controversial

AlaskaDispatch.com: Alaska Gasline Failure Disappointing, but No Surprise

by on May 18, 2011

Huffington Post…

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Backers of Alaska’s Denali natural gas pipeline project had barely thrown in the economic towel, when some state lawmakers began calling for TransCanada and the administration of Gov. Sean Parnell to prove the controversial state-sanctioned gas line project is economically viable. At stake with the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act is several hundred million dollars in public money the Legislature agreed to give the project as well as the state’s ability to move forward with a larger-sized, in-state gas pipeline. And the announcement Tuesday morning by the Denali project’s backers that they were giving up on building a $35 billion, 1,700-mile pipeline from the North Slope to Alberta, Canada, was also immediately viewed as yet another sign that a decades-long major economic dream for Alaska is once again slipping away. Disappointment, but not surprise was the phrase most used by people who have been following the gas line debate on all sides. It’s not unexpected news,” said Larry Persily, the federal coordinator for Alaska gas line projects. “Clearly given today’s market it’s going to be hard. If you were Denali how many more millions are you going to spend when you’re not seeing success close at hand. It’s all their money. Maybe when you’re spending someone else’s money you can keep going a little longer.” TIMELINE: Alaska’s gas line pipe dreams In an indictment on the economics of the natural gas business in Alaska, Denali President Bud Fackrell said in a press release that the company was unable to secure customers and wasn’t going to spend billions more dollars on a futile effort. This after BP and ConocoPhilips, the companies behind Denali, had spent about $165 million on the project. Natural gas prices have fallen considerably since 2007 when the Legislature led by former Gov. Sarah Palin passed AGIA and agreed to support it with as much as $500 million of state money. The state signed an exclusive license agreement with TransCanada which then brought Exxon Mobil on as a partner. The Denali project was started as a parallel effort and has not had the benefit of state subsidies, a fact some AGIA supporters point to as one big difference between the two proposals and perhaps the reason TransCanada can succeed where Denali failed. But House GOP leaders who have long been critical of AGIA are seizing the demise of Denali as an I-told-you-so moment. In the just-ended legislative session, they pushed for — but then dropped — an effort to force TransCanada and Gov. Sean Parnell to prove whether the project is economically viable before giving it even more state cash. “Why is TransCanada afraid to answer the same question that Denali just answered openly and honestly and in the public eye?” Rep. Mike Hawker, an Anchorage Republican and one of AGIA’s biggest critics, said Tuesday. “What do they have that makes theirs different? They’re looking at exactly the same marketplace and the same customer base.” Alaska Speaker of the House Mike Chenault, another Republican opponent of Palin’s AGIA law, has begun moving toward an in-state gas line that would run from the North Slope through Fairbanks and down to Anchorage. The House, over the Senate’s objections, included $200 million in the capital budget in a dedicated fund that would kickstart an in-state gas line if approved. The budget also reduced by $100 million the amount of money Parnell had requested for AGIA. But the bullet line has come under fire, too, for its huge cost — as much as $12 billion — and high tariffs that would mean a dramatic rise in the cost of gas to Southcentral consumers. The only way around that would be if the state subsidized the project with billions of dollars. Read the complete story only at Alaska Dispatch http://www.alaskadispatch.com

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AlaskaDispatch.com: Alaska Gasline Failure Disappointing, but No Surprise

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Official: Fed Prepared To Fight Inflation, Just Not Yet

