White House spokesman Ari Fleischer Wednesday night announced the initial phase of U.S. disarmament of Iraq had begun. The president addresses the nation at 10:15 EST, Fleischer said.

Earlier today, Gov. Linda Lingle announced the state security alert status will be raised from “blue” to “yellow” beginning at 3 p.m. HST today, March 19.

The governor made the decision this morning to coincide with Pres. George W. Bush’s announcement on Monday giving Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave the country at that hour.

It also follows the move by National Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to raise the federal homeland security alert status to “orange” and implement “Operation Liberty Shield.”

The governor says the heightened security level means homeland security team will implement numerous precautionary measures to increase our state’s readiness to prevent terrorist attacks, which will ultimately protect our residents and visitors, Gov. Lingle says.

“The decision to raise our security alert status was based on the best available intelligence provided by the U.S. military and the Department of Homeland Security,” Gov. Lingle adds. “Although there is still no credible or direct threat to the state of Hawaii, we are aware of increased terrorist activity worldwide due to the initiation of conflict with Iraq. It would be prudent for the citizens of Hawaii to be at this elevated level of awareness.”

Under the color-coded Hawaii Homeland Security Advisory System, the yellow condition indicates an elevated risk of a terrorist attack. The yellow level also means there will be increased surveillance of critical locations, coordination of emergency plans, assessments and further refinement of protective measures, and implementation, as appropriate, of contingency and emergency response plans. For security reasons, details of the exact measures that will be implemented are not being released.

The Hawaii Homeland Security Advisory System complements the National Security Advisory System, which provides practical guidelines for individuals, families, businesses and organizations to plan for a potential terrorist threat.

Lingle says she and her appointees are in constant communication with the federal government and are working closely with our entire Hawaii homeland security team.

That includes the military and civilian partners to implement certain planned security measures as a result of the heightened security alert status, according to Major General Robert Lee, Hawaii’s adjutant general.

“The latest intelligence indicates that there is still no credible threat to Hawaii, however, with increased threats worldwide, raising Hawaii advisory status is a prudent step to take,” he says.

The governor emphasized the importance of keeping alert, while going on with normal daily lives. She also extended her full support to America’s military men and women, who she says, like countless of brave Americans before them, stand to defend the principals of freedom and democracy for which this nation stands.

Additional information about the Hawaii and national security alert guidelines and recommendations can be viewed at:

Hawaii State Civil Defense: https://www.scd.state.hi.us/

The National Strategy For Homeland Security: Office of Homeland Security: https://www.whitehouse.gov/homeland/

American Red Cross Hawaii Chapter: https://www.hawaiiredcross.org/

Gov. Lingle’s Web Site: https://www.hawaii.gov/gov

The United States and its allies began a war of disarmament of Iraq early Thursday Baghdad time, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer announced. U.S. President George W. Bush planned to address the nation just over two hours after expiration of the deadline given Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq or face war.

“The initial phases of the disarmanent of Iraq have begun,” Fleischer said.

”Anti-aircraft guns were heard firing in Baghdad.”

Earlier, U.S. and British aircraft earlier Wednesday pounded targets in Iraq’s southern no-fly zone and dropped leaflets telling Iraqi soldiers how to surrender, a U.S. Air Force spokeswoman based at an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia told United Press International. She said the targets of the strikes were communication, artillery and air defense facilities.

Similar strikes have been carried out regularly since December 1998, but the leaflet drop was the first time that Iraqi troops have received instructions on how to avoid being harmed should the invasion begin.

The leaflets, in Arabic, advise soldiers to park their vehicles in square formations and then stay at least a kilometer away from them. It says that they should display white flags, disarm themselves and avoid approaching U.S.-led forces.

About 250,000 American, 45,000 British and 2,000 Australian troops were massed in the Persian Gulf to be used against Iraq.

On Monday, Bush gave Saddam and his two sons a 48-hour ultimatum to leave Baghdad or face war. The deadline expired at about 8 p.m. EST, or 4 a.m. Thursday Iraq time. Despite stiff opposition at the U.N. Security Council, Bush said past U.N. resolutions gave him the authority to disarm Iraq by force.

It seemed as if some Iraqi soldiers took the leaflets to heart right away. Pentagon officials told UPI that 17 had surrendered to U.S. forces Wednesday, even before the start of hostilities. They said they could not provide further details, but CNN reported the men had been taken into custody by Kuwaiti officials.

