Facing South

Happy Independence Day!

2008-07-04T10:46:00.006-04:00

It's another hot July 4 down South -- and in what has become something of a Facing South tradition, we again share two of our favorite commentaries on the subjects of patriotism, independence and our nation's ongoing struggle to live up to its ideals:

PATRIOTISM'S SECRET HISTORY
By Peter Dreier and Dick Flacks
The Nation, May 16, 2002

Our country has a rich history of dissent, but sometimes those who dare to speak out against government policy are labeled "unpatriotic." But how many know that the "Pledge of Allegiance" was written by a Christian socialist, "Ballad for Americans" was a favorite of the radical Paul Robeson, and "America the Beautiful" penned by an anti-imperialist poet?

WHAT TO THE SLAVE IS THE 4TH OF JULY?
By Frederick Douglass
July 5, 1852

At a meeting of the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in 1852, the abolitionist leader Douglass delivered a speech that took aim at the pieties of the nation -- the ideals of the independence struggle, its principles of liberty, and its moral and religious foundation -- and contrasted them to the country's unfinished business of ensuring justice for all. What's remarkable is how much of Douglass' address speaks to the unfinished business of today. For more, see MeteorBlades' excellent commentary at DailyKos.

Enjoy, and Happy July 4!

Federal watchdog faults nuke plant fire safety

2008-07-03T15:53:00.004-04:00

While the U.S. nuclear industry is pushing plans to build seven new nuclear reactors -- all of them south of the Mason-Dixon line -- its regulators have failed to adequately enforce fire regulations at existing nuclear power plants.

That's the finding of a report released this week by the Government Accountability Office, which documented serious weaknesses in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's oversight of fire safety at commercial reactors. The report was done at the request of U.S. Rep. David Price of North Carolina in response to local governments' concerns about fire protections at Progress Energy's Shearon Harris plant near Raleigh. The GAO concluded:

NRC has not resolved several long-standing issues that affect the nuclear industry’s compliance with existing NRC fire regulations, and NRC lacks a comprehensive database on the status of compliance. These long-standing issues include (1) nuclear units' reliance on manual actions by unit workers to ensure fire safety (for example, a unit worker manually turns a valve to operate a water pump) rather than "passive" measures, such as fire barriers and automatic fire detection and suppression; (2) workers' use of "interim compensatory measures" (primarily fire watches) to ensure fire safety for extended periods of time, rather than making repairs; (3) uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of fire wraps used to protect electrical cables necessary for the safe shutdown of a nuclear unit; and (4) mitigating the impacts of short circuits that can cause simultaneous, or near-simultaneous, malfunctions of safety-related equipment (called "multiple spurious actuations") and hence complicate the safe shutdown of nuclear units. Compounding these issues is that NRC has no centralized database on the use of exemptions from regulations, manual actions, or compensatory measures used for long periods of time that would facilitate the study of compliance trends or help NRC's field inspectors in examining unit compliance.

The GAO report noted that the NRC has granted more than 900 waivers for fire safety rules. As we've reported previously, Southern nuclear power plants lead the nation in the use of problematic fire wraps to protect electrical cables.

The risk of fire has long been a major concern for nuclear safety advocates. The current fire safety rules were written in the wake of the 1975 fire at Alabama's Browns Ferry nuclear power plant, where workers using a candle to test seals for air leaks ignited a blaze that burned for seven hours. According to the GAO report, there have been 125 fires at 54 of the nation's 65 nuclear facilities since 1995.

In 2006, five citizen groups filed an emergency petition with the NRC asking the agency to either shut down the Harris plant until it comes into full, unqualified compliance with fire regulations or impose the maximum fine of $130,000 per violation for each day the plant operates out of such compliance. Behind the filing were the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network; the Union of Concerned Scientists; nuclear safety specialist Paul Gunter, now with Washington-based Beyond Nuclear; Students United for a Responsible Global Environment; and N.C. Fair Share, a social justice advocacy group active in communities near the plant. The NRC rejected that petition.

The GAO called on the NRC to obtain and monitor data on the status of compliance with its fire safety regulations and address long-standing fire safety issues concerning interim compensatory measures, fire wrap effectiveness, and those "multiple spurious actuations." In its response, the NRC said the report was accurate and complete, but it didn't address GAO's recommendations.

Drilling deceptions

2008-07-03T13:00:00.005-04:00

North Carolina is one of the last Southern states to still support the federal ban on new offshore oil drilling, but lifting that ban has now become an issue in the governor's race.

This week, Republican nominee and Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory (photo right) announced that he would issue an executive order allowing "safe, technologically sound" exploration and drilling -- and he criticized his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, for her opposition to new drilling:

"Too many of our elected officials simply reject the possibility of offshore drilling with scare tactics. Lt. Gov. Perdue says she is '100 percent opposed' to the idea of examining deep sea drilling, claiming one 'Exxon Valdez could destroy North Carolina coastline forever.' (Maybe someone should inform the lieutenant governor that the Exxon Valdez was a boat with a drunken captain, not a rig.) Instead of a balanced and comprehensive approach, she endorses 'green energy alternatives' as the only solution."

Let's ignore for a moment the fact that McCrory is wrong about Captain Joseph Hazelwood being drunk at the time of the accident, a charge the longtime Exxon employee successfully defended himself against during his trial.

Instead, let's consider what McCrory values: balance.

What's the balance between what we stand to gain through drilling offshore versus what we stand to lose?

Because despite McCrory's downplaying of them, the potential environmental losses of offshore oil drilling are considerable. Even if pipelines are used to transport oil ashore, there's still a very real risk of leaks and spills -- and these can be catastrophic. In 2000, for example, a broken pipeline dumped about 1,300 tons of oil into the waters off Brazil, and a pipeline break off Nigeria's coast two years earlier spilled some 14,300 tons of oil into the sea, according to the United Nations Environmental Program.

There can also be spills related to the drilling process itself, including "blowouts" that result in the uncontrolled flow of fluids from an oil well. A blowout at the Ixtoc I exploratory oil well off the Mexican coast (pictured left) that took place over a nine-month period from 1979 to 1980 resulted in the dumping of some 475,000 tons of oil, while a blowout near Nigeria in 1980 spilled 54,000 tons of oil and destroyed more than 800 acres of mangroves.