by on May 5, 2011

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LAS CRUCES, New Mexico (Pedro Nicolaci da Costa) – Inflation remains well under control, despite the spike in oil prices, but the Federal Reserve stands ready to raise interest rates if price pressures appear to be getting out of hand, top Fed officials said on Wednesday. John Williams, in his first speech as president of the San Francisco Fed, argued that the recent spike in commodity costs will likely be transitory. “The economy today faces many pitfalls, but I don’t believe that runaway inflation is one of them,” Williams said, adding that he would not prejudge a possible need for additional bond purchases in the future. In response to evidence of economic weakness last summer, the U.S. central bank in November announced it would buy some $600 billion in Treasury bonds in an effort to keep long-term borrowing costs low and support the recovery. In some of the first public speeches by Fed officials since a policy meeting April 26-27 at which the central bank said it would complete those purchases on schedule by the end of June, policy makers who spoke on Wednesday explained why they are in no rush to pull back ultra-loose monetary policy soon. Eric Rosengren, the dovish president of the Boston Fed, who is a voter this year on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, struck much the same note as Williams, saying a return to 1970s-style inflation was not likely. He said tame wage growth and high unemployment are helping cushion some of the inflationary impact of higher food and energy costs, by keeping consumer inflation expectations under control. A rise in inflation expectations can be self-fulfilling if it leads workers to demand higher wages. But with high unemployment, workers have little power to demand higher wages because they can easily be replaced. JOB MARKET HEALING SLOWLY Another U.S. central bank official, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, saw steady but modest job growth of about 200,000 jobs per month through the rest of this year after a slow spell. “It may take three years before the size of the nation’s work force reaches prerecessionary levels,” he said in a speech in Atlanta. The U.S. Labor Department will report figures for April nonfarm payrolls on Friday. Economists expect that 186,000 jobs were added in April, according to a Reuters poll. Rosengren said increases in overall U.S. inflation due to supply shocks since the mid-1980s have generally been temporary, a pattern that should play out again. “We should expect the impact on inflation to be transitory — and that total inflation will converge back to core inflation, which remains well below 2 percent,” he said. The U.S. consumer price index jumped 2.7 percent in the year to March. But so-called core CPI, which excludes more volatile food and energy costs and is a gauge of underlying price trends, climbed just 1.2 percent. The Fed’s informal target is 2 percent. Not all Fed officials are equally sanguine about inflation. Richard Fisher, the Dallas Fed’s hawkish president and also an FOMC voter this year, cited worries about rising prices. “The headline (inflation) numbers have gotten a little stout,” he told reporters after a speech. “We have to carefully monitor” how inflation expectations evolve. Still, he stopped well short of calling for near-term interest rate hikes. And Lockhart, of the Atlanta Fed, said no tightening of monetary policy is imminent. “It’s a bit premature now to anticipate it’s going to happen right away,” he said. The sequence and pace of steps that the Fed takes when it is time to reverse its easy money policy will depend on economic conditions at the time, Lockhart added. READY TO FIGHT INFLATION If inflation does begin to act up, officials said the Fed has both the tools and the will to attack price threats by bringing up interest rates quickly. “I am committed to responding decisively, and as forcefully as necessary,” the Boston Fed’s Rosengren said, “to ensure that long-term inflation expectations remain stable and that food and energy prices are not passing through to other prices.” In response to the worst recession in generations, the Fed slashed official borrowing costs to effectively zero and implemented an array of unorthodox lending facilities to heal frozen credit markets. Many of those measures have been shuttered as market conditions improved, but the controversial buying of assets to keep down long-term rates has continued. “Should it prove necessary to counter inflationary pressures, I will be among the first to advocate the unwinding of some of the stimulus we have provided,” Fisher said. Fisher cited a rebound in manufacturing and capital goods orders as not only a positive short-term indicator of economic momentum but also potentially a sign that the U.S. economy was finally moving away from an overreliance on consumer spending. “They are harbingers of needed rebalancing,” he said. (Additional reporting by Ros Krasny in Boston, Ann Saphir in Los Angeles, and Joe Rauch in Atlanta; additional writing by Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Leslie Adler) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Official: Fed Prepared To Fight Inflation, Just Not Yet

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‘Bridge To Nowhere’ — We’re Still Paying For It

April 10, 2011

Alaska legislators have signed off on another $1.4 million in federal money to pay planners of the controversial Knik Arm bridge and are talking about ponying up state dollars for the project next year.

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Target Sues San Diego Gay Rights Group

March 25, 2011

SAN DIEGO — A judge said Friday he would issue a ruling next week in a lawsuit filed by Target Corp. against a pro-gay marriage group to make it stop canvassing outside the retailer’s San Diego County stores. The suit alleges the activists are driving away customers by cornering them and talking about gay marriage. Rights advocates say the legal battle between Target and Canvass For A Cause could further strain the retailer’s relations with the gay and lesbian community. Target previously made a $150,000 donation to a business group backing a Minnesota Republican candidate opposed to gay marriage. Minnesota-based Target insisted it remained committed to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and its lawsuit has nothing to do with the political agenda of the organization. During a court hearing Friday in San Diego, Target attorney David McDowell told Judge Jeffrey Barton that the solicitors are on private property, and Target has the right to enforce its policy against solicitors. “The question is Target’s property right and its right to exclude,” McDowell told Barton. The group tries to collect signatures and donations in support of gay marriage. Barton had asked McDowell why the company did not present testimony from customers complaining about the activists. McDowell said Target could get such testimony if needed, but it was not needed since Target just wants to exercise its right to ask people to leave its property. Bryan W. Pease, the attorney for Canvass For A Cause, said Target does not have that right. He told the judge the outside area surrounding stores in shopping centers like Target have been considered by the courts to be public domain for free speech. He argued that Target is taking action because it does not agree with the group’s message about gay marriage. Barton said he will issue a written ruling by the end of next week. Target says it has taken similar action against a number of organizations representing a variety of causes. It alleges in the lawsuit that activists with the San Diego group harass customers by cornering them near front entrances of stores and debating with them about their views on gay marriage. The corporation says at least eight Target stores in the area have reported receiving more than a dozen complaints daily since canvassers started working outside their stores in October 2010. Target says the activists have refused to leave when asked politely and shown the company’s policy prohibiting “expressive activity” on its property. Canvass For A Cause director Tres Watson says Target wants to silence the 12,000-member group that formed in 2009 because it promotes gay marriage. “It’s very David vs. Goliath,” he said. “We understand they’re the Goliath in the room. They’ve got all money in world to get us to stop talking about gay marriage.” Watson says volunteers are trained daily on being professional and polite and their aim is to educate the public about the rights of gays and lesbians. He says they have a right to work outside the stores and the courts have ruled in the past that shopping centers are today’s public squares where freedom of speech should be allowed. “We train our staff and volunteers very carefully in techniques in winning people over,” he said. “When you’re trying to persuade voters and reach out to the community with a message, there is no advantage to being aggressive.” Target was seen as an ally of the gay and lesbian community before it gave money to MN Forward, which supported Tom Emmer, who lost the governor’s race to Democrat Mark Dayton. Target later said it was sorry for the hurt feelings and tried to repair its public relations damage from the controversial donation. Target created a committee to help it better scrutinize decisions regarding financial donations. The company also negotiated a deal with Lady Gaga to sell a special edition of her upcoming album in a partnership Gaga said was tied to their “reform,” supporting the gay community and making up for past mistakes. But the singer backed out a few weeks ago.

