism and the death of freedom. As Mary McCarthy said, “Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.”

Bureaucratic Frankenstein's

A politician explained that he opposed projects he defined as “Frankenstein”.  An example explains the difference between these and other projects. He would consider funding to write a book because it was finite, ending when the book was published. He would reject money to start a monthly journal – because once started the funding requirements don't end. Attempts to stop funding trigger charges of ending a “tradition'. You have to keep feeding the monster. This is part of the pattern in which today's privilege becomes tomorrow's right and entitlements never end.

Once you assign a problem to a bureaucracy, either by creating a new one or giving it to an existing one, you are guaranteeing the problem will not be resolved. Worse, the bureaucracy will expand and costs will grow. Much of the increased cost will go to preparing arguments for perpetuating the bureaucracy. This is done by claiming the problem has expanded and was far worse than previously understood. They are paid to confirm what is already established, not determine the truth.

Turf Wars

There are very few examples of bureaucracies being shut down. Often they're absorbed by another agency but this is not usually to improve resolution of the problem. It occurs because part of self-perpetuation of a bureaucracy involves not impinging on other bureaucracies. Turf wars are a constant part of bureaucracies. They don't prove anything, inhibit resolution of problems, and create further problems. A classic example was the problems and failures of turf conflicts identified after the 9/11 air attacks.

Maurice Strong knew what he was doing when he bypassed politics to achieve his goal of causing the collapse of the industrialized nations. He knew bureaucracies were the answer because they remain as politicians' come and go. Within the bureaucracies of the United Nations he had the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that gave direct access to the climate bureaucracies of every nation. It was these people who controlled the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) supporting and promoting those scientists such as the ones from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) who provided the science required for the objective.

It is no surprise John Houghton was the first Co-Chairman of the IPCC from 1988 to 2002. This overlapped with his bureaucratic role as Director General of the United Kingdom Meteorological Office (UKMO) from 1983 to 1991. However, as Phil Jones notes in a May 5, 2005 email to Kevin Trenberth, “IPCC has a lot of clout – much more than GCOS (Global Climate Observing System) and/or WMO.” He makes this argument to suggest IPCC should push for more weather stations and better determination of global temperature. A good idea but doing so would undermine the certainty of IPCC claims.  Steve McIntyre reports on this ironic event because it involved another influential bureaucrat, Susan Solomon, National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) representative on the IPCC. Solomon, as Co-chair of Working Group I of the Science Report, illogically opposed Jones' proposal.

Meaningless Codes Of Ethics

How do you control bureaucrats? It's an issue of concern as attempts at legislation attest, but they are all vague and apparently unenforceable.  For example, the US has the Hatch Act, which relates to political activity of Federal Employees. But is that different from a code of ethics? NASA has ethical rules that involve misuse of position – but neither has inhibited the activities of NASA GISS Director James Hansen.

Apparently there are no codes or guidelines for IPCC members. The UN has general guidelines as follows; “Conflict of interest includes circumstances in which international civil servants, directly or indirectly, would appear to benefit improperly, or allow a third party to benefit improperly, from their association in the management or the holding of a financial interest in an enterprise that engages in any business or transaction with the organization.” Do they apply to IPCC? Does this mean they are guilty because they allowed Al Gore and others to benefit from carbon credits? It's unlikely because individual governments pay for the IPCC.

World Meteorological Organization (WMO) code of ethics likely don't apply either. They say in part, b) Refrain from acting in the course of their duties with respect to a matter in which they or someone with whom they have a close relationship, or from whom they are seeking employment or other benefit or favour, has a special interest” . Who then determines the appropriateness of the behavior and ethics of James Hansen, Phil Jones or Rajendra Pauchari? The answer is nobody and that is the advantage of bureaucracies. They are not accountable to anyone and if they get in trouble it's easy to set up whitewash investigations. Individuals, including Obama, will come and go but the totally unaccountable bureaucracy will persist. They will mindlessly pursue and expand the agenda they were ostensibly established to resolve: they are the cancer of the body politic.

Source

CONTACTS:

Stacy Kika (News Media Only)

Kika.stacy@epa,gov 202-564-0906

202-564-4355

Abby Hall (Public Inquiries)

Hall.abby@epa.gov

202-566-2086

Regions Provide Multiple Reasons for Incomplete Cost Recovery
EPA regions have recovered $165 million of $294 million (56 percent) of the total Superfund costs, from the sites we reviewed. However, EPA has not recovered as much as $129 million (44 percent) and has determined it will not attempt to recover between $30 million and $90 million of this amount.
Two general reasons cited for incomplete cost recovery
The unrecovered costs do not represent costs that were billed but not paid, as the PRPs at these sites have generally paid the amount billed. The remainder of this
section documents reasons cited by the regions for incomplete cost recovery. Regions have billed and recovered 95 percent or more of their site costs at 11 of the 58 sites we reviewed. Where cost recovery was less complete, regional staff sometimes provided general explanations. These general explanations did not indicate specific costs excluded from bills, or reasons why the regions did not bill these costs. This indicates a potentially significant breakdown in controls over Superfund cost recovery. Regional staff often cited one or both of the following reasons for incomplete cost recovery, without supporting documentation.
•
Limitations in negotiated settlements –EPA does not recover some costs because the private party and EPA agreed to exclude certain costs in reaching a settlement. Regional staff cited this as a reason for incomplete cost recovery at 12 sites.
•
Total costs overestimated by SCORPIOS – SCORPIOS’ total cost reports for past years may not accurately reconstruct the indirect costs. Regional staff said that this SCORPIOS limitation is another reason that SCORPIOS reports show costs recovered as less than actual costs for seven sites. However, regions did not provide actual cost figures to document this reason.
Many specific reasons cited for incomplete cost recovery
Regional staff also had other explanations for incomplete cost recovery. Some of these reflect a misunderstanding of policies and procedures or a lack of oversight in the billing process. In several cases, our review caused regions to become aware of oversight lapses on some site bills.
•
One region did not include a site on the billing list – While preparing its response to our information request for this project, one region discovered that one of the sites in question had inadvertently been left off its annual oversight billing inventory. SCORPIOS indicates the region last billed the site in 1996, and approximately $1.3 million of the total costs have not been recovered. Since this discovery, regional staff have added the site to their oversight billing inventory and have scheduled the next bill for the site in April 2008.
•
One region did not bill one site for years due to a misunderstanding on using a special account – While preparing its response to our information request for this project, one region discovered that it had not billed one site due to a misunderstanding about using funds in the site’s special account. The special account contained money recovered from the site for past EPA costs. Regional staff incorrectly thought the money in the special account was for future costs, so they did not bill the site for these costs. The site was last billed in 2001, and total costs since 2001 have been approximately $500,000. Since this discovery, regional staff have generated a bill to address these costs.
•
One region may not be able to recover oversight costs from State-lead sites – One region has never billed two State-lead sites, and the total SCORPIOS costs are approximately $1.4 million. Some of the costs were not billed due to a past settlement agreement, and some costs cannot be recovered because the statute of limitations has expired. Regional staff stated that they could not bill the site for oversight costs, as the PRPs have cost recovery agreements only with the States. The region continues to incur oversight costs – slightly over $95,000 total for both sites since 2000. EPA has no existing settlement agreement to recover oversight costs.
Other explanations for incomplete cost recovery include the following.
•
Superfund remediation work for one site was performed under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) permit. Regional staff incorrectly thought oversight costs were recoverable through work performed under the RCRA permit, but RCRA has no legal authority to allow recovering oversight costs.

•
Document imaging costs for one site’s files were attributed as direct costs to the site, when these costs should have been included as regional indirect costs. The region therefore did not bill for these costs. These document imaging costs were not used to calculate the region’s indirect rate(s).
•
Costs should have been attributed to a different site.
•
Costs represented a litigation risk (in the opinion of EPA attorneys, if the PRP challenged the costs in court, EPA would lose).
•
Cost invoices were not received or processed in time for billing.
•
The statute of limitations for cost recovery has expired.
•
Some of the identified costs were RCRA costs and therefore were not recoverable.
•
A circuit court ruling prevented the recovery of oversight costs from sites in two regions for several years. This ruling has recently been reversed, and the regions are taking steps to recover these costs.
•
Cost recovery negotiations are ongoing.
•
Costs will not be billed until the PRP completes its remedial actions under an EPA Administrative Order.
SCORPIOS Does Not Track Cost Recovery Efficiency or Corrections
While SCORPIOS provides detailed cost information for regions to produce site bills, the system design does not include enough information to determine cost recovery efficiency or track corrections. These functions are not available because SCORPIOS does not allow the input of cost categories that would allow reports to calculate efficiency and track corrections. This makes program performance difficult to quantify and can impede cost recovery.
Conclusions
EPA does not have sufficient management control over the process for the recovery of Superfund expenses. Regions have pursued recovery of some EPA’s Superfund expenditures for most sites, and sites have generally paid the amount billed. However, based on EPA’s information systems, EPA has not recovered approximately $129 million out of $294 million in total costs, or 44 percent, ofthe total costs at these sites. Regions are using some billing practices that impede Superfund cost recovery and regions did not recover costs because they misunderstood procedures or did not generate bills. Enhancing guidance and tracking Superfund costs can help EPA avoid unnecessary financial losses through better recovery of its Superfund costs.
Recommendations
We recommend the EPA Chief Financial Officer and the Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance work collaboratively to:
1. Enhance cost recovery guidance for use by all regions. At minimum, this guidance should include:
–
Procedures for annually reviewing Superfund site costs for all sites where EPA is recovering or expects to recover costs, to ensure costs are adequately identified and documented. This guidance should include procedures for ensuring that costs are reviewed while involved staff are available and can remember cost details.
–
A standard definition of anniversary date for timeliness of billing.
–
A definition of the minimum costs required for billing.
2. Implement mechanisms to:
–
Support calculation of site cost recovery efficiency - Track the resolution of each cost as determined in the annual billing process. Resolutions could include billed, not billed for a specified reason, and pending.
–
Track corrections – Identify incorrect costs until they are corrected. Both of these mechanisms could be implemented through enhancements to SCORPIOS.
3. Implement performance measures to track cost recovery efficiency.
Agency Comments and OIG Evaluation
The OIG made changes to the report based on the Agency’s comments where appropriate. Appendix A provides the full text of the Agency comments and OIG response.
EPA concurred with all recommendations. We agree that the proposed actions, when implemented, will meet the intent of the recommendations.
1

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

June 17, 2010

EPA Launches New Program to Green America's Capitals

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is launching a new technical assistance program to help state capital cities design more sustainable communities. Greening America 's Capitals will assist state capitals, selected through a competitive application process, develop a vision of distinctive, environmentally friendly neighborhoods that incorporate innovative green building and green infrastructure. This program is a new project of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities between EPA, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT).

"EPA is excited to work with our partners at HUD and DOT to offer this new design assistance to capital cities," said Lisa Heinzerling, associate administrator for EPA's Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation. "The selected cities will offer sustainable development models for their states and for many communities around the country."

EPA will provide design assistance to up to four cities per year to help them use sustainable designs to develop neighborhoods with multiple social, economic, and environmental benefits. With funding from EPA, these design teams will assist the city staff in developing project strategies to accelerate sustainable development in priority neighborhoods and create sustainability models for other cities to follow. The projects also could be used as testing grounds for larger, city-wide actions, such as changes to local codes and regulations to better support sustainable growth and green building.

Capital cities are invited to submit letters of interest to EPA by July 9, 2010. Letters of interest will be evaluated based on how well the proposed project describes the challenge, potential impact, and political and public support. A small group of applicants will be asked to participate in a follow-up call to further evaluate how well the applicant meets the criteria. Final selection will be made by early fall 2010.

More information on the program and application process: http://epa.gov/smartgrowth/greencapitals.htm

GREEN THE HOOD!

JEFFERSON DISTRICT OF SHASTA - TRINITY

Delist from 303(d) list

TMDL Project Code: 603
Date TMDL Approved
by USEPA:
01/01/2002
Impairment from
Pollutant or Pollution:
Pollutant
Conclusion: This pollutant is being considered for removal from the section 303(d) list under
section 4.1 of the Listing Policy. Under this section a single line of evidence is
necessary to assess listing status.
One lines of evidence are available in the administrative record to assess this
pollutant. None of samples exceeded the water quality objective.
Based on the readily available data and information, the weight of evidence
indicates that there is sufficient justification for removing this water segmentpollutant
combination from the section 303(d) list.
This conclusion is based on the staff findings that:
1. The data used satisfies the data quality requirements of section 6.1.4 of the
Policy.
2. The data used satisfies the data quantity requirements of section 6.1.5 of the
Policy.
3. None of 31 samples exceeded the chronic or acute criteria and this does not
exceed the allowable frequency listed in Table 4.1 of the Listing Policy.
4. Pursuant to section 4.11 of the Listing Policy, no additional data and
information are available indicating that standards are not met.
RWQCB Board Staff
Recommendation:
After review of the available data and information, RWQCB staff concludes that
the water body-pollutant combination should be removed from the section 303(d)
list because applicable water quality standards for the pollutant are not being
exceeded.
SWRCB Board Staff
Recommendation:
After review of this Regional Board decision, SWRCB staff recommend the
decision be approved by the State Board.
USEPA Decision:
Line of Evidence (LOE) for Decision ID 4124, Copper Region 5
Sacramento River (Keswick Dam to Cottonwood Creek)

Circuit Allows Non-Settling PRPs to Intervene in CERCLA Consent Decree Action

By: Genevieve Essig  and Gabrielle Sigel

On June 2, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a non-settling PRP's right to contribution under CERCLA was a legally sufficient interest to justify intervention to challenge a proposed consent decree between the federal government and the settling PRPs, joining ranks with the Eighth and Tenth Circuits, the only other U.S. appellate courts to address the issue. The case is  U.S. v. Aerojet Gen. Corp . , No. 08-55996 (9th Cir. Jun. 2, 2010).