There's also potential risk to offshore oil facilities from hurricanes -- a serious problem for the North Carolina coast.

In recent weeks, proponents of expanded offshore drilling have been downplaying the effect that hurricanes Katrina and Rita had on oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico. Speaking in favor of expanded drilling last week on Fox News, Louisiana Gov. Bobbie Jindal claimed there had been "no major spills" after Katrina and Rita. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain delivered the same message earlier in the month.

But Jindal, McCain and the other politicians deploying this talking point are simply wrong.

In fact, Katrina and Rita caused 124 offshore spills that dumped a total of 743,700 gallons of pollution into the ocean, as Think Progress reports. At the same time, onshore spills from pipelines, tanks and refineries totaled 9 million gallons, as compared to the 10.8 million gallons released by the Exxon Valdez. A single spill of 1 million gallons from the Murphy Oil refinery in Chalmette, La. (photo right) spread over one square mile and contaminated some 1,700 homes.

Clearly, the environmental risks of drilling for oil off North Carolina's coast are considerable.

So how much do we stand to gain from expanded offshore drilling?

The U.S. Energy Information Agency estimates that production from currently protected areas would reach 200,000 barrels per day in about 20 years. And that's for the entire U.S. continental shelf -- not just North Carolina's coast.

That amount represents a drop in the bucket of demand, as the United States now consumes about 21 million gallons of oil per day day.

Meanwhile, the "green energy alternatives" McCrory scoffs at could have a bigger impact on boosting the availability of oil. For example, a new analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that if the federal government had simply increased vehicle mileage standards after 1985 at the rate of just 0.4 miles per gallon per year for both cars and light trucks, the savings would be equal to 3.3 million barrels of oil per day through 2027, when offshore drilling is expected to reach peak capacity.

(Pat McCrory photo from the Charlotte Mayor's Office website, Ixtoc I oil spill photo from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Response and Restoration, and Murphy Oil spill photo from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.)

School officials in Louisiana attempt to suppress bilingual speech

2008-07-02T14:03:00.003-04:00

Terrebonne Parish school officials are considering barring students from speaking a foreign language during commencement speeches. The proposal comes after Hue and Cindy Vo, cousins who were co-valedictorians at Ellender High School, incorporated their native Vietnamese language into parts of their commencement speech before translating the words into English for the general audience.

Hue Vo told the Associated Press that her statement in Vietnamese was aimed at her parents, who do not speak fluent English. “Out of the whole speech, it’s one sentence dedicated to them to give thanks,” she said, pointing to the hardship her parents faced moving here from Vietnam. “It’s very important to my parents that I keep my culture,” she said. “I felt if I expressed myself in Vietnamese it would be more heartfelt.”

By the end of the 20th century, the Vietnamese were by far the largest Asian group in Louisiana, and the nearly 25,000 Vietnamese made up an estimated 44% of all the Asians in the state. In fact, Louisiana had the ninth largest Vietnamese population in the United States, according to the National Alliance for Vietnamese American Service Agencies of Washington.

Despite the large population, relations remain dicey in the racially and ethnically-divided Louisiana.

"I don’t like them addressing in a foreign language. They should be in English,” school-board member Rickie Pitre was quoted saying during a recent committee meeting.

The pro-English sentiment is an ironic one in a parish whose name is French for “Good Earth.” The area was settled by French-speaking Catholics deported from Nova Scotia in 1755. But as late as the 1950s, children who spoke French in school were routinely punished. Historians have argued that the long suppression of French in state schools caused a vital loss of cultural heritage in Southern Louisiana. Today, the cultural diverse heritage of Acadiana, including its French language, is often touted and celebrated.

In a press release this week, the Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association of New Orleans said that the policy will affect not only the Vietnamese American community in the Terrebonne Parish, but threatens all multilingual communities in this Gulf Coast region.

“This proposal is a grave act of injustice to all who embrace the diverse communities in which they are a part of,” Minh Nguyen, Executive Director of VAYLA-NO, stated in the press release. “It is blatantly discriminatory and infringes on core American values of the freedom of speech. We should instead celebrate the fact that the success of these students are rooted in their culture and their ability to communicate in a second language.”

Waiting for an act of racial justice in North Carolina

2008-07-02T12:45:00.006-04:00

In North Carolina last week more than 300 clergy members signed onto a letter sent to lawmakers urging the passage of the North Carolina Racial Justice Act, a bill giving capital murder defendants the right to challenge prosecutions on grounds of racial bias. The bill passed in the North Carolina House in 2007 and now is pending in the state Senate. Supporters of the bill hope the NC Senate will pass the bill in the next two to three weeks.

Facts about the North Carolina Racial Justice Act:

It would allow a person accused of a capital crime the opportunity of a court review of whether race played a part in the prosecutor’s decision to seek the death penalty.
The bill would apply retroactively, so inmates currently on death row could make such arguments. If a defendant has already been sentenced to death, he may present evidence, if available, that his death sentence was improperly obtained on the basis of race.
As in housing and employment discrimination cases, the Racial Justice Act will allow defendants to use statistical proof of racial bias or other evidence to support such a claim. For instance, a defendant could cite statistical racial disparities in how the death penalty is used.
If a defendant succeeded in establishing his claim that race was a basis for his death sentence, the court could impose a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

The letter was distributed to clergy by People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, and contains signatures from Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Episcopal, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim and other faith communities in North Carolina. The letter calls for passage of the NC Racial Justice Act “out of a deep concern over the documented significant and persistent role that racial bias appears to play in deciding who is sentenced to die in North Carolina and who is not.”

North Carolina has more than 150 inmates on death row, according to the N.C. Department of Correction. In North Carolina, about 22 percent of the population is black, while more than 50 percent of the inmates on death row are black. Since December 2007, three African-American men from North Carolina’s death row—Jonathan Hoffman, Glen Edward Chapman and Levon Jones—have been exonerated. In all of the cases, at least one of the murder victims was white. One of the exonerated men was even convicted with an all-white jury. Combined they spent almost 40 years awaiting their executions for crimes they did not commit.