A separate news report suggested the might have started already.

The British Evening Standard newspaper reported on its Web site that British and American Special Forces were already fighting near Basra, the southern Iraqi port city that was heavily targeted in the first night of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Pentagon officials would not comment on the report.

At the White House, officials said the president — after his usual round of intelligence briefings — spent much of the day going over war plans with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, among others.

Later he sent Congress a formal notification of his plans to use military force in Iraq, saying that further diplomacy would neither adequately protect the national security of the United States nor lead to the enforcement of U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for Iraq’s disarmament of its suspected chemical and biological weapons.

The White House said there were no plans to officially mark the passage of the deadline. Spokesman Ari Fleischer could not say whether the president was seeking any type of spiritual guidance or support as he was about to give the order for war.

At some point either prior to the war or shortly after hostilities begin, Bush is expected to again speak to the nation, this time from the Oval Office.

The mood inside the executive mansion was subdued as Bush’s deadline passed.

There was no indication that the president would order immediate military action, and some areas in middle Iraq faced wind and sand storms. But the reality of military action did not seem far off. Fleischer told reporters “Americans ought to be prepared for loss of life. Americans ought to be prepared for the importance of disarming Saddam Hussein to protect the peace.”

In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair also convened a meeting of his war Cabinet, and the U.K. Foreign Office issued a warning to Britons all over the world to beware. “The risk of indiscriminate terrorist attacks in public places, including tourist sites, will be especially high during military action in Iraq,” a statement said.

Tuesday, Saddam and his eldest son, Uday, rejected Bush’s ultimatum, with Uday saying Iraqis “will make the mothers and wives of the U.S. and British invading soldiers shed blood instead of tears on their sons and husbands” if a they start a war.

The Iraqis intensified their preparations for a war, and prices of drinking water, gold and dollars rose. Ministries and government institutions were fortified with sandbags.

Hadir al-Rabie, a 37-year-old journalist, told UPI the Iraqis were also trying to access water by digging wells in their gardens.

“We are also stockpiling fuel,” said al-Rabie, but he added that he worried that “if a bomb strikes near the house, it will immediately be set on fire.”

Bush’s ultimatum Monday came at the end of two days of failing diplomacy. He and the leaders of Britain, Spain and Portugal, blunted by Russian and French veto threats in the U.N. Security Council last week, met in a hurriedly prepared summit in the Azores Sunday. They agreed that March 17 would be the last day of diplomacy in the Iraq crisis.

Monday morning, U.S. and British representatives decided against seeking a vote on the U.N. resolution that they proposed several weeks ago to try to get Security Council support for force.

The draft required nine votes in the Security Council to be approved but had only the support of the United States, Spain, Britain and Bulgaria. Six other members — Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan — were undecided. France and Russia threatened a veto. Germany, China and Syria also opposed the motion.

Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — permanent members of the panel — have veto power in the council.

The impasse at the Security Council began last September when Bush told the U.N. General Assembly to confront the “grave and gathering danger” of Iraq — or stand aside as the United States acts. In November, the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved the U.S.-sponsored Resolution 1441, which authorized the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq and “serious consequences” if Baghdad failed to cooperate.

Since then, Bush has repeatedly maintained that Saddam has lied to the international community and must be disarmed with force. He said if the world body did not act against Iraq, the United States will along with a “coalition of the willing.”

Copyright 2003 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

I was dropping my kids off at The Growing Place and I see the owner/principal, who is also my son’s first grade teacher, unloading a truck full of toys.

She explained how she was shopping at California’s newest department store, Kohls, and noticed that all Fisher Price toys were 50 percent off. So she bought $1,000 worth of toys for her school. She didn’t have to fill out any paperwork or go through a cumbersome procurement process or wait 6 months for her request to be approved — she just bought the toys and the kids will begin playing with them immediately. Unfortunately, in most public schools financial decisions at the local school level are rare and there is more at stake than just toys.

Professor William G. Ouchi and his colleagues at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management have done some excellent new work comparing management practices of large school districts and how those practices effect student achievement.