Aerojet concerns the remediation of contaminated groundwater at a Superfund site involving nearly seventy PRPs and a total cleanup cost of $87 million. EPA proposed a consent decree providing 10 settling PRPs with immunity from contribution claims in return for payment of a fixed sum. A group of non-settling PRPs, who were not parties to the consent decree action but were defendants in other actions brought by local water providers involved in performing the cleanup, moved to intervene as of right after the close of the public comment period EPA provided for the consent decree. Most had submitted comments objecting to the consent decree. The district court denied intervention, but the court of appeals reversed, holding that the non-settling PRPs have a right under Fed. R. Civ. P. 24(a)(2) and CERCLA § 113(i) "to protect their interests in contribution and in the fairness of the proposed consent decree." Aerojet , No. 08-55996, slip. op. at 19.

Focusing on the Rule 24(a)(2) criteria for intervention as a right, the court concluded: "We join the Eighth and Tenth Circuits in holding that non-settling PRPs have a significant protectable interest in litigation between the government and would-be settling PRPs." Id. at 13. The court reasoned that, because approval of the proposed consent decree would entirely extinguish the non-settling PRPs' contribution rights against the settling PRPs under § 113(f)(1), the proposed consent decree would "therefore directly affect [the PRPs'] interest in maintaining their right to contribution." Id. In addition, the court noted, "because non-settling PRPs may be held liable for the entire amount of response costs minus the amount paid in a settlement," the non-settling PRPs "have an obvious interest in the amount of any judicially-approved settlement." Id. The court disagreed with the argument that § 113(f)(1) creates only a contingent or speculative interest, and was not swayed by policy or statutory interpretation arguments that allowing intervention would work against CERCLA's scheme to encourage early settlement.

This decision came fairly soon after the 10th Circuit's decision in U.S. v. Albert Inv. Co. , No. 08-6267 (10th Cir. Nov. 10, 2009), which concerned the cleanup of the Double Eagle Superfund Site in Oklahoma City. The 9th Circuit's decision in Aerojet repeatedly echoed the conclusions of the 10th Circuit in its Albert decision. For example, the 10th Circuit, as did the 9th Circuit, summarily dismissed the assertion that a non-settling PRP's contribution right is too speculative and contingent, holding that the statutory right to contribution is a "substantive right that currently exists." Albert , No. 08-6267, slip. op. at 22. Both courts also agreed that a public comment period is not a substitute for federal court intervention. The 8th Circuit decision was U.S. v. Union Elec. Co. , 64 F.3d 1152 (8th Cir. 1995).

These holdings contrast with what until recently had been considered the majority view, as a number of district courts, including courts in California, Michigan, Arizona, and Ohio, had rejected non-settling PRPs' requests to intervene in CERCLA consent decree actions. The announcement of this Aerojet decision confirms a definite shift in favor of the position of those district courts which have permitted intervention, including courts in New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and West Virginia.

Break on Through[1]: Tenth Circuit Allows Non-Settling PRP To Intervene in CERCLA Settlement Proceedings

Viewpoints: Free trade gets only lip service
By Wally Herger
Special to The Bee Published: Saturday, Jun. 19, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 13A

This week marks the 80th anniversary of perhaps the most disastrous economic legislation in our nation's history. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was the signature failure of 20th century protectionism. It raised tariffs on products in every sector of the U.S. economy, resulting in retaliatory tariffs from other countries and a dramatic reduction in global trade. Modern economists largely agree that Smoot-Hawley worsened the Great Depression.

Our nation and much of the world painfully learned the lesson that trade barriers severely undermine economic prosperity. Following World War II, both Republican and Democratic presidents worked to open new markets and recognized the far-reaching benefits of trade for American workers, consumers and small businesses. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy proclaimed the importance of free trade and our nation's leadership role in advancing it: "Economic isolation and political leadership are wholly incompatible.

"The United States has encouraged sweeping changes in Free World economic patterns in order to strengthen the forces of freedom. But we cannot ourselves stand still. If we are to lead, we must act. We must adapt our own economy to the imperatives of a changing world and once more assert our leadership."

Unfortunately, in the midst of the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, President Barack Obama has failed to assert the strong leadership we need on trade, thus bringing our nation's trade agenda to a standstill. He has embraced a new era of soft protectionism – centered primarily on non-tariff barriers and willful inaction – that is restricting U.S. trade and undermining our economic recovery.

Aside from his misguided tariffs on tires from China, the president has for the most part avoided the outright tariff-driven protectionism that plagued the Great Depression era. But he has chosen to endorse damaging non-tariff barriers to shield domestic industries from foreign competition.

Most prominently, the "Buy American" provision included in the misnamed economic stimulus legislation in 2009 green-lighted protectionism worldwide and sent an alarming message to all of our trading partners that the United States believes trade impedes, rather than fosters, economic growth. Additionally, the administration continues to prohibit the efficient cross-border transportation of goods from Mexico as required by our trade agreement with that nation. Mexico has responded by imposing billions in harmful retaliatory tariffs on U.S. agriculture and other goods.

Equally troubling, President Obama has not rallied members of his party and powerful special interest groups to support open markets as Presidents Kennedy and Clinton did.

To be sure, he has talked about the importance of trade, called for the doubling of exports, and warned about the dangers of sitting on the sidelines as other nations pursue trade agreements. But he has failed to match his rhetoric with the commitment and leadership necessary to persuade anti-trade Democrats to end their delay tactics and take positive actions, such as passing the market-opening agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.

The U.S. International Trade Commission estimated that they would increase U.S. exports by at least $12 billion, which, under the administration's own calculations, would create 250,000 jobs.

It is critical to stress that protectionism through inaction threatens our prosperity just as its more explicit predecessor did. As our nation fails to implement market-opening agreements, we are losing our competitive edge because other countries are moving forward with agreements that will lock out U.S. companies and cost U.S. workers their jobs.

Colombia has negotiated agreements with Canada and the European Union and has implemented agreements with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. The American Farm Bureau Federation found that U.S. agricultural exports to Colombia dropped 50 percent last year as Argentina and Brazil used their new duty-free access to take market share away from American farmers and ranchers.

Meanwhile, South Korea is negotiating an agreement with Australia and could implement an agreement with the EU before the end of this year. Our failure to act on the U.S.-Korea agreement will be especially detrimental given the size of the Korean market.

President Obama is therefore faced with a stark choice. He can undermine our economy by hiding behind tired anti-trade arguments and appeasing key supporters who disregard the overwhelming benefits of open markets, or he can match his rhetoric with positive action, reverse protectionist policies, and help put our nation back in the driver's seat of the global economy.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

CA-02: WHERE'S WALLY on deep-water drilling NOW?

by smileycreek

Thu Jun 17, 2010 at 04:31:49 PM PDT

Crossposted at Calitics

Wally Herger, CA-02, just prevailed in his primary against a teabagger, but will he survive this fall against Democratic candidate Jim Reed , who is far more in touch with the beliefs of his California constituents when it comes to drilling and environmental issues?

You might think a Republican would reconsider the safety of deep water drilling after the endless eruption of the oil volcano in the Gulf.

You would be wrong.  Herger still maintains that with our superior 21st Century technology we can drill-baby-drill with no harm to the environment.

Those of us in the reality-based community, including Jim Reed, see it differently.

(But wait!  There's more.....)

• smileycreek's diary :: ::

From Herger's Website: (emphasis mine)

I've long supported efforts to allow for the exploration of oil and natural gas in a small section of the frozen "ANWR" tundra in Alaska.  ANWR spans nearly 20 million acres, but energy exploration would only occur on 2,000 acres, or .01 percent of the land area.   And importantly, 21st Century technology would also allow us to recover energy resources without harming the environment.

Wondering If Herger might have updated his files on that amazing 21st Century technology keeping us safe story, I spoke with Herger's Chico office where his representative got back to me and confirmed that yes, Herger IS still in favor of deep water drilling.

At least he's consistent. Why bother to re-think a position in the face of compelling new evidence when it's so much easier to just rubber-stamp your party line, even when failing to think for yourself can cause irreparable harm to your own constituents?

While Herger gives pleasant lip-service to alternative and clean energies on his website, his voting record shows where his heart truly is-- with the oil companies. Votes on energy:

Voted NO on tax incentives for energy production and conservation.(May 2008)
Voted NO on tax incentives for renewable energy. (Feb 2008)
Voted NO on investing in homegrown bio-fuel. (Aug 2007)
Voted YES on criminalizing oil cartels like OPEC. (May 2007)
Voted NO on removing oil & gas exploration subsidies. (Jan 2007)
Voted NO on keeping moratorium on drilling for oil offshore. (Jun 2006)
Voted YES on scheduling permitting for new oil refineries. (Jun 2006)
Voted YES on authorizing construction of new oil refineries. (Oct 2005)

Jim Reed in the Comments section of his introductory diary at Daily Kos stated:

I am against any expansion of off shore drilling and the gulf accident just proves there will be human error with disaster to follow.

Cheers to Jim Reed be his willingness to dive into a notoriously thorny political site like the Daily Kos and to stick around to answer all questions for the next two hours.  Check out Reed's diary for an impressive example of an intelligent, decent, open-minded approach to differences of opinion.

Why "Where's Wally"?

In this 30 minute interview with Jim Swanson of Progressive News Radio Jim Reed makes a convincing case for how Wally Herger has become an increasingly lazy and ineffective legislator.  In 24 years in office Herger has only sponsored one piece of legislation where teamed up with Diana Feinstein.  He's voted with the Republican party 94% of the time, and some of those times appeared to be errors on his part.

As Jim Swanson of Progressive News Radio comments,

A Republican with a horrible voting record, even for topics that matter for his constituency. He does hold the honor of being in the top ten percentile of the worst Congressional Representatives in the United States government. As he no doubt sits at his desk in Washington, D.C., doodling on paper, reading the latest edition of "Field and Stream" and waiting for House Minority leader John Boehner to phone Wally's office and tell him how to vote, the time has plainly come to send Wally home to retirement.

As a personal anecdote, I and many other of Herger's constituents have written lengthy letters in support of HCR and energy independence, only to get "Thank you for support!" form letters in reply.  Apparently even his staff doesn't bother to read his mail.

As we know, ousting Herger will take some money. As Gail Collins wrote in The New York Times: :

We have been entertaining ourselves with theories about how this election year is going to be all about voter anger. Or Washington insiders. Or health care. Or TARP. But, really, it's going to be about money. Gobs of cash falling on campaigns like tar balls on a beach.

Jim Reed has already done some innovative fund-raising in sending out his unique "Talking Mailpieces" to Democrats all over the country, where he uses Herger's own words against him, to devastating effect:

Restoring the Clean Water Act

Minnesota Currents|Online , Summer 2010

The drinking water sources for nearly 1 million Minnesotans are at risk of losing Clean Water Act protections. Congress now has an opportunity to fix this and restore protections weakened by the Supreme Court and Bush Administration.

For those whose water sources are no longer protected under the Clean Water Act, the status quo means increased contamination risks. Communities also face the prospect of higher water costs as expensive filtration and disinfection technologies are deployed.

"Preventing pollution in the first place is cheaper, better and faster than having to get it out at treatment plants," said Clean Water Action President and CEO John DeCock, "there is a serious common-sense aspect to passing this bill."

The America's Commitment to Clean Water Act (ACCWA – H.R. 5088) was introduced in the U.S. House earlier this year by Representative Oberstar (D-MN). The bill will restore Congress' original intent for the Clean Water Act to protect all of our nation's waters. It is as clear today as it was in 1972 when the Clean Water Act was passed--you cannot get the job done by only protecting some of our waters; you have to protect all of them.

The Clean Water Act has been one of our most important and fundamental environmental protection laws. For 38 years the Clean Water Act has prevented millions of tons of pollution from entering our waters and led to the cleanup of polluted lakes, rivers and streams across the country. Big polluters have been working to reduce the protections claiming the Clean Water Act should not cover numerous wetlands, streams, rivers and lakes that have been historically protected. In just one year, more than 500 enforcement cases have been dropped by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Justice Department.

Boyer Lake is one of the lakes which was removed from Clean Water Act protection

An illustration of what is at risk is Boyer Lake in Becker County, Minnesota. The local Corps of Engineer's office ruled that the 310-acre lake no longer falls under the protection of the Clean Water Act. Their interpretation of the Supreme Court rulings left the local fishing spot vulnerable to pollution and outright destruction. Luckily, the EPA overturned the ruling but it illustrates how vulnerable our waters are to losing Clean Water Act protections.

More than 500,000 Clean Water Action members have written to Members of Congress asking for Clean Water Act protections to be restored for all drinking water sources. Contact your representative today and ask them to support and cosponsor H.R. 5088.

Publication Date:  06/08/2010

In this issue of Minnesota Currents |online:

2010 Legislative Summary

The 2010 legislative session ended in the early morning hours of May 17 after a brief special session was called by the Governor. Fights over the state budget and funding for health care and education dominated the atmosphere at the Capitol, making it a tough year to pass meaningful environmental legislation. However, once again Clean Water Action was able to celebrate several legislative victories this session. In addition to passing another bill to keep toxins out of our environment, we were able to stop attempts to weaken current environment laws and move Minnesota towards dirty energy options.

Earth Day Birthday Bash Highlights

Clean Water Action members, volunteers, allies and staff celebrated Earth Day's 40th Birthday with food, fun and activism!

Restoring the Clean Water Act

The drinking water sources for nearly 1 million Minnesotans are at risk of losing Clean Water Act protections. Congress now has an opportunity to fix this and restore protections weakened by the Supreme Court and Bush Administration.