Supporters of the Racial Justice Act cite a 2001 study by researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill that found that the odds of a defendant receiving the death penalty in North Carolina increase if the victim of the murder is white.

Executions are currently on hold in North Carolina pending a resolution of questions about the state’s lethal injection procedure. Nevertheless, if passed, the bill would be a major development in the continuing debate over capital punishment in North Carolina.

The bill’s advocates argue that the bill is just one step in ensuring innocent people are not sent to death. “You can overturn a wrongful conviction, but you can’t unpack a wrong grave,” the Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, told the Raleigh News & Observer last month.

Voter registration surges in Georgia, North Carolina

2008-07-02T10:37:00.003-04:00

Spurred by competitive primaries and hopes that their states might be in play come November, voters are registering in record numbers in Georgia and North Carolina.

Georgia has grown the most: an astounding 300,000 new voters have been added to the rolls since January 2008, putting the total number of active registrants at 4.7 million. To put that in context:

The bump is significant, said Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political scientist. As a comparison, he pointed out that there were 500,000 names added to the active voting rolls in the three years between the presidential election in 2004 and Jan. 1 of this year. "That is more than a 20 percent increase."

Overall, new registrations have favored Democrats and African-Americans -- although registration is up across the board, leaving the electorate looking only slightly different than past elections. For example, 1.3 million African-Americans are registered in Georgia, up from 1.2 million in 2006, nudging up the black share of the electorate from 27% to 28% in two years.

North Carolina's number of registered voters has also grown in 2008, although not as much as Georgia. According to N.C. State Board of Election statistics, just over 203,000 new voters have registered since January.

Like Georgia, new registrations have favored Democratic, independent and African-American voters. African-American voters have gone from 20.1% to 20.7% of the N.C. electorate in 2008. By party, Democrats have gone from 44.8% to 45.3%, and unaffiliated voters from 20.9% to 21.4% since January.

Those gains have been at the expense of Republicans, who went from being 34.3% of N.C. voters in January to 33.3% by the end of June -- a one-point drop.

Va. military contractors face lawsuits over alleged torture

2008-07-01T13:52:00.006-04:00

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights was part of a legal team that last year filed suit against North Carolina-based private security contractor Blackwater for its role in the mass shooting of Iraqi civilians.

Now the nonprofit law firm is targeting three other contractors based in the South -- this time over torture inside Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Yesterday CCR announced that it was suing CACI International and CACI Premier Technology Inc. of Arlington, Va., along with an Alexandria-based division of L-3 Communications Corp. It's also suing three individual contractors: Adel Nakhla of Maryland, a translator with L-3, then known as the Titan Corp.; Timothy Dugan of Ohio, a CACI screener and interrogator; and Daniel E. Johnson of Seattle, also a CACI interrogator.

"Private military contractors and the individuals they employ cannot act with impunity," said CCR attorney Katherine Gallagher in a statement. "Contractors must act within the bounds of law and must be held accountable for their participation in the atrocities at Abu Ghraib and the other facilities in Iraq. We believe their actions and the acts of torture of their employees clearly violated the Geneva Conventions, the Army Field Manual, and the laws of the United States."

The lawsuits were filed in federal court on behalf of the following Iraqi civilians:

* Mohammed Abdwaihed Towfek Al-Taee, a 39-year-old taxi driver who alleges abuse during a nine-month detention and who later learned that he was probably turned in by a customer seeking U.S. payment for intelligence tips.

* Wissam Abdullateef Sa’eed Al-Quraishi, a 37-year-old who was allegedly hung on a pole for seven days and subjected to beatings, forced nudity, electrical shocks, humiliating treatment, mock executions and other forms of torture.

* Sa’adoon Ali Hameed Al-Ogaidi, a 36-year-old Arabic teacher and shopkeeper who was allegedly held for a year during which he was caged, abused, stripped and kept naked, and who for a time was hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

* Suhail Najim Abdullah Al-Shimari, a farmer who was held for more than four years and allegedly caged, menaced with dogs, subjected to beatings and electrical shocks, and threatened with death and being sent to a "far away" place.

CCR was founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South. Other firms involved in the lawsuit over contractor torture are Burke O'Neil of Philadelphia and Akeel & Valentine of Troy, Mich. For more details on the allegations, click here.

Judge halts Ga. coal plant over climate concerns

2008-07-01T13:09:00.003-04:00

Construction on Georgia's first new coal-fired power plant in decades came to a halt yesterday, thanks to a groundbreaking decision by a judge.

Overturning an administrative court's earlier ruling permitting Dynegy's Longleaf plant, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore found that the state Environmental Protection Division must limit the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the facility. The plant is expected to release 9 million tons of CO2 pollution annually -- more than twice the amount from an average coal-fired power plant, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Judge Moore's decision marks the first time since last year's Supreme Court ruling requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate CO2 that a court has applied that standard to emissions from an industrial source, according to the nonprofit environmental firm GreenLaw:

"In a case that is being watched across the country, Judge Moore has sent a message that it is not acceptable for the state to put profits over public health," said Justine Thompson, Executive Director of GreenLaw. "This ruling goes a long way toward protecting the right of Georgians to breathe clean air and sends a message to EPD that it must tighten the standards it uses to approve air pollution permits for companies seeking to build any more coal-fired power plants in this state."

Last June, GreenLaw attorneys representing the Friends of the Chattahoochee and the Sierra Club filed suit challenging the permit allowing the 1,200 megawatt coal-fired power plant to be built in Early County south of Columbus. The groups were concerned that the permit failed to include any limits on carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas pollutant. Houston-based Dynegy currently leads the nation in efforts to build new coal-fired power plants.

The Georgia ruling illustrates the courts' growing role in the fight over new coal-fired power plants. Just last month, for example, the North Carolina Division of Air Quality responded to a federal court ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency wrongly exempted coal-fired plants from Clean Air Act limits on hazardous pollutants by asking Duke Energy for assurances that its new Cliffside coal-fired power facility under construction west of Charlotte would include what are known as "maximum achievable" pollution controls for mercury and other toxic emissions.

