Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group that works to cast doubt on the scientific consensus around the reality and seriousness of manmade global warming, was scheduled to hold a town hall meeting today in Fort Myers, Fla. and another on Friday in West Palm Beach.

Ironically enough, the group was forced to postpone those meetings due to Tropical Storm Fay, which flooded Central Florida today. Scientists have warned that global warming is intensifying hurricanes and other storms.

AFP was established in 2003 with funding from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, which is run by the billionaire brothers behind Koch Industries -- the nation's largest privately held oil company. It's currently wrapping up a "Hot Air Tour" designed to challenge what it calls "global warming alarmism."

(Photo from Americans for Prosperity website)

Labels: Climate Change, climate change skeptics, Florida, hurricanes

As Facing South previously reported, Louisiana’s Governor Bobby Jindal made an important commitment last week to spending a billion dollars in state funds on coastal restoration and protection projects in the coming years.

But many coastal activists continue to point out that in order to restore the coast and to fully protect Gulf communities, much larger investments will have to be made. Since oil and gas companies have played an integral part in destroying Louisiana’s coastline, these activists argue that these companies should have to pay up to restore it.

Yesterday, a group of environmentalists demanded that Shell Oil Co. “fix the coast you broke” when they attempted to deliver the corporation a bill for $362 million for the cost of restoring wetlands that the company has destroyed, reports the Times-Picayune.

Dredging by oil companies such as Shell has contributed to erosion of the coast, leaving the region more vulnerable to hurricanes. The coalition of activists from grassroots groups such as Gulf Restoration Network and Advocates for Environmental Human Rights called on Shell to pay the money to the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Trust Fund, where it could be added to other offshore drilling revenue to help rebuild wetlands and build levees.

The Gulf Restoration Network reported in their blog:

The current estimate to fix Louisiana’s coast and secure our communities is $50 billion, but taxpayers can’t and shouldn’t shoulder that burden alone. Coastal scientists estimate that oil and gas companies have caused 40-60% of the coastal land loss Louisiana is experiencing. Shell has played a major role in placing us in this precarious position, and should be a part of the financial solution.
…
According to records from the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, Shell Oil has dredged 8.8 million cubic yards of pipeline since 1983. These activities alone have caused the loss of 22,624 acres of wetlands in the last 25 years.
…
We feel the current situation in southern Louisiana informs the national debate around expanding offshore drilling on the Atlantic and Pacific Coast. Increased off-shore drilling would be detrimental to coastal communities, which is clear in the case of Louisiana. Decades of oil and gas activity along the coast have left the Mississippi River’s once mighty delta a pale comparison of its former glory.

Labels: coastal protection, environment, environmental health, Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, louisiana, offshore drilling, oil industry, shell oil, wetlands

It's been the sort of week that probably makes Duke Energy chief Jim Rogers feel he's earned his $9.9 million annual salary, what with all the trouble he's had to deal with.

Yesterday the chairman, president and CEO of the Charlotte, N.C.-based energy giant appeared before the North Carolina Utilities Commission and faced a grilling over his company's proposed Save-a-Watt energy efficiency initiative. The voluntary program would offer interested customers financial incentives to buy energy-efficient appliances and to take other steps to reduce energy consumption. But all Duke customers would finance the initiative through their monthly bills -- including low-income families who couldn't afford the more costly appliances even with incentives.

Opponents of Save-a-Watt -- which include church groups, environmental organizations, consumer advocates, businesses, municipalities, and the state attorney general -- point out that the program would cost Duke's customers more than any other efficiency program in the nation while providing only a small fraction of the energy savings. Other U.S. utilities and municipalities operating energy efficiency programs average 11 percent efficiency, but Duke's Save-a-Watt anticipates only a 1.8 percent savings by 2015 -- at which time the savings would begin to drop.

At the same time, the program would provide unusually generous financial rewards to Duke. The commission's Public Staff has estimated that Save-a-Watt would earn a 61 percent return for the company, which would collect $18.23 for promoting an energy-efficient light bulb that retails for $1.65. Under examination yesterday by Assistant Attorney General Len Green, Rogers acknowledged the program would produce a 35 percent to 40 percent return after corporate income taxes, which the CEO described as "an appropriate incentive." The Public Staff has suggested a return of 6.8 percent would be more appropriate.