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Fed Officially Abandons Plan To Gut Predatory Lending Rule

February 1, 2011

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve Board of Governors confirmed Tuesday that it will not proceed with plans to gut a principal federal remedy for predatory lending. As HuffPost reported last week , the central bank had already quietly made that clear to legal experts and fair-lending advocates, who had opposed the rule change. Principal regulatory authority on the issue will now shift to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is not expected to revive the earlier Fed proposal. “The Board has determined that proceeding with the 2009 and 2010 proposals would not be in the public interest,” the Fed said in a press release. “Accordingly, the Board does not expect to finalize the August 2009 and September 2010 proposals prior to the July 2011 date for transfer of rulemaking authority to the CFPB.” The Fed is officially backing down from its proposal to eliminate rescission, a critical component of consumer-protection law that strips banks of the right to make money on illegal loans. Under current law, if a borrower wins a rescission case in court, the bank loses the right to foreclose on the home and forfeits all income from the loan’s fees and interest. Borrowers are still required to repay the original amount the bank extended to them under the loan, but since banks cannot foreclose on the property, that amount can be repaid over time without the borrower facing pressure from a bank that sold them a predatory loan. Under the controversial Fed proposal, however, the borrower would have been required to pay off the full principal balance before the bank lost its right to foreclose. Since most victims of predatory lending do not have hundreds of thousands of dollars lying around to hand over to a bank at a moment’s notice, the new rule would have severely limited the protections offered by rescission. Even if a judge found a bank guilty of predatory lending, the bank would still be able to foreclose on the wronged borrower. Consumer advocates met with Fed staffers three times before the release of last year’s proposal , urging the central bank not to pursue the plan. Once the prospective rule was announced, several concerned citizens posted colorful, critical comments on the Fed’s website. The CFPB had been the arbiter of choice for consumer advocates, given that the new bureau is not expected to alter the existing rescission framework.

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Michael Likosky: Obama’s Economic Philosophy

January 26, 2011

President Obama reaffirmed his economic philosophy in the State of the Union address — a government that works, invests, delivers opportunity, and that we can believe in. It is a lean government, not a big government. It is not a problem, but a problem-solver. The approach that Obama laid out for infrastructure and clean energy investment is emblematic. I describe it in my book: Obama’s Bank: Financing a Durable New Deal . Rather than looking to 2012, the State of the Union Address returned to 2008, on the campaign trail in Janesville. In front of an audience of workers at the GM Plant, Obama first set out his economic philosophy. The GM plant would not survive to see his inauguration; however, the approach that Obama set forth in Janesville was the template for the State of the Union address. What Obama said in Janesville in 2008 is far more inspiring and durable than Paul Ryan’s rebut tonight. Importantly, the Janesville speech — and the State of the Union — start off by reminding us that our crisis has been decades in the making. In other words, our crisis did not emerge in the subprime mortgage market, and it will note be solved there. Instead, we have divested from our real economy for decades. In the meantime, our new competitors — China, etc — have invested in state-of-the art infrastructure. As a result, we risk loosing our competitive edge. In other words, we do not have the state-of-the-art infrastructure that makes companies like GE see the US as an attractive place to do business. Enlisting Jeffrey Immelt in our recovery effort is valuable for exactly this reason — he knows what it takes to insource jobs, repatriate the operations of American firms, draw money out of the TARP banks and into our real economy. And, just as in Janesville, Obama explained how we can co-invest with the private sector to return the country to its prestige place. The State of the Union spoke of the types of co-investments that happened during the Cold War that produced the Internet. Forget about the controversial shovel ready projects, few would deny that Obama’s examples tonight of entrepreneurs who benefited from a little federal help — not a lot — have excelled in the midst of the crisis. Certainly, this is the story of GE in Schenectady. When it came to infrastructure investment, Obama too returned to Janesville. We have a long term deficit in the infrastructure field. Our bridges crumble. The American Society of Engineers awarding us a D. Obama once again explained how we have to bring private investment into US infrastructure to solve this problem. Government lends a hand, but only as honey to attract private sector money. And, it’s all about the importance of opportunity — from the nod to Biden and Boehner and their uniquely American stories to the need to invest in infrastructure not only to make our powerhouse metropolitan regions even more competitive. But instead, to make sure that the off-ramps of the high speed rail and our highways that we build today become the on-ramps of vibrant cities and towns tomorrow. This was the benefit of the Transcontinental Railroad, the Eisenhower national road system, and the Internet. This is the essence of not only the Progressive Movement, but also America Dream

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Bank Of America To Stop Processing WikiLeaks Payments, WikiLeaks Lashes Out On Twitter

December 18, 2010

Bank of America announced it will stop handling transactions for WikiLeaks, the controversial non-profit group that has published secret government data and communications. In a tense response posted on Twitter late last night WikiLeaks urged customers to stop doing business with the bank and suggested the consumers could find safer places to put their money. See WikiLeaks’ Twitter response below: According to the AP: “The bank said in a statement that it believes that site ‘may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.’ It joins financial institutions including MasterCard and PayPal that have stopped handling payments for the site.” In a cover story published last month in Forbes , WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was recently released from a British prison, said that the organization’s next leak, due out early next year, will involve at least one major American bank . In a 2009 Computer World interview, Assange said that his organization had obtained a 5GB hardrive from a Bank of America employee, but had been struggling with the best way to present the hard drive’s data.