(Photo of protesters outside a Dynegy shareholder meeting courtesy of Clean Energy for Georgia; more photos online here.)

Targeting Mississippi’s misplaced priorities

2008-07-01T11:52:00.004-04:00

A New York Times editorial last week took a hit at Mississippi over its misspending of Hurricane Katrina relief funds.

Facing South has reported on the controversy surrounding the State of Mississippi’s plans to divert emergency federal funding from pressing recovery needs, most notably affordable housing. Mississippi plans to transfer $600 million from a housing program created to help low-income homeowners in order to expand the State Port at Gulfport. Last month several members of Congress signed and sent a letter to the House Appropriations Committee in protest of the transfer.

The NYT editorial comments on this move:

The members [of Congress] are rightly outraged by a state plan that will siphon off more than a half-billion dollars in disaster aid for the redevelopment of the port of Gulfport, which local boosters have long envisioned as a hub for cruise ships and gambling. That is not what Congress intended when it voted to distribute the Katrina aid through the Community Development Block Grant program, which was set up in the 1970s to improve housing, economic opportunities and quality of life for the poor.
Congress must use its power to ensure that any remaining Katrina money goes to low-income households. It can start by barring Mississippi from using the block-grant funds for the Gulfport project. It must also close the loopholes in the block-grant law to ensure that future disaster aid goes to those who truly need it.

Bush signs $162 billion war spending bill that includes Gulf Coast relief

2008-07-01T11:10:00.003-04:00

President Bush on Monday signed the $162 billion supplemental appropriations bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a move that will provide funding to the wars through the first month of the next president’s term. According to CNN, the supplemental spending bill also contains a new GI Bill that expands education benefits for veterans who have served since the 9/11 attacks, provides a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits and more than $2 billion in disaster assistance for parts of the Midwest that have been hit by record floods.

The bill also includes hard-fought for provisions for Gulf Coast rebuilding—$5.8 billion for Louisiana levees and $73 million for Gulf Coast housing vouchers to shelter physically and mentally disabled Katrina victims.

As Facing South reported last month, Sen. Mary Landrieu has been pushing legislators for more than two years to provide additional relief to the Gulf Coast. She said the funds from the bill will help a few thousand in New Orleans, but is concerned that much needed money for hospitals, police, and flood prevention was still cut from the final bill.

As Landrieu stated in a press release last week:

“This bill provides a foundation for some of the remaining recovery needs on the Gulf Coast, but the task is not completed. The House of Representatives unfortunately caved to White House demands and cut from this Supplemental critical funding the Senate had passed for our very real domestic emergency along the Gulf Coast. Gone are provisions to finally make our hospitals whole, to beef up our criminal justice system – much of which is still operating out of trailers – language to accelerate closure of MRGO. Also gone is the flexibility I added for Louisiana to pay back over 30 years its cost share for repairing the federal levees that broke in 2005. The House did, after a media onslaught, keep in the bill funding for 3,000 vouchers for extremely low income Louisianians who are seniors, disabled or both. It is a crucial provision that will go a long way toward keeping our most vulnerable population off the street.”

Moving on up

2008-07-01T09:52:00.004-04:00

National average gas prices, July 1 2007: $2.97/gallon

National average gas prices, July 1 2008: $4.09/gallon

Source: AAA Fuel Gauge Report

PLUS: Is Texas benefiting from the oil price boom? The Houston Chronicle reports that the net balance sheet isn't great for the Lone Star state:

Despite what some people may think, the state isn't getting a windfall from high gasoline prices, because unlike the production taxes, which are keyed to prices, the state gasoline tax is a flat 20 cents per gallon and hasn't been increased since 1991.

And gasoline costs are straining some state agency budgets, as they are consumer pocketbooks, but on a much larger scale. School districts also will be hard hit when they start busing students to classes when the new school year begins later this summer.

13 arrested during protest over Va. coal plant

2008-06-30T14:51:00.003-04:00

A week after leading climate scientist James Hansen called for radical steps to prevent environmental chaos caused by greenhouse gas pollution, 13 people were arrested today during a blockade of Dominion's Richmond headquarters to protest the granting of an air permit earlier this month for the company's planned new coal-burning power plant in Wise County, Va.

During the protest involving members of Blue Ridge Earth First!, four women locked themselves together and to a concrete-filled barrel while a man using climbing gear dangled off a suspension bridge. Eight supporters watching from the sidelines were also arrested. The action snarled traffic for miles.

There have been other direct-action protests this year against coal plants in North Carolina, Texas, and Kentucky. And in the United Kingdom earlier this month, climate activists occupied a coal train on its way to a power plant.

Last week, Virginia's Air Pollution Control Board approved pollution permits for Dominion's proposed Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center, which would burn a mix of coal and other polluting fuels including bituminous coal waste commonly known as "gob." The company said the permit decision "paves the way for us to start construction in the very near future."

(Photo from the blog "It's Getting Hot in Here: Dispatches From the Youth Climate Movement.")

Black farmers still waiting for justice

2008-06-30T14:29:00.005-04:00

The $100 million budgeted for damages in the government's discrimination settlement with Black farmers may not be sufficient to fully compensate all farmers with successful rulings. The 2008 Farm Bill includes a provision to assist the late filers in the Pigford Class Action Lawsuit filed by Black farmers against the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The provision authorizes Black farmers who would have qualified for Pigford relief to seek redress in Federal court. But as the Associated Press reported last week, with more than 70,000 potential claimants, the liability could exceed $3 billion, a far greater amount that the $100 million included in the legislation.

According to the AP:

The decision to allow new claims comes almost 10 years after the Agriculture Department settled a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of thousands of black farmers. The farmers, mainly from rural areas in the South, alleged that local USDA offices routinely denied them loans, disaster assistance and other aid frequently given to whites -- practices that often drove them out of business. At that time, 22,500 farmers filed claims…[but] an estimated 73,000 others were denied payments because they missed the October 1999 deadline for seeking claims.