Duke appears to be growing increasingly desperate to defend Save-a-Watt from its critics. The company's attorneys have approached some of the program's opponents to try to negotiate compromises. In addition, Rogers made a surprise announcement at yesterday's hearing, saying Duke would be willing to plow profits back into the program for several years.

But at least some of the opponents are unimpressed. "Save-a-Watt is not about saving energy," said Jim Warren of the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, one of the groups formally opposing the program. "It's a P.R. cover so Duke can keep building power plants."

Meanwhile, N.C. WARN and the other Save-a-Watt opponents offered up their own surprise yesterday: They filed a motion with the Utilities Commission to establish an independently administered energy efficiency program in North Carolina they're calling NC SAVE$.

"You have heard about Robin Hood -- Duke's Save-a-Watt proposal is the 'hood getting robbed," Rev. Melvin Whitley of ACORN's Durham, N.C. chapter said at a press conference announcing the proposal. "We need an independent energy efficiency nonprofit such as NC SAVE$ to protect the poor."


Meanwhile, Duke Energy reached an out-of-court settlement over the weekend with a former employee who claimed he was fired after raising concerns about legally murky payments the utility made to some of its biggest customers in an effort to discourage them from opposing a rate hike in Ohio, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.

John Deeds, the former employee, filed a lawsuit in 2005 accusing Cinergy -- which Duke acquired that same year -- of retaliating against him for questioning the legality of secret deals the company signed with 22 large customers including Procter & Gamble, AK Steel, General Electric and others. Duke paid those companies a total of about $22 million a year between 2005 and 2008, according to the paper.

Duke had tried to conceal the identities of the companies, arguing that the deals contained trade secrets. The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio also refused to fully disclose the contracts, but a judge last week ordered their release after The Enquirer asked for them.

While Duke Energy has said the contracts were legitimate "option agreements" to keep it from losing big customers to competitors, Deeds and others have called them "sham" transactions that broke Ohio's law against utilities paying rebates to one group of customers at the expense of another. The rate hike in question boosted Duke's residential power costs by around 30 percent.

The contracts are still the subject of a federal class action lawsuit that claims the payments were kickbacks Duke/Cinergy made in exchange for the companies agreeing not to oppose the rate increase.

The CEO of Cinergy at the time the secret deals were made?

Jim Rogers.

Labels: Duke Energy, Jim Rogers, NCWARN, Save-a-Watt

Rates of obesity continued to rise across the country during the past year, according to a report released Tuesday by Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The report found that Mississippi's adult obesity rate is 31.7% - the highest in the nation. This year, two more states weighed in with obesity rates of more than 30 percent – West Virginia at 30.6 percent and Alabama at 30.1 percent. Finishing off the top five are Louisiana at 29.5% and South Carolina at 29.2%.

Rates in the rest of the South continue to rise. The survey, which reports a continued correlation between poverty and obesity, as well as a geographic correlation, found that:

Obesity and obesity-related disease rates remain the highest in Southern states. Nine of the top 10 most obese states were in the South. In addition, all 10 states with the highest rates of diabetes and hypertension, 9 of the 10 states with the highest rates of physical inactivity, and 8 of the 10 states with the highest rates of poverty are in the South.

The report calls on the federal government to convene partners from state and local governments, businesses, communities, and schools to create and implement a realistic policy framework, including taking such steps as:

• Investing in effective community-based disease-prevention programs that promote increased physical activity and good nutrition;
  
• Improving the nutritional quality of foods available in schools and childcare programs;
  
• Increasing the amount and quality of physical education and activity in schools and childcare programs;
  
• Increasing access to safe, accessible places for physical activity in communities.
  
• Improving access to affordable nutritious foods by providing incentives for grocery stores and farmers' markets to locate in underserved communities
  

Labels: Alabama, health disparities, louisiana, mississippi, public health, South Carolina, west virginia

An editorial in today’s NOLA Times-Picayune applauds the financial commitment being made to protect Louisiana’s coast. Last week, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal announced plans for more than $1 billion in coastal protection and restoration projects in Louisiana - the largest investment in coastal protection in Louisiana history, reported the Environmental News Service.

