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Barack Obama's key climate bill hit by $45m PR campaign
Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian
Surge in oil, gas and coal industry lobbying against Democratic leadership on 'cap and trade' legislation
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America's oil, gas and coal industry has increased its lobbying budget by 50%, with key players spending $44.5m in the first three months of this year in an intense effort to cut off support for Barack Obama's plan to build a clean energy economy.

The spoiler campaign runs to hundreds of millions of dollars and involves industry front groups, lobbying firms, television, print and radio advertising, and donations to pivotal members of Congress. Its intention is to water down or kill off plans by the Democratic leadership to pass "cap and trade" legislation this year, which would place limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

A defeat for the bill would have global consequences. The international community is depending on America, as the world's biggest per capita polluter, to set out a firm plan for getting off dirty fuels in the months before crucial UN negotiations in Copenhagen in December.
(13 May 2009)

Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and More
Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times
... The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”
(13 May 2009)
This is not the Boy Scouts that I knew.

-BA

Deb Doncaster at CPFO talks about Ontario's Green Energy and Economy Act (audio)
Marc Strassman, Etopia news
Deb Doncaster, Executive Director of the Community Power Fund Ontario, and Chair of the Green Energy Act Alliance, discusses the passage of Ontario, Canada's, Green Energy and Economy Act, recorded from Toronto, Ontario, on May 14, 2009.
(14 May 2009)