(News Briefs August 3, 2006)

Oversight…
Ulster County legislators, Charter Commission members and about 30 residents recently discussed primary areas of contention surrounding a proposed charter to establish a county executive form of government initially called on by the former GOP majority of the county legislature. A major area of debate turned out to be a provision that would allow the county executive to appoint the heads of the departments of planning, health and mental health. At present, department heads are appointed by oversight boards, with confirmation by the Legislature.
Republicans, now in the minority, said such appointments were “scary” while Legislature Chairman David Donaldson said departmental boards must be restricted to advisory roles to allow the county executive enough authority to run a streamlined, accountable government.
It was further pointed out that under the proposed charter, the county executive will choose the director of planning from a pool of three possible candidates selected by the county Planning Board.
Others asked for the charter to be amended to present the budget in a more timely manner for taxpayers to review the numbers before voting for a county executive. As of now, the charter continues the current budget schedule, which requires the final draft to be presented to lawmakers by December. Also, some questions were also raised over the charter’s unknown cost.
Dean Palen, the county’s public health director, asked that the charter drop its requirement for a physician to lead the health department. He said under state law, he already has a doctor on his staff. The proposed changes anticipate the county reaching a population of 250,000 - the state threshold for requiring a physician at the helm of a county health department.
The full legislature now decides on August 9 whether to act on a committee endorsement of the plan and put the proposal, spearheaded by former GOP legislator and SUNY New Paltz professor Gerry Benjamin, on the November 7 ballot.
Benjamin, NOW the dean of liberal arts and sciences at SUNY New Paltz, said various charter counties across the state have shown they are not more expensive than non-charter counties. He said the charter creates few new jobs, but a “parallel reduction of positions” makes up for them.

CHA Winners!
The Catskill Heritage Alliance has awarded scholarships to four graduates Margaretville, Onteora, Roxbury, and Andes Central Schools asked to write no more than 750 words on the subject “My Catskill Heritage.” A five-person jury assessed the entries and selected one winner from each school: Eun Lee of Margaretville for a poem, Rosie Winn of Onteora for a memoir-essay, Kelli Huggins of Roxbury for a memoir-essay, and Josh Weaver, Andes, for a memoir-essay. Each winner received $100 and a book published by a local publishing house — Purple Mountain Press in Fleischmanns, Overlook Press of Woodstock, and Black Dome Press of Hensonville — that, in the judges’ determination, was appropriate to the writer’s winning entry. The prizes were awarded at each winner’s graduation ceremony.
“It was difficult to select just one winner per school from these wonderful submissions,” said Susanna Margolis, chairman of the jury. “And it was downright inspiring to see how important their Catskill heritage is to these young writers.”
The membership of the Catskill Heritage Alliance has also unanimously elected Richard Schaedle as its new chairman at the group’s annual meeting July 16 in Big Indian. John Carney had earlier been confirmed as co-chairman of the organization, filling out the unexpired term of Michele Wooton, who remains on the Executive Committee. Schaedle succeeds Margolis, who served as Chairman for the past two years.
“During the two years that Susanna Margolis has been Chairman, the CHA has widened its presence in the community and grown its membership. I’m honored to be chosen Chairman and look forward to continuing our mission,” said Richard Schaedle.
A resident of Pine Hill, Schaedle’s ties to the region go back two generations to his father’s day, when the family began summering in Pine Hill. The new CHA Chairman was baptized in what was then the Pine Hill Presbyterian Church and spent summers and vacation time in the hamlet as a boy. After graduating from Dartmouth with a degree in economics, Schaedle obtained an MBA from New York University and began his career on Wall Street. He retired in 1996, at which time he and his wife, Bonnie Panzig Schaedle, became year-round residents of Pine Hill. The Schaedles have two grown sons.
Schaedle has been an active participant in community affairs. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Margaretville Memorial Hospital / Mountainside Resident Care Center and the Board of Trustees of Kingston Hospital. Richard has also been instrumental in the move by the Town of Shandaken to acquire the Pine Hill Water Company to ensure the water supply, and has been a member of CHA since its inception.
After years of visiting Ulster and Delaware counties and falling in love with the Catskills, in 1992 newly appointed co-chairman John Carney and his wife, Julie McQuain, settled in Hardenburgh where Carney currently serves on the Board of Assessment Review. A native of suburban Chicago, Carney holds a BA in theater arts from Southern Illinois University. He moved to New York in 1980 to pursue an acting career and also toured nationally as a stand-up comic. Carney has been active in several unions and remains a member of the Screen Actors’ Guild and AFTRA. John is a gardener, hiker, volunteer shelter dog-walker, and is Vice President of JMPR Associates Inc., a media relations firm specializing in news from science, medicine and the arts. The Carneys have one son.
The Catskill Heritage Alliance is a volunteer, non-profit 501(c) 3 organization with a membership of more than 500 dedicated to preserving the harmony between the villages of the central Catskills and the surrounding wilderness through community revitalization and open space conservation. CHA is a member of the Catskill Preservation Coalition.