Today’s Times-Picayune editorial states that:

There are hardly more important goals for Louisiana's long-term future than rebuilding our coast and improving hurricane protection -- and it's heartening that state officials are committing serious money to those efforts.
...
Louisiana has only a few years to reverse coastal erosion before it is too late. Our state is putting money down to do its part -- and Congress needs to do the same.

The projects represent "one of the largest public works efforts in the world," according to Governor Jindal. In funding the more than 150 possible projects, $300 million will go toward levee repair alone in order to meet a 2011 deadline and another $70 million will be used for floodgates, beaches and marshes.

Coastal activists have long called for more state and federal attention and funding to go toward protecting wetlands in the United States. The devastation wrought by the 2005 hurricanes brought attention to the environmental crisis on Louisiana's coast, whose wetlands are disappearing into the Gulf of Mexico at alarming rates. Louisiana’s 4,600 square miles of coastal wetlands are lost at a rate of about 35 square miles annually, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Many experts say that healthier wetlands and the natural buffers they create could have provided more protection to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast during the 2005 hurricanes.

For a long time, there has been a tension between coastal protection and levee construction in terms of funding priorities. But many environmentalists and coastal activists see the new spending plan as a step in the right direction to supporting both needs.

“We have always said that, in order to keep Louisiana safe, we need both to strengthen the levees we have now and restore the wetlands and coastal areas that serve as our natural hurricane barriers,” Paul Harrison, coastal Louisiana project manager for Environmental Defense Fund, told the Times-Picayune. “This new plan fulfills both of those priorities.”

Photo of wetlands from Gulf Restoration Network.

Labels: coastal protection, Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, levees, louisiana, wetlands

It's now been over two months since Sen. Barack Obama officially clinched the Democratic Party nomination. In terms of sizing up the presidential race, that means we now have 10 weeks of poll data to figure out how McCain and Obama fare in a pure head-to-head match-up.

By taking the averages of these polls and seeing the trend lines over time, we get a sense -- better than any individual snap-shot poll -- of how each candidate's chances are shaping up. Call it that despised word of the primaries, "momentum."

So which way are Southern states moving? Using the polling averages used over at Pollster.com, some clear categories emerge:

SOUTHERN STATES MOVING IN OBAMA'S FAVOR

The best example of this is Virginia. Most polls show the VA race as tight, but the trend lines show the state is moving in Obama's direction:

The other big one in this category is Florida. McCain remains slightly ahead, but what's more interesting is how much Obama has gained on him over the last few months:

Obama's poll numbers have also been on the rise in Alabama, Arkansas and even Kentucky -- but he's likely starting in too deep of a hole in those states to close the gap by election time.

SOUTHERN STATES MOVING IN MCCAIN'S FAVOR

McCain leads in most Southern states, but there are few where his lead is actually expanding/. The one notable exception: South Carolina, where a couple early polls had shown a potentially close race. Not many polls have been done in SC since, but those available show McCain's lead growing -- more from a drop in Obama's support than from any gains on McCain's part:


WHAT ABOUT THE REST?

There isn't much movement in other Southern states, where McCain largely has a comfortable lead. What's interesting is that in no Southern state except North Carolina have McCain's numbers been going up -- he leads in the other 12 Southern states because he started out with a huge advantage, or because Obama's ratings have also fallen or leveled off (for example, Georgia).

So what about North Carolina? The Tar Heel state is unique to Southern states in that, while Obama has actually gained some ground, McCain has kept the state in the GOP column because he has also boosted his numbers:

Also: Gallup has a new round of numbers out, broken down by region. Interestingly, the only take-away in terms of trends is that the race is about where it was in June in the South and West. In the East, McCain's slightly gained; in the Midwest, Obama.

Labels: Alabama, arkansas, barack obama, Election 2008, Florida, Georgia, john mccain, louisiana, mississippi, north carolina, polls, South Carolina, Tennessee, texas, virginia

There's been a barrage of bad news on the economic front this week, with inflation growing at the fastest rate in 17 years, average weekly wages posting the the biggest year-over-year decline since November 1990, and the number of people receiving unemployment benefits at the highest level in almost five years.

Not surprisingly, the downward slide is taking a toll on pets, with shelters from Massachusetts to California reporting a surge in animals given up by families no longer able to afford their care.