Tips For Water Conservation and Safety

The summer is a time for hot weather and enjoying our lakes, rivers and streams. It is also a time when we tend to have our water closer to the forefront of our minds. Sometimes it seems like there is not much we can do to protect the health and vitality of our water because these problems seem too big. Increasingly, we all share a responsibility to do our part to protect our waters. How we use water, what happens to the rainwater falling on our lands and what we send down our drains are the next greatest challenges we must face together.

Clean Water Action would like to offer a few tips that each of us can do at home to help protect, restore and conserve our precious water resources

Pesticide Issues Gain Urgency At Federal Level

Pesticide issues have gained momentum and long awaited attention at the federal level this year. Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota is leading the fight to ban the highly toxic and commonly used pesticide atrazine, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is seeking to disclose inert ingredients in pesticides and the President's Cancer Panel released a report stating that chemicals threaten our bodies.

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Holy war looming over Iron Mountain?

Growing up in Redding in the 1950s and '60s, I didn't think much about Iron Mountain. It was just a big gash on a hillside west of town, a sometimes useful landmark.

This was before I learned the colorful 70-year history of the mine and before Iron Mountain became famous — infamous, I should say — as one of the first Superfund sites, notorious for leaching some of the most corrosive water in the country and home to an EPA-directed treatment and cleanup operation that I joke may be the last employer in Shasta County several centuries hence.

Four years ago, while on the staff of the Record Searchlight, I got a tour of the round-the-clock pollution treatment efforts at Iron Mountain, just after a glowing federal report about all the progress made. The Iron Mountain remediation effort, it implied, was a feather in the cap of the Environmental Protection Agency and Rick Sugarek of the agency's San Francisco office, who has spent more than two decades working on it.

Then I met Ted Arman, the octogenarian owner of the mine. Over coffee, he said the EPA has exaggerated Iron Mountain's risks with talk of “poison” and pictures of shovel blades eaten away by acid mine drainage, and that the feds have kept him from using new technology to turn mineral-rich water into fertilizer and other products. “EPA messed up my business.”

In late March I joined him in his 1989 Lincoln for a two-hour tour of his property. Arman is clearly bitter that others, like Sugarek and CH2MHill, have made careers and fortunes from the property he's owned since 1979.

As he traverses the winding gravel road up his mountain, he must announce his position on a radio phone.

Arman's 89 but still full of fire and big plans. If EPA won't let him turn acid runoff into life-giving fertilizer he aims to make his mountain known for something more than just a Superfund site. The idea — call it an epiphany — came to him three years ago: erect a 200-foot-tall concrete statue of Jesus Christ on top of Iron Mountain. He claims to have received calls from interested parties from around the world after word of his plans got on the Internet.

If Arman thinks he's got trouble with EPA, wait until he submits plans for his towering statue (think Rio de Janeiro) to county officials, the FAA and Jim Milestone, superintendent of neighboring Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. Instead, maybe he should explore the (for lack of a better word) eco-tourism potential of Iron Mountain. It is, after all, ecology — a mountain turned inside out by man. Just as interesting as the Devastated Area and Bumpass Hell at Lassen Park.

Old-time religion

When it comes to religion, call me old-fashioned, conservative. Before I knew who Shakespeare was, I fell in love with the Elizabethan language of the Book of Common Prayer. At All Saints Episcopal Church, a quaint turn-of-the-century wood-framed chapel that used to sit on the southwest corner of Court and Yuba streets, I fell in love with the vestments, candles, brass processional cross, silver chalice and crisp linen altar cloths.

But then, some time in the late '60s, the Episcopal Church felt it had to change, to get hip, to get (in the buzzword of the time) “relevant.” Priests started strumming guitars and the Book of Common Prayer was rewritten, recast in newspaper English. Here in Redding the local church fathers decided to forsake their historic building and began what turned out to be a short-lived period of cohabitation with the Presbyterians in that brown pyramid on Placer Street.

Of course, in hindsight, this move to a secular rock ‘n roll style church service is obviously what people wanted. Witness the rise of nondenominational megachurches like Bethel, where congregations get folksy sermons from laid-back ministers dressed in jeans with their shirttails hanging out and worship services largely consist of congregants singing and swaying to seemingly unending U-2-inspired rock anthems.

Whatever works, I guess. Successful churches are, fundamentally, businesses. In the Puritan old days church services were something to endure. Now they're something to enjoy, something to uplift. And the money follows.

Wish my Episcopal Church had resisted the siren song of modernity. It tried to be something it wasn't — and the young people left anyway. Last time I attended an 8 o'clock Holy Communion service (this was several years ago) I had trouble hearing the minister over the sound of parishioners on oxygen tanks.

Show time

The Cascade Theatre, which turns 75 this year, is the crown jewel of downtown Redding — a gem restored to its 1935 Art Deco luster thanks to the vision of the folks behind southern Oregon-based Jefferson Public Radio, the fundraising prowess of Lou Gerard Jr., the energy of Shasta High “Music Man” Ken Putnam, the generosity of thousands of north state residents and, last but not least, the boosterism of this newspaper.

My early memories of the Cascade Range from “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Easy Rider” to “Rosemary's Baby” and such unforgettable second features as the “H-Man,” a badly dubbed Japanese monster movie about sewer-dwelling blobs of blue-green radioactive sludge that devour anyone unlucky enough to get in their way (scared the daylights out me when I was eight).

How lucky we are that the Cascade is still around, making memories for new generations of north state residents. Speaking of which... among the headliners lined up for JPR's 2010-11 season at the Cascade: Wynonna Judd, Clint Black, Pat Benatar, Garrison Keillor, Bryan Adams, the Manhattan Transfer and (I'm not going to miss this one) the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Bravo, JPR.

Marc Beauchamp has a blog at redding.com. Reach him at notbusinessasusual@gmail.com .

Redding's 'Taj Mahal' quietly turns 10

• Posted June 18, 2010 at 11:36 p.m.

If it was celebrated at all, it was a quiet anniversary. Unlike the hoopla that greeted the grand opening of Redding's 110,000-square-foot City Hall campus 10 years ago.

On a magically sunny day in mid-February, hundreds of curious and proud Redding residents came to check out the city's impressive new digs. They munched on chocolate truffles and chicken mole tacos.

There was a festive, hopeful mood in the air. The only discouraging word Record Searchlight reporter Megan Long recorded came from perennial candidate Russell Hunt, who “held up a sign during the outdoor ceremony that protested the use of taxpayers' money for the project.”

Actually, in hindsight, as these things go, our grand-looking city hall was a relative bargain, at $15 million ($23.5 million if you include the widening of Cypress Avenue and other improvements). The Shasta County Administration Building, also designed by Nichols Melburg & Rossetto, cost about $33 million. Our new courthouse is estimated at $200 million.

Even so, somebody (Russell Hunt?) dubbed the place Redding's “Taj Mahal” and the nickname stuck. Mind you, this was long before the economy cratered and some members of the business community and public began peering behind the palatial-looking building to the princely pay and pensions of some of the folks working there, like now-retired City Manager Mike Warren.

But my favorite part of reporter Long's account was when she quoted then-Mayor Bob Anderson.

The Civic Center complex... has already proved itself, he said. “A manufacturer is considering moving here with 150 well-paying jobs,” he said, but declined to identify the company. “We met with them in this building — now we're their No. 1 choice.” (I seriously doubt that a fancy new city hall building convinced Chatsworth Products to open a plant in Redding to make server racks and cabinets, but the company did come soon thereafter, just as the dot.com bubble was popping. It closed shop in 2004.)

Sound familiar? Build it — a fancy city hall or Stillwater Business Park — and they will come.

Which reminds me of a story I heard in 2002, as I was thinking of moving back to Redding from Washington, D.C. A local live wire told me of a business relocation specialist in the San Francisco Bay area who came to check out Redding. He interviewed business leaders and was taken to all the sights, including the city hall, and then flew home.

A few weeks later the aforementioned live wire called him up to see what he thought. Pass, he said. Why? he was asked. “There's an inverse relationship,” he said, between the size of a city hall and how hard it is to do business in a town. The bigger the city government, he said, the less business-friendly the city.

Why gold bugs me

To my regret, gold (recently $1,200 an ounce and four times what it fetched a decade ago) hasn't been a part of my recent investment portfolio. Maybe I'm prejudiced because of the company gold keeps.

In the late 1980s, when I worked at Forbes magazine's West Coast bureau, we built a veritable cottage industry writing about Orange County boiler room operators pitching gold and other precious or “strategic” metals. Accused Redding Ponzi schemer James Koenig was convicted in an '80s gold scam, a fact he may or may not have disclosed to his more recent investors.

Equally off-putting, for me, is the company gold keeps on talk radio. Hosts like Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage and Roger Hedgecock regularly shill for gold dealers, and standalone gold ads are sandwiched between spots for get-out-of-debt-fast services, herbal remedies for enlarged prostates and too-good-to-be-true-sounding home-based business opportunity schemes.

When I hear these ads I wonder: What are the commissions and fees, who regulates this market, how do I know the gold is real or the correct weight, what am I going to do with it when it arrives, and how am I going to sell it when I don't want it anymore?

Then I think that a better bet might be gold mining stocks. Just not penny stocks like the outfit working the mine in the hills above French Gulch — Bullion River Gold Corp., or whatever it's called these days. Six years ago it was fetching about $1.25 a share. Last time I checked a share was selling for less than a penny.

But what truly bugs me about gold is this — I suspect that our fiat currency is heading into very stormy seas and yet I haven't hedged my dollar-based investments with something politicians can't manipulate or devalue. Shame on me.

Errata

Minor corrections and an amplification to last week's item on Ted Arman and Iron Mountain Mine. Arman is 88 not 89 and he bought the mine in 1976 not 1979, several years before it was designated a Superfund site. The towering Christ statue he wants to erect on the mountain will be made of concrete but clad in Italian marble, he tells me. He estimates the project will “take three years and create 100 jobs.” Assuming, of course, he lines up the money and gets the requisite permits.

Marc Beauchamp has a blog at Redding.com. Reach him via e-mail at notbusinessasusual@gmail.com .

© 2010 Record-Searchlight. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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EPA Moves to Terminate All Uses of Insecticide Endosulfan to Protect Health of Farmworkers and Wildlife

Release date: 06/09/2010

Contact Information: Dale Kemery kemery.dale@epa.gov 202-564-7839 202-564-4355

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking action to end all uses of the insecticide endosulfan in the United States. Endosulfan, which is used on vegetables, fruits, and cotton, can pose unacceptable neurological and reproductive risks to farmworkers and wildlife and can persist in the environment.

New data generated in response to the agency's 2002 decision have shown that risks faced by workers are greater than previously known. EPA also finds that there are risks above the agency's level of concern to aquatic and terrestrial wildlife, as well as to birds and mammals that consume aquatic prey which have ingested endosulfan. Farmworkers can be exposed to endosulfan through inhalation and contact with the skin. Endosulfan is used on a very small percentage of the U.S. food supply and does not present a risk to human health from dietary exposure.

Makhteshim Agan of North America, the manufacturer of endosulfan, is in discussions with EPA to voluntarily terminate all endosulfan uses. EPA is currently working out the details of the decision that will eliminate all endosulfan uses, while incorporating consideration of the needs for growers to timely move to lower-risk pest control practices.

Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), EPA must consider endosulfan's risks and benefits. While EPA implemented various restrictions in a 2002 re-registration decision, EPA's phaseout is based on new data and scientific peer review, which have improved EPA's assessment of the ecological and worker risks from endosulfan. EPA's 2010 revised ecological risk assessment reflects a comprehensive review of all available exposure and ecological effects information for endosulfan, including independent external peer-reviewed recommendations made by the endosulfan Scientific Advisory Panel.

Endosulfan, an organochlorine insecticide first registered in the 1950s, also is used on ornamental shrubs, trees, and herbaceous plants. It has no residential uses.

For more information: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/reregistration/endosulfan/endosulfan-cancl-fs.html

The EPA permitted this since the 60's?

By Juliet Eilperin Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 21, 2010

There is no question that the Superfund program, first established 30 years ago to clean up sites around the country contaminated with hazardous waste, is facing a budget crunch

For 15 years, the government imposed taxes on oil and chemical companies and certain other corporations. The money went into a cleanup trust fund, which reached its peak of $3.8 billion in 1996. But the taxes expired in 1995, and because Congress refused to renew them, the fund ran out of money.

Now the Obama administration will push to reinstate the "Superfund" tax. The Environmental Protection Agency, which rarely urges passage of specific bills, will send a letter to Congress as early as Monday calling for legislation to reimpose the tax.

The move will spark an intense battle on Capitol Hill, with Democrats and the administration lining up against oil companies and chemical manufacturers. The measure's proponents say it will ease the burden on taxpayers, who are currently funding the cleanup of "orphaned" sites, where no one has accepted responsibility for the contamination. Opponents suggest that it amounts to an unfair penalty.

"This is really about who should pay for the cleanup," said Mathy Stanislaus of the EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. "Should it be the taxpayer, who has no responsibility for contaminating the sites, or should it be those individuals who create hazardous substances that contaminate the site?"

Since the fund ran out of money at the end of fiscal 2003, the federal government has appropriated public dollars each year to pay for orphaned sites, which account for 606 of the 1,279 sites across the nation. But that has slowed the rate of cleanup. The program completed 19 sites last year, compared with 89 in 1999, the EPA says.

"It's clearly slowed down as the money's dried up," said Mike Charles, senior manager for government relations at the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Superfund sites are found in the District of Columbia and every state except North Dakota (whose one site was restored to health). Orphaned sites abound, including Ordinance Products in Cecil County, Md., and Atlantic Wood Industries in Portsmouth, Va. The Washington Navy Yard is still struggling with contamination dating from the 1800s, and federal authorities have yet to remove all the toxins from the area's groundwater.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee who has been pushing to reinstate the Superfund tax for more than three years, said the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico might encourage lawmakers, even some Republicans, to embrace a new tax on oil and petrochemicals.