New Counsel…
Ulster County lawmakers have fired the special legal counsel they had who represented them in disputes with contractors who worked at the new Law Enforcement Center. With Mark Sweeney gone and the Keane and Beane law firm of Westchester hired, attorney Edward Beane briefed the special oversight committee last week, with Committee Chairman Richard Parete saying this new firm should work out better for the county.
“They actually worked with Orange County with their jail and some of the problems that arose from there,” he said. Two attorneys from the new firm met with Ulster lawmakers. “They want to get this resolved and get everything behind us as quickly and as economically as can be.”
The Sheriff’s Office administration has already moved into the new law enforcement center with the jail expected to be certified for occupancy later this year.
Contractors are finishing up with their punch lists of items that need to be corrected.

Energy Hikes
Gas and electric bills, already up due to increased summer consumption and rising supply costs, are set to rise again due to new delivery rates that Central Hudson is planning to charge to bring service to homes and businesses across the region.
Fortunately, much of the Route 28 corridor is NYSEG territory… but such changes tend to have ramifications.
The state Public Service Commission has approved CH’s proposal to raise its overall electric and natural gas delivery rates by 11 percent and 9.5 percent, respectively. For residential customers alone, the increases work out to 15.7 percent for electric service and 11.9 percent for gas over three years.
In a press release Central Hudson’s senior vice president of regulatory affairs, lauded Arthur Upright, praised the decision as one that “balances important initiatives that meet the region’s growing energy needs while ensuring that our customers continue to pay amongst the lowest delivery prices in the Northeast.”
The new rates, which took effect Aug. 1, are expected to raise the utility’s electric revenues by 42 percent, or $72.1 million, and natural gas revenues by 53 percent, or $22.2 million, over three years. The typical residential electric customer who consumes about 500 kilowatt hours of electricity per month will see electric bills increase by about 5.4 percent in the first year, 5 percent in the second year and 4.6 percent in the third.
The approved increases are only for the costs Central Hudson incurs in delivering the commodities. The actual cost of electricity and natural gas, which appear as a separate item on customers’ utility bills, are not subject to regulation.
State Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, D-Kingston, said the commission “failed to live up to its mission” of protecting the rights of the public with regard to utilities. He called the utility’s proposal “ill-timed and excessive.”

The Evers Award
At its annual meeting in Arkville this Saturday, July 29, the Catskill Center present Michael DeWan and the Woodstock Land Conservancy with its 2006 Alf Evers Award for Excellence, initiated in the late historian’s spirit to annually recognize individuals or organizations who have made outstanding contributions in community development, education, arts and culture or natural resource protection in the Catskills.
“For centuries, people, with both insight and foresight, have made significant contributions to our past, present and future that should not go unnoticed. Alf Evers was one of those people,” said CCCD Executive Director Tom Alworth. “We are extremely proud to present this year’s award to Michael DeWan and the Woodstock Land Conservancy for their excellent work protecting the landscape that Alf Evers so cherished.”
“Just as The Catskills - the single best history of our region and Alf’s best work - begins and ends on the summit of Overlook, so has the Woodstock Land Conservancy’s work been focused on Overlook, preserving both its upper reaches and those of its sister Mount Guardian, as well as fabulous mountain vistas from below, such as the Zena Cornfield,” DeWan said, speaking of the many successes the small organization started in 1988 with the Zena campaign, “To date, our ‘Save Overlook’ campaign - launched in 2004 with the help of The Open Space Institute - has saved over 400 acres of the most fragile and threatened land at the highest elevation, and we are looking to increase that soon by another 250 acres.”
Evers passed away just shy of his 100th birthday in 2005. He was the author of major histories of The Catskills, Woodstock and the City of Kingston, as well as numerous essays and children’s books. In addition to presenting the award, The Catskill Center’s Annual Membership Meeting featured keynote speaker Barbara “Charlie” Murphy, Director of Local Government at the New York State Department of State. In keeping with The Catskill Center’s mission of balancing environmental conservation and sustainable community development, Murphy spoke about smart growth and the “quality communities” movement in New York State.