Animal shelters across the South are also feeling the effects of the struggling economy, with the SPCA in Wake County, N.C. reporting what it calls a "dramatic increase" in surrendered animals over the past two months. In an effort to stem the tide of homeless pets, the organization announced that it's opening a pet food pantry that will provide a month's supply to people in need.

"For many families, a month's supply of pet food can mean the difference between keeping their pet or having to leave their pet at an animal shelter," said spokesperson Mondy Lamb. "And for many pets, staying in their home and out of an animal shelter can mean the difference between life and death."

The Wake SPCA hopes that drawing in people with offers of free pet food will also boost use of the organization's spay/neuter clinic.

Across the country, other animal advocacy groups are also taking action to help pet owners weather the economic crisis. As we reported earlier this year, for example, the Humane Society of the United States has created a Foreclosure Pets Fund offering grants to local shelters, rescue groups and animal control agencies for programs that help cash-strapped families care for their pets.

Labels: economy, friday dogblogging, poverty

Earlier this week federal investigators raided and seized documents from the New Orleans Affordable Homeownership Corporation, the city-chartered and city-financed nonprofit that ran a home-remediation program in 2006 and 2007. The grand jury issued a subpoena last week allowing investigators to collect documents related to NOAH’s finances, client files and records of payments to contractors. As the Times-Picayune reported:

The city nonprofit has been under intense scrutiny for the past several weeks, as news reports raised questions about whether its contractors billed taxpayers for work they didn't perform on blighted New Orleans homes.

…some of the homes listed on NOAH work sheets were in fact gutted by volunteer groups, records show. Meanwhile, more than 100 of the 870 properties that the agency's contractors claim to have remediated have since been torn down. Neighbors have said that some of the demolished homes were not cleaned up at all before they were razed, though taxpayers were billed for the service.

National news has credited the work of industrious New Orleans bloggers in breaking open the investigation into NOAH. A story in yesterday’s New York Times focuses on how New Orleans activist and blogger Karen Gadbois broke the NOAH story on her site “Squandered Heritage.” A few months ago Gadbois discovered that NOAH did not appear to actually be fixing up the houses it was supposed to be working on.

The New York Times explains that Gadbois’ work has:

…set off a bomb that has exploded in slow motion [in New Orleans] in the past three weeks, largely thanks to Ms. Gadbois: the federally financed program to gut and repair the storm-damaged homes of the poor and elderly, on which the city spent $1.8 million, has been exposed as — at least partly — a sham.

“Last year at this time we were working feverishly on the issue of the illegal demolition of people’s homes,” Gadbois wrote on her site on August 1st. “This year we have been working just as feverishly on the nonexistent home-gutting program.”

According to the New York Times:

Taking their cues from Ms. Gadbois, WWL and The Times-Picayune have documented business connections between the program’s former director, Stacey Jackson, and some of its contractors, one of whom was [New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin]’s brother-in-law. The reports showed houses that were supposedly fixed up at the taxpayers’ expense but in fact were untouched, contractors who billed the city for gutting work that was actually done by church volunteers, “remediated” houses that were then demolished and poor and elderly residents mystified at turning up on the city’s list of those supposedly helped. Some of the houses did not belong to the poor and the elderly at all, but were actually owned by businessmen or landlords.

Mayor Ray Nagin tried to deny the legitimacy of Gadbois’ investigation. He said the claims that federal money had been misspent on work never done were “completely untrue,” and he then complained about “amateur investigations.” He even criticized local reporters as “reckless” for following up on Gadbois’ discoveries, accusing reporters of “hurting the city’s recovery.” A few days later, however, he admitted there were “documentation issues” and “discrepancies” in NOAH’s remediation program, reports the New York Times.

Labels: blogging, Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, new orleans, ray nagin

Murder and attempted-murder charges against seven New Orleans police officers—accused of shooting unarmed civilians on the Danziger Bridge in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina—were tossed out by a judge who concluded that a prosecutor violated grand jury secrecy, the Times-Picayune reports.

According to the Times-Picayune, District Judge Raymond Bigelow agreed with defense arguments that prosecutors violated state law by divulging secret grand jury testimony to a police officer who was a witness in the case. Assistant District Attorney Robert White said his office would analyze the rulings and will look at various options to possibly revive the charges, including an appeal or a new grand jury.