Blumenauer's bill would raise about $18.9 billion over 10 years by imposing excise taxes of 9.7 cents a barrel on crude oil and refined oil products, excise taxes of 22 cents to $4.87 a ton on certain chemicals, and an income tax of 0.12 percent on certain corporations' modified alternative minimum taxable income above $2 million.

"I think the stars have aligned to make it not only possible for the first time in 15 years but likely that we will reinstate the Superfund tax," Blumenauer said in an interview. He added that for industries facing the tax, "it's a golden opportunity to demonstrate their environmental responsibility and their willingness to solve problems."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also supports the reinstatement of what her spokesman, Drew Hammill , called the "polluter pays" tax.

But a similar measure in the Senate, sponsored by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), could face a greater challenge, given Republicans' inclination to filibuster any measure that lacks the support of 60 senators.

Oil producers and refiners, now facing the prospect of Congress raising the Oil Spill Liability Fund tax from 8 to 49 cents a barrel, are furious at the idea of another tax burden.

"Policymakers -- Congress and the administration -- have simply got to stop using the domestic refining and petrochemical industry as an ATM machine," said Charles Drevna, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. "They seem to think we're an endless supply of cash for other programs."

Chemical manufacturers are just as opposed, and they note that the chemicals in question are used in everything from plastics to public water treatment. Cal Dooley, president of the American Chemistry Council, said members of his association "have invested literally billions of dollars" in sites that they have taken responsibility for cleaning up.

"It is blatantly inequitable and unfair for the administration or Congress to reinstate a Superfund excise tax," Dooley said in an interview. He said it would undermine the goal of "an economic recovery in the manufacturing sector in the United States" because it would result in "shifting jobs outside the United States to chemical manufacturers that would not be subject to this tax."

Meet Our Canvassers - Is This Job In Your Future?

Summer is in full swing and so is Clean Water Action's canvass recruitment program! We are currently hiring for part time and full time positions for our field and phone canvasses. Learn valuable skills, work with fun and exciting people, chat with our members about important environmental issues and build your resume. Spend your summer with us by calling today to learn more about our exciting employment opportunities.

Here is what phone canvass manager, Terrance Noble, and field canvass manager, Anna Waugh, have to say about working for the Clean Water Action canvasses.

Summer Campgaign Updates

Creating Healthy Homes and Healthy Water

Clean Water Action continues our work to protect environmental and human health from toxic chemical exposure through our involvement in the Healthy Legacy Coalition. This past year, we educated over 500 Minnesotans about how to reduce their toxic chemical exposure in their homes and actively support protective policies with our Healthy Home Presentations. If you would like to host a Healthy Home, Healthy Water Presentation in your community, contact Kim LaBo .

Preserving the Great Lakes

The potential invasion of Asian Carp has been one of the dominant Great Lakes issues as of late. Asian Carp are voracious eaters that have been moving up the Mississippi River system threatening native species wherever they go. An electric fence was constructed near Chicago to prevent the carp from traveling from the Illinois River through the artificial canal system and into Lake Michigan. Unfortunately, last year Asian Carp DNA was found in the waterway beyond the electric fence sparking fears the fish have breached the barrier and will establish themselves in the Great Lakes. Efforts since then have focused on a dual track of determining the extent of the immediate problem and finding a long-term solution. Initial results are promising that they have not established themselves in the Great Lakes, yet, but efforts will continue to determine the extent of the Asian Carp invasion.

Climate and Clean Energy

Clean Water Action and all of the other activists and allies working for strong, comprehensive climate and energy legislation are still waiting for the introduction of new climate and energy legislation by US Senators Kerry (D-MA) and Lieberman (I-CT). These senators have been working with Senator Graham (R-SC) to craft a bill capable of passing the Senate since earlier efforts stalled. A draft was released during the middle of May.

The Blood of Patriots and Tyrants

They must find it difficult, those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

EPA classifies milk as "hazardous waste"

You can't make this stuff up. Although, given the growth hormones these cows are injected with, which gives children cancer, I suppose you could say it's hazardous waste, although I'm not sure this is what the EPA had in mind.

9 and 10 News -

New EPA regulations have some Northern Michigan dairy farmers crying over spilled milk.

The Environmental Protection Agency intends to classify milk as a hazardous waste; in the same category as oil.

That means, farmers would have to come up with an oil spill prevention plan which could cost them thousands of dollars.

The Senate Agricultural Committee passed a resolution today urging the EPA to take back those regulations.

EPA report on a nearly certain catastrophe ignored by the media

Written by Luboš Motl, physicist, reference frame | 20 June 2010

The climate is always changing. Fortunately, the climate of the climate reporting is changing, too. News that would fill the front pages of all the newspapers just a year ago are ignored by the media today.

Five days ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published its findings about the impact of the proposed American Power Act (APA):

EPA analysis of the APA in the 111th Congress (PDF)

The file reminds me of some of the crackpots' documents that want to revolutionize physics. They easily "prove" that the rise of temperatures by 2 °C is equivalent to the Armageddon - composed out of floods, drought, and sea level rise (you know, that's apparently how planets behave at 16.5 °C) - while any rise below 2 °C is safe.

And they "calculate" that the probability of the Armageddon is 99 percent if the APA is rejected and only 25 percent if it is approved. It's a great conclusion because it effectively identifies APA with non-Armageddon :-) and it was published by a "powerful" institution whose administrator has the right gender as well as the right race ;-) so it would surely be promoted by the media during the peak days of the AGW era.

Still, something had to change about the media because, as Susan Kraemer in Scientific American noticed, the media ignored the "story". A few media that noticed the documents wrote about the costs, rather than benefits, of the bill.

The EPA thinks that it would only cost O(100) dollars per person and year to reduce CO2 emissions by 50%. That's extremely unlikely because just your electricity bills could triple (the solar/wind alternatives that would have to thrive are 5 times as expensive) - check whether your bills are just $50 per year today or more (it's $1,400 per average U.S. household and year now!) - and the same changes would affect your gasoline and many products (and services) that need a lot of energy during production (or execution).

Needless to say, the document is complete rubbish in its non-economic points, too.

Even if the climate sensitivity were 3 °C as they assume, rather than closer to 0.5-1.5 °C which is what it is, the 2010-2100 change would be affected by other terms comparable to 0.5-1.5 °C (ocean cycles, volcanoes, and many other effects). The behavior of countries other than the U.S. would be uncontrollable by America. The temperature change would also depend on the region (note that the bulk of Antarctica has seen no warming for 50 years) and even the change by 2 °C would have no significant impact on the life anywhere. The report is indefensible at all levels.

"EPA report on a nearly certain catastrophe ignored by the media

Strengthening a recent trend, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has become the second federal Circuit Court to allow a non-settling potentially responsible party (“PRP”) to intervene in a CERCLA action in order to oppose entry of a Consent Decree if entry of the Decree would foreclose the PRP's ability to seek contribution under the Superfund law. [2] In United States v. Albert Inv. Co. , [3] the Tenth Circuit ruled that when the government attempts to settle with fewer than all of the PRPs at a Site, non-settling PRPs may intervene by right in the proceedings. The Court dismissed fears that its decision would undermine CERCLA's policies favoring settlement, and noted that courts have approved settlements in which non-settling intervenors have been allowed to participate.

The Tenth Circuit's ruling shifts the precedential balance in cases of this type. Previously, the majority view was thought to be that non-settling PRPs had no intervention right. Now the Eighth and Tenth Circuits, the only two Circuit Courts to have addressed the issue, have ruled the other way. The Albert ruling and similar decisions may lead to greater participation in settlement proceedings by non-settling parties.

Background

The Albert decision arose out of EPA's attempt to recover the approximately $30 million it and the State of Oklahoma had spent remediating the Double Eagle Superfund Site , a waste oil disposal facility in Oklahoma City (the “Site”). [4] EPA had negotiated a $6.5 million settlement with forty-four parties that had sent oil to the Site for disposal. [5] To perfect the settlement, the Department of Justice filed a “friendly suit” – a lawsuit brought solely for the purpose of settlement – against the settling PRPs and immediately filed a Consent Decree for the Court's review and approval. Following its usual policy, DOJ posted the proposed Consent Decree for comment.

A single party – Union Pacific Railroad Company – filed comments on the proposed Consent Decree. Union Pacific became the successor-in-interest to one of the Site's former owners after a 2003 merger, and as such became potentially liable for all of the government's unrecovered cleanup costs. [6] In its comments, [7] Union Pacific claimed that it had been unfairly excluded from the settlement negotiation process, and that the proposed settlement was defective. Specifically, Union Pacific claimed that the Consent Decree was not based on a rational allocation of the settling PRP's contribution to the contamination, undercounted the amount of waste that the settling PRPs had actually shipped to the Site, did not allocate any of the Site's substantial orphan share [8] to the settling PRPs, and ultimately required the settling PRPs to pay substantially less than Union Pacific believed they owed.

Union Pacific's concern was not academic: the government also had brought a cost recovery suit against it, [9] and the company was in the process of defending itself and bringing contribution actions against other PRPs. [10] Although Union Pacific's total potential liability would be reduced by the value paid by the settling PRPs under the Consent Decree, a PRP that settles with the government via a Consent Decree is immune from contribution claims. [11] Union Pacific believed it could get more from the settling PRPs through a contribution claim than the government was getting in settlement, and so risked losing a substantial amount of money if the settlement were approved.

Receiving no response to its comments, Union Pacific moved to intervene in the settlement proceedings. In addition to its substantive complaints, the company claimed that the statute of limitations had run on the government's claims against the settling PRPs, and that, therefore, the purpose of the settlement was not to resolve the PRPs liability to the government, but only to protect the settling PRPs from Union Pacific's contribution claims. [12] The district court denied the motion and Union Pacific appealed to the Tenth Circuit.

The Albert Decision

The primary issue before the Circuit Court in Albert was whether Union Pacific had an interest in the settlement proceedings sufficient to satisfy the intervention requirements of Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 24(a)(2) and CERCLA § 113(i). [13] Under both the Federal Rules and the Superfund statute, a party may only intervene if it can show that it has “an interest relating to the property or transaction that is the subject of the action.”

Union Pacific's claimed interest was not in debate: it would lose its ability to bring contribution actions against the settling PRPs. However, courts have split on whether such an interest meets the intervention standard. In brief, a number of district courts have deemed a non-settling party's interest in protecting its contribution rights to be too “speculative” and “remote” to satisfy the intervention standard, and have determined that allowing non-settling PRPs to disrupt settlement proceedings through intervention would undermine CERCLA's pro-settlement policies. [14] On the other hand, several Courts had ruled the other way, declining to enter into an extensive examination of CERCLA policy when making what is essentially a procedural decision based on the Federal Rules. [15] For a thorough discussion of the conflicting rationales underlying this split, see Meline MacCurdy, “ Let Me In: District Court Allows Non-Settling Parties to Intervene in CERCLA Consent Decree ,” Marten Law Group Environmental News (Feb. 6, 2008).

In Albert , the settling parties argued that Section 113(f)(2) (protecting settling parties from contribution) converts the right in Section 113(f)(1) (providing for contribution) into a “qualified right” insufficient to support intervention. [16] The Court, “read[ing] § 113(f) as a whole,” found that “a contribution right exists until settlement with the government eliminates that right,” [17] and therefore is not “qualified,” but rather concrete and capable of protection through intervention.

The Tenth Circuit also rejected the proposition that Section 113(i) (providing for intervention in language nearly identical to Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 24(a)(2)) is ambiguous, and that in resolving any ambiguity, the Court should find that CERCLA's legislative history indicates that non-settling parties should be denied intervention. [18] The Court noted that no party had identified what language, specifically, was ambiguous, [19] and ruled that to the contrary although the intervention standard is “very broad, a statute's breadth does not make it ambiguous.” [20] The Court then took a step further, finding that even if it were to consider legislative history showing that CERCLA promoted early settlement, “[i]ntervention can be read consistently with a prompt settlement. … A brief delay for the court to consider a non-settling PRP's interest is not inconsistent with a general goal of early settlement.” [21]

The Court also ruled that Union Pacific's alleged failure to participate in settlement negotiations did not “diminish its right to intervene,” [22] and that Union Pacific's earlier submission of comments was not an adequate substitute for intervention, because the government is free to ignore those comments and that decision is not appealable, but a district court may not ignore the same arguments and its decision is subject to appellate review. [23]

Conclusion

With two Circuit Courts now in agreement that non-settling PRPs may intervene as of right in settlement proceedings, it is possible that more non-settling PRPs will challenge settlement agreements. One interesting possibility (not discussed in the Tenth Circuit opinion) is that intervenors may raise the Supreme Court's recent Burlington Northern decision to disrupt settlement approval. In Burlington Northern , the Supreme Court ruled that where there is a reasonable basis for apportionment, PRPs are only responsible for their own contributions to contamination (leaving the government holding the bag for any orphan share). For a complete discussion of the Supreme Court's decision, see Brad Marten, “ U.S. Supreme Court Holds That Superfund Liability Is Not Joint and Several Where A Reasonable Basis for Apportionment Exists; Court Also Narrows Arranger Liability ,” Marten Law Group Environmental News (May 4, 2009). The decision might create issues where, as in Albert , the government allegedly failed to base its settlement on an apportionment formula. While further discussion will have to wait for a district court ruling, increased PRP intervention may bring that ruling sooner rather than later, creating another avenue for exploring the ramifications of the Supreme Court's far-reaching opinion in Burlington Northern .

For more information on CERCLA or the Albert case, please contact Adam Orford or any member of Marten Law Group's Waste Cleanup practice group.