As the Federation of Southern Cooperatives explained in a June press release, in hearings held by Congress in 2004 and again last year, it was determined that these tens of thousands of potential Pigford claimants had not gotten fair notice of the settlement from the TV, radio, and print campaign about the settlement in early 1999, and that, as a matter of fundamental fairness, they should be given another chance to obtain relief for the USDA discrimination.

In light of the limited funds available to redress wronged farmers, it appears the long-fought battle by Black farmers will continue. Lawyers involved in the case acknowledge that it is unclear where the money will come from once claims exceed $100 million. “There’s no doubt that there will have to be more money in the future,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and lead sponsor of the measure, told the AP, but adding that, "African-American farmers deserve justice.”

Lawyer behind Katrina insurance litigation gets five years for bribery

2008-06-30T13:42:00.002-04:00

The man who's been called a "pirate in seersucker" is heading to the brig.

Richard "Dickie" Scruggs -- the noted Mississippi trial attorney who sued insurance companies for their actions after Hurricane Katrina -- was sentenced last week to five years in federal prison for attempting to bribe a state judge. Scruggs, who must also pay a $250,000 fine and the cost of his incarceration, is a former Navy fighter pilot who made a fortune suing the asbestos industry on behalf of sick shipyard workers and representing Mississippi in the tobacco litigation of the 1990s.

Upon reporting to prison on Aug. 4, Scruggs reportedly will receive mental health and drug treatment. He was found to have a drug problem after pleading guilty earlier this year.

At the sentencing hearing, Scruggs expressed regret and an inability to understand why he did what he did:

I could not be more ashamed than to be where I am today, mixed up in a judicial bribery scheme that I participated in. I realized that I was getting mixed up in it. And I will go to my grave wondering why.

I have disappointed everyone in my life, my wife, my family, my son, particularly; my friends, many of whom were kind enough to come up today and to write to the Court. I deeply regret my conduct. I ' m sorrowful for it. It is a scar and a stain on my soul that will be there forever.

Scruggs' former law partner, Sidney Backstrom, was already sentenced to 28 months for his role in the scheme. Scruggs' son, Zach, is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday for charges related to his failure to report the wrongdoing. Also awaiting sentencing are attorneys Tim Balducci and Steve Patterson, a former state auditor.

Scruggs and his co-conspirators were indicted last year for offering to pay Circuit Court Judge Henry Lackey $50,000 to rule in favor of the Scruggs Law Firm in a lawsuit over the allocation of $26.5 million in attorney's fees for the Katrina litigation. Lackey reported the bribery attempt to the FBI, which taped subsequent conversations.

After insurers tried to avoid paying claims filed by homeowners after Katrina by arguing the damage was due to water and not wind, Scruggs sued. He eventually negotiated more than $100 million in settlements, though a federal judge recommended that he face criminal contempt charges for using improper tactics.

A Democrat, Scruggs is the brother-in-law of former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, and he represented the Lott and U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor in their lawsuits against State Farm for refusing to pay claims for the loss of their homes in Katrina. Taylor, a Democrat, and Lott, a Republican, pushed federal legislation to investigate insurers' claims handling after the disaster, a potential conflict of interest.

Lott resigned last year just days before Scrugg's indictment, and it was later reported that the former Senator was being investigated for a possible role in the bribery conspiracy. Lott was not in the courtroom for Scruggs' sentencing. U.S. Attorney James Greenlee, who prosecuted Scruggs, has said his investigation is continuing.

A message at the website of Scruggs' law firm says Katrina insurance cases are now being handled by the Katrina Litigation Group. That firm says the criminal case will not affect its clients.

The N.Y. Times' early Valentine to Duke Energy CEO

2008-06-27T14:20:00.001-04:00

Last Sunday, the New York Times Magazine ran a gushing profile of Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy in Charlotte, N.C. Penned by staff writer Clive Thompson, who found his subject "charming and natty," the article repeated the oft-heard praise that because he acknowledges the threat of greenhouse gas pollution and the need for his company -- the nation's third-largest carbon emitter -- to do something about it, Rogers is an "environmentalist." Why, he even talks to scientists:

For years, he has opened his doors to the kinds of green activists who would give palpitations to most energy C.E.O.’s. In March, he had breakfast with James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia theory, which regards the earth as a single, living organism, to discuss whether species can adapt to a warmer earth. In April, James Hansen, a climatologist at NASA and one of the first scientists to publicly warn about global warming, wrote an open letter urging Rogers to stop burning coal -- so Rogers took him out for a three-hour dinner in Manhattan. "I would dare say that no one in the industry would talk to Lovelock and Hansen," Rogers told me.

It's true that Rogers, a former reporter, has cultivated a green media image. Of course, he's had some help with that from Duke Energy's formidable in-house public relations department, and private P.R. firms including California-based Marston+Marston and Grossman Strategies of New York. Then there's Duke's army of lobbyists in state capitals, and its Washington-based political action committee, which so far in the 2008 federal election cycle has spent about $900,000 on various politicians, according to OpenSecrets.org.

But is Rogers really the green dreamboat the Times makes him out to be? Let's examine some of the claims in the magazine's mash note:

* QUESTIONABLE CLAIM #1: Duke's coal-fired plants "produce clean air."

Thompson visited the company's massive Cliffside coal-fired power plant in Rutherford County, N.C. to check out its pollution control equipment. Speaking to him afterwards, Rogers said, "Sometimes I tell people that Duke is really just a company that processes chemicals to produce clean air, and we get electricity as a byproduct." Thompson didn't examine this claim further.

So how clean is the air produced by Duke's facilities?

According to Cliffside's toxics release inventory, the plant emitted more than 4.2 million pounds of toxic air pollution in 2006 alone -- including some 3.7 million pounds of hydrochloric acid, 265 pounds of lead, and 174 pounds of mercury. And that's the pollution from just one of the company's coal-fired power plants. In 2006, Duke's 14 coal plants across the Carolinas, Indiana and Kentucky emitted more than 61 million pounds of pollution -- including more than 48 million pounds of hydrochloric acid, 8,000 pounds of lead, and 2,700 pounds of mercury. This year, researchers at the University of Massachusetts identified Duke as the nation's 13th-largest corporate polluter, having more than doubled its total emissions of toxic chemicals since 2002 to 80 million pounds per year.