Recently members of Hawaii Gov. Lingle’s education brain trust were looking for a model to reorganize Hawaii’s school district. I sent them William Ouchi’s research and Reason Public Policy Institute Fellow and Hawaii correspondent Cliff Slater wrote a terrific column for the Honolulu Advertiser summarizing Ouchi’s work and applying it to Hawaii’s unique centralized education system.

Hawaii Education: Here’s the Answer

By Cliff Slater

With fortuitous timing for Hawaii’s legislators, Professor William G. Ouchi (one of Hawaii’s own) and his colleagues at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management have published the first ever comparative study [i] of the management practices of large school districts.

For the purpose of comparing centralized and decentralized districts, the authors chose three of each. The three centralized school districts chosen were, Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. The three decentralized districts selected were Seattle, Houston and Edmonton, Canada, which have recently changed to the type of decentralized plan that was first implemented in Edmonton in 1977.

The study essentially first determined how centralized each district was based on: (1) the relative number of employees directly controlled by the central office (many of whom may work in schools but not for the principal) [ii] ; (2) the percent of the school’s budget that is controlled by the school principal; and (3) what share of budgets reach the classroom.

Each decentralized school makes its own decisions of who to hire, how many part-time or full-time staff, which books and materials to purchase, how much to spend on electricity and computers, and how much of the budget to allocate to teacher training.

The small central office staff takes advantage of economies of scale only where it is efficient, such as handling insurance, payroll, and information technology. In addition, it monitors and audits the financial and educational results for the individual schools. Reflecting this greater local discretion, the central office also provides extensive budget training to school staff and has teams of experts available to answer questions. [iii]

The decentralized districts monitor the schools by using an “exceptions” approach, calibrating the degree of scrutiny to the past performance of a school, intervening only when they spot problems from financial and management reports.

The decentralized districts have adopted Weighted Student Funding (WSF) which provides each principal with funding arrived at by calculating, for each student, an amount that is the basic per-student allocation adjusted plus any state and federal funding available for gifted students, emotionally disabled or autistic students, poor students, and non-native English speakers.

That funding follows each student to the school they choose since these districts have all adopted a policy allowing students to attend any public school in the district.

Here are the effects of decentralization:

They found that while the school principals in centralized districts only control 10% of their budgets, those in the decentralized districts control 75%. In fact, Edmonton’s principals control 92% of their budgets. [iv]

And because each principal in these schools is responsible for, and has authority over, most of their budget, there are few excuses they can make for failures of student performance.

In Seattle, Houston, and Edmonton, the authors said they rarely met a principal who did not know the details of student achievement in every classroom, while in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, they rarely did. Nor did they know how much money was in their budgets, while in the three decentralized districts; they knew it down to the last dollar. [v]

They found that decentralized districts put more money in classrooms. For example, Los Angeles District spends only 45% of its resources in the classroom, while Edmonton, Canada, had 60.5%. Thus, if Los Angeles were as efficient as Edmonton, it would have an additional $2,200 per student annually. [vi]

Principals are easy to recruit in decentralized districts. In the centralized system principals are held responsible for student outcomes, yet they have no control over the staffing or budgets of their schools, without which they cannot take the steps that will produce improvement. Thus, principals positions are much sought after in Edmonton, Seattle, and Houston whereas recruitment has become a problem in centralized districts. [vii]

This study found superior performance for all students, particularly minority ones, in the decentralized schools.

The authors concluded that they were able to “clearly and dramatically to establish that decentralized systems give principals greater control over their resources and that these systems drive more personnel and financial resources down to schools and classrooms

I was dropping my kids off at The Growing Place and I see the owner/principal, who is also my son’s first grade teacher, unloading a truck full of toys.

She explained how she was shopping at California’s newest department store, Kohls, and noticed that all Fisher Price toys were 50 percent off. So she bought $1,000 worth of toys for her school. She didn’t have to fill out any paperwork or go through a cumbersome procurement process or wait 6 months for her request to be approved — she just bought the toys and the kids will begin playing with them immediately. Unfortunately, in most public schools financial decisions at the local school level are rare and there is more at stake than just toys.

Professor William G. Ouchi and his colleagues at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management have done some excellent new work comparing management practices of large school districts and how those practices effect student achievement.

Recently members of Hawaii Gov. Lingle’s education brain trust were looking for a model to reorganize Hawaii’s school district. I sent them William Ouchi’s research and Reason Public Policy Institute Fellow and Hawaii correspondent Cliff Slater wrote a terrific column for the Honolulu Advertiser summarizing Ouchi’s work and applying it to Hawaii’s unique centralized education system.