[1] You know the day destroys the night
Night divides the day
Tried to run
Tried to hide
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side, yeah

The Doors, Break on Through (to the Other Side) (Elektra 1967).

[2] CERCLA is the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, 42 U.S.C. §9601 et seq. (1980). CERCLA provides a Federal “Superfund” to clean up uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous-waste sites as well as accidents, spills, and other emergency releases of pollutants and contaminants into the environment. Through CERCLA, EPA was given power to seek out those parties responsible for any release and assure their cooperation in the cleanup.

[3] 585 F.3d 1386 (10th Cir. 2009). Slip Op. available here .

[4] 585 F.3d at 1389.

[5] EPA, Notice of Lodging of Consent Decree, 73 Fed. Reg. 41118 .

[6] 585 F.3d at 1389.

[7] Union Pacific Company's Motion to Intervene, Ex. A [hereinafter “Comment Letter”], United States v. Albert Inv. Co. , No. 08-CV-637 (W.D.Okla. Oct. 10, 2008).

[8] The orphan share is the portion of cleanup costs attributable to responsible parties that no longer exist or otherwise may avoid payment. Where no reasonable basis exists for allocation, CERCLA imposes joint and several liability on responsible parties, meaning that a single party may potentially be responsible for the full cost of cleanup.

[9] United States v. Union Pacific , Case No. 5:06-CV-887-C (W.D.Okla.)

[10] Comment Letter at 6.

[11] 42 U.S.C. § 9613(f)(2).

[12] Union Pacific Company's Motion to Intervene at 1-4. United States v. Albert Inv. Co. , No. 08-CV-637 (W.D.Okla. Oct. 10, 2008).

[13] 42 U.S.C. § 9613(i).

[14] See , e.g. , State of Arizona v. Motorola , 139 F.R.D. 141 (D. Ariz. 1991); United States v. Beazer East, Inc ., 1991 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21436 (N.D. Ohio Mar. 6, 1991); United States v. Acorn Eng'g Co. , 221 F.R.D. 530 (C.D. Cal. 2004).

[15] See United States v. Union Electric Co ., 64 F.3d 1152, 1167 (8th Cir. 1995); United States v. City of Glen Cove ,221 F.R.D. 370 (E.D.N.Y. 2004); United States v. Acton Corp ., 131 F.R.D. 431, 434 (D.N.J. 1990).

[16] 585 F.3d at 1393-94; see also U.S. v. Browning-Ferris Indus. Chem. Servs., Inc. , 1989 U.S. Dist. Lexis 16596, at *8-9 (M.D.La. Nov. 15, 1989) (adopting this position).

[17] 585 F.3d at 1394.

[18] Id.

[19] The full text of Section 113(i) is:

In any action commenced under [CERCLA] … in a court of the United States, any person may intervene as a matter of right when such person claims an interest relating to the subject of the action and is so situated that the disposition of the action may, as a practical matter, impair or impede the person's ability to protect that interest, unless the [government] shows that the person's interest is adequately represented by existing parties.

[20] 585 F.3d at 1395.

[21] Id . at 1396.

[22] Id. at 1397.

[23] Id. at 1398-99.

January 2010 Update: Environmental Litigation

There's a lot of great solar news out of California this week. Susan wrote about a small town in the Mojave desert the other day that is going 85% solar and now we have this news out of Mendota, California.

yahooBuzzShowBranding=0;yahooBuzzBadgeType="square";yahooBuzzArticleHeadline="1st Transmission-Connected Solar Farm in California"; green_options321:http://cleantechnica.com/2010/06/12/1st-transmission-connected-solar-farm-in-california/ 1
vote Buzz up! tweetmeme_url="http://cleantechnica.com/2010/06/12/1st-transmission-connected-solar-farm-in-california/";

We hear it over and over that one of the biggest limitations to solar and wind energy is its intermittent nature. Research recently put out by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory , however, indicates that the electric grid can accomodate much more renewable energy than it currently does.

To follow up on that, a new solar project in California — the CalRENEW-1 project built by Meridian Energy near Mendota — is making it clear that this is true in the real world as well. This 5MW project is the first solar farm in California to be connected to the transmission grid. Every other solar project, no matter how big, is connected to distribution lines.

What Meridian had to go through to get this project up, however, is rather ridiculous.

>> Interested in solar power? See if group discounts are available in your city

The Center for American Progress' Richard Caperton reports : “Arguably the biggest hurdle to getting connected to the transmission grid is receiving approval from the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), which manages California's transmission grid.”

“Meridian had to meet stringent requirements set by the grid operator and by Pacific Gas & Electric, the Northern California utility that is buying the plant's output. It had to upgrade its transformer to handle 10 percent above its maximum planned output and install phone lines throughout, which took eight months alone, according to Jake Rudisill, a consultant on the project,” ClimateWire reports .

Speaking of the illogical hurdles and difficulties renewable energy projects must pass to move through the bureaucratic system, California PUC Commissioner John Bohn says, “It demonstrates enormous persistence on the part of the developer. Sometimes getting anything done in California is a huge pain in the panties.”

It is clear that the bureaucratic process is in need of great transformation. The technologies have changed and the regulatory system needs to change to adapt to them as well.

However, this is not to say that every project should be connected to transmission lines. “This project only had to build about 300 feet of new line to connect to existing transmission, so the additional infrastructure costs were much less than other projects. And, there are significant benefits to having smaller solar developments tied directly to distribution lines, since this helps utilities manage their system. This project does, however, open the way forward for much larger, utility-scale developments, which will be absolutely necessary to California meeting its 33% RPS goal,” Caperton comments.

This project does indicate that we can be more progressive in the way we are connecting renewable energy to the grid.

Have more comments on this project or topic? Leave them below.

Like this article? Connect with me on Facebook or Twitter

Image Credit: Wayne National Forest via flickr /CC license

http://climateprogress.org/2010/06/12/california-gets-first-transmission-connected-solar-farm/

The U.S military is ramping up its commitment to solar energy and other alternative fuels with two new demonstration projects for smart microgrid technology.  These microgrids can draw energy interchangeably from solar arrays and other sources to cut costs, improve logistics, and reduce the troop safety risks involved in fossil fuel convoys.  As part of the military's drive to lead the civilian sector to more secure and sustainable energy sources , the projects are designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of microgrids at large civilian facilities as well as military installations.  Corporate parks, industrial complexes and educational institutions would be prime candidates.

tweetmeme_url="http://cleantechnica.com/2010/06/18/u-s-military-is-developing-smart-microgrids-with-solar-power/";

One of the sustainable microgrid projects  is being carried out now at the world's largest Marine Corps base, Twentynine Palms Base in California, and the other will be conducted at the Wheeler Air Base in Hawaii beginning in September.  At Wheeler alone, the Army is hoping for a cut in fuel consumption of up to 60% and a reduction in the number of generators it needs.

>> Interested in solar power? See if group discounts are available in your city

Magically carbon neutral biomass, evil EPA rules and other myths

Posted June 18, 2010 in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming

Tags: accounting , bioenergy , biopower , climatelegislation , forest , landusechange , renewableenergy , renewables Share | |

Wouldn't it be great if you had a bank account that automatically filled back up no matter how much you spent? You could just ignore how much you spent. Amazingly, the bioenergy industry has succeeded so far in convincing legislators here in the U.S. and around the world that bioenergy offers just such a carbon account. According to the industry, we only need to look at the carbon that biomass absorbs, not the carbon emissions it releases. The industry has convinced policymakers that no matter how much carbon is “spent” when biomass is burned for energy, there will magically be enough income in the form of regrowth to cover all expenses. Because of this magic, the industry would have us categorically exclude their emissions when we do our carbon accounting.

As I've written about before , both the House climate and energy bill (ACES) and the American Power Act recently introduced in the Senate buy into this magically carbon neutral source of energy. The European Union has done it too.

So how did the biomass industry and its supporters on Capitol Hill react recently when EPA said it was going to account for the emissions column of the ledger as part of its rules governing which facilities will be covered by the Clean Air Act? Sadly, with willful misinterpretation. The industry and its supporters have been able to cow the agency and the rest of Congress by claiming that EPA is only going to look at the emissions associated with burning biomass. Only looking at the expenses part of the ledger would be just as wrong as assuming magical income, but that of course is not what EPA said it would do.

Back middle of May, EPA released its "tailoring rule," which governs which sources of global warming pollution will be required to get federal pollution permits. The rule includes the smokestack pollution from burning biomass. The preamble to the rule discusses some of the complexity around biomass emissions accounting and announces EPA's intention to seek stakeholder input and, within a year, issue guidance on how to account for both sides of the ledger.

On May 24, Weyerhaeuser—one of the biggest proponents of the concept that bioenergy is magically carbon neutral— sent EPA a letter saying that it was "taken aback" that EPA wasn't towing the line, buying into the magic, and ignoring biomass emissions.

On June 2, EPA responded to Weyerhaeuser by pointing out that it was already committed to getting input and working to get biomass accounting right. That would be the end of a wonky story except that last week the Senate considered (and fortunately rejected) a proposal from Senator Murkowski that would have forced EPA to stop this work and ignore all sources of global warming pollution. What's more, some Senators that should have known better thought that this was a way to "fix" EPA's tailoring rule.

As my colleague Dan Lashof wrote , Senators Collins and Snowe from Maine and Senator Brown from Massachusetts voted last week for Murkowski's massive giveaway to coal and oil--because as Senator Collins put it :

“Incredibly, the EPA proposes to ignore the carbon neutrality of biomass and place onerous permitting requirements on businesses such as Maine's biomass plants and paper mills, which use biomass to provide energy for their operations.”

Interestingly, the same day that the Senate was voting to reject Murkowski's big polluter bailout, Massachusetts was releasing a report commissioned by the state's Department of Energy Resources. As I've written a little about , this report, done by Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, makes it very clear that most forest biomass is not carbon neutral. In fact, the report finds that burning whole trees to make power would leave the atmosphere 3% more polluted between now and 2050 than burning coal over that same period.

This finding should not be surprising. Wood, especially green wood, contains less energy per pound of carbon than coal and forests grow slowly. So when we burn a tree, we're releasing more carbon and getting less energy than we would if we burned coal, and then re-absorbing that carbon very slowly as trees grow back. This means the timeframe over which we do our accounting also makes a big difference. For example, over 100 years or more, the forest may grow back, reabsorb the carbon that we released initially, and possibly absorb enough additional carbon to put the biomass carbon ledger ahead of coal, but there's no guarantee. And in the meantime the climate get more and more unstable and 100 years is simply too long to wait for significant carbon reductions.

But the report also discusses how different sources of biomass and different approaches to managing forests after biomass is harvested can have a big impact. Under a best-case scenario for sourcing and forest management, the study finds that 40 years of wood-derived power could actually be 11% better than 40 years of coal. This is still very far from 100% better, which is what carbon neutral implies, but this is why EPA should be netting carbon debits and credits over some reasonable period, and taking into account both the source of biomass and land management practices. I've written about the importance of getting this type of accounting right before and just recently 90 scientists called on Congress to get it right in climate legislation and energy policy.

While the report does an impressive job of looking at a range of forest sourcing scenarios, it doesn't look at woody residues at lumber yards or papermills, where biomass is coming out of forests anyway. Nor does the report try to look at agricultural residues or biomass specially grown on degraded lands. If EPA does netting right, these sources of biomass will be encouraged.

Representing as they do a state with such a strong forest industry, it certainly makes sense for Senators Collins and Snowe to be pushing for smart netting as part of EPA's tailoring rule, but supporting Senator Murkowski's attempt to roll back EPA authority to protect our air quality was not a vote for thoughtful regulation. It was like using a chainsaw where pruning shears would have done the trick, and Senators Collins and Snowe, both leaders in the climate debate, know better.

The second EPA action that Senator Collins takes exception with in her statement is the agency's proposed new air regulations that would require biomass combusters not to emit more carbon monoxide, mercury and other toxics than the cleanest fossil fuel boilers. Tellingly, the industry doesn't argue (subscription required) that they aren't emitting this pollution or that the pollution isn't hurting people's health or even that the technology doesn't existing to clean up the pollution. Their only argument is that it will cost them too much. As Jane Williams, Chairwoman of the Sierra Club's National Air Toxics Task Force, put it: "What they're saying, apparently, is: 'We're just too dirty…We can't meet the standards because we're too dirty.'"

The worst part about this is that bioenergy doesn't have to be a major source of pollution. There are sources of biomass that can be used to replace fossil fuels and provide a low-carbon source of energy. And the toxics that are produced from burning clean biomass are technically easy to control. (Burning garbage, which sometimes gets called biomass, is a different matter.)

But you can't fix a problem if you won't acknowledge it exists. The ultimate solution is a comprehensive climate and energy bill that requires careful accounting of all carbon, including the carbon released and absorbed by biomass. I hope that Senators Collins, Snowe and Brown will read MA's new report, recognize that carbon neutrality is a myth and biomass pollution is still pollution, and work with NRDC to shape the climate and energy bill and EPA's rules to get the best performance we can out of bioenergy.

The U.S. Military and Sustainable Power

The Department of Defense is pursuing sustainable energy all over the map, including microbial fuel cells , portable solar  power for the Marines and fighter jet biofuel for the Navy and Air Force among a growing number of solar arrays at military bases such as Pearl Harbor.  Increasing energy efficiency is another point of focus,  through such projects as non toxic anti-barnacle coatings for ships' hulls, next-generation desalination processes, and  diesel-electric hybrid vehicles .  Microgrid technology fits in as a transitional step that enables sustainable energy to supplement conventional fossil fuels seamlessly, and as a way to manage an energy future that gives fossil fuels the boot almost entirely in favor of multiple renewable fuel sources.