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More Small Banks Are Becoming TARP ‘Deadbeats’

September 14, 2010

The latest report from the agency shows that more than 120 institutions – nearly all of them small banks – have missed their scheduled quarterly dividend payments, which is more than a sixth of the banks that received federal aid during the financial crisis. In addition, five banks that received capital injections from the controversial $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program have failed altogether, making it highly unlikely that taxpayers will recover the nearly $3 billion poured into those institutions.

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Kelsey Timmerman: 5 Reasons American Apparel Is on the Path to Bankruptcy

August 24, 2010

From the Financial Post ‘s story American Apparel a hipster darling no more as bankruptcy looms : “Dov Charney is at the moment of truth,” said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates Inc., a national retail consulting and investment banking firm based in New York City. “And all roads for him lead to hell. He’s got to pick the best of the worst choices.” Dov Charney is the controversial CEO of American Apparel , the US’s largest remaining apparel manufacturer. Dov is reportedly very hands on when it comes to clothes and, reportedly his female workers . I wrote about AA in my book Where Am I Wearing? as an option for engaged consumers who are looking to support American-made products. But recently the company’s stock has fallen lower than the necklines of their T-shirts — 66%. It’s doubtful that the brand will go away, but it sounds like they might be in for a restructuring and that likely means Dov will have to go away. This is a shame. Despite his alleged transgressions, I hate seeing someone forced from doing the something that they love. That said, why is American Apparel in this position? Here are five reasons: 1) Sex Sells except when it doesn’t No company has taken the advertising mantra “sex sells” to the level of American Apparel. I mean really, does anything say “come shop here and you’ll get laid” more than this? American Apparel sells T-shirts, socks, and everything in between, but most of their ads feature women barely wearing anything. I’ve never seen a copy of their catalog, likely because they are stuffed beneath the mattresses of every 13 year-old boy from here to Tuscaloosa. If men bought and wore pantyhose, this ad alone would keep them out of bankruptcy. Unfortunately, women buy pantyhose. The fact that their ads are oversexed (and Dov, the face and crotch of American Apparel is too) could have contributed to their decline. 2) Don’t mess with Woody Allen AA ran an ad with Woody Allen in it without his permission. Allen sued and won. Now AA is breathing it’s last breath. Woody Allen is still doing fine. Just saying… 3) A referendum on mustaches Need I say more? 4) Garment workers aren’t supposed to be paid a decent wage Last year AA had to layoff 1,500 workers under threat of a raid by the federal government to investigate claims of illegal immigrants working. Illegal or not, the workers were paid a respectable wage with respectable benefits. American Apparel workers made American Apparel products. This is something unheard of today. There’s no such thing as a GAP garment maker. The folks who make GAP work for some other factory in faraway places. Maybe it’s economically impossible for a brand to actually make something other than a commercial in today’s market. 5) Too cool for school I own two of their collared shirts and a few of their T-shirts. However, much of what they make is too cool, too fushcia, too (dare I say) ball hugging for me. I don’t know a single guy that owns a pair of pink pants, let alone pink briefs. — Which if any of the above factors played a roll in American Apparel’s troubles? I can’t say. Regardless, we live in a world where engaged consumers have limited options already. The loss of American Apparel would limit them even further.

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Wenonah Hauter: Is BP the Fox Guarding the Henhouse?

July 11, 2010

The Administration this week demanded that BP present them with detailed plans surrounding their newest Gulf oil cleanup strategy, including information on the company’s plans for limiting dispersant usage. While this is a timely order, especially in light of BP’s announcement that many Gulf responders were exposed to a now-discontinued version of Corexit (a controversial dispersant linked to chronic health problems that BP used in cleanup efforts despite orders to stop), it’s unlikely that BP’s response will answer another, more critical question: Why should BP provide information on their dispersant usage when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stopped demanding this information, and until now, BP has willfully and without consequence defied much of what the EPA has demanded they do? Immediately following the spill, BP took the liberty to overrule the EPA’s order to cease using the controversial dispersant Corexit. The company continues to use the dispersant, and for a time, was even using the now-discontinued version that they just admitted may have poisoned up to 20 percent of offshore responders . The EPA, in turn, has responded to BP’s insolence by rephrasing their directive and ordering that dispersant usage be ramped down. Since then, BP has ignored that directive, pumping millions of gallons of the chemical into the Gulf while the EPA continues to fail to regulate them. As of late, the EPA appears to have developed a “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality. Last week BP (under the title ” Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information Center “) and the EPA issued a joint press conference on the results of preliminary Corexit testing on marine life. Perhaps not surprisingly, these tests stopped far short of mimicking the Gulf environment, lacking both crude oil and saltwater. The tests also failed to include marine organisms smaller than shrimp or silverfish and did not determine the effects of long-term (over 96-hour) exposure. Although the results of the tests were “announced” last week, this type of dispersant data is not new. Dispersant manufacturers are already required to submit similar data (and to test the toxicity of their dispersants combined with oil) if their product is to be included in a national list of allowable dispersants. The results from these previous tests have already revealed that there are seven dispersants that are more effective and less toxic to both shrimp and fish when combined with oil. And while one of the products, called Dispersit, rated nearly twice as effective and between half and a third as toxic as Corexit (when mixed with oil), the EPA never ordered BP to use it instead. So why, when these tests have been conducted, are BP and the EPA announcing that they will be presenting the results of a similar test (combining dispersants and oil) in the coming months? Why is it taking months from the time the EPA attempted to ban Corexit to verify data that is already available and to announce information regarding a known toxic chemical? If it feels like we’re being given the run-around, it may be because we are. It is not surprising that some in industry would want to use Corexit. According to media reports , Nalco, the producers of Corexit, stand to make $800 thousand to $6.5 million per day from dispersant sales. Nalco’s board of directors includes a former BP executive and board member. What is surprising, however, is that a major federal agency, tasked with protecting the public, would allow industry to call the shots. It is an outrage that Corexit continues to jeopardize both the health of the public and of the Gulf marine life exposed to the chemical. Both the EPA and BP are to blame, with the former allowing the latter to shoot first, ask questions later (and act surprised when the answer involves documented toxicity). This is why, despite the Administration’s claim that they are demanding answers from BP, it is we who must demand that our government stop asking BP what they intend to do and start telling them what they are required to do.