Hawaii Education: Here’s the Answer

By Cliff Slater

With fortuitous timing for Hawaii’s legislators, Professor William G. Ouchi (one of Hawaii’s own) and his colleagues at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management have published the first ever comparative study [i] of the management practices of large school districts.

For the purpose of comparing centralized and decentralized districts, the authors chose three of each. The three centralized school districts chosen were, Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. The three decentralized districts selected were Seattle, Houston and Edmonton, Canada, which have recently changed to the type of decentralized plan that was first implemented in Edmonton in 1977.

The study essentially first determined how centralized each district was based on: (1) the relative number of employees directly controlled by the central office (many of whom may work in schools but not for the principal) [ii] ; (2) the percent of the school’s budget that is controlled by the school principal; and (3) what share of budgets reach the classroom.

Each decentralized school makes its own decisions of who to hire, how many part-time or full-time staff, which books and materials to purchase, how much to spend on electricity and computers, and how much of the budget to allocate to teacher training.

The small central office staff takes advantage of economies of scale only where it is efficient, such as handling insurance, payroll, and information technology. In addition, it monitors and audits the financial and educational results for the individual schools. Reflecting this greater local discretion, the central office also provides extensive budget training to school staff and has teams of experts available to answer questions. [iii]

The decentralized districts monitor the schools by using an “exceptions” approach, calibrating the degree of scrutiny to the past performance of a school, intervening only when they spot problems from financial and management reports.

The decentralized districts have adopted Weighted Student Funding (WSF) which provides each principal with funding arrived at by calculating, for each student, an amount that is the basic per-student allocation adjusted plus any state and federal funding available for gifted students, emotionally disabled or autistic students, poor students, and non-native English speakers.

That funding follows each student to the school they choose since these districts have all adopted a policy allowing students to attend any public school in the district.

Here are the effects of decentralization:

They found that while the school principals in centralized districts only control 10% of their budgets, those in the decentralized districts control 75%. In fact, Edmonton’s principals control 92% of their budgets. [iv]

And because each principal in these schools is responsible for, and has authority over, most of their budget, there are few excuses they can make for failures of student performance.

In Seattle, Houston, and Edmonton, the authors said they rarely met a principal who did not know the details of student achievement in every classroom, while in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, they rarely did. Nor did they know how much money was in their budgets, while in the three decentralized districts; they knew it down to the last dollar. [v]

They found that decentralized districts put more money in classrooms. For example, Los Angeles District spends only 45% of its resources in the classroom, while Edmonton, Canada, had 60.5%. Thus, if Los Angeles were as efficient as Edmonton, it would have an additional $2,200 per student annually. [vi]

Principals are easy to recruit in decentralized districts. In the centralized system principals are held responsible for student outcomes, yet they have no control over the staffing or budgets of their schools, without which they cannot take the steps that will produce improvement. Thus, principals positions are much sought after in Edmonton, Seattle, and Houston whereas recruitment has become a problem in centralized districts. [vii]

This study found superior performance for all students, particularly minority ones, in the decentralized schools.

The authors concluded that they were able to “clearly and dramatically to establish that decentralized systems give principals greater control over their resources and that these systems drive more personnel and financial resources down to schools and classrooms

“Dick Rowland Image”

”Shoots (News, Views and Quotes)”

– Expanding Contractors

The shooting is probably just weeks away and when it starts private contractors will be helping it make it happen. This is both good and bad.

It is positive development that so many defense functions have been contracted out to the private sector. This is cheaper and more efficient, and it frees up the uniformed services to do the truly nasty stuff. The “back office” support functions can also stay up-to-date with civilian technologies and procedures rather than be relegated to some government manual for decades at a time.

The downside is that modern war — especially with a non-conventional foe — already makes little distinction between civilians and combatants. Using contractors in nearly frontline conditions blurs that boundary even more.

Right now, there is no clear understanding of how close contractors should get to the fighting. A hard and fast bright line may be impossible to find, but erring on caution should be the rule. There should be no question that the uniformed military is actually fighting the war.

