Excerpts: Alaska's senior senator say he's "very disturbed" by the proposed Pebble gold and copper development near Iliamna Lake and will do what he can to stall it. [snip]
[From Steve Borell, Executive Director of the Alaska Miner's association with regard to Northern Dynasty who is leading the charge to develop Pebble...] "Some of their statements, I guess you could say, sound promotional. That's probably what they need to do to maintain interest in the project."
by Paula Dobbyn Anchorage Daily News March 4, 2006 Read the original here.
[Note: I'm surprised and pleased to be able to infer from Stevens' statement the principle of discriminating development. I'm equally surprised and pleased by Borell's candor. I think the world needs much more skepticism, and much less posturing. Obviously, there are trade-offs associated with most important policy decisions. Let's illuminate them and weigh them against one another rather than engaging in minimization, denial, and manipulation. -- Dan]
The wording is so bland and buried so deep within a 324-page budget document that almost no one would notice that a multibillion-dollar scam is going on. Not the members of Congress voting for it and certainly not the taxpayers who will get fleeced by it. And that is exactly the idea. [snip]
by Donald Barlett and James Steele Time Magazine February 26, 2006 Read the original here.
[This article about a national phenomenon stimulates my thinking in terms of what's happening at home. Where have I heard "tax incentives" for big corporate industry before? Cook Inlet? Alaska? I mean tax incentives, and more tax incentives, and, now, yet more proposed tax incentives. In Alaska. For exploration and development and "jobs"?
How about we by the next corporation a jack rig? Yuk. And then of course, from the "clean coal" industry that conned the nation for so-called "synfuel", we get so-called Alaskan "clean coal." Read the article. This is not solely about corporate welfare. It's sometimes worse. -- Dan]
Ahhh. School district and assembly budget issues. Another hint of the mammoth difficulties yet in store for us emerged during the Assembly meeting on February 7, 2006.
Briefly, our new Kenai Peninsula Borough (KPB) Mayor John Williams began his term with an audit of sorts of the KPB budget. With staff, he re-assessed budget numbers and identified opportunities to cut expenditures.
The big budget item he cut was a financial software package ($600,000) that previously the Assembly had learned was a "need," but now learned was a "want." The remaining approximately $310,000 expenditure cuts for 2006 were mostly small items.
Among the small items was a $60,000 proposed expenditure cut from the maintenance budget1 for the school district.
This $60 thousand expenditure cut out of a $106 million dollar budget was more than one might think. Partly at stake was the issue of whether or not the Kenai Peninsula Borough continues to fund the school district out of its general fund budget at the maximum legal level. This is regulated by Alaska statute, and it's called "funding at cap."
In the borough's budget, spending on education is by far the borough's largest expense, about 67% of the borough's total general fund appropriation. Support for "education" and "funding at cap" in this borough are push-button issues, important to a lot of voters, and a point of pride among administrators and elected officials.
But as originally proposed, this $60 thousand dollar expenditure cut would have meant that for the first time in a long time, the borough was choosing not to fund education at cap. This caused fear and consternation in the camps.
School district rumors circulated about laying off another 100 teachers (see here). The educational/political, principle of "funding at cap" was invoked.
The mayor and the school district negotiated an arrangement whereby the mayor kept his $60k cut, but the school district paid for some legal services, and technically the borough would continue to fund at cap.
Here is the mayor speaking to the issue at that February 7, 2006 Assembly meeting:
Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor, John Williams: 42sec
"...It's more than a $60 thousand dollar issue in the eyes of the administration."
Here is Assemblyman Gary Superman opposing an amendment to the ordinance that would have eliminated all reference of not funding at cap:
Kenai Peninsula Borough Assemblyman, Gary Superman: 2min 14sec
Mr. Superman refers to an earlier comment I had made to the effect that "funding at cap could not forever be considered an 'inviolable' principle."
Here I am, just before the Assembly vote, reiterating that sentiment, but, for now, on this $60k dollar issue, continuing to adhere to the fund-at-cap-line:
Dan Chay: 47sec
Then, not surprisingly, the Assembly voted 7:1 (Merkes was absent) to support the negotiated arrangement, continuing to fund at cap, and leaving the mayor's total expenditure cut line intact.
In my next posts on this topic, I want to address 1) what I see as an inherent flaw in the principle of "funding at cap" as I have seen it expressed; 2) what I see as a kind of pathogen in school district and borough budgets; and 3) what I see as a vulnerability in continuing "business-as-usual." I might also comment on contract negotiations currently underway and out of sight.
New research shows that children who switch eating from regular mass produced foods to organic foods show in their urine dramatic drops in pesticide exposure. (See here.) In particular, the research focused on exposure to the neurotoxins malathion and chlorpyrifos.
We are not surprised, because this is intuitively obvious. Garbage in-garbage out. If we refrain from eating foods that were sprayed with neurotoxins (pesticides such as malathion and chlorpyrifos), the evidence of those pesticides in our urine goes away.
In the U.S., more than 80,000 new synthetic chemical compounds have been developed during the last 50 years. About 15,000 chemicals are produced at quantities greater than 10,000 pounds per year. About 2,800 chemicals are produced at quantities greater than a million pounds per year.
Less than half of these high volume chemicals have been tested for potential human toxicity. About 7% have been tested for possible effects on development. (See here.) [snip]
The American people ... know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. — President Bush, Jan. 10
Let us, as lawyers say, stipulate that the Bush administration was genuinely concerned that weapons of mass destruction, which they firmly believed to be in Saddam Hussein's arsenal, might be shared with the same Qaeda leadership that planned the horrific events of 9/11. That would have been a reasonable motive for invading Iraq; but surely now, three years later, when the existence of those weapons is no longer an issue, it would be insufficient reason for the United States to remain there. [snip]
"Will Fight for OIl" by Ted Koppel New York Times February 24, 2006 Read the original here or here.
