Organization: Partners Worldwide

Location: UG

General Description:

Partners Worldwide walks alongside Talanta Finance Ltd., a small micro finance service institution, in operation since 2006, with the aim of providing micro credit services to the poor community at a favorable interest rate. It serves clients in war affected, high-density urban and rural areas of the Gulu district located in Northern Uganda. Talanta Finance is based on Christian business values and is a Local Business Affiliate (LBA) of Partners Worldwide. Its other activities include providing training, mentoring and access to capital to Small and Medium businesses, as well as micro credit and agricultural loans. The leadership of Talanta Finance partner with a Global Business Affiliate (GBA) of Partners Worldwide. The GBA provides international mentoring in specializations, encouragement, accountability, networking and fundraising support to Talanta Finance.

The primary focus of this internship is to assist in the improvement and implementation of Microfinance service delivery to the business community.

Qualifications/Experience: The Partners Worldwide Uganda Intern will be required to uphold Christian principles and demonstrate exemplary servant leadership at all times as a God image bearer; be prepared to work on tight schedules and meet deadlines; and be flexible and a team player. In addition, demonstrate ability to relate well with Partners Worldwide leaders in the promotion of God’s Kingdom through business development programs. Essential qualities for this position include: Mature Christian faith with an understanding of Business as Ministry; Compassionate, respectful of other cultures and emotionally stable; Fluent in English and sensitive to adopting other types of English; Proactive and able to work with minimal supervision as well as interdependently; Leadership skills; Intern or job experience in organizational development and program management; Intern or job experience in accounting, marketing, and basic business management; Knowledge of and capability to work with; Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe, Skype (or similar telecommunications program) and Loan performer software (www.loanperformer.com)

Education and/or Experience: Minimum of bachelor’s degree in Accounting/Finance major or Business Administration is preferred; Minimum of 6 to 12 months of cross-cultural experience

Learn more at http://www.partnersworldwide.org/get-involved/internships/

Read more...

Read also: Kevin Drum on the decline of Big Labor, the rise of Big Business, and why the Obama era fizzled so soon.

Before he became the 15th-richest American, Michael Dell was hailed as a corporate wunderkind. His eponymous computer company's "dazzlingly efficient" factory in Austin, Texas, "may be the best hope of keeping blue-collar jobs in the United States," proclaimed the New York Times in 2004. Recently, Dell Inc. has been better known for gobbling up federal contracts and pulling financial shenanigans to line its executives' pockets—all while exploiting tax loopholes, outsourcing production, and laying off American workers.