Civilian support for that fighting will be direct enough in terms of repairing systems that blow things up or direct fire onto targets. If there is need for any more direct civilian involvement in combat, the U.S. might need to consider some sort of foreign legion and place contractors in the role of mercenaries. They wouldn’t exactly be within the traditional command structure, but they wouldn’t be civilians any longer either.

In the meantime, one sure growth area for contractors is the new Homeland Security department. The operation is short of help to run the infrastructure protection unit. The job transferred over from the FBI. The staff didn’t.

Sources:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24033-2003Mar1?language=printer

https://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/1832371

– Net Tax Tango

Having squandered billions in new spending in recent years, state legislatures are casting about for more revenue. Internet sales taxes, they feel, should be the new another honey pot.

Trouble is, even assuming states have the legal standing to levy taxes on transactions outside their borders, they have done next to nothing to solve the practical hurdles. Even states that are members of the Streamlined Sales Tax Project have yet to actually streamline their taxes.

Until states come to some sort of agreement on what is taxable at the state level, it will be effectively impossible to collect taxes on retail transactions. No small Web-retailer could possibly comply with the thousands of permutations of state sales taxes.

Meanwhile, many sales taxes exist not so much to raise revenue as to favor or punish particular items. Snack taxes, food exemptions, sale tax “holidays” — all show that officials like to bring a good bit of social engineering along with their revenue expectations.

They can’t have it both ways. If they want to tax out-of-state transactions, they’ll have to significantly simplify their sales levies. If they want to play favorites with certain sectors, they’ll have to kiss off whatever they think they are losing in Web-based revenue.

Source: https://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/1855941

Above articles are quoted from Reason Express 3/4/03 reasonexpress@reason.com

”Roots (Food for Thought)”

– The Grim Green Giant: The Environmentalist Establishment’s Lobbying Behemoth

By Hugo Gurdon

The 12 biggest environmental pressure groups in the United States enjoy combined annual revenues of $1.9 billion, according to recent Internal Revenue Service figures. Of 20 million corporations in the United States, only 725 can boast such an opulent income.

The green Big Twelve include some organizations that are merely left-of-center, such as the Nature Conservancy ($731 million) and the Wildlife Conservation Society ($311 million). But there are also genuinely extreme organizations that militate aggressively against new technology, the market, and property rights — like the World Wildlife Fund ($118 million) and the Sierra Club ($73 million) — to the detriment of the economy and the majority of ordinary people.

These organizations are richly financed by the developed world’s comfortable middle classes, among whom they stoke a largely romantic environmentalism that, when manifested in policy, does harm to less fortunate people everywhere. A fitting collective name for them is the Grim Green Giant — always looming, waiting to sow fear at every step of technological innovation.

The Grim Green Giant’s immense resources have allowed it to mount brilliant public relations campaigns that have moved the terms of the policy debate in its direction, successfully selling a view of economic activity as being antithetical to the public interest and the environment: that mankind can enjoy robust growth or maintain a livable planet, but cannot have both.

This is a false choice. Economic growth and prosperity are allies, not enemies, of conservation; wealth allows people to invest in the environment. But for environmental pressure groups, alarmism and doomsaying bring in far more in donations than does reasoned weighing of risks.

Radical environmentalists are not the David in the David-and-Goliath fight against evil, polluting Big Business that they like to portray — but their propaganda has convinced many otherwise.

The worst impact of the greens’ P.R. success is the policies they push. Green prescriptions are often merely sublimated socialism that, like more traditional forms of socialism, cares little for the livelihoods it wrecks along the way. The vested environmental interests get their money and the poor of the world get the shaft.

Let’s look at some examples. Genetically Modified Foods. Genetically modified (GM) crops are environmentally friendly because they reduce the need for pesticides. In 2000, for instance, the use of pest-resistant GM cotton in the United States saved 3.4 million pounds of raw materials and 1.4 million pounds of fuel oil in the manufacture and distribution of synthetic pesticides. Cotton farmers used 2.4 million gallons less fuel and 93 million gallons less water than they would have with non-modified crops.

A quarter of the corn in the U.S. commodity stream is genetically modified, and Americans have been eating it and other GM foods for years without ill effect. The risk of introducing human allergens into food is lower with genetic engineering than with conventional plant breeding because the new science is more selective about which genes it transfers from one species to another.