Condo Hell...
The nationwide market for luxury condominiums appears to have tanked, with tens of billions in new construction projects cancelled and apartment-to-condo conversions down from $4 billion last September to just $334 million in May. Almost everywhere in the country, developers are cancelling or delaying projects as high-end home sales decelerate, lenders back out of funding projects that may not sell, and construction costs rise. Builder confidence, as tracked by the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market index, has fallen to its lowest level in over 11 years.
Partly to blame is a surplus of high-end condo properties both available and under construction nationwide, but especially in major sunbelt markets like Miami, Las Vegas, and San Diego. Also at risk for major price declines say many in the industry are Manhattan, Boston, and Washington DC. Apart from the glut of available units, the underlying problem however, seems to be that too few people can afford the $1 million dollar-plus residences developers and investors have been speculating on.

Hudson Stall
Governor George Pataki said Thursday that he was “extremely disappointed” in the US EPA’s decision to allow a one-year delay in the start of dredging of the Hudson River of PCBs. Congressman John Sweeney of Clifton Park said he was not surprised by the announcement.
EPA spokesman Leo Rosales said the agency has independently verified the accuracy of the projected construction schedule provided by GE. “The change of schedule was due to a recent design report by General Electric in which they projected the project to start in 2008 and after careful review of their design documents and our own evaluation of the reasons why we have decided to agree with the report and look into those.
“Each time the cleanup timetable is pushed back, people lose confidence that this important project will ever happen,” said Pataki. “I urge the EPA to refocus and redouble its efforts to get this important project underway as soon as possible.”
Sweeney, meanwhile, said he has concerns regarding to magnitude of the project. “Once the decision to dredge was final, I have fought vigorously to ensure it was realistic in its approach and considered carefully the impacts to the Upper Hudson communities that will be severely affected by this effort,” he said. “This process requires a concerted commitment on the part of both the EPA and GE to address these issues quickly and limit the length of this project so the residents can put this issue behind them.”

Whose Space?
US House Resolution 5319, the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), was passed by a 410 to 15 vote of the House of Representatives last week. If the Resolution becomes law social networking sites and chat rooms must be blocked by schools and libraries or those institutions will lose their federal internet subsidies. According to the resolution’s top line summary it will “amend the Communications Act of 1934 to require recipients of universal service support for schools and libraries to protect minors from commercial social networking websites and chat rooms.”
Adults will be able to ask for the library’s permission to use such sites. The Resolution will now go to the US Senate for a vote before being offered to the President for signature into law.
The rhetoric from advocates was all about MySpace. For example, Texas Republican Ted Poe says, “social networking sites such as MySpace and chat rooms have allowed sexual predators to sneak into homes and solicit kids.”
An incredibly vague law, DOPA will require schools and libraries to block access to a potentially huge range of sites on the internet. The goal is to protect children from adult predators. Sites that must be blocked include those that allow people to post profiles, include personal information and allow “communication among users.”

Nominations!
The Ulster County Development Corporation (UCDC) and the Chamber of Commerce of Ulster County (Chamber) are seeking nominations for their 2nd Annual Business Recognition Awards. The awards recognize Ulster County entrepreneurs and businesses that are leaders in their field, have realized outstanding achievements over the past year, or have shown dedication and commitment to furthering business in Ulster County. Awards will be given in the following categories: Entrepreneur or Businessperson of the Year, Business of the Year, Small Business of the Year, Cultural Business of the Year, Building Project of the Year, and Tourism or Hospitality Business of the Year
The application period is now through August 18, 2006. Nomination forms must be submitted to the office of UCDC at 5 Development Court, Kingston, New York, no later than 5:00 P.M. on August 18th.
A committee of UCDC and Chamber representatives will evaluate nominations. Winners will be recognized at a dinner held on October 19, 2006 at the Wiltwyck Golf Club in Kingston, New York. Additional information about the awards and the nomination forms are available by contacting Irene MacPherson at UCDC at 845-338-8840 or imacpherson@ulsterny.com.