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Topless Ashley Judd Poster Mocks Actress For Her Coal Criticism

July 8, 2010

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A topless photo of Ashley Judd emblazoned on a poster that mocks the actress’ outspoken opposition to mountaintop removal mining was on display at a coal industry-sponsored golf tournament in Kentucky. “Ashley Judd makes a living removing her top, why can’t coal miners?” the 5-by-3-foot poster reads in bold, black letters. It was hanging at a golf tournament Wednesday at StoneCrest Golf Course in Prestonsburg, Ky. Judd is covering her breasts with her hands in the photo, which appears to be from a 2006 issue of Marie Claire magazine. Judd said in a speech last month to the National Press Club that mountaintop removal, which blasts the tops off mountains to extract coal, is the “rape of Appalachia.” She also referred to golf courses that have been built atop former mining sites, like StoneCrest. “I’m not too keen on reinforcing stereotypes about my people, but I don’t know a lot of hillbillies who golf,” Judd said in the June 9 speech. The actress, who spent her childhood in eastern Kentucky and attended the University of Kentucky, said she is “proud of being a hillbilly.” Judd said in a statement that she anticipated criticism from “cunning and greedy” coal companies when speaking out against mountaintop mining. “It is time to retire the cynical and superficial coal company-created argument that we must choose between people, their jobs, and our mountains,” Judd said. “That is simply false, fear-based and fear-mongering.” The actress, who has starred in the Hollywood films “A Time to Kill” and “Where the Heart Is,” said she will continue her vocal opposition to the mining practice. Two coal industry groups sponsored the tournament, Friends of Coal and the Pikeville-based Coal Operators and Associates. Its president, David Gooch, said he does not know who created the sign, first reported by WYMT-TV in Hazard. But Gooch said Thursday that many Appalachians are angry over Judd’s criticisms because they see it as an attack on their livelihoods and culture. “If you’re an eastern Kentuckian, if you’re a hillbilly – if that’s what you want to call yourself – you don’t go around and ridicule and denigrate the other people of the area,” Gooch said. Paul Hughes, assistant general manager at the StoneCrest Golf Course, said he heard no complaints about the poster. “All the people that was here yesterday, they was all for it,” he said. Judd is one of many artists, including musicians Dave Matthews and EmmyLou Harris, who have been outspoken about the controversial mining practice. Coal industry officials, along with many politicians and business leaders in Appalachia, say the mining is crucial to the region’s economy and a supply of affordable energy. Environmentalists counter it dumps rock and rubble into streams and destroys Appalachian mountain peaks. Rob Perks, campaign director for the environmental group National Resources Defense Council, said he found the poster of Judd to be “terribly derogatory and sexist.” “Anyone who is remotely critical of (coal industry) practices, particularly the most extreme strip mining on the planet, immediately has their character attacked,” Perks said. The golf tournament was put on for a new professional basketball team in Pikeville, the East Kentucky Energy. Hughes said he planned to remove the sign Thursday and will try to find its owner.

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Bill Gates’s Dad Says `Rich People Aren’t Paying Enough’ State Income Tax