The notorious Danziger Bridge incident took place six days after Katrina struck New Orleans. The police had been accused of shooting pedestrians on the bridge, killing two men and severely wounding four others. The pedestrians were shot multiple times, and one woman had an arm partially blown off.

Facing South reported on the Danziger Bridge officers’ December 2006 indictment following the lengthy grand jury investigation. The Institute for Southern Studies also discussed the shooting in our special report, Hurricane Katrina and the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, in a section outlining human rights abuses involving Katrina survivors and criminal justice authorities in the wake of the hurricane. As we reported in 2007:

While police claim they were shot at first, no weapons have been recovered linked to the civilians on the bridge, and the survivors insist they did nothing to provoke police. An autopsy showed that one of the people killed—a developmentally disabled 40-year-old named Ronald Madison—was shot in the back.

In civil lawsuits filed at federal court, survivors of the shooting have continued to assert they were unarmed and ambushed by the officers, who jumped from a rental truck and started shooting.

The accused officers continue to deny wrongdoing, and the police department cleared them in an internal investigation that drew criticism. According to the Times-Picayune, the investigation by the NOPD’s homicide unit was incomplete and, in many ways, questionable.

Many Katrina survivors reported instances of police misconduct in the days following the hurricane. The Danziger Bridge case has sparked outrage among the families of the victims and their supporters, who say the accused officers received preferential treatment, Reuters reports.

“Our family today still feels that the ruling just proves again that the justice system here in New Orleans is still flawed,” Romell Madison, the brother of Ronald Madison, told the Times-Picayune.

The Associated Press calls the Danziger Bridge case just the latest in a series of high-profile, emotional criminal prosecutions tied to Katrina that have fizzled, citing:

Last year a grand jury refused to charge a doctor and two nurses in connection with the deaths of four patients at a New Orleans hospital after the storm. A jury also returned a not-guilty verdict against the operators of a St. Bernard Parish nursing home where more than 30 residents died in the storm's flooding.

Labels: criminal justice, Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, Hurricane Katrina, new orleans

Fresh from his election as chair of the Southern Governors Association, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine kicked off a year-long effort this week aimed at encouraging his regional colleagues to take a more active role in reducing greenhouse gas pollution linked to climate disruption, Stateline.org reports.

Kaine's effort comes after governors' groups in the Northeast, West and Midwest have already launched efforts to limit greenhouse gas pollution. An agreement among 10 states in the Northeast, for example, will begin charging power plants for CO2 emissions starting in January. A coalition of seven Western states has crafted a broader agreement that would apply to all sources of greenhouse gas pollution, while a group of six Midwestern states is working on a similar plan. Six individual states -- none in the South -- have also placed comprehensive limits on CO2 emissions.

These state and regional initiatives come as the federal government has failed to take effective action to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. The bipartisan Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act to create a carbon cap-and-trade system failed in the U.S. Senate in June.

But not everyone thinks these initiatives are a good idea, according to Stateline:

At a February meeting of U.S. governors, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) called the idea "stupid."

"I can tell you right now, I’m against taxing carbon. People in my state pay more for gasoline right now than we want them to pay, and their electric bills are higher than we want them to be," Barbour said then.

The solutions embraced to date by the regional governors' groups do not involve actual carbon taxes, which would directly levy carbon-containing fuels at the wholesale level. Instead, these are all cap-and-trade programs involving market-based emissions trading systems.

Barbour is not alone in opposing state and regional efforts to address climate disruption: Duke Energy, the North Carolina-based company currently building a controversial new coal-fired power plant near Charlotte, also opposes them. Duke spokesperson Tom Williams told Stateline that his company wants "a national program to deal with a worldwide issue."

However, Duke Energy opposed Lieberman-Warner, which was killed by Senate Republicans in June over concerns that it would hurt the economy. According to an analysis by Clean Air Watch (pdf), Duke objected to the bill because its method of distributing emissions allowances did not give any away for free to big polluters like Duke based on their proportional share of historic CO2 emissions.

Looks like Kaine has his work cut out for him.

Labels: Cliffside, climate, Climate Change, Duke Energy, haley barbour, Jim Rogers, Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, Southern Governors Association, tim kaine

Rural America is increasingly dependent on military dollars to keep its economy afloat, according to a new report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City (pdf). Whether that's a good or bad thing depends on how you look at it.