Microgrids at U.S. Military Bases

At Wheeler, the microgrid developed by Honeywell Aerospace will be capable of distributing electricity from solar energy and other sources, and provide for portable energy that enables troops in battle zones and other remote locations to operate with far less resupply baggage than fossil fuels involve.  It is also designed to pull more efficiency out of existing “legacy generators” and ensure that power is delivered without interruption in emergencies. The focus is similar at Twentynine Palms, where a demonstration project from General Electric is under way.  At both, the microgrids are expected to cut the cost of energy supply by decreasing reliance on the outside electrical grid.

The U.S. Military and True Energy Security

In some civilian circles, energy security for the U.S. simply means drilling for more oil in American soil and coastal areas, and buying less foreign oil.  The military doesn't see it that way.  The Department of Defense has established a far more insightful and comprehensive approach that calls for ending reliance on fossil fuels altogether, due to their high risks for environmental and public health, their potential to create global political instability related to climate change , their role as a flashpoint for military action regardless of climate change, their expense, and above all the impact of fossil fuels on troop safety and supply logistics in the field. Because the civilian sector has failed to act, the military has adopted an explicit policy of going beyond merely meeting the requirements of existing environmental regulations, and using every constitutional means within its disposal to lead the country to a safer, saner way to harvest energy .  It is beyond ironic that many of the same politicians and pundits who would otherwise profess to support our troops have instead blocked this goal at every opportunity.

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• Tenth Circuit Finds Non-Settling PRP Can Intervene in CERCLA Consent Decree.
  
  by Gabrielle Sigel and Genevieve Essig
  
  On November 10, 2009, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that a non-settling potentially responsible party's (“PRP”) right to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (“CERCLA”) contribution is a legally sufficient interest to justify intervention as of right in a consent decree action between the federal government and settling PRPs. United States. v. Albert Inv. Co ., 585 F.3d 1386 (10th Cir. 2009). In the action underlying Albert , U.S. EPA brought a CERCLA action against 44 potentially responsible parties (“PRPs”) for the cleanup costs and natural resource damages associated with the Double Eagle Superfund Site in Oklahoma City; subsequently, EPA and Oklahoma lodged a consent decree, which would grant the 44 PRPs immunity from contribution in exchange for settlement payments totaling $6.5 million of the more than $30 million in total costs. EPA provided a public notice-and-comment period on the consent decree. Union Pacific Railroad Co., a PRP who was not a party to the consent decree action, but a defendant in a separate EPA cost recovery action in which the government sought to hold Union Pacific jointly and severally liable for all unreimbursed costs related to the Site, submitted to EPA the sole comments in opposition to the consent decree. Union Pacific then filed a motion to intervene in the consent decree court action as of right, pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 24(a)(2) and CERCLA § 113(i), arguing that its potential contribution right against the settling PRPs under CERCLA § 113(f) was a legally cognizable interest that would be eliminated by the grant of immunity contained in the proposed consent decree. The district court for the Western District of Oklahoma denied the motion. On appeal, the Tenth Circuit held that Union Pacific was allowed to intervene, finding that a non-settling PRP's contribution right is an interest legally sufficient for intervention as of right and that Union Pacific's intervention would not undermine CERCLA's policies promoting prompt settlement. The Tenth Circuit's decision contrasts with decisions from other district courts, including those in California, Michigan, and Ohio, which rejected non-settling PRPs' requests to intervene in CERCLA consent decree actions. The Tenth Circuit's decision, however, follows a decision in the Eighth Circuit, U.S. v. Union Elec. Co ., 64 F.3d 1152 (8th Cir. 1995).
  
  In ruling for Union Pacific, the court addressed four principal arguments presented by the federal government and the settling PRPs. First, the court found that “a contribution right [under CERCLA § 113] exists until settlement with the government eliminates that right.” Thus, it concluded, “[t]hat the statute . . . impairs the right upon a certain event does not mean that Union Pacific never has an interest in the underlying litigation.” Albert at 1394. Second, the court rejected the argument that § 113(i) is ambiguous about whether a non-settling PRP may intervene; further, it found that, even if § 113(i) were ambiguous, the legislative history does not indicate Congressional intent to prevent such intervention. The court reasoned that allowing such parties to intervene would not contravene the statute's policy favoring early settlement and stated that “[a]ny delay [caused by such intervention] is properly considered under [the section's] timeliness requirement, instead of being confused with the existence of an interest.” Id. at 1398. Third, the court summarily dismissed the government's assertion that Union Pacific's contribution right is “too remote, speculative, and contingent to warrant intervention,” holding that Union Pacific's statutory right to contribution is a “substantive right that currently exists.” Id . at 1397. Finally, the court held that Union Pacific's “strategic” decision not to settle did not diminish its right to intervene, finding it irrelevant to the existence of Union Pacific's interest in the litigation. Id.
  
  In finding that Union Pacific met the other requirements for intervention as of right, i.e., timeliness, impairment of interest, and inadequate representation, the court noted that Union Pacific's right to submit public comments was no substitute for federal court intervention because public comment is not statutorily required and both EPA and the district court may ignore public comments when considering the consent decree.  Therefore, the appellate court concluded that Union Pacific would be allowed to intervene in the underlying CERCLA consent decree action and to participate fully as a party.
  
  

  Restoring the Clean Water Act

  Minnesota Currents|Online , Summer 2010

  The drinking water sources for nearly 1 million Minnesotans are at risk of losing Clean Water Act protections. Congress now has an opportunity to fix this and restore protections weakened by the Supreme Court and Bush Administration.

  For those whose water sources are no longer protected under the Clean Water Act, the status quo means increased contamination risks. Communities also face the prospect of higher water costs as expensive filtration and disinfection technologies are deployed.

  "Preventing pollution in the first place is cheaper, better and faster than having to get it out at treatment plants," said Clean Water Action President and CEO John DeCock, "there is a serious common-sense aspect to passing this bill."

  The America's Commitment to Clean Water Act (ACCWA – H.R. 5088) was introduced in the U.S. House earlier this year by Representative Oberstar (D-MN). The bill will restore Congress' original intent for the Clean Water Act to protect all of our nation's waters. It is as clear today as it was in 1972 when the Clean Water Act was passed--you cannot get the job done by only protecting some of our waters; you have to protect all of them.

  The Clean Water Act has been one of our most important and fundamental environmental protection laws. For 38 years the Clean Water Act has prevented millions of tons of pollution from entering our waters and led to the cleanup of polluted lakes, rivers and streams across the country. Big polluters have been working to reduce the protections claiming the Clean Water Act should not cover numerous wetlands, streams, rivers and lakes that have been historically protected. In just one year, more than 500 enforcement cases have been dropped by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Justice Department.

  Boyer Lake is one of the lakes which was removed from Clean Water Act protection

  An illustration of what is at risk is Boyer Lake in Becker County, Minnesota. The local Corps of Engineer's office ruled that the 310-acre lake no longer falls under the protection of the Clean Water Act. Their interpretation of the Supreme Court rulings left the local fishing spot vulnerable to pollution and outright destruction. Luckily, the EPA overturned the ruling but it illustrates how vulnerable our waters are to losing Clean Water Act protections.

  More than 500,000 Clean Water Action members have written to Members of Congress asking for Clean Water Act protections to be restored for all drinking water sources. Contact your representative today and ask them to support and cosponsor H.R. 5088.

  Publication Date:  06/08/2010

  In this issue of Minnesota Currents |online:

  2010 Legislative Summary

  The 2010 legislative session ended in the early morning hours of May 17 after a brief special session was called by the Governor. Fights over the state budget and funding for health care and education dominated the atmosphere at the Capitol, making it a tough year to pass meaningful environmental legislation. However, once again Clean Water Action was able to celebrate several legislative victories this session. In addition to passing another bill to keep toxins out of our environment, we were able to stop attempts to weaken current environment laws and move Minnesota towards dirty energy options.

  Earth Day Birthday Bash Highlights

  Clean Water Action members, volunteers, allies and staff celebrated Earth Day's 40th Birthday with food, fun and activism!

  Restoring the Clean Water Act

  The drinking water sources for nearly 1 million Minnesotans are at risk of losing Clean Water Act protections. Congress now has an opportunity to fix this and restore protections weakened by the Supreme Court and Bush Administration.

  Tips For Water Conservation and Safety

  The summer is a time for hot weather and enjoying our lakes, rivers and streams. It is also a time when we tend to have our water closer to the forefront of our minds. Sometimes it seems like there is not much we can do to protect the health and vitality of our water because these problems seem too big. Increasingly, we all share a responsibility to do our part to protect our waters. How we use water, what happens to the rainwater falling on our lands and what we send down our drains are the next greatest challenges we must face together.

  Clean Water Action would like to offer a few tips that each of us can do at home to help protect, restore and conserve our precious water resources

  Pesticide Issues Gain Urgency At Federal Level

  Pesticide issues have gained momentum and long awaited attention at the federal level this year. Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota is leading the fight to ban the highly toxic and commonly used pesticide atrazine, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is seeking to disclose inert ingredients in pesticides and the President's Cancer Panel released a report stating that chemicals threaten our bodies.

  Meet Our Canvassers - Is This Job In Your Future?

  Summer is in full swing and so is Clean Water Action's canvass recruitment program! We are currently hiring for part time and full time positions for our field and phone canvasses. Learn valuable skills, work with fun and exciting people, chat with our members about important environmental issues and build your resume. Spend your summer with us by calling today to learn more about our exciting employment opportunities.

  Here is what phone canvass manager, Terrance Noble, and field canvass manager, Anna Waugh, have to say about working for the Clean Water Action canvasses.

  Summer Campgaign Updates

  Creating Healthy Homes and Healthy Water

  Clean Water Action continues our work to protect environmental and human health from toxic chemical exposure through our involvement in the Healthy Legacy Coalition. This past year, we educated over 500 Minnesotans about how to reduce their toxic chemical exposure in their homes and actively support protective policies with our Healthy Home Presentations. If you would like to host a Healthy Home, Healthy Water Presentation in your community, contact Kim LaBo .

  Preserving the Great Lakes

  The potential invasion of Asian Carp has been one of the dominant Great Lakes issues as of late. Asian Carp are voracious eaters that have been moving up the Mississippi River system threatening native species wherever they go. An electric fence was constructed near Chicago to prevent the carp from traveling from the Illinois River through the artificial canal system and into Lake Michigan. Unfortunately, last year Asian Carp DNA was found in the waterway beyond the electric fence sparking fears the fish have breached the barrier and will establish themselves in the Great Lakes. Efforts since then have focused on a dual track of determining the extent of the immediate problem and finding a long-term solution. Initial results are promising that they have not established themselves in the Great Lakes, yet, but efforts will continue to determine the extent of the Asian Carp invasion.

  Climate and Clean Energy

  Clean Water Action and all of the other activists and allies working for strong, comprehensive climate and energy legislation are still waiting for the introduction of new climate and energy legislation by US Senators Kerry (D-MA) and Lieberman (I-CT). These senators have been working with Senator Graham (R-SC) to craft a bill capable of passing the Senate since earlier efforts stalled. A draft was released during the middle of May.

   

• FTCA Discretionary Function Exception Bars Plaintiff's Environmental Tort Claims.
  
  by Gabrielle Sigel and Genevieve Essig
  
  On November 9, 2009, the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina granted the federal government's motion to dismiss a plaintiff's claims filed pursuant to the Federal Tort Claims Act (“FTCA”), finding that the discretionary function exception to the FTCA's waiver of immunity applied to restore sovereign immunity. Oxendine v. United States , 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 104450 (D.S.C. Nov. 9, 2009). In Oxendine , plaintiff sought compensation from the federal government for property damage and personal injuries allegedly sustained from trichloroethylene (“TCE”) contamination of his private well. Plaintiff alleged that the contamination stemmed from activities at the Shaw Airforce Base (“Shaw AFB”), near Sumter, North Carolina, which had used TCE in the 1940s and 50s in testing procedures.
  
  The FTCA provides a limited waiver of the federal government's sovereign immunity from suit by allowing a plaintiff to recover damages caused by an employee of the government in certain circumstances; however, this waiver is subject to the discretionary function exception, under which the U.S. may not be sued if: 1) the allegedly negligent conduct was not subject to a law prescribing a specific course of action for the employee to follow; and 2) the federal employee's discretionary conduct was susceptible to an analysis involving social, economic, or political policy considerations.
  
  In its analysis, the district court relied on the 10th Circuit's prior consideration of this exception in Aragon v. United States , 146 F.3d 819 (10th Cir. 1998). Accepting all allegations in plaintiff's complaint as true for purposes of this motion to dismiss, the court found that, because the use of TCE at Shaw AFB occurred before the body of environmental regulations addressing TCE had been passed, plaintiff could not allege that there existed any federal statute, regulation, or policy specifically prescribing a course of action for government employees to follow regarding the use of TCE.  The court also found that the activity at issue in the complaint occurred in the context of the military's necessary balancing of water protection policies and broader public and military policies, falling “squarely within the type of conduct that the discretionary function exception was designed to shield.” Id. at *14.
  
  Thus, finding that plaintiff could not show that: (a) a Shaw AFB employee had violated any regulation regarding the handling of TCE or public notification of environmental contamination; (b) TCE was used at Shaw AFB after the enactment of environmental statutes governing TCE; or (c) the government's conduct regarding remediation and notice violated any applicable non-discretionary provision; and finding the Air Force's actions to be susceptible to policy analysis; the court concluded that Shaw AFB's activities fell within the discretionary function exception to the FTCA's waiver of immunity. Finding the government immune from suit under the discretionary function exception, the court granted the government's motion to dismiss.