May 20, 2010

By Peter Robison May 20 (Bloomberg) — Bill Gates ’s father wants the Microsoft Corp . co-founder to pay more in income taxes. Bill Gates Sr ., a retired Washington state lawyer, supports a proposed ballot initiative that would require the state’s highest earners including himself and his son to pay an income tax. Washington now collects no personal income taxes. “Poor people and middle-income people are paying too much to support the state and rich people aren’t paying enough,” Gates Sr. said in an interview yesterday in Seattle. “That’s the starting point for me.” The proposed tax on individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and couples earning more than $400,000 would raise $1 billion a year to fund education and health care. While targeting the highest earners, the measure would ease the burden on homeowners with a 20 percent reduction in state property taxes and eliminate the business-and-occupation tax for 80 percent of enterprises in the state, backers say. Proponents begin collecting signatures today to put proposed Initiative 1098 on the state’s November ballot, amid opposition from critics who say a new tax will discourage spending and investment. “The last thing our state needs is more job-killing taxes in the middle of a recession,” said Luke Esser , chairman of the state Republican Party. Flat-Rate Proposal Gates Sr., 84, turned to philanthropy and social causes after retiring from the Seattle law firm Preston Gates & Ellis LLP in 1998. He chaired a state panel that recommended introducing a flat-rate personal income tax in 2002 to reduce the state sales tax and eliminate property taxes, and advocated estate taxes in a book he co-authored, “Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes” (Beacon Press, 2003). People in the bottom fifth of the state’s tax brackets pay 16 percent of their income toward state and local taxes, while those in the top 1 percent pay only 2.5 percent, he said. “It’s just not fair,” he said. Education in the state is languishing, with spending per pupil ranking No. 46 in the country, Gates Sr. said. Money raised in the initiative would go into a trust fund to increase teacher salaries, pay for new buildings, support early learning and reverse cuts to state universities, Gates Sr. said. The proceeds also would fund public health and long-term care for seniors. Furniture Store Gates Sr.’s own father owned a furniture store in Bremerton, Washington, an hour’s ferry ride from Seattle. While his father was comfortable, “he was not making a lot of money and I think the credits we’ve provided in this initiative would have probably taken him out from under paying anything,” Gates Sr. said. His son, William H. Gates III, whose net worth was estimated at $53 billion by Forbes magazine in March, ranking him as the world’s second-richest person, hasn’t decided whether to support the initiative, the elder Gates said. “We’ve talked about it; he goes to the left and he goes to the right and I’m not too sure where he comes out,” Gates Sr. said. “He is the face and voice on quite a number of causes and has no anxiety to add another controversial cause to his list.” Individuals would pay a 5 percent tax on income over $200,000 and 9 percent over $500,000. Couples would pay 5 percent over $400,000 and 9 percent over $1 million. Expansion Concerns It’s only a matter of time before the income tax is expanded to other income brackets, the Seattle Times said in an April 24 editorial. It called the measure “the seed of a big, big thing” and advised: “Think twice before planting it in Washington.” The measure includes a provision that says the taxes can’t be changed without another vote, Gates Sr. said. Initiative 1098 was co-authored by the Economic Opportunity Institute , a non-profit group in Seattle, and has drawn funding from the Service Employees International Union, said Sandeep Kaushik, a spokesman for the I-1098 campaign. Gates Sr. agreed to serve as the public face, visiting business groups and unions to solicit support. “Anywhere there are more than three people who will sit and listen to me,” Gates Sr. said. To contact the writer on this story: Peter Robison in Seattle at robison@bloomberg.net .

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FedEx Ally Corker Blocks Senate Aviation Measure in Fight With UPS, Unions

March 6, 2010

By John Hughes March 6 (Bloomberg) — Senator Bob Corker , who represents FedEx Corp. ’s home state of Tennessee, is blocking aviation- funding legislation over the prospect that language may be added later helping unions organize at the company. Corker’s action extends a years-long fight in Washington between the mostly non-union FedEx and its unionized rival United Parcel Service Inc. over how workers at both companies should be treated under U.S. labor laws. The dispute is over a measure reauthorizing funds for the Federal Aviation Administration. “We are supportive of the Senate FAA bill, but we have placed a hold until we can be assured that the controversial FedEx provision will not be included in the final legislation,” Laura Lefler Herzog, a spokeswoman for Corker, a Republican, said today in an e-mailed statement. A version of the $53.5 billion measure passed by the House last year would place the FedEx workers under the same federal labor law that covers UPS workers represented by the Teamsters union. That law lets workers vote locally to join unions rather than being forced to conduct a national union election. While the measure awaiting Senate action doesn’t include the labor language, FedEx and Corker want to be sure the provision doesn’t make it into an eventual reconciliation of the House and Senate bills. “UPS clearly wants the FAA bill to move forward in the Senate and thinks it’s unreasonable to be held up for reasons that aren’t even in the Senate bill,” said Malcolm Berkley, a UPS spokesman. The House bill’s labor provision “removes special treatment currently provided to FedEx under the current application of the law,” he said. Seeking Accord Senate leaders usually seek to reach an accord with a senator putting a hold on a bill. Lawmakers can overcome objections from individual lawmakers with 60 votes, though that process can take several days. FedEx has said the union provision would raise its costs, amounting to a bailout of competitor UPS by Congress. Pilots, who belong to the Air Line Pilots Association , are the only major worker group represented by a union among FedEx’s 290,000 employees and contractors. UPS has said the proposal would even the playing field with UPS’s union workforce. UPS is the biggest employer of Teamsters , with about 240,000 workers. The Teamsters have been trying to organize FedEx ground workers for years. UPS, the world’s largest package-delivery company, is based in Atlanta. Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx is the world’s largest cargo airline. FedEx rose 59 cents to $86.95 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading and has climbed 4.2 percent this year. UPS increased 29 cents to $59.49 and has risen 3.7 percent this year. To contact the reporters on this story: John Hughes in Washington at jhughes5@bloomberg.net .