Yet, the Grim Green Giant has persuaded many people, particularly in Europe, that genetic engineering is creating poisonous-or at best hazardous-“Frankenfoods.” Fine. Europe wealthy enough to look after herself, and has chosen to pay too much for groceries with massive farm subsidies for years. But GM food imports are banned in Europe and this green protectionism has dire, even fatal, consequences elsewhere. Drought-stricken African countries have rejected GM corn seed for fear of losing exports to Europe, even though it would increase crop yields and afford that continent some protection against the ravages of pests and drought.

Zambian President Levey Mwanawasa, rejected milled corn from the U.S., saying: Simply because [2.4 million of] my people hungry, that is no justification to give them poison food that is intrinsically dangerous to their health.” Whatever Mr. Mwanawasa’s motives for this outrage, green alarmism is the main culprit. For instance, Sierra Club calls for “a moratorium on planting of all genetically engineered crops, including those now approved.” This, acknowledges the Club, is “in accordance with the Precautionary Principle,” which calls for the prevention of any new activity that may harm the environment, “even if the causal line between the activity and the possible harm has not been proven.”

DDT. Many people in Western nations still consider the banned pesticide DDT what Silent Spring author Rachel Carson called it in 1962: an “elixir of death.”

The truth, however, is that can DDT be used safely and if used properly can save millions of lives. Malaria was an increasing rarity in Africa until DDT use was stopped, but has surged back and now kills over a million people on that continent every year. But, as a recent New York Times editorial points out, “there are still too many obstacles preventing nations that need it from using DDT when appropriate.” Fears about DDT — stoked by statist environmentalists — have led developed nations that have banned DDT to refuse to pay for its use in poorer countries.

The recently signed Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) wisely allows for the use of DDT for malaria control in underdeveloped countries. But the National Resources Defense Council sees the POPs treaty as “only the beginning of the process that will eliminate POPs globally.”

An environmental movement genuinely concerned about protecting ordinary people would advocate widespread use of the pesticide against malaria rather than spend huge amounts of money to scare people from using it.

Sales of Ivory. Environmental groups were furious when the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species(CITES) voted in November to allow South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia to sell 60 tons of elephant ivory.

World Wildlife Federation (WWF) vice president Ginette Hemley said that “legal sales could fuel demand for illicit ivory.” But CITES is hardly the poachers’ friend. Its safeguards will ensure legal ivory is not used to launder poached ivory into the world market. And by giving local Africans a financial stake in the survival of the species, CITES will encourage locals to conserve herds-benefiting both humans and the African elephant. Yet, the WWF brags that “strong lobbying” by it “and other conservation groups” led African countries to withdraw their requests for annual sales in addition to the approved one-time sale.

The Kyoto Treaty. Even if every country in the world signed the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, the treaty would reduce global warming only by about 0.14 of a degree Celsius by the year 2100. With China, South America, Africa, India, and the United States outside the treaty, the actual figure will be more like 0.04 of a degree. Even if the science of global warming were solid, which it is not, this would be a pointlessly small reduction. Green activists implicitly agree when they say Kyoto is just a first step — Sierra Club president Adam Werbach calls Kyoto a “first baby step” — but it is more like a slippery slope towards global economic stagnation.

The European Union, the treaty’s principal backer, can achieve its Kyoto emissions reductions by simple measures such as shutting down unproductive factories in the former East Germany and switching British power generation from government subsidized coal to clean burning gas. These were happening even without Kyoto-dictated by sound economics. But for poor nations that must use whatever energy they have available, reducing emissions will mean cutting down energy consumption to levels that will retard economic development.

By militating against economic advancement, the Grim Green Giant makes it more difficult for millions to escape poverty and its attendant evils-hunger, disease, and illiteracy. Rather than help up the little guy, he sits comfortably up on a perch of wealth and privilege, pulling up the ladder as others try to join him.

Left-of-Center Groups Total 2001 Income Nature Conservancy $731,893,471 Wildlife Conservation Society $311,725,830 Ducks Unlimited $139,232,266 Trust for Public Land $124,816,000 Humane Society $61,728,724 Subtotal $1,369,396,291

Radical Environmentalists Total 2001 Income World Wildlife Fund $118,144,311 National Wildlife Federation $98,801,711 National Audubon Society $94,141,652 Sierra Club Foundation $73,814,363 Conservation International $68,960,797 Natural Resources Defense Council $55,696,677 Environmental Defense $42,868,851 Subtotal $552,428,362

TOTAL $1,921,824,653 Source: Chronicle of Philanthropy Hugo Gurdon is CEI’s 2002-2003 Warren Brookes Journalism Fellow.