14 PARCELS - DEMOCRAT MOUNTAIN & BATTLE CREEK, MINE LAND THE DOI-BLM IS TRYING TO CONFISCATE BY FRAUD & FALSE CLAIMS WAR ON FLAT CREEK MINING DISTRICT, MATHESON TO KESWICK SHASTA INTERNATIONAL & MUNICIPAL AIRPORTS OF ARMANSHIRE Camden, Magee, and Sallee again operated until 1894 when they sold to Mountain Copper Co. Ltd. who built (the next year) a smelter at Keswick and the Iron Mountain Railway, a 3-ft. gauge mountain mining railroad which connected the mine with the Keswick smelter and Southern Pacific tracks at Keswick. Iron Mountain included a one-story, 7-room cottage with two large brick fireplaces and wide porch all around for the manager, three superintendent's houses containing 4 or 5 rooms, a 2-story, 16-room staff quarters' building, a large mess and entertainment hall which included a dining room and kitchen, canteen, billiard room, and music room, about 25 family cottages, and two 16-room bunkhouses for men. Also on the property was a tennis court and football field. The fires also destroyed the silver mill, a sawmill, all the stores, the office, the assay department, hospital, the mess and entertainment hall, plus a number of small buildings. Mining must be resumed and the buildings must be reconstructed.

Bureaucrats run amok: EPA now classifies milk as a pollutant.

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June 20, 2010 – Comments (13) | RELATED TICKERS: GS , SVL , GLD

While you were not looking because of the OIL TRAGEDY. Got to love the Government. Now you know why he wanted to get Rid of the EPA and let the States regulate their own pollution. But NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You wanted the GOVERNMENT TO TELL YOU WHAT TO DO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.ihatethemedia.com/epa-classifies-milk-as-pollu......

In case you doubted that government bureaucrats are committed to controlling every aspect of our lives, please be aware that they've now categorized milk as a pollutant.

Northern Michigan's Channel 9 has the details:

The Environmental Protection Agency intends to classify milk as a hazardous waste; in the same category as oil.

That means, farmers would have to come up with an oil spill prevention plan which could cost them thousands of dollars.

The Senate Agricultural Committee passed a resolution today urging the EPA to take back those regulations.

This new interpretation of the EPA's Clean Water Act will require dairy farmers to develop oil spill prevention plans for their milk storage tanks.

How much is that going to add to your gal of milk and to the children who need it?

Turn on the Water on back in Cal. for the Farmers. 

Dear Mr President. Let me be perfectly clear. Please take off the rule for the Foreign Ships not to come here.  Lift it today. Let the other Country's come in and help. People Call your Congress member and ask them to go on FOX or CNN or MSMBC and to Publicly and respectfully ask the President to do this in front of the Nation so he can not say that there has been no request. This is past sick. This is oh I am chewing steel and spitting nails I am so ruffled. Who will benefit from the Tax and Cap. Well you know. GS. May god bless us one and all including the President and may he do what is right.

http://townhall.com/columnists/HarryRJacksonJr/2010/06/20......

A thought runs through my head. Powers that Be is the Gulf Spill just collateral damage to you in your end run game plan? Iraq and Afghanistan also. 10 Years now. What war. Just nation building. No water in Cal. More Collateral Damage? You see people it was never about what is fair or just for the weak and the poor. They just wanted your vote. Silver will go higher because of the law suit with JP Morgan. Happy Fathers Day and thank you to those who have served.

Stimulus funds aiding companies fined for pollution, accused of fraud

January 10, 2010 | Will Evans

Large corporations working in California have reaped tens of millions of dollars in new federal stimulus funds, despite previous pollution violations, criminal probes, and allegations of fraud, a California Watch investigation has found.

Residents in Ventura County say they are dismayed that airplane and defense giant Boeing received a $15.9 million stimulus contract for environmental monitoring at the same site near Simi Valley where the company was fined for polluting a creek with chromium, dioxin, lead and mercury. A local resident and opponent, Dawn Kowalski, called the new contract “the fox guarding the hen house.”

Watsonville-based Granite Construction received $6.4 million in stimulus contracts to work on airport runways in Salinas and Monterey, and to repair roads in San Bernadino, Riverside and Butte counties. Yet the company faces three federal probes, including a criminal investigation into whether it fraudulently overcharged the city of San Diego in the wake of the devastating 2007 wildfires.

And a major apartment owner based in Denver, AIMCO, stands to benefit from $13 million in stimulus tax credits to rehabilitate its housing complex in Los Angeles. This federal assistance comes after the company paid $3 million in 2004 to settle a lawsuit from the city of San Francisco over complaints that it operated mold and rodent-infested buildings that posed serious safety hazards. Residents continue to complain about AIMCO's management.

To government watchdogs, these contracts and others raise concerns about the way the massive federal stimulus program is being administered. Although most major companies in America face lawsuits and regulatory action, these government reformers say a contractor's entire history should be considered before doling out more money to the same firms.

“It is very upsetting that the government doesn't do more due diligence before it hands money out,” said Laura N. Chick, California's inspector general for stimulus funds.

Stimulus money has flowed quickly into California over the past year, moving from federal agencies to specific contractors that compete for projects, or through the state government and local agencies that have their own bidding process for distributing federal money. The process is moving so rapidly, the government may not be making the best decisions, one government watchdog said.

“I think we're trying to spend money as quickly as possible, and at that point putting taxpayers' money at risk,” said Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight, which tracks contractor misconduct.

But one major stimulus contractor with past legal troubles, CH2M Hill, said focusing on a few isolated cases would be a misleading representation of its work. The company was awarded a $20.7 million federal stimulus contract to clean up contaminated sediment from a defunct mine near Redding in Shasta County – a contract that enabled CH2M Hill to keep as many as 21 positions that otherwise would have been eliminated.

In 2008, CH2M Hill was sued by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for an alleged scheme to deceive and defraud the city with spurious charges over several years. The suit was settled under undisclosed terms. The company also was fined more than $800,000 for spilling 85 gallons of radioactive waste in 2007 while cleaning up an old nuclear site in southeastern Washington, according to a report by the federal Government Accountability Office.

“We have more than 10,000 active projects all over the globe and on a rare occasion we may have an issue with an individual project,” said John Corsi, a spokesman for CH2M Hill. Corsi said both the Los Angeles and Washington projects were successful.

Clean energy project questioned

One of the biggest stimulus projects in California is a hydrogen power plant, near Bakersfield, that's getting a taxpayer infusion of $308 million.

The project, by BP and mining company Rio Tinto, is designed to generate more environmentally friendly electricity by capturing carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. The project would bury and store the emissions underground in an oil field reservoir.

In 2005, BP paid $81 million to settle lawsuits that its refinery spewed noxious fumes into the working-class city of Carson. The company has also pleaded guilty to criminal violations of environmental laws – for a 2005 explosion at BP's Texas refinery that killed 15 people and a 2006 oil spill in Alaska. This past October, federal safety officials fined BP $87 million, which the company is contesting, for failing to fix the hazards in Texas. Also last year, BP agreed to pay $179 million to resolve government findings that its Texas plant leached cancer-causing and ozone-depleting chemicals.

BP referred questions to a spokewoman for the hydrogen power plant, who spoke of the project's benefits and noted that BP and its partner will provide most of the funding. Tiffany Rau, spokeswoman for Hydrogen Energy California, said the new facility is “designed to be the cleanest solid fuel power plant in the world.” The Department of Energy's grant to BP and Rio Tinto, she said, “further recognizes that the project owners have invested several tens of millions of dollars in the project thus far.”

Another stimulus contractor, the Computer Sciences Corp., received a $5.1 million NASA contract for technological improvements at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. The project money is for equipment and has not created any jobs. In 2008, the company paid the federal government $1.4 million to settle allegations that it ran a contracting kickback scheme. A NASA spokeswoman said the agency didn't find problems with the company's past performance.

Boeing contract under fire

One stimulus contract through the Department of Energy is causing consternation in the rugged foothills above Simi Valley in Ventura County.

The toxic contamination at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory has been a painfully sore subject to locals for decades. Since the 1940s, the lab was operated by divisions of North American Aviation, which eventually became Rockwell International. It was the site of rocket engine testing and nuclear power development that led to toxins leaching into the dirt and groundwater and a partial nuclear meltdown in 1959.

Boeing acquired the aerospace divisions of Rockwell International in 1996, but community activists said Boeing has been fighting its responsibility for pollution that occurred before and after the purchase. A group of local residents sued Boeing, contending that the company caused cancer. The company settled for $30 million in 2005.

The regional water quality board fined Boeing $471,000 in 2007 for 79 pollution violations that let wastewater and storm runoff from the site ooze toxins into various creeks, flowing downstream to the Los Angeles River.

Boeing had discharged 118.5 million gallons of water laced with pollutants like chromium, lead and mercury, according to the water board. At one point, the company exceeded the allowable concentration of cancer-causing dioxin by 6,900 times. The water board said the chronic violations created a risk to public health and, given Boeing's resources and sophistication, were “exceedingly serious.”

Dan Hirsch, president of a California nuclear watchdog group, doesn't believe Boeing should have been rewarded with federal stimulus money for environmental monitoring there. The contract for Boeing, which made $2.7 billion in profits in 2008, was not bid competitively. “How can one have federal taxpayer money going to a company that is responsible for the contamination and is resisting the cleanup?” Hirsch said.

Boeing said it has made significant progress. “Boeing is fully committed to cleaning up the site in a manner that fully protects public health and the environment,” wrote spokeswoman Kamara Sams in an e-mail to California Watch. She said Boeing, NASA and the Department of Energy are responsible for cleaning up portions of the property.

Jen Stutsman, an Energy Department spokeswoman, responded by e-mail that Boeing has the expertise to perform the work and a good track record of working with the agency. “Changing contractors would only cost the taxpayer additional money as a new contractor arrived and took over the work for Boeing,” she wrote. The project was reported to have created 11 jobs.

At the same time, Boeing is trying to overturn a California toxic cleanup law. On Nov. 13, Boeing sued in federal court to invalidate SB 990, which holds the Ventura County cleanup to especially strict standards. Boeing claims the California-mandated standards are unnecessary and the excavation required would further destroy the “ecological habitat.”

State Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, who represents nearby residents, said she's concerned that Boeing is getting stimulus money and “almost in the same breath” suing against California cleanup standards. “Something just seems not right in that picture,” she said.

Under investigation

Granite Construction picked up several stimulus contracts – which were distributed through Caltrans and various local agencies – despite being at the center of a fraud scandal in San Diego, where many residents feel the company took advantage of the city in a time of crisis.

“As a taxpayer, I would be more than a little frustrated with that, given the track record here in this city,” said Jan Rasmussen, a San Diego resident and outreach coordinator of Rancho Bernardo United, a community group that helps victims of the 2007 wildfires.

The city of San Diego sued Granite Construction and another company, A.J. Diani, in 2008 for separately allegedly overbilling for their debris removal services after the disaster. The city claimed both companies billed with “falsified records” that overestimated the amount of debris they had cleared and that the firms had inflated their costs. The lawsuit is on hold pending a criminal probe by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Granite also faces two U.S. Department of Justice investigations. One targets an Oregon construction project where storm runoff dumped dirt into various creeks, possibly harming the fish population. The other focuses on allegations that a joint venture run by Granite in Minnesota failed to hire enough minority businesses as subcontractors and missrepresented those efforts.

A Granite spokesperson, Jacque Fourchy, said the company is open about its legal problems in corporate filings and disputes wrongdoing in San Diego. “It's unfortunate,” Fourchy said, “that this investigation continues to plague us because we really feel like we didn't do anything wrong.”

Apartment owners sued

The federal government has directed stimulus funds, in the form of tax credits, to create low-income housing across the state. Denver-based AIMCO – in a joint venture with the nonprofit Foundation for Affordable Housing – was offered $13 million in tax credits to help fix up its senior housing apartment complex in Los Angeles. An AIMCO spokeswoman said the company has yet to accept the stimulus tax credit and contends the project “represents the company's continued commitment to meeting the critical need for affordable housing.”

But in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco, residents have complained for years of slumlord conditions and bad management at the AIMCO apartment complexes. “We trust them as far as we can throw them – that's the general rule when it comes to AIMCO,” said Sara Shortt, director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, a nonprofit tenants-rights organization.

The city of San Francisco sued AIMCO, saying that the company ignored more than two dozen orders to fix scores of health and safety hazards, including stairways collapsing from dry rot as well as moldy, water-damaged ceilings and walls. Inspectors cited a blocked fire escape and lack of smoke detectors. They also found broken windows and doors and faulty plumbing. AIMCO settled the suit for $3 million in 2004.

Resident Dorothy Peterson said she was considering protesting the stimulus assistance to AIMCO. “If they really wanted to make sure that low income housing was built properly and for residents that were going to be treated like human beings, then they would not give it to an AIMCO,” she said.

But AIMCO's partner on the Los Angeles project vouches for the company. “They're huge,” said Deborrah Willard, president of the Southern California-based Foundation for Affordable Housing. “When you're huge and you own this many units, you're bound to make somebody unhappy somewhere along the line.”

White House to Whiskeytown

Whiskeytown Lake was formed as part of the Central Valley Water Project, providing water for agriculture and was dedicated by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Although local creeks such as Brandy Creek flow into the lake, most of the water in Whiskeytown Lake comes from the Trinity River. This water is diverted over the mountains by tunnels and penstocks to the Judge Carr Powerhouse at the Spring Creek arm of Keswick.

CAFA Exception Bars Jurisdiction Over Federal Courts For Claims Seeking To Enforce The Terms Of Instruments Creating And Defining Securities.

Greenwich Financial Services Distressed Mortg. v. Countrywide Financial Corp . , Slip Copy, 2009 WL 2499149 (S.D.N.Y., Aug 14, 2009)(NO. 08 CIV. 11343RJH).

The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York held that a third exception to CAFA (28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(9)(C)) applied in this case because the plaintiffs were attempting to create and define their securities; and remanded the case to the state court.