Meanwhile, Duke has fought requirements to clean up its emissions. Last year, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision and ruled that Duke violated the Clean Air Act when it modernized its coal plants without buying required pollution control equipment.

* QUESTIONABLE CLAIM #2: The pollution-scrubbing process at coal-fired power plants produces harmless byproducts.

During his visit to the Cliffside plant, Thompson viewed the massive pollution scrubbers that capture sulfur dioxide pollution. "The process produces gypsum," he wrote, "a safe and inert mineral, which Duke sells for use in drywall."

It's true that the air pollution scrubbing process produces what's known as flue gas desulfurization sludge, which is used to make a synthetic form of gypsum processed into wallboard and other building products. But that's just one kind of waste created from burning coal; there's also fly ash, bottom ash and boiler slag. These coal combustion wastes contain toxic pollutants such as arsenic, lead and mercury. They're also a fast-growing pollution source: The volume of CCW produced nationally increased by more than 30 percent in 2004 alone due to laws aimed at controlling acid rain, according to an Environmental Protection Agency report [pdf].

Because the federal government doesn't regulate CCW as hazardous waste, most of it ends up being dumped in unlined and poorly monitored landfills, surface impoundments or abandoned mines. A 2000 report by the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force found there are 60 places around the country where CCW has degraded public ground and surface waters to the point they're unusable.

Duke has its own problems with CCW pollution. Earlier this year, the Charlotte Observer reported that state records indicate potentially unsafe levels of toxic arsenic, boron and selenium in groundwater beneath Duke's coal waste dumps, and an Indiana community has discovered boron contamination of groundwater coming from waste dumps at Duke's Gibson Generating Station.

As far back as the 1970s, CCW pollution from Duke's Belews Creek Steam Station in North Carolina caused the widespread selenium poisoning of the adjacent Belews Lake ecosystem, where fish suffered deformities and 19 out of 20 fish species were eventually wiped out.

* QUESTIONABLE CLAIM #3: Coal is cheaper and more accessible than other energy sources.

Thompson paraphrased Rogers making this claim while explaining Duke's plan for reducing the company's reliance on coal, but he didn't scrutinize it.

The fact is, coal is relatively cheap on today's energy market only because coal profiteers like Rogers have been successful in shifting many of its associated costs to the public.

What would the price of coal be if it included the cost of hospital visits and medical treatment for asthma and other illnesses in people forced to breathe coal-plant pollution? If it included the billions paid in public medical benefits to former miners, many of whom suffer from black lung and other job-related health problems? Or the value of forests destroyed by acid rain, landscapes ruined by strip mines, waters rendered unfit to fish because of mercury contamination?

And what's the cost of the coal industry's wholesale destruction of Appalachian communities through mountaintop removal mining? Besides West Virginia, North Carolina is the largest consumer of coal mined by mountaintop removal, thanks in large part to Duke Energy. The company is the nation's third-largest consumer of coal mined via mountaintop removal, in which explosives are used to blast apart mountains to get at the coal, with the resulting debris dumped into nearby river valleys. The practice has destroyed more than 470 mountain peaks, polluted more than 1,200 miles of headwater streams, and wiped out some 800 square miles of diverse ecosystems across Appalachia.

* QUESTIONABLE CLAIM #4: Rogers' Save-a-Watt efficiency plan is simply "brilliant."

Thompson reports on Duke's proposed Save-a-Watt efficiency program, which would allow the company to charge higher rates for its electricity in exchange for reducing customer usage. His sole sources about the program are Rogers and former President Clinton, who calls it a "brilliant idea."

But in North Carolina, the program has drawn opposition from a coalition of environmentalists, consumer advocates and conservative policy wonks.

In an opinion piece published earlier this year in the Raleigh News & Observer, co-authors Daren Bakst of the right-leaning John Locke Foundation think-tank and Shana Becker of the N.C. Public Interest Research Group with help from Pete MacDowell of the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network called on the state Utilities Commission to reject Duke's proposal. They noted that Save-a-Watt would require consumers to pay for lost sales based on the company's own speculative projections and would have a disproportionate impact on the poor.

Others have criticized the program for excessive profits and for focusing too much on load shifting -- that is, moving power use to off-peak hours when it costs less to generate, which doesn't save energy.

* QUESTIONABLE CLAIM #5: The people who oppose Duke's plan to build a new 800 megawatt coal plant at Cliffside are "elites."

At Duke's annual shareholders' meeting in May, a dozen people stepped up to the microphone and lambasted Rogers over the company's plan to build a new 800 megawatt coal-fired power plant at Cliffside, voicing concerns about its impact on climate and its dependence on coal mined via mountaintop removal. (The company's original plans called for two new plants at Cliffside, but that proposal was rejected by state regulators.) Rogers is reportedly "annoyed" by opposition to the plant -- and he accuses the protesters of being "an eco-elite" unsympathetic to working-class families' need for affordable energy.

In fact, the movement to stop the Cliffside plant involves a broad cross-section of North Carolinians -- students concerned about the climate, mothers worried about mercury, doctors alarmed by increases in pollution-related illness, people of faith distressed by the destruction of Appalachia. The Canary Coalition -- a grassroots clean air advocacy group that organizes weekly boycott actions to stop the new Cliffside plant ---reported in a press advisory this week that it's grown to the point that it's now financed by its members alone and no longer needs to rely on "industry funded grant foundations" or "government funds."

It's unlikely that many of the Canary Coalition's members are as "elite" as Rogers himself, who was paid about $9.9 million last year in a compensation package that includes personal use of company aircraft. Few of them probably live in mansions like his, either.

Book Friday: poetry slams, Civil Rights, energy independence and Black Codes

2008-06-27T12:56:00.008-04:00

This week Facing South begins a monthly listing of new books about the U.S. South or written by Southern writers.

