Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

Each morning, Sara Barker wakes before dawn, covers herself with camouflage and makes sure she has her compass before heading into the eastern Arkansas swamps. Her quest: the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker.

Dozens of birders have flocked to the wildlife refuges of the Arkansas Delta to follow up on a kayaker’s 2004 sighting of a bird so rare it was thought to have become extinct. They hope to obtain a clear video or picture of the bird and then study its behavior.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/18/AR2005121801270.html

But how much oil is there in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

Nobody really knows for certain.

As a Christmas week fight rages in Congress over whether to allow drilling along the narrow coastal strip of tundra 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, both sides are trying to use the refuge’s oil estimates _ as vague as they may be _ to their advantage. Some of the rhetoric has little bearing on reality.
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A 1998 U.S. Geological Survey assessment still used today concluded it’s almost certain there are at least 5.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil and possibly as much as 16 billion barrels (a 5 percent likelihood) beneath the refuge’s 1.5 million-acre coastal plain.

The number most frequently cited is 10.4 billion barrels, the amount the report says is the “mean” _ a statistical tool that simply says there’s as good a chance to find less than that as there is to find more.

“There’s no question there’s a range of uncertainty involved that is quite large,” says David Houseknecht, a government geologist involved in the 1998 study. Still, he calls it an “educated assessment” based on seismic studies conducted in the mid-1980s and an examination of adjacent geology where oil has been discovered.

The massive Prudhoe Bay oil field, which has produced 13 billion barrels since 1977 and has 3 billion left, sits 65 miles to the west and there are oil fields in Canada to the east.

“In many cases the oil is dripping out of those rocks,” says Houseknecht.

But there has never been a well dug in the federal part of the refuge’s coastal plain and only one well drilled in a smaller area within the refuge controlled by Alaska natives.

If that well, dug 22 years ago, indicates an oil bonanza, few know it. The results have been kept a closely held secret by the Alaska native corporation and a handful of people at two oil companies that did the drilling.

The oil numbers are “a ballpark, seat-of-the-pants estimate,” concedes Roger Herrera of Arctic Power, the lobbying group that for years has tried to persuade Congress to approve oil development in the refuge. But given the adjacent geology, Herrera says, “you can logically expect” a lot of oil to be there.

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Violence in 1898 that resulted in the only known forceful overthrow of a city government in U.S. history has historically been called a race riot but actually was an insurrection that white supremacists had planned for months, a state commission concludes.

The violence in Wilmington, which resulted in the deaths of an unknown number of black people, “was part of a statewide effort to put white supremacist Democrats in office and stem the political advances of black citizens,” the 1898 Wilmington Riot Commission concludes in a draft report.

Afterward, white supremacists in state office passed laws that disfranchised blacks until the civil rights movement and Voting Rights Act of the 1960s.

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Announced on Nov. 10, The Kalamazoo Promise _ which already is being referred to by locals as simply “the promise” _ is altering a lot of students’ college plans. It could also have a seismic effect on the community’s economy.

The promise is expected to attract more businesses, jobs and homebuyers to the area and raise property values in and around this largely middle-class city of 77,000 about 130 miles west of Detroit. Officials expect more students and, with that, a need for more schools and teachers.

The scholarships _ funded by anonymous donors _ will be good toward tuition at any of Michigan’s public universities or colleges, and will be available to anyone who has been in the Kalamazoo schools for at least four years at the time of graduation. The amounts will be dispensed on a sliding scale, with those who have been enrolled since kindergarten getting 100 percent of their tuition covered.

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Congress ‘Authorized’ Domestic Surveillance in Iraq War Resolution, Says President, Attorney General
Can you spell “fascism”?

He expressed anger at the fact that someone revealed the secret program, saying he assumed the Department of Justice would launch an investigation to determine the source of the leak. “My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this program in a time of war. . . . The fact that we’re discussing this program is helping the enemy,” he said.

And he was visibly angered when a reporter asked him what limits there were on “unchecked” presidential authority during wartime. “I disagree with your assertion of unchecked power,” Bush said. “There is the check of people being sworn to uphold the law for starters. There is oversight. We’re talking to Congress all the time. . . . To say ‘unchecked power’ is to ascribe dictatorial power to the president, to which I object.”
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The resolution does not mention eavesdropping or detention, which the administration has also said is supported by the authorization. It says, “The President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

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Sharers Must Marry Their Needs

After years of struggling with trying to be mother and executive, hoping to hang on to a career in finance while also trying to hang on to sanity, [Martha] Mensch and [Andrea] Pesta heard a suggestion from their boss that it was time for them to put their heads and lives together and share one job at the firm. At that time, it was an idea that had never been tried before at Booz, particularly at such a high level of the company.
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Pesta and Mensch were on the first edges of job sharing. They are also among the few who have succeeded at a job share at such a high level in an organization. But it has worked. The two have shared four jobs now and have even been promoted together. The concept of job sharing is still not incredibly popular with most companies. But as workers attempt to come up with alternatives to an 80-hour workweek, and as baby boomer retirements threaten companies with a major loss of workers, the cliche “work-life balance” is getting a second look. Postings asking for a job-share partner are becoming more common on company bulletin boards, among listings on job Web sites and, naturally, at working women’s organizations.
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But the idea of two brains for one job is still a foreign concept to many employers and employees.

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Efforts to Get Medicine To Poor Children Falter

One vaccine, which protects against a life-threatening form of pneumonia, has been available to children in the United States for five years and has had a dramatic impact on disease here. The other, a vaccine that protects against a deadly form of diarrhea, is poised for a rollout soon among middle-income countries in Latin America.
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But the efforts have faltered amid a dizzying array of snafus, misjudgments and business difficulties. One company cannot produce enough vaccine, and studies needed to support widespread use of another have been slowed by behind-the-scenes squabbling. The problems have proved so vexing that the vaccines are expected to take an additional three to five years to reach the poorest villages.
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Most people have never heard of rotavirus, but every child in the world contracts it early in life. In such places as the United States, some children are hospitalized with rotavirus diarrhea, but they get good care and do not die. In countries with poor health systems, children often progress to catastrophic dehydration and an estimated 440,000 die of rotavirus every year.
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Some public-health doctors, although regretting that the original goal will not be met, urged a sense of perspective, noting that the vaccine might reach poor children just a few years after it reaches those in rich countries. “If we can cut the lag time from 30 years to a decade or less, that’s 20 years of lives saved,” said Nils Daulaire, president of the Global Health Council, an advocacy group in White River Junction, Vt.

The sentiment, however valid, is a measure of the degree to which the public-health world has become accustomed to death on a mass scale.

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