The plaintiffs in this case, Greenwich Financial Services Distressed Mortgaged Fund 3, LLC and QED LLC, brought this putative class action in the New York State Court, as the holders of now-infamous mortgage-backed securities whose decline in value had hobbled the financial markets. The plaintiffs specifically alleged that they held certificates issued by various trusts, which own hundreds of thousands of mortgage loans. The trusts' ownership of the loans entitled them to the borrowers' periodic interest and principal payments, and the certificates entitled the plaintiffs to a share of those payments. 

The plaintiffs' claims arose from actions taken by the defendants with respect to these loans pursuant to the terms of a settlement with several state Attorneys General. In the summer of 2008, the Attorneys General for seven states filed lawsuits accusing Countrywide of violating laws against predatory lending. The defendant, Countrywide Servicing, later agreed to a multistate settlement, requiring it to modify the terms of numerous mortgage loans that it currently services – including at least some of the loans it services on behalf of plaintiffs. 

The plaintiffs responded to the defendants' settlement with the state Attorneys General by filing this putative class action in New York State Supreme Court. The plaintiffs alleged that that pooling and servicing agreements (PSAs) required the defendants, loan servicers, to purchase any loans they modified at a price equal to the unpaid principal and accrued interest thereon.  

The defendants removed the action to the United States District Court of New York, and the plaintiffs sought a remand.

The plaintiffs, citing 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(9)(C), argued that CAFA excepts certain suits from its jurisdictional reach, and this case fell within one of those exceptions. 

The District Court noted that § 1332(d)(9)(C) provides that the district courts do not have jurisdiction over a class action that solely involves a claim that relates to the rights, duties (including fiduciary duties), and obligations relating to or created by or pursuant to any security. 

The District Court observed that in Estate of Barbara Pew v. Cardarelli , 527 F.3d 25, 30, 32 (2d Cir. 2008), the Second Circuit confronted the exception's scope in the context of a state consumer fraud claim, where the plaintiffs were purchasers of money market certificates – unsecured, fixed-interest debt instruments – whose issuer had gone bankrupt.   ( Editors' Note:   See the CAFA Law Blog analysis of Pew posted on August 20, 2008).

The Second Circuit began by rejecting the plaintiffs' argument that the exception covered all securities claims, and held consumer fraud claims at issue in Pew did not fall into either of these categories. The Second Circuit concluded that the exception was limited to suits seeking to enforce the terms of the instruments that create and define securities or the duties imposed on persons who administer securities. 

Based on Pew's interpretation of Section 1332(d)(9), the District Court concluded that CAFA's third exception applied to the plaintiffs' claims because the plaintiffs sought to enforce the terms of the instruments that create and define their securities.

In its opposition, the defendants argued that: (1) Pew's requirement that the claims be grounded in the terms of the security itself, should be read as restricting CAFA's third exception to claims based on language contained in the four corners of the certificates; (2) even if the terms of the certificates were implicated by the plaintiffs' claims, they were not solely implicated and, therefore, do not fall with the third CAFA exception; and (3) in its third argument, the defendant attempted to rewrite CAFA to grant jurisdiction over all cases having a national impact. 

The District Court rejected all of the defendants' arguments finding that it did not overcome a common sense reading of Pew and the text of CAFA itself. The District Court held that the CAFA did not provide the court with jurisdiction because the plaintiffs' claims to enforce the defendants' obligations under the PSAs fell within CAFA's exception in 28 U.S.C.S. § 1332(d)(9)(C) for claims seeking to enforce the terms of instruments creating and defining securities.

The District Court also held the claims did not arise under federal law because the plaintiffs' claim that the PSAs required the defendants to buy back the modified mortgage loans did not rely on or required an interpretation of Truth-in-Lending Act. 

Accordingly, the District Court remanded the case to the state court.

California's Dirty Energy Secret: BP and Rio Tinto Team Up with Local Utility

Posted: June 17, 2010 02:08 PM The University of California's BP Problem

As oil spills into the Gulf of Mexico, we are reminded of UC Berkeley's controversial deal with BP. The oil company currently supports the Energy Biosciences Institute at UC Berkeley, and as one recent newspaper article put it , "It may seem incongruous that an oil company responsible for such environmental devastation is funding this effort to find green fuels and reduce oil use." Like so many other large corporations, BP spends a small fraction of its revenue on alternative technologies and resources so that it can proudly proclaim that it is doing something for the environment.

Since universities are now seeking outside funding, and corporations are looking for ways to improve their public images, programs like Berkeley's Energy Biosciences Institute seem to make perfect sense. However, we must ask if universities really want to have their images tarred by companies that are more concerned with the bottom line than higher education.

When in 2007, BP pledged $500 million to Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, some people protested, but most university officials praised this deal as the biggest corporate support for university research ever made. However, we have to ask if this is a deal made with the devil, and will the university's reputation for objectivity and neutrality be undermined by such a huge gift? In other words, can scientists question BP and its practices if these researchers are being supported out of the corporation's profits?

According to its agreement with BP, the UC could walk out of the arrangement if an event occurs that violates the university's policies. In the agreement signed by UC and BP, it clearly states that the university "should avoid any collaboration that would render it an active participant in criminal conduct, human rights violations, or environmental despoliation." Since the current oil spill is clearly an example of "environmental despoliation" and may prove to be a case of "criminal conduct," it is clear that the UC should break the deal. However, we know how hard it will be to walk away from easy money during a budget crisis.

BP funds search for green fuels at UC Berkeley
By Laurel Rosenhall
lrosenhall@sacbee.com

BP has 14 employees who work behind closed doors in a private suite on the third floor of the Energy Biosciences Institute. The rest of the staff – employed by the university or the national lab – work in open bays filled with test tubes, beakers and elaborate machinery. More BP employees likely will join the institute when it moves to a new UC Berkeley building in 2013.

Partnerships between companies and colleges go back to the 1800s, said Jennifer Washburn, author of "University, Inc.," a book about corporate influences on universities.

But the nature of the deals changed significantly in the 1980s, she said, when Congress passed a law giving universities the right to patent and license their discoveries for commercial use.

"It put a new kind of profit motive into the heart of the university that did not exist in those earlier academic-industry relations," Washburn said.

In an upcoming report called "Big Oil Goes Back to College, " Washburn takes a closer look at how oil companies are shaping university research. The report examines the institute at UC Berkeley as well as Chevron's sponsorship of UC Davis research and Exxon's ties with Stanford.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

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Justice Souter may be retired, but he still works

BOSTON — Justice David Souter ever so politely interrupts an attorney making a complicated legal argument.

High Court: Justices to consider ‘funeral protests' in free-speech case

Albert Snyder, an industrial equipment salesman from York, Pa., says he was once a quiet guy who had no taste for the limelight. Now he has a Web site and interviews scheduled back to back. The most important person in the Senate is rallying support for him, and 48 states and the District of Columbia have come to his aid.

Filed by admin at May 30th, 2010 under News
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Christian conservatives target seated judges

SAN DIEGO — A group of conservative attorneys say they are on a mission from God to unseat four California judges in a rare challenge that is turning a traditionally snooze-button election into what both sides call a battle for the integrity of U.S. courts.

Calif. voters to decide whether to open primaries

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Take that political parties.

Filed by admin at May 30th, 2010 under News
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May 28, 2010

DOJ, Arizona officials meet over immigration law

PHOENIX — Justice Department officials told Arizona's attorney general and aides to the governor Friday that the federal government has serious reservations about the state's new immigration law. They responded that a lawsuit against the state isn't the answer.

Filed by admin at May 28th, 2010 under News
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AP News in Brief

— Obama visits Gulf, confronts spill damage - and rising anger over failure to stop gushing oil

Filed by admin at May 28th, 2010 under News
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Before you howl, just pause and take a deep breath.

The most dangerous time in the markets is when everyone agrees about something. And right now, everyone agrees that Apple (AAPL) is a juggernaut that will keep churning out sex-in-a-box devices until it finally takes over the whole world. 

Most analysts now have targets for Apple in the mid-$300s (and those that don't will soon). The iPhone 4 is an absolute bombshell, and Apple is selling 1 million iPads a month.  Gene Munster of Piper makes a persuasive case that Apple could go to $1,000 over the next few years . And so on.

In the face of that, some fellow got on Twitter and put out a press release this week saying Apple is going to plummet to $45 a share.

Now, that's a sure way to grab some attention, and anytime you put out a press release on something that, you make crystal clear that attention is what you're after.

But don't shoot the messenger until you consider the message.  If, back in the summer of 2007, someone had told you that house prices were going to plunge 30% and that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Citi, AIG, and dozens of other huge companies were going to go bankrupt--all within two years--you would have howled in derision.

Anything's possible in the markets, and the moment you forget that, you're dead.  And there's nothing like a warm comfortable consensus to lull you into shutting your brain off and charging with the herd right over the cliff.

So let's at least give this fellow's logic a moment's consideration:

Understanding Why Apple Will Fall From Its Tree

Unlike traditional financial models which have difficulty during times of market volatility, BAM Investor uses a unique model called "Behavioral Analysis of Markets" or BAM, which is based on more than 20 years of quantitative analysis of how complex human behaviors and social movements affect stock prices. This unique model has enabled BAM to predict market prices with enormous precision--especially in times of extreme market volatility...

Okay, forget it.  No Apple-specific logic whatsoever.  Just a market-crash call wrapped in an Apple headline.

By the way, if memory serves, Apple has about $40 billion of cash.  If the stock went to $45, the company would be worth about $40 billion, which would be less than the current cash balance.

Now, this isn't inconceivable--for the stock to crater that far, the company would almost certainly have to start losing billions of dollars a quarter, and at that rate of loss, it would burn through cash fast.  But Apple isn't run by idiots.  And it for some reason it's business did go to hell, we imagine management would quickly cut expenses.

So it's not IMPOSSIBLE that Apple would go to $45.  After all, it traded at $75 in the middle of the financial crisis.  But it's highly unlikely.

And, more importantly for the purposes of this discussion, the fellow who says it's going to $45 hasn't provided any logic whatsoever for why it might go there other than general proclamations of market doom. So howl away.

(via Philip Elmer-Dewitt )

Venable partner nominated U.S. District Court seat

The White House has nominated a Venable partner and former special litigation chief at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia for an open spot on the federal bench.

Filed by admin at May 30th, 2010 under News
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TITLE 5 > PART I > CHAPTER 3 > § 301 Miner's Apex Law Application

Departmental regulations - Creation by Miners, General Mining Law

The head of an Executive department or military department may prescribe regulations for the government of his department, the conduct of its employees, the distribution and performance of its business, and the custody, use, and preservation of its records, papers, and property. This section does not authorize withholding information from the public or limiting the availability of records to the public.

§ 302. Delegation of authority, Nanotubes for Los Angeles Cap & Trade

(a) For the purpose of this section, “agency” has the meaning given it by section 5721 of this title. (b) In addition to the authority to delegate conferred by other law, the head of an agency may delegate to subordinate officials the authority vested in him— (1) by law to take final action on matters pertaining to the employment, direction, and general administration of personnel under his agency; and (2) by section 3702 of title 44 to authorize the publication of advertisements, notices, or proposals.

§ 305. Systematic agency review of operations

(a) For the purpose of this section, “agency” means an Executive agency, but does not include— (1) a Government controlled corporation; (2) the Tennessee Valley Authority; (3) the Virgin Islands Corporation; (4) the Atomic Energy Commission; (5) the Central Intelligence Agency; (6) the Panama Canal Commission; or (7) the National Security Agency, Department of Defense. (b) Under regulations prescribed and administered by the President, each agency shall review systematically the operations of each of its activities, functions, or organization units, on a continuing basis. (c) The purpose of the reviews includes— (1) determining the degree of efficiency and economy in the operation of the agency's activities, functions, or organization units; (2) identifying the units that are outstanding in those respects; and (3) identifying the employees whose personal efforts have caused their units to be outstanding in efficiency and economy of operations.

§ 306. Strategic plans

(a) No later than June 30th, 2010, the head of each agency shall submit to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and to the Congress a strategic plan for program activities. Such plan shall contain— (1) a comprehensive mission statement covering the major functions and operations of the agency; (2) general goals and objectives, including outcome-related goals and objectives, for the major functions and operations of the agency; (3) a description of how the goals and objectives are to be achieved, including a description of the operational processes, skills and technology, and the human, capital, information, and other resources required to meet those goals and objectives; (4) a description of how the performance goals included in the plan required by section 1115 (a) of title 31 shall be related to the general goals and objectives in the strategic plan; (5) an identification of those key factors external to the agency and beyond its control that could significantly affect the achievement of the general goals and objectives; and (6) a description of the program evaluations used in establishing or revising general goals and objectives, with a schedule for future program evaluations. (b) The strategic plan shall cover a period of not less than five years forward from the fiscal year in which it is submitted. The strategic plan shall be updated and revised at least every three years, except that the strategic plan for the Department of Defense shall be updated and revised at least every four years. (c) The performance plan required by section 1115 of title 31 shall be consistent with the agency's strategic plan. A performance plan may not be submitted for a fiscal year not covered by a current strategic plan under this section. (d) When developing a strategic plan, the agency shall consult with the Congress, and shall solicit and consider the views and suggestions of those entities potentially affected by or interested in such a plan. (e) The functions and activities of this section shall be considered to be inherently Governmental functions. The drafting of strategic plans under this section shall be performed only by Federal employees. (f) For purposes of this section the term “agency” means an Executive agency defined under section 105 , but does not include the Central Intelligence Agency, the Government Accountability Office, the Panama Canal Commission, the United States Postal Service, and the Postal Regulatory Commission.

ABSOLUTE ORDER, MINING DEPARTMENT FEDERATION § 9102. Establishing and acquiring corporations