Local Thriller!
A film shot in several locations throughout the region last year is now ready to hit Theaters, and there’s already a buzz around that it’s going to be a good one.
In the spring of 2005 film crews were on location along with film superstar Robin Williams shooting scenes for “The Night Listener.” Roger Ebert reviewed the film when it was at the 2006 Sundance Festival in January and while “The Night Listener” failed to win any awards at the prestigious event, Ebert was impressed with the film.
“The big evening hit at the Eccles was Patrick Stettner’s “The Night Listener,” an eerie, Hitchcockian thriller starring Robin Williams as a gay late-night disk jockey whose publisher friend (Joe Morton) asks him to read a manuscript about a young boy (Rory Culkin) tortured by his parents and now dying of AIDS under the care of a foster mother in Wisconsin (Toni Collette),” Ebert wrote shortly after seeing the film. “The Williams’ character is depressed by the breakup of a long-term love affair, and gets involved by telephone in the life and death story of the boy. But the more he finds out, the more questions are raised, until the movie takes turns that no one in the audience can anticipate. The screenplay is by Armistead Maupin and Terry Anderson, based on Maupin’s novel, and is scary, fascinating, and elusive. Williams pursues versions of reality in a series of events that grow nightmarish.”
“This is a movie that ends more than once, in more than one way,” he added.
Francesca Dinglasan of Boxoffice magazine said “The film derives its force from director Patrick Stettner’s touch at sustaining a dark and foreboding mood that permeates from the moment Gabriel’s skepticism is raised to the conclusion of his investigations.”
Although the story takes place in rural Wisconson, it was the Catskills that played the role, standing in for Wisconson were locations like the Reservoir Deli in Olive and the Phoenicia Diner, where during shooting Williams took time out to chat with a local reporter in the parking lot.
“Look out, that van behind you is backing up,” Williams said.
Other locations were in Greene County and other parts of Ulster County.
Also at Sundance was “Stephanie Daley,” a film shot in the Phoenicia area last summer. The film, which stars Tilda Swinton of “Narnia” fame and Timothy Hutton, has no release date.
“The Night Listener,” rated R, enters theaters in wide release on August 4th.

Climate Fires…
Scientists worldwide are watching temperatures rise, the land turn dry and vast forests go up in flames. In the Siberian taiga and Canadian Rockies, in southern California and Australia, researchers find growing evidence tying an upsurge in wildfires to climate change, an impact long predicted by global-warming forecasters.
A team at California’s Scripps Institution, in a headline-making report last month, found that warmer temperatures, causing earlier snow runoff and consequently drier summer conditions, were the key factor in an explosion of big wildfires in the U.S. West over three decades, including fires now rampaging east of Los Angeles.
Researchers previously reached similar conclusions in Canada, where fire is destroying an average 6.4 million acres a year, compared with 2.5 million in the early 1970s. And an upcoming U.S.-Russian-Canadian scientific paper points to links between warming and wildfires in Siberia, where 2006 already qualifies as an extreme fire season, sixth in the past eight years. Far to the south in drought-stricken Australia, meanwhile, 2005 was the hottest year on record, and the dangerous bushfire season is growing longer.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an authoritative U.N.-sponsored network of scientists, has long predicted that summer drying and droughts would worsen forest fires, which in many regions are primarily set by humans. Global temperatures rose an average 1 degree Fahrenheit in the 20th century, and warming will continue as long as manmade “greenhouse gases,” mostly carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning, accumulate in the atmosphere, the panel says.
The Scripps study, in the journal Science, was unique in collating detailed data from 34 years of U.S. western wildfires with temperature, snowmelt and streamflow records.
A nonhuman cause, meanwhile, may also be on the rise. Warming in high northern latitudes is expected to generate more lightning, igniting more forest fires, notes the report.