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FedEx Ally Corker Blocks Senate Aviation Measure in Fight With UPS, Unions

March 6, 2010

By John Hughes March 6 (Bloomberg) — Senator Bob Corker , who represents FedEx Corp. ’s home state of Tennessee, is blocking aviation- funding legislation over the prospect that language may be added later helping unions organize at the company. Corker’s action extends a years-long fight in Washington between the mostly non-union FedEx and its unionized rival United Parcel Service Inc. over how workers at both companies should be treated under U.S. labor laws. The dispute is over a measure reauthorizing funds for the Federal Aviation Administration. “We are supportive of the Senate FAA bill, but we have placed a hold until we can be assured that the controversial FedEx provision will not be included in the final legislation,” Laura Lefler Herzog, a spokeswoman for Corker, a Republican, said today in an e-mailed statement. A version of the $53.5 billion measure passed by the House last year would place the FedEx workers under the same federal labor law that covers UPS workers represented by the Teamsters union. That law lets workers vote locally to join unions rather than being forced to conduct a national union election. While the measure awaiting Senate action doesn’t include the labor language, FedEx and Corker want to be sure the provision doesn’t make it into an eventual reconciliation of the House and Senate bills. “UPS clearly wants the FAA bill to move forward in the Senate and thinks it’s unreasonable to be held up for reasons that aren’t even in the Senate bill,” said Malcolm Berkley, a UPS spokesman. The House bill’s labor provision “removes special treatment currently provided to FedEx under the current application of the law,” he said. Seeking Accord Senate leaders usually seek to reach an accord with a senator putting a hold on a bill. Lawmakers can overcome objections from individual lawmakers with 60 votes, though that process can take several days. FedEx has said the union provision would raise its costs, amounting to a bailout of competitor UPS by Congress. Pilots, who belong to the Air Line Pilots Association , are the only major worker group represented by a union among FedEx’s 290,000 employees and contractors. UPS has said the proposal would even the playing field with UPS’s union workforce. UPS is the biggest employer of Teamsters , with about 240,000 workers. The Teamsters have been trying to organize FedEx ground workers for years. UPS, the world’s largest package-delivery company, is based in Atlanta. Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx is the world’s largest cargo airline. FedEx rose 59 cents to $86.95 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading and has climbed 4.2 percent this year. UPS increased 29 cents to $59.49 and has risen 3.7 percent this year. To contact the reporters on this story: John Hughes in Washington at jhughes5@bloomberg.net .

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FedEx Ally Corker Blocks Senate Aviation Bill in Fight With UPS, Unions

March 6, 2010

By John Hughes March 6 (Bloomberg) — Senator Bob Corker , who represents FedEx Corp. ’s home state of Tennessee, is blocking aviation- funding legislation over the prospect that language may be added later helping unions organize at the company. Corker’s action extends a years-long fight in Washington between the mostly non-union FedEx and its unionized rival United Parcel Service Inc. over how workers at both companies should be treated under U.S. labor laws. The dispute is over a measure reauthorizing funds for the Federal Aviation Administration. “We are supportive of the Senate FAA bill, but we have placed a hold until we can be assured that the controversial FedEx provision will not be included in the final legislation,” Laura Lefler Herzog, a spokeswoman for Corker, a Republican, said today in an e-mailed statement. A version of the $53.5 billion measure passed by the House last year would place the FedEx workers under the same federal labor law that covers UPS workers represented by the Teamsters union. That law lets workers vote locally to join unions rather than being forced to conduct a national union election. While the measure awaiting Senate action doesn’t include the labor language, FedEx and Corker want to be sure the provision doesn’t make it into an eventual reconciliation of the House and Senate bills. “UPS clearly wants the FAA bill to move forward in the Senate and thinks it’s unreasonable to be held up for reasons that aren’t even in the Senate bill,” said Malcolm Berkley, a UPS spokesman. The House bill’s labor provision “removes special treatment currently provided to FedEx under the current application of the law,” he said. Seeking Accord Senate leaders usually seek to reach an accord with a senator putting a hold on a bill. Lawmakers can overcome objections from individual lawmakers with 60 votes, though that process can take several days. FedEx has said the union provision would raise its costs, amounting to a bailout of competitor UPS by Congress. Pilots, who belong to the Air Line Pilots Association , are the only major worker group represented by a union among FedEx’s 290,000 employees and contractors. UPS has said the proposal would even the playing field with UPS’s union workforce. UPS is the biggest employer of Teamsters , with about 240,000 workers. The Teamsters have been trying to organize FedEx ground workers for years. UPS, the world’s largest package-delivery company, is based in Atlanta. Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx is the world’s largest cargo airline. FedEx rose 59 cents to $86.95 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading and has climbed 4.2 percent this year. UPS increased 29 cents to $59.49 and has risen 3.7 percent this year. To contact the reporters on this story: John Hughes in Washington at jhughes5@bloomberg.net .

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Mad Housewife, Billion-Mark Note, Klee Renew Tired Bauhaus at MoMA: Review