The report is mostly upbeat. Noting that "the $660 billion our nation spent on defense in 2007 was the most since 1945," it finds that rural areas have been the biggest beneficiary of defense dollars:

This rise in national defense spending has boosted many rural economies, where the military is now sometimes the most important and fastest-growing part of the local economy.

The two biggest gains have come from (1) military personnel stationed at bases, and (2) defense contracts. The impact? "These two aspects of defense spending have accounted for more than 4 percent of total rural U.S. economic growth."

The report mentions eight Southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia) that have seen big influxes of military money.

It's hard to argue higher defense spending has helped certain areas -- but is that a good thing? The report mentions few of the down sides that come with a town or region hitching its economic fortunes to war.

In the Institute's report "North Carolina at War" published last year, we looked at some of the downsides of being dependent on the war economy:

* North Carolinians have suffered heavily from casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2007 alone, 21 soldiers from North Carolina bases have been killed, including five members of Fort Bragg’s 82 Airborne in a March 5 bomb explosion in Samarra, Iraq. 74 service members born in North Carolina have died in the wars since 2002.

* The state report claims North Carolina stands to gain economically from a state of “permanent war,” but defense dollars aren’t free. Two leading economists put the total price tag of the Iraq wars at $2 trillion. According to a budget watchdog group, North Carolina taxpayers alone have already paid $12.3 billion for the two wars.

* Official reports also fail to account for the instability and costs of military politics: base towns rise and fall with ever-shifting troop deployments; decisions about base sizes and defense contracts often hinge on back-room Washington deal-making; and military-dependent states are often devastated when national priorities shift to a “peacetime” economy.

* The state’s international reputation has been jeopardized by mounting evidence of complicity in “extraordinary rendition” flights that ship terror suspects to countries with lax torture laws for interrogation. The Johnston County Airport is now the target of prosecutors in Germany and Italy, and a U.S. federal lawsuit, for its ties to what human rights groups call “torture taxis;” 20 state legislators have called on Gov. Mike Easley to investigate the issue.

There's also the prospect -- encouraging, one hopes -- that the country will engage in fewer wars in the future, meaning less resources. The Bank acknowledges that reality, but through 2025 foresees "solid growth" in military spending to offset these problems:

To be sure, relying too heavily on military spending for economic sustainability comes with some risks. In particular, any reductions in local defense activity -- such as through base realignments -- can have devastating effects on smaller areas. In addition, and depending on the area involved, there may potentially be more productive long-term uses of land and other resources than military bases. Still, the more stable expectations for military personnel growth than for other types of defense spending heading forward should provide some assurances for many rural areas involved in defense.

But if the business of war is doing well, doesn't that mean the business of peace and diplomacy is failing?

Labels: defense contractors, federal reserve bank of kansas city, military, military spending, north carolina, rural south, south at war

A note to Facing South readers: this week, we made our 2,500th post to the blog since launching in spring 2005.

We launched Facing South to offer a take on the South you can't find anywhere else. Over the last 3 1/2 years, we've broken important stories and stimulated critical debates about the South's future.

As we've hinted before, we're in the process of expanding Facing South's coverage and will be able to unveil our new online media efforts soon.

In the meantime, thanks for reading and for your support.

-- The Editors

Labels: facing south

The Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record reports that Wal-Mart's federal political action committee, the retailer's political arm, has been expanding its donations to candidates seeking North Carolina state office, including $54,000 to state-level candidates during the current election cycle.

According to the News & Record, in North Carolina, the PAC seems to support candidates with business-friendly reputations:

Of the 52 North Carolina state-level candidates to whom the PAC has given in the election cycle, recipients include Sen. Phil Berger, a Republican who represents Rockingham County and parts of Guilford County; Rep. Nelson Cole, a Reidsville Democrat; Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat; and Rep. Hugh Holliman, a Lexington Democrat.