Slavery by another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War by Douglas A. Blackmon, 480 pages, Doubleday (March 25, 2008)

Based on a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Slavery by Another Name unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude. The book has been hailed by Bill Moyers as “the most stunning book you will read this year.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called it “an important, ambitious account of the black men engulfed in a legal system operating for the white South’s pursuit of racial dominance and private profit. It weaves together a vast quantity of existing scholarship, interviews and archival records in order to tell the personal stories of black Southerners snared by the South’s interlocking systems of racial exploitation.”

For more information, visit the book’s website.

Winning Our Energy Independence: An Energy Insider Shows How by S. David Freeman, 248 pages, Gibbs Smith (September 7, 2007)

In Winning Our Energy Independence, Tennessean-born environmentalist and long-time energy insider S. David Freeman sheds light on America’s deadly addiction to the "three poisons": foreign oil, coal, and nuclear power. He challenges the United States and the world to create a high-energy global civilization where each nation has its own homegrown, carbon-free renewable source of energy. The LA Times blogs that Freeman’s book “is a highly inspiring and optimistic read that encourages environmentalists to think big and act fast.”

"We now are aware that this civilization of ours is on death row,” Freeman told a crowd gathered to him speak this month at The Carter Center. “Almost every climatologist tells us we have about 10 years to get greenhouse gases under control… or the greatest likelihood is our civilization will go down and go down for keeps."

For more information visit Gibbs Smith publishing.

On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail by Charles Cobb, 388 pages, Algonquin Books (December 20, 2007)

Charles Cobb’s On the Road to Freedom is a journey through Southern history and an insider's tour of the Civil Rights trail. Cobb left college in the early 1960s to join the Civil Rights movement in the Deep South, and went on to spend five years working with people who would become icons of the movement and in places that would become pivotal battlegrounds in the fight for civil rights.

FireDogLake called On the Road to Freedom “a book about freedom--the idea and pursuit of it--not only from slavery itself but also from the unique history of slavery in the United States, a history so ugly, so painful but yet fundamental, the author argues, that even after over two hundred years later in the 21st century we still haven't fully come to grips with it: We still haven't completely dealt with the collective trauma and social neurosis in its wake.”

For more information visit Algonquin Books. You can listen to an interview with Cobb on North Carolina Public Radio or on NPR’s Tell Me More.

Let Them Eat MoonPie: The Southern Fried Poetry Slam From 1992-2000 by Bill Abbot, 274 pages, The Wordsmith Press (March 1, 2008)

Poetry slam is the competitive art of poetry originating in Chicago over 20 years ago, and is now practiced at venues worldwide. It is an interactive experience that involves the audience as well as the poets, according to Nashville-born writer Bill Abbott. Abbott captures the colorful history of Southern performance poetry in Let them Eat Moonpie, a book that is part history and part Southern study.

According to the Winston-Salem Journal, the book takes a look at some of the South’s most decorated competitive poets and the events and people who were and continue to be a part of the Southern Fried circuit, a quirky regional poetry slam held annually in cities around the South. The Winston-Salem Journal goes on to call the book an “oral and somewhat insider history of a competition that's as much about performing as it is about writing, eight years of Southern poetry slamming stitched together by the colorful memories of creative people. Like poetry and performing itself, it is sometimes bawdy, sometimes piecemeal but a celebration of an activity that prides itself on being on the fringe.”

The Southern Fried Poetry Slam continues to remain strong. As the Tallahassee Democrat reported, this year’s Southern Fried Slam attracted more than 200 poets and 40 teams to Tallahassee, Fl. earlier this month.

For more information about the book, visit its website or the website of The Wordsmith Press.

Business bracketology: Who's the 'Worst Company in America?'

2008-06-27T09:49:00.011-04:00

Have you filled out your bracket at the Consumerist blog yet?

Don't worry, they don't want early picks for the 2009 NCAA hoops tournament -- the popular consumer rights website is asking readers to vote for which business deserves the dubious honor of "Worst Company in America."

The annual contest starts off with a field of 64 companies infamous for their treatment of consumers. This week, readers have been choosing among the "Elite 8" corporate miscreants. Five -- soon to be six -- of the eight finalists are headquartered in the South: American Airlines (Texas), Bank of America (North Carolina), Capital One (Virginia), ExxonMobil (Texas) and Wal-Mart (Arkansas).

Voters' brackets were thrown into chaos by yesterday's "Elite 8" match-up, which pitted #7 Bank of America vs. #15 Countrywide Home Loans, given the news that the Charlotte banking giant BofA is buying up Countywide and its troubled home mortgage operations.

The blog editor's advice: "For the purposes of this contest we ask that you evaluate their track record with consumers separately." According to testimonials from Consumerist readers, neither has a pretty track record:

Bank of America:

"Bank of America tellers gave away $12,000 of my money to a woman with missing teeth and a fake driver's license in my name. On SEVEN occasions. In places I never go."

"My girlfriend had a credit card with a bank that was bought out by BOA. Her monthly payments went from $20 a month to $170 despite the fact that she never missed a payment and always paid more then the minimum."

"BoA is not just "a" bank, they're a bank with some of the least customer-friendly policies in America. Re-opening closed accounts then charging $35 for it? That's not a courtesy, that's fraud."

"Can u say overdraft? Lets take billions from the poor every year and feel good about it!"

Countrywide:

"Countrywide, because before the subprime crisis I could finance my education, and now I'm posting as a dropout."

"Countrywide is ultimately what caused the dollar to be worthless. So them, and people like them, wrecked our economy."

"Countrywide is the subprime mortgage business. Sure, blame is spread widely, but no one company/person/sector so aggressively made it part of their business plan."

Many readers were dismayed at the prospect of such operations now being under one roof.

UPDATE: The Final Four has been announced: Comcast, Countrywide, Diebold and Wal-Mart (the highest vote-getter among the Elite 8). Who are you betting will win it all?

Institute Index: McClatchy and the downsizing of journalism

2008-06-26T16:56:00.005-04:00

The latest Institute Index -- about deep budget cuts at newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. -- as featured in our e-newsletter Facing South. If you don't get Facing South, sign up now in the box in the upper right hand corner!