Costly Visits
Wanted: Face time with President Bush or top adviser Karl Rove. Suggested donation: $100,000. The middleman: lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Blunt e-mails that connect money and access in Washington have shows that prominent Republican activist Grover Norquist facilitated some administration contacts for Abramoff’s clients while the lobbyist simultaneously solicited those clients for large donations to Norquist’s tax-exempt group. And those who were solicited or landed administration introductions included foreign figures and American Indian tribes, according to e-mails gathered by Senate investigators and federal prosecutors or obtained independently by The Associated Press.
“Can the tribes contribute $100,000 for the effort to bring state legislatures and those tribal leaders who have passed Bush resolutions to Washington?” Norquist wrote Abramoff in one such e-mail in July 2002. “When I have funding, I will ask Karl Rove for a date with the president. Karl has already said ‘yes’ in principle and knows you organized this last time and hope to this year.”
A Senate committee that investigated Abramoff previously aired evidence showing Bush met briefly in 2001 at the White House with some of Abramoff’s tribal clients after they donated money to Norquist’s group.
Norquist and Abramoff were longtime associates who went back decades to their days in the Young Republicans movement. Norquist founded ATR to advocate lower taxes and less government. He built it into a major force in the Republican Party as the GOP seized control of Congress and the White House.
Lawyers for Abramoff declined comment and the White House has said Rove was unaware that Norquist solicited any money in connection with ATR events in both 2001 and 2002 that brought Abramoff’s tribal clients and others to the White House.
“We do not solicit donations in exchange for meetings or events at the White House, and we don’t have any knowledge of this activity taking place,” said a White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy.

More Expensive…
The war in Iraq has cost almost $300 billion so far and would total almost a half-trillion dollars even if all U.S. troops were withdrawn by the end of 2009, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis released late last month. Congress has approved $432 billion for military operations and other costs related to the war against terror since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The new CBO study is the first analysis by Congress’ scorekeeping agency of how much of that has been allocated for the Iraq war.
Since 2003, the tally of appropriations for Iraq is $291 billion, CBO said. That includes $45 billion from a $94.5 billion hurricane relief and war funding measure passed last month.
The nonpartisan CBO analysis comes after congressional debate over whether to set goals or timetables for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq. Congress declined to set a timetable, but the Pentagon hopes to start drawing down forces by the end of the year. Meanwhile, troop amounts went up and new spent funds have been in several departments in the administration.
The CBO study estimated future appropriations… The more optimistic scenario would maintain 2007 troop levels in Iraq at 140,000, but quickly dropping thereafter with almost all troops out by the end of 2009. Under it, the Iraq war would cost $184 billion more over the 2007-2010 budget years. Under a more pessimistic scenario, with a slower drawdown of troops and a continued U.S. presence of 40,000 over the long term, the Iraq war would cost $406 billion over the next decade, CBO said.
Regardless of future costs, operations in Iraq have far exceeded early estimates. Former White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey initially predict the war could cost $100 billion to $200 billion. Other administration officials dismissed the figure as too high and Lindsey was fired.
A recent competing analysis by the Congressional Research Service puts the tally for Iraq at $319 billion with the war in Afghanistan costing another $88 billion. The lower CBO estimate only includes appropriations passed since the war in Iraq began.

Town of Olive resident, Edwin J. Maldonado, was honored by the Ulster County Board of REALTORS® (UCBR) as the 2006 Realtor Associate of the Year. Edwin Maldonado is a GRI designated Broker-Associate with Win Morrison Realty in Kingston, NY. He was presented with the award at the UCBR Annual Recognition Luncheon held at the Skytop Steak House and Brewing Co. on June 8th. The Ulster County Board of REALTORS® chose him from close to 1,000 Realtor Associates in Ulster County for the professional and ethical manner in which he works with his colleagues, his high level of professional integrity in serving a diversity of customers and clients, and the time he donates to the UCBR. For the last five years he has chaired a committee which raises money for a local charity, the Ulster County Affiliate for Habitat for Humanity International. Edwin also serves on the Public Relations Committee for the UCBR. Prior to becoming a full time real estate agent, Edwin was an Assistant Golf Professional at Rondout Golf Club, among others.

Edwin became a Town of Olive resident in 1999, the year he married his wife, Peggy Odenwald-Maldonado, a long time Olive resident. They live in Krumville with their 5 year old daughter, Alexa.