– The Four Horsemen of Cafe

By Sam Kazman

Warning: This was written before the appearance of the fifth and biggest CAFE Horseperson: Arianna Huffington.

We did not mourn the congressional stalemate over an energy bill this past year. While it meant the death of several deregulatory measures, it also stopped, at least temporarily, a bipartisan array of boondoggles and climate control curtsies. But what the impasse meant for one of our favorite (not) programs, CAFE, won’t be clear for some time.

CAFE-short for Corporate Average Fuel Economy-is the federal government’s set of fuel economy standards for new cars and light trucks. CAFE was the focus of heated debate last year, when the Senate took up a Democratic proposal to make the standards far more stringent than they currently are. The fact that the proposal even made it to the Senate floor indicates the Alice in Wonderland nature of the debate. In the summer of 2001, a National Academy of Sciences study corroborated what CEI and others have claimed for over a decade — that CAFE kills. Specifically, the study found that, through its downsizing effect on cars, CAFE contributes to between 1,300 and 2,600 highway deaths per year.

Despite this, the congressional debate was not over repealing CAFE, but over how much more stringent — and deadly — to make it. CAFE advocates, who generally subscribe to the Precautionary Principle (“Do absolutely nothing unless it’s proven to be absolutely safe”), ditched their alleged safety concerns by dismissing the NAS findings. Their major argument: The finding wasn’t unanimous, since “only” 11 of the 13 NAS panel members agreed that CAFE kills.

The safety issue did have an impact: Moderate CAFE proposals won out over the radical ones. But the energy bill impasse left CAFE in congressional limbo, and, since politics abhors a vacuum, the field is now filling up with activists calling for dangerous CAFE “reform” proposals. There are four noteworthies:

*1) Keith Bradsher, author of High and Mighty: SUVs-The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way. When Bradhser was the New York Times’ Detroit bureau chief, he wrote a seemingly endless series of stories on the horrors of SUVs: SUVs are unsafe for their occupants; they are unsafe for nonoccupants; they’re really unsafe when passed down to teenage drivers, etc. In his book, Bradsher takes this theme to infinity and beyond, exploring the allegedly asocial psyche of SUV owners and the need for such legal “reforms” — I kid you not — as extra punishment for SUV owners involved in accidents if they didn’t really “need” their SUVs. But if SUV owners are such asocial beasts, then why are they the ones called upon during snow emergencies to ferry patients to hospitals?

*2) Consumer Reports. Decades ago, Consumer Reports magazine accurately noted that large cars are more crashworthy than small cars. But that was before car size became fused with politics: Big cars are now “wasteful” and therefore evil. In a December 2002 four-page article, “Fuel Economy-Stalled In Traffic,” Consumer Reports dismisses the CAFE-safety issue as an industry claim that has supposedly been refuted. You won’t find a word, not one single word, about the NAS finding on CAFE deaths.

*3) What Would Jesus Drive? The WWJD campaign went into high gear in November, when its leaders — gathered under an umbrella named the Evangelical Environmental Network — met with Detroit auto execs, apparently to reveal some divine truths about consumer demand. Bringing religion into the issue of car ownership seems pretty questionable. But if morality does bear on this, then what about the sanctity of human life? In its push for higher CAFE standards, the WWJD campaign simply ignores the CAFE safety issue. Apparently, for these folks the NAS study isn’t just inconvenient; it’s blasphemous.

*4) The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In early December NHTSA proposed to raise the CAFE standard for SUVs and other light trucks. NHTSA didn’t exactly ignore the safety issue, but it did come close to burying it, arguing that the higher standard would not force automakers to do anything they weren’t already planning to do. But if that’s so, then why raise the standard?

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, CEI and Consumer Alert sued NHTSA, arguing that it had illegally ignored CAFE’s lethal effects. A federal court ruled in our favor, finding that this agency had done its best to conceal the fact that one of its programs kills people. (Remember, NHTSA’s middle name is safety.) In the court’s words, the agency’s whitewashing of CAFE was based on “lame claims,” “statistical legerdemain,” and “bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo.” Regulatory history, it seems, repeats itself.