Size of workforce cuts announced this month by California-based newspaper chain McClatchy: 10 percent

Jobs lost: about 1,400

Jobs lost at the Miami Herald: 250, or 17 percent of the workforce

At the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer: 123, or 11 percent

At the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer: 70, or 8 percent

At the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, which is unionized: 17, or 4 percent

Annual savings expected as a result of the cuts: $70 million

Year McClatchy went heavily into debt to buy the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain: 2006

Debt remaining from the deal even after McClatchy sold a dozen former Knight-Ridder papers in slow-growing markets: $2.5 billion

Proportion of McClatchy ad revenue that comes from papers in Florida and California, which have been hit hard by the housing market crunch: more than 1/3

Fall in sales of print ads in the first quarter for U.S. newspapers overall: 14 percent

Last time there was such a dramatic quarterly decline: more than 30 years ago

Growth in McClatchy's online audience in 2007: 25 percent

In the first quarter of 2008: 41 percent

Gain in online ad revenue McClatchy reported last month: 12.9 percent

Drop in McClatchy's stock price in reaction to the job-cut announcement: 13 cents, to $8.02

Fall in company's stock value over the past year: more than 70 percent

Shares of McClatchy stock CEO Gary Pruitt beneficially owns: 13 million

Last year's pay for Pruitt: $4.6 million

Pruitt's additional bonus in 2007: $800,000

Salary of a newsroom aide laid off from one McClatchy paper: barely $20,000

Year in which McClatchy was founded by an Irish immigrant fleeing the potato famine: 1857

Exxon-erated

2008-06-25T18:23:00.003-04:00

The U.S. Supreme Court has slashed the punitive damages awarded in the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster from $2.5 billion to $500 million. The 1989 tanker accident fouled Alaska's Prince William Sound with 11 million gallons of crude oil, causing the collapse of the local marine ecosystem and leading to the bankruptcy of the native Chugach people.

Today's high court decision marks a win for Texas-based Exxon, which was originally ordered by a jury to pay $5 billion in punitive damages. During the time the matter has been making its way through the courts, more than 3,000 of the original plaintiffs died.

Greenpeace USA Executive Director John Passacantando criticized the ruling as a "mockery of justice":

"The worst environmental calamity in U.S. history will continue to haunt the Prince William Sound and those dependent upon it for their livelihoods. Crude oil still can be found under rocks along the Sound’s shores, and fishery scientists estimate that only ten percent of the oil was ever cleaned up.

"As long as America maintains its addiction to oil, the country will remain at risk of environmental disasters such as the one caused by the Exxon Valdez."

In a statement released after the ruling, Exxon said it deeply regretted the incident and noted that it's paid $3.4 billion as a result -- an amount that covers compensation, cleanup, settlements and fines. Last year the company recorded a profit of more than $40 billion.

The court's decision comes as President Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain are pushing to lift the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling, which would increase the likelihood of coastal spills.

(Photo of birds killed by Exxon Valdez spill from the online photo gallery of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council)

The housing crisis: An assault on black and Latino economic progress

2008-06-25T14:51:00.004-04:00

Economists say that recessions hurt African-American and Latino workers the most because they are "the last hired and the first fired."

James Sparks at the AFL-CIO blog has an eye-opening post this week arguing that the home foreclosure crisis is working the same way: while affecting everyone, it's been especially devastating for blacks and Latinos -- draining billions of dollars in wealth built up over decades.

First the numbers:

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies reports that the rate of subprime mortgages for Latinos and African Americans is about double the rate for whites. In 2006, subprimes made up one in four mortgages (26 percent) made to whites, 47 percent of those to Latinos and 53 percent of mortgages that went to African Americans.

As Southern Exposure found in our award-winning series on predatory lending four years ago, the disparate racial impact isn't a coincidence. Sparks shows other evidence of racial targeting:

[E]conomist Algernon Austin ... says in a study released last week that creditworthiness -- alone or in combination with factors other than race -- cannot account for the disparities in subprime loan rates. When the Federal Reserve and the Wharton School of Business conducted an analysis that took into account how many adults in a neighborhood were high-credit risks, they still found a link between the amount of subprime loans and the number of minorities in the neighborhood.

An analysis by the Center for Responsible Lending found that even after taking into account individual credit scores, Latino and African American borrowers were more than 30 percent more likely to receive higher-rate subprime loans.

The result? A shocking report by United for a Fair Economy this year estimates that the subprime mortgage crisis will end up stripping away $213 billion from largely African-American and Latino communities -- the greatest loss of wealth in U.S. history.

Small boosts in African-American, youth vote could turn states Democratic

2008-06-25T11:21:00.006-04:00

There's a long-standing debate in Democratic Party circles about how to win over "swing states."

One view -- which usually comes from moderates and conservatives, like those in the once-influential Democratic Leadership Council -- argues the trick is to move to the political center to lure wavering Soccer Moms and Reagan Democrats.

The other side, coming from the party's more liberal/left wing, believes the winning formula is to hold firm on a solidly progressive agenda, and mobilize more voters who embrace that agenda -- like young voters and African-Americans.

The Chicago Tribune today gives ammunition to the progressives, showing that even modest gains in youth and African-American voter turnout could turn nine swing states Democratic in 2008 -- including three in the South:

If Obama could inspire just 10 percent more Democratic voters under 30 to go to the polls than did four years ago, that alone could be enough to switch Iowa and New Mexico from red to blue, the analysis suggests.

Just a 10 percent increase in turnout among blacks would make up more than 40 percent of George W. Bush's 2004 victory margin in Ohio and more than 20 percent of the Republicans' 2004 victory margin in Florida.

Turnout increases of 10 percent of young voters and African-Americans could virtually eliminate the Republicans' 2004 victory margin in Ohio and go a long way toward closing the gap in Colorado, Nevada, Missouri, Virginia and -- a bit more of a stretch -- possibly North Carolina.

Since this strategy -- registering huge numbers of new young and African-American voters -- is largely the strategy Obama is using, we'll find out in November if they're right.

One curious omission from the list: Georgia, where Obama is sinking major resources for ad buys and field offices to reach new voters -- and where the GOP fears Republican-turned-Libertarian Bob Barr might be a spoiler (not a factor in the Tribune's analysis).