November 16, 2009

Review by James S. Russell Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) — Marcel Breuer’s tubular-steel chairs and the glass-walled buildings copied from Walter Gropius are everywhere. Can a retrospective on the Bauhaus — the art school that nurtured such work — say anything new? At New York’s Museum of Modern Art, “Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity” shatters the tidy narrative of industrialized progress constructed by its chief exponents and abetted by historians, though it doesn’t attempt to account for the horrors perpetrated under the Modernist banner. The familiar Bauhaus aesthetic is all crisp, platonic geometries, machined surfaces and forms in space. Step into the first gallery at MoMA and you think you’ve entered a mad monastery. The spinning shapes of the painting “Ascent and Resting Point,” by Johannes Itten, an influential Bauhaus teacher, evoke a feverish spirituality. Pottery, woodcuts and hand-bound books suggest a craft guild more than the industry-obsessed art school it later became. Gropius conceived the Bauhaus from the merger of a state art academy and an applied-arts school in Weimar, Germany. The diverse and tentative works of the school’s initial years reflect the early 20th century’s welter of art movements. Bauhauslers tried to make sense of a war-torn world of rapid industrialization and seismic economic upheaval. Beset by perpetual money problems and vilified for left- wing politics, the school lasted a mere 14 years. It went through three directors and moved twice. Gropius soon began sidelining craft as he sought a unity of art and industrial technique. Reunification Itten didn’t fit in and he left in 1923, yet his influence lived on in the lovely color studies he asked his students to make. Look at the delicate compositions by Paul Klee and room- color schemes that anticipate the monumental calm of Minimalism. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy is well-represented in geometric canvasses. With German reunification, curators Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman have been able to obtain rarely seen objects. Subtle variations in texture soften the striking geometries of textiles. Typewriter numbers and slashes delicately pattern beautiful wallpapers. Impish Surrealism draws the eye to photomontages.     Gropius moved toward industrial technique in part to raise cash he desperately needed. His partnerships with ceramics workshops and light-fixture makers weren’t profitable, but they produced the famous tea sets and tubular-steel chairs. You can buy the Bauhaus Table Lamp by Carl J. Jucker and Wilhelm Wagenfeld in the museum shop . Hyperinflation The convulsive struggles between the left-wingers of the Weimar and the rightists who would coalesce under Hitler buffeted the school. Type designer Herbert Bayer’s handsome billion-mark note reminds viewers of the era’s ravaging hyperinflation. The industrial aesthetic could become obsessive. A vintage film shows a housewife robotically slamming dishes into the ultra-functional cabinets of her modern kitchen. It evokes the obsessions to come. The school spread its influence through its second home in Dessau, a 1926 complex Gropius composed of intersecting platonic solids in glass and white plaster. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe , whose classic chairs are displayed, struggled to hold the Bauhaus together under rising Nazism. He failed, and later unsuccessfully sought work from the regime. Under Mies, visionary urban planner Ludwig Hilberseimer drew identical factory-produced housing running all the way to the horizon. Soon we got the reality of sterile, centrally planned Soviet cities, isolating Paris suburbs, and public- housing towers that deadened American urban renewal. Pan Am Bloat Gropius moved to the U.S., ran Harvard University’s architecture school and plopped the bloated Pan Am building in front of Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. The backlash against assembly-line buildings and cities came, and relegated the Bauhaus largely to museum gift shops. Yet Bauhaus proteges also expanded cities to accommodate modern life, poking green parks into dank Amsterdam, economically sheltering Europe’s ill-housed millions from Stockholm to Vienna — efforts that had to be made and largely succeeded. Bergdoll and Dickerman don’t set out any revisionist view of the Bauhaus legacy. The result is to resuscitate the aesthetic and play down the controversial, socially grounded aspirations of the Bauhaus and Modernism. They let the Bauhaus breathe outside the agendas of advocates and skeptics — if that’s possible. “Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity” is on view until Jan. 25 at the Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St. in New York. Information: +1-212-708-9400; http://www.moma.org/visit . ( James S. Russell is Bloomberg’s U.S. architecture critic. The opinions expressed are his own.) To contact the writer of this column: James S. Russell in New York at jamesrussell@earthlink.net .

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Placement firm boss earned millions after CalPERS investment (The Sacramento Bee)

November 4, 2009

Alfred Villalobos, the controversial businessman at the heart of a pension fund corruption probe, earned some $9.6 million in fees after CalPERS invested hundreds of millions of dollars with a real estate firm with deep ties to downtown Sacramento. More:  Placement firm boss earned millions after CalPERS investment (The Sacramento Bee)

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Recession in U.S. May Erase Previous Expansion’s Jobs, Goldman Sachs Says

October 7, 2009

By Carlos Torres Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) — For the first time in three decades, a U.S. recession may wipe out all the jobs created during the previous expansion, according to Ed McKelvey , a senior economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York. Pending payroll revisions and the likelihood that employment will keep dropping in coming months mean the 8.3 million jobs created from 2003 through 2007 will be lost, McKelvey wrote in an Oct. 6 note to clients. The only other time that’s happened in the post-World War II era was during the “aborted” recovery sandwiched between the 1980 and 1981-82 recessions, McKelvey said. “The current situation is obviously quite different,” he wrote. The payroll count in September stood just 1.13 million above the August 2003 trough reached in the aftermath of the 2001 contraction. About 824,000 more jobs may be subtracted from the count for the 12 months through last March when the figures are officially revised early next year, a preliminary Labor Department estimate showed last week. Goldman’s research shows a “loose” relationship between the direction of that revision and adjustments to payrolls in the following months, McKelvey said. “Coupled with the size of the upcoming revisions, this suggests fairly strongly that the benchmark revision next February is likely to include a downgrade of the trend in payrolls since March,” he wrote. 300,000 ‘Cushion’ With a “cushion” of only about 300,000 remaining, the probability is “high” that all the jobs created during the expansion will be lost, he said. A Labor Department official last week attributed the projected change in the employment count to the inability of the government’s statistical projections, known as the birth/death model, to measure swings during intense contractions such as the one that occurred in the first three months of this year. The calculation tries to estimate how many jobs are created by newly formed companies and how many are lost as businesses go out of business, two groups the government has difficulty sampling. McKelvey said that doesn’t mean the model should be scrubbed. “It does, after all, do well in most years,” he wrote. “But it does suggest that efforts to take account of the cyclical nature of net business formation could improve the performance of this controversial process.” To contact the reporter on this story: Carlos Torres in Washington ctorres2@bloomberg.net

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