Published: Feb 23, 2012
A state judge’s decision this week supporting the rights of individual towns to determine whether to allow hydraulic fracturing has added a new wrinkle to the fight over the natural gas drilling process in New York. Parties on all sides are trying to figure out what the ruling will mean, but a consensus emerged on Wednesday that there will be
Read original article Topics: New-Energy
Published: Feb 23, 2012
After 20 years of delay and litigation by polluters, the Obama administration approved in December one of the most important rules in the history of the Clean Air Act. It will require power plants to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants by more than 90 percent in the next five years and is expected to prevent as many as 11,000
Read original article Topics: New-Energy
Published: Feb 23, 2012
Seattle LAST week, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that teachers’ individual performance assessments could be made public. I have no opinion on the ruling as a matter of law, but as a harbinger of education policy in the United States, it is a big mistake. I am a strong proponent of measuring teachers’ effectiveness, and my
Read original article Topics: New-Energy
Published: Feb 23, 2012
As everyone knows, the world has been “flattening” for the past three decades. This has opened the door for dozens of nations and billions of people to enter the global economy. What many do not realize is that this era is coming to an end. Not that global integration is over, or even slowing down. Far from it. But the developing world
Read original article Topics: New-Energy
Published: Feb 23, 2012
The weary sameness of life at sea has taken its toll on the crew members of the S.S. Glencairn. Even drunk, desperate and quarrelsome, these sullen salts rarely raise or otherwise vary their voices. They sound pretty much the same whether they’re anguished or angry or excited or on their deathbeds. The monotony of a sailor’s lot has
Read original article Topics: New-Energy
Published: Feb 23, 2012
RARELY is there anything un-noteworthy about Madonna’s fashion choices. In 1998, the goth-inflected gown she wore to the Academy Awards catapulted its relatively unknown designer, Olivier Theyskens, into the limelight. At this year’s Super Bowl, she pranced and popped squats in three couture looks from the French house of Givenchy
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Published: Feb 23, 2012
WASHINGTON — President Obama asked Congress on Wednesday to scrub the corporate tax code of dozens of loopholes and subsidies to reduce the top rate to 28 percent, from 35 percent, while giving preferences to manufacturers that would set their maximum effective rate at 25 percent. Mr. Obama’s proposal , outlined by Treasury Secretary
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Published: Feb 23, 2012
The 20th Republican debate! I have now spent more time watching the Republican presidential candidates on television than two seasons of “Downton Abbey.” Perhaps it would be easier if Newt Gingrich wore a tuxedo. Also, I am pretty sure the folks at Downton Abbey never spent an episode arguing about earmarks. Republicans, why are we
Read original article Topics: New-Energy
Published: Feb 23, 2012
MATTHEW COOPER was living on Tums, Pepto-Bismol and Zantac and experiencing such a bad case of irritable bowel syndrome , he’d frequently have to abandon his wife and friends at restaurants midmeal. He had leg cramps , insomnia and chronic cases of fatigue and acid reflux . And then a friend turned him on to enzymes. “Within a week,
Read original article Topics: New-Energy
Published: Feb 23, 2012
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, seeking to promote domestic manufacturing without increasing the federal deficit, proposed Wednesday to offset new tax breaks for manufacturers by raising taxes on a wide range of other companies. Some of the prospective losers are familiar targets, including oil and gas companies, private equity firms
Read original article Topics: New-Energy