Trans Hudson…
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Board of Commissioners Thursday authorized the investment of at least $1 billion and as much as $2 billion toward construction of the Trans-Hudson Express Tunnel project.
The project would create an additional passenger rail tunnel connecting New York City to New Jersey and to Rockland and Orange counties in New York, and includes the expansion of New York’s Penn Station beneath 34th Street in Manhattan. With a direct rail connection, commuters will be able make the trip from the Hudson Valley in 47 minutes rather than today’s average trip of about 60, and they will not have to leave their seats and transfer trains.
“This tunnel will help grow New York’s economy for decades to come, and it will create a faster, one-seat ride to Midtown for tens of thousands of New Yorkers in Rockland and Orange counties,” said Senator Charles Schumer. “As the Hudson Valley grows, we need to keep it moving. We can give commuters back 25 minutes a day by providing a one-seat ride between the Hudson Valley and mid-town Manhattan. It will not only improve traffic flow, but will expand commuting options, reduce air pollution and improve overall quality of life.”
Last week, the U.S. Department of Transportation approved New Jersey Transit’s application to move ahead on plans to build a new tunnel under the Hudson River, which would create a one-seat train ride from the Hudson Valley and Northern New Jersey directly in to Midtown Manhattan. The approval allows the project to move ahead to the preliminary engineering phase, a key step toward achieving federal funding.
Schumer said that the Trans-Hudson Express Tunnel Project will give commuters in the Hudson Valley a faster trip-time, a one-seat ride, and real congestion relief in anticipation of ridership demands over the next 20 years. The improved travel time and convenience is expected to attract substantial numbers of new Hudson Valley commuters to rail, with daily trips tripling from close to 8,000 now to over 24,000 in 2030.
All calls for renewed rail travel on the West bank of the Hudson relies on such news… Stay tuned!

Ulster Rx…
The Ulster County legislature is considering getting rid of Ulster Rx’s enrollment fee to help boost membership in the countywide discount drug program. The move would involve the dropping of Liberty Care Rx, the company that is currently administering the plan, and adopt a free program now being offered through the National Association of Counties.
Liberty Care Rx discontinued live customer support services with the county in May 2005 due to low enrollment. The live line was replaced with a toll-free number that features a recording referring customers to the company’s Web site or to a long-distance number.
Legislators believe the lack of human contact in the enrollment process is proving daunting to those who might be signing up for the benefit. People will now look to Dutchess County’s practice of supplying National Association of Counties discount cards directly at participating pharmacies.

Virus Fears
The U.S. is poorly prepared for a major disruption of the Internet, according to a study by the Business Roundtable, which is composed of the CEOs of 160 large U.S. companies. They say neither the government nor the private sector has a coordinated plan to respond to an attack, natural disaster or other disruption of the Internet. While individual government agencies and companies have their own emergency plans in place, little coordination exists between the groups, according to the study.
The study points out that a massive Web disruption could potentially paralyze banks, transportation systems, health-care providers and voice calling over the Internet.
The chief problem: There are so many public and private institutions that handle security-related tasks that their responsibilities often overlap, creating inefficiencies that can bog down an emergency response, according to the study.
Security officials at some banks and other companies have established groups to swap data about Internet threats. Companies that make the technology behind the Internet itself have an informal group of their own to discuss security issues. Meanwhile, a government body called the National Cyber Response Coordination Group is meant to manage a response to Internet emergencies.
Yet those groups’ roles are often unclear, and no system is in place to coordinate their efforts, the study says. It cited “serious problems stemming from the lack of consolidation, including the fact that these organizations are not accountable for their actions.”
The group said the public and private sectors should develop a closer relationship in preparing for an Internet disruption. It also suggested that the government fund a panel of experts who could assist in developing plans for restoring Internet services in the event of a massive disruption
The government should invest in developing a good early-warning system for Internet emergencies — the cyber equivalent of the warnings provided ahead of a hurricane or other natural disaster, the Roundtable said. The private sector should also decide on one process for sharing information with each other and the government during an Internet emergency, the group added.

Oh… Them!
The U.S. Army will discontinue its multi-billion dollar contract with oil services giant Halliburton Co. to provide logistical support to U.S. troops worldwide. The company, formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, has drawn scrutiny for its work in Iraq from auditors, congressional Democrats and the Justice Department, which is investigating potential overcharges for fuel, dining and laundry services.
Texas-based Halliburton is the world’s second-largest oil services company and the U.S. military’s biggest contractor in Iraq. The logistical support is performed by Halliburton engineering and construction unit Kellogg Brown & Root. Last year, the Army paid the company more than $7 billion under the contract, the Post said.
Army officials defended the company’s performance but said Pentagon leaders decided multiple contractors would give them better prices, more accountability and greater protection if a one contractor fails to perform. Halliburton maintains that its billing disputes with Defense Department auditors have been resolved and that its work has received rave reviews from the military.
The Pentagon’s decision on Halliburton comes as the U.S. contribution to Iraq’s reconstruction begins to wane, reducing opportunities for U.S. companies after nearly four years of massive payouts to the private sector. They now plan to split the Iraq work among three companies to be chosen this fall and Halliburton would be eligible to make a bid. A fourth firm would be hired to help monitor the performance of the three contractors selected.