But Wal-Mart is not only stepping up its involvement in state-level policy-making. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company has been holding mandatory meetings with store managers and department heads, encouraging them to oppose the election of Barack Obama and to vote against Democrats in U.S. Senate campaigns because of concerns over pro-labor union legislation. The Wall-Street Journal reported:

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers ... make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

Wal-Mart continues to face scrutiny for its aggressive anti-union activity, policies that include shutting down the few stores where employees have been able to start organizing drives and firing many others for union activity. This latest anti-union activity surrounds Wal-Mart's fear that Democrats will resurrect the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that, if passed, would make it much easier and quicker for employees to unionize. Wal-Mart, alongside other large corporations, has been putting heavy funds and resources into lobbying against the passage of the EFCA.

"We believe EFCA is a bad bill and we have been on record as opposing it for some time," David Tovar, a Wal-Mart spokesman, told the Wall Street Journal. "We feel educating our associates about the bill is the right thing to do."

Labels: labor, lobbyists, north carolina, wal-mart, workers' rights

The shrimping industry in the Gulf Coast continues to suffer post-Hurricane Katrina. The 2005 hurricanes, rising fuel prices, and foreign competition has put the industry “at the center of a perfect storm that just won’t quit” reports USA Today this week.

The devastation wrought by the 2005 hurricanes caused severe damage to the shrimping industry’s local infrastructure. Louisiana had an estimated $120 million in damages to its shrimping sector, and Mississippi’s estimated $134 million damages hit shrimpers hard, according to USA Today.

Rebuilding continues to be hampered by rising fuel prices. According to local Texas paper, The Brazosport Facts, rising fuel costs combined with the rising flood of foreign competition has led to a massive decline in the numbers of shrimpers in Gulf Coast waters. As The Facts and USA Today report:

• Licenses to catch shrimp in the Gulf have dropped 60 percent over the past 12 years. Both Louisiana and Mississippi have seen declines in the number of state-issued commercial shrimp-gear licenses. In Louisiana, the number dropped from 22,188 in 2000 to 12,590 in 2007. Mississippi issued 1,069 licenses in 2000 and only 530 last year.
• Since 2000, shrimpers have been threatened by an influx of cheaper shrimp from foreign countries. Shrimp from countries like Thailand, Brazil, China, India, Ecuador and Vietnam account for about 95 percent of the market. These imports continue to force a dramatic drop in the per-pound price of local shrimp.

Labels: economy, Gulf Coast, Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, louisiana, mississippi, shrimping industry, texas

The Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group for the U.S. nuclear industry, is in the process of selecting at least two rural U.S. communities to serve as potential dump sites for highly radioactive spent fuel from the nation's nuclear power plants.

The NEI refuses to identify the communities being considered or even say what region they're in. But while a representative of the group has said New England is not a candidate, he refuses to say the same about the South.

"We're in a very preliminary stage," Marshall Cohen, who's heading NEI's selection process, tells Facing South. "It's not appropriate to characterize geography yet."

Cohen recently disclosed to a reporter from Connecticut that her region was not home to the communities being considered, according to Linda Gunter of the Maryland-based watchdog group Beyond Nuclear. NEI initially considered seven sites and narrowed the choice to two, Beyond Nuclear reports. The communities under consideration already have nuclear installations of some kind.

The sites would serve as storage facilities for the spent fuel currently being stored on the grounds of nuclear power plants until -- and if -- the Department of Energy's controversial Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste dump opens in Nevada. Yucca Mountain was supposed to begin accepting spent fuel in 1998 but has faced numerous delays due to legal challenges and other problems. There is still no official opening date set for that facility.

In March of this year, the Las Vegas Sun reported that NEI "was quietly talking to communities across the nation to see if they are interested in hosting a temporary waste storage site -- perhaps not just a dump, but a nuclear industrial park that could support ancillary businesses and bring in jobs."

Beyond Nuclear criticizes the secretive site selection process as undemocratic.

"NEI and the two mayors should tell their communities and the neighboring towns they are being targeted for radioactive waste traffic," says Paul Gunter, Beyond Nuclear's director of reactor oversight. "This is not a decision that should be made behind closed doors but in the full light of day."

But Cohen blames Beyond Nuclear for the secrecy, alleging that if the targeted communities were disclosed the group would "immediately scare and frighten them with misinformation."

Besides, he adds, after NEI selects the sites they still have to undergo the official licensing process, which offers an opportunity for public input.

Labels: Beyond Nuclear, Nuclear Energy Institute, nuclear power, nuclear waste, Yucca Mountain