Kansas’ first-in-the-nation rejection of a proposed coal-fired plant on the basis of carbon dioxide emissions is drawing reactions beyond Kansas.
“If coal’s on the run, then a lot of Americans need to get prepared to sit around in the dark,” said Joe Lucas, executive director of the coal lobby Americans for Balanced Energy Choices.
And the New York Times editorializes today that the Kansas decision and a Montana movement against coal-fired plants “provide further evidence, if any were needed, that Congress should not listen to the coal industry’s siren call for special treatment.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., thinks Blackwater USA violated tax laws and may have defrauded the government of millions of dollars. (The company says its guards are independent contractors with the federal government.) Stay tuned, but the proposal to ditch Blackwater for another contractor looks more justified by the day.
Meanwhile, one possible replacement for Blackwater, DynCorp International, is the subject of a report by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. He says the State Department so badly mishandled a contract that it “does not know specifically what it received for most of the $1.2 billion in expenditures under its DynCorp contract for the Iraqi Police Training Program.”
The stories have in common not just private contractors toiling in Iraq but the Bush administration’s continuing problems with oversight, accountability and competence.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Barack Obama is rightly fuming about what John Tanner, the head of the Justice Department’s voting rights division, said earlier this month about state voter ID laws, in suggesting they disproportionately hurt the elderly who lack proper IDs:
“That’s a shame, you know, creating problems for elderly persons just is not good under any circumstance,” Tanner said, according to video posted on YouTube. “Of course, that also ties into the racial aspect because our society is such that minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do. They die first.”
Obama wants Tanner gone, calling the bureaucrat’s comments “patently erroneous, offensive and dangerous.” Even if Tanner has the statistics on his side, he surely can find more constructive ways to discuss the downside of voter ID cards, such as how they constitute a poll tax.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
A decade ago, much attention was given to how the Wichita public schools could better serve Wichita business. Then came the aviation layoffs, the No Child Left Behind law and more. The need for high-quality work-force training is driving Sedgwick County’s plan for the Jabara Airport technical training center. But with the aviation companies hiring, baby boomers retiring and technology constantly changing, public schools also need to be focused on serving employers’ evolving needs — one of the valuable messages to emerge from a Regional Economic Area Partnership summit last week. Not every kid will or should go to college, but they will need defined but flexible job skills. As Pete Gustaf, president of Wichita Area Technical College, told the gathering: “I am concerned our education system is not equipped to be reactive enough and progressive enough to meet the challenge we’re going to be facing.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
It’s comforting and surprising to learn that the Air Force punished 70 airmen over the August flight of a nuclear-armed B-52 bomber to North Dakota to Louisiana — comforting because the response seems significant, surprising because this incident clearly was bigger than a couple of guys. “We are making all appropriate changes to ensure this has a minimal chance of ever happening again,” said Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne.
With so much consideration given to the terrible things terrorists want to do to the United States, it’s too easy to forget the terror we could unleash on ourselves if our nuclear arsenal isn’t handled with extraordinary care.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
“I think a lot of people are asking whether — they say, ‘Is this, is this real,’ you know? And to which I would say to everybody, this is not a dream, OK? You’re not going to wake up from this, OK? I’m, I’m, I’m far realer than Sam Brownback, let me put it that way.” — Sort-of presidential candidate Stephen Colbert, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