Bad Hunting
A Bush Administration appointee to the federal Interior Department was awarded his own buffalo to hunt on a billionaire’s Texas ranch a month before his office designated Houston as a port for exotic wildlife, a move that greatly benefited the ranch owner.
The involvement of the official, David P. Smith, “was inappropriate and violated the appearance standard,” the department’s inspector general said in a recent report. Smith resigned after its release to begin working at a new law firm.
Smith was deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks when he shot and killed the buffalo at a 5,000-acre ranch owned by Texas billionaire Dan Duncan in late 2004. He said the aging buffalo he shot had torn up some ranch equipment, rammed vehicles and terrified ranch hands and that he was driven in a pickup to within 100 yards of the animal - the official symbol of the Interior Department - and shot it between the eyes with a .30-caliber bolt-action rifle.
One month later, the department then designated Houston, Memphis, Tenn., and Louisville, Ky., as official ports for bringing exotic wildlife animals and trophies into the United States… a provision for big-time hunters who bring such animals to their private preserves for hunting.
Duncan, an energy entrepreneur with ties to Enron, has hunted around the globe, seeking ever more exotic animal species. He is a major contributor to Safari Club International, a group that seeks to protect the freedom to hunt.

Terror Flights
Fourteen European nations colluded with U.S. intelligence in a “spider’s web” of secret flights and detention centers that violated international human rights law, the head of an investigation into alleged CIA clandestine prisons reports, noting that the nations aided the movement of 17 detainees who said they had been abducted by U.S. agents and secretly transferred to detention centers around the world. Some said they were transferred to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and others to alleged secret facilities in countries including Poland, Romania, Egypt and Jordan. Some said they were mistreated or tortured. The investigation relied mostly on flight logs provided by the European Union’s air traffic agency, Eurocontrol, witness statements gathered from people who said they had been abducted by U.S. intelligence agents and judicial and parliamentary inquiries in various countries.
It was concluded that several countries let the CIA abduct their residents, while others allowed the agency to use their airspace or turned a blind eye to questionable foreign intelligence activities on their territory. 14 European countries — Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Bosnia, Macedonia, Turkey, Spain, Cyprus, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Romania and Poland – were listed as being complicit in “unlawful inter-state transfers” of people. Some, including Sweden and Bosnia, already have admitted some involvement.
A parallel investigation by the European Parliament has said data show there have been more than 1,000 clandestine CIA flights stopping on European territory since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Officials said it was not clear if or how many detainees were on board, and have not shed any light on allegations of CIA secret prisons. Clandestine prisons and secret flights via or from Europe to countries where suspects could face torture would breach the continent’s human rights treaties, including the European Convention on Human Rights.

Cancer Taint…
Growing scientific evidence suggests the most widespread industrial contaminant in drinking water — a solvent used in adhesives, paint and spot removers — can cause cancer in people. The National Academy of Sciences report notes that a lot more is known about the cancer risks and other health hazards from exposure to trichloroethylene than there was five years ago when the Environmental Protection Agency took steps to regulate it more strictly. TCE, which is also widely used to remove grease from metal parts in airplanes and to clean fuel lines at missile sites, is known to cause cancer in some laboratory animals. EPA was blocked from elevating its assessment of the chemical’s risks in people by the Defense Department, Energy Department and NASA, all of which have sites polluted with it.
TCE is a colorless liquid that evaporates at room temperatures and has a somewhat sweet odor and taste. It is one of the most common pollutants found in the air, soil and water at U.S. military bases. Until the mid-1970s, it also was used as a surgical anesthetic. It also has been found at about 60 percent of the nation’s worst contaminated sites in the Superfund cleanup program, the academy said.
Its 379-page report recommends that EPA revise its assessment of TCE’s risks using “currently available data” so no more time is wasted. Rep. Maurice Hinchey said the report should prompt the government to move faster in cleaning up TCE contamination like that found in his home state and nationally.
“It is no longer acceptable for the government and local polluters to claim that health risks associated with TCE are simply scientific theory when we know that they are compelling scientific fact,” said Hinchey, who is on the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the environment.
A committee of academy experts said “a large body of epidemiologic data is available” on TCE showing the chemical is a possible cause of kidney cancer, reproductive and developmental damage, impaired neurological function and AIDs.