Above articles are quoted from Competitive Enterprise Institute CEI” Monthly Planet Volume 16, Number 1 https://www.cei.org> www.cei.org

”Evergreen (Today’s Quotes)”

“You can have a lord, you can have a king, but the man to fear is the tax collector.” — ancient sumerian proverb “Money does not pay for anything, never has, never will. It is an economic axiom as old as the hills that goods and services can be paid for only with good and services.” — Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man [1943]

“As surgeon general, I was called everything … I was called the ‘condom queen.’ But I don’t mind putting that crown on my head and sleeping with it.” — Jocelyn Elders, Former Surgeon General

”’Edited by Richard O. Rowland, president of Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. He can be reached at (808) 487-4959 or by email at:”’ mailto:grassroot@hawaii.rr.com ”’For more information, see its Web site at:”’ https://www.grassrootinstitute.org/

“Suzanne Gelb Image”

”Danger — Why Flirt With It?”

Dear Dr. Gelb:

My brother is a surfer and also has a motorcycle. He surfs the waves even when there is a surf warning, and pushes the speed limit on his motorcycle. He has done some courageous things in his life, but I don’t understand why he flirts with danger?

Loving Sister

A: Dr. Gelb says . . .

Dear Sister:

From my professional experience, I can share with you that one explanation for such dangerous behavior may be the addictive adrenaline rush that experienced. This “rush,” which is typical of addictive habits, tends to affect the nervous system. The feeling could be equated to that experienced by a toddler who goes down a slide for the first time, even though it is scary, and then looks back and proudly announces, “I did it.”

Each time this type of challenge is repeated, the adrenaline rush repeats. I believe that this rush is triggered by natural fear whose purpose is to instill caution and good judgment. However, instead of it being a warning or a signal of danger, for some people the adrenaline rush becomes addictive, and they take undue risks to satisfy the addiction.

This reminds me of the daredevil Evil Kneivel. It has been said that as a result of his stunts many of his bones have been broken several times, at one time or another. Despite these consequences he persisted with the stunts. In my opinion, such persistence is not necessarily to achieve fame, but to satisfy that craving for the adrenaline rush, which accompanies the stunt process.

”Mystery — Can the Inexplicable be Explained?”

Dear Dr. Gelb:

A friend of mine dreamed that her cousin who lives on another continent died in a car crash. The next morning she received a phone call confirming this. How could my friend have known about her cousin’s death, when he was so many miles away, and my friend was not at the scene of the accident?

Phenomenal

A: Dr. Gelb says . . .

Dear Phenomenal:

Your interest in psychic phenomena touches on concepts that have puzzled scientists for ions as they try to determine what part of the brain accesses these phenomena. My belief is that we are all intuitive and our intuition is founded in the spiritual aspect of our personality. Many consider intuition to be a function of the brain stem’s medulla oblongata, believing that energy forms such as people’s thoughts and feelings which travel though the ether of the earth, are perceived here. Such perceptions have been equated to a radio signal.

It has also been noted that identical twins often perceive each other’s thoughts and feelings. Even where they may be separated at birth, by adoption for example, it has been said that they tend to have similar mannerisms and behaviors, even similar choice of attire. I have a colleague who is considered to be psychic and his accuracy is phenomenal. There are also many books about this type of phenomenon. Good luck with your research.

Dear Readers:

Today’s answers can be supplemented with excerpts from “Yesterday’s Children” (pp. 30-33) written by psychologists Marti Barham, R.N., Ph.D. and Tom Greene, Ph.D. For more information visit https://www.DrGelbSays.com

”’Suzanne J. Gelb, Ph.D., J.D. authors this daily column, Dr. Gelb Says, which answers questions about daily living and behavior issues. Dr. Gelb is a licensed psychologist in private practice in Honolulu. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology and a Ph.D. in Human Services. Dr. Gelb is also a published author of a book on Overcoming Addictions and a book on Relationships.”’

”’This column is intended for entertainment use only and is not intended for the purpose of psychological diagnosis, treatment or personalized advice. For more about the column’s purpose, see”’ “An Online Intro to Dr. Gelb Says”

”’Email your questions to mailto:DrGelbSays@hawaiireporter.com More information on Dr. Gelb’s services and related resources available at”’ https://www.DrGelbSays.com