1984	19-year-old Michael Dell builds and sells computers from his University of Texas-Austin dorm room. He drops out, and by 1987 Dell Computer's sales hit $60 million.
1992	At 27, Dell becomes the youngest CEO to ever make the Fortune 500.
1993	Dell Inc. builds its HQ in an Austin suburb, lured by sales-tax rebates, property-tax cuts, and $50 million in tax-free financing. Austin's mayor calls Dell, known for his "made in the USA" computers, "a model corporate citizen."
1997	Dell and his wife, Susan, build a $30 million, 33,000- square-foot granite and stainless-steel mansion with 8 bedrooms, a gym, an indoor pool, and (reportedly) 21 bathrooms. Dubbed "the castle" for its elaborate security, it's appraised at $22 million; the Dells argue it's worth only $6.5 million, and the county eventually settles at $12 million. Feds fine (PDF) Dell Inc. $50,000 for selling computers in Iran in violation of sanctions.
1998	Michael Dell forms a private-equity firm, MSD Capital, to manage his family's money. Today, their $12 billion in assets include a $100 million collection of Magnum photos; Dollar Rent-a-Car; real estate in Hawaii, Mexico, and California; and the companies that run Applebee's, IHOP, and Domino's. Dell Inc. opens a production and sales center in China, overseen by a subsidiary. By 2010, it has subsidiaries in 77 countries, including holding companies in tax shelters such as Bermuda and the Caymans that allow it to avoid at least $3.7 billion in US taxes. In 2010, it paid an effective tax rate of 7.5% on its foreign income.
1999	Dell Inc. gets an estimated $200 million in city and state incentives to build a factory in Nashville, Tenn. Three years later, half of the plant's jobs are relocated to a nearby town, where Dell gets $6 million in tax breaks. George W. Bush names Michael Dell to head his campaign's information technology advisory council. Dell Inc. becomes the country's top PC seller. Dell writes the bestselling Direct From Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry.
2000	Dell Inc.'s stock price hits all-time high. The New York Times declares Michael Dell the richest Texan ever. (He's now No. 2.) Dell buys two ranches outside Austin for an estimated $75 million. One gets its property taxes slashed 99.8% by claiming an agricultural exemption (proof: turkey feeders, birdhouses, and deer "habitat control"). Recently asked by Time about reducing his carbon footprint, Dell answered, "I'm sequestering way, way more than I'm using. I have a lot of land and a lot of trees." Dell and his wife give $250,000 to the Republican National Committee.
2001	Susan Dell's personal fashion label, Phi, makes Jenna and Barbara Bush's inaugural gowns. President Bush appoints Dell to his President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which warns that outsourcing is destroying the US tech industry. Dell builds a four-story villa on the exclusive Caribbean island of Anguilla.
2003	Dell Inc. replaces its call-center employees with part-time temps. Annual turnover soars to 300%. The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation gives $250,000 to a charity run by then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who's later convicted of illegally funneling corporate money to candidates. The "Dell Dude" actor is busted for pot possession.
2004	Dell Inc. employs more workers overseas (23,800) than it does in the US (22,200). After heavy lobbying by Dell Inc., Congress passes the American Jobs Creation Act, which lets US companies "repatriate" overseas profits at a one-time tax rate of 5.25%, rather than the normal 35%. The company brings home $4 billion.
2005	Michael and Susan Dell give $250,000 for President Bush's second inaugural celebration.
2006	President Bush: "It's tough in a time of war, when people see carnage on their Dell television screens." Dell Inc. recalls 4.1 million fire-prone laptop batteries. Dell Inc. discloses that it's been audited by the SEC, says it won't reveal details of any "misconduct," but revises four years' worth of financials. Dell Inc. says it's doubling its factory and call-center staff in India to 20,000.
2007	Michael Dell returns as CEO after a three-year hiatus. Less than six months later, his compensation exceeds $153 million, making him the sixth-highest-paid CEO in the US. His benefits include more than $1 million for security, second only to Oracle's Larry Ellison. By year's end, Dell Inc. announces 8,800 layoffs, about 10 percent of its global workforce. Investors sue Dell Inc.'s executives, alleging inflated profits and billions in secret kickbacks from chip maker Intel. The company will settle for $40 million. Customer service employees file a class-action lawsuit claiming that Dell Inc. routinely underpaid them. The case also is settled out of court. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sues Dell Inc. for luring customers into expensive finance plans. In 2009, Dell Inc. settles another case with 34 state AGs and agrees to reform its marketing and financing practices.
2008	Dell Inc. announces $3 billion in cuts, including the closure of an Austin plant, eliminating 900 jobs. It imposes a hiring freeze, offers buyouts, and asks workers to take unpaid days off. Four former middle managers file (PDF) a sex- and age-discrimination suit. None of Dell Inc.'s 14 top executives are women.
2009	Dell Inc.'s quarterly profits fall by nearly half; its shares have lost 80% of their value since 2004. The company announces another $1 billion in cuts. Opposition by Michael Dell helps defeat a proposal that would require federal stimulus money to be spent on American-made goods. Dell Inc., the 43rd-largest federal contractor, now makes most of its computers abroad. Lebanon, Tenn., threatens to sue Dell Inc. for eliminating 700 of the 1,000 jobs it had offered as part of a tax deal. Dell Inc. then shutters its last large US factory, in North Carolina, and sends its 900 jobs abroad. Michael Dell's MSD Capital and other investors buy the remains of the failed IndyMac Bank from the FDIC, putting up $1.3 billion for a $158 billion mortgage-servicing portfolio. The FDIC, which expects to lose up to $9.4 billion on the deal, promises to reimburse the investors for their potential losses. By year's end, the new bank has made $700 million in profits and a New York judge excoriates its "harsh, repugnant, shocking, and repulsive" practices. Susan Dell closes Phi, citing the poor market for items such as $1,495 suede harem shorts. Michael Dell's net worth hits $14.5 billion. He bills his company $4 million for using his private jet, reportedly the priciest flying habit of any public company's CEO.
2010	Since 2008, Dell Inc. has cut 7,300 jobs in the US while creating 4,300 jobs overseas. Dell Inc. announces a "flagship" factory and customer center in China that will employ 3,000. It plans to spend $100 billion in China over the next decade. Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that makes many Dell PCs, erects suicide nets around its dorms' roofs after 12 workers jump to their deaths. White House seeks to end a tax loophole that has let Dell Inc. save $546 million in three years by transferring patents and other properties to foreign subsidiaries. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Dell lobbyists targeted the plan; the company denies it. Dell Inc. discloses (PDF) that it's received nearly $1 billion in "tax holidays" from governments around the world in the past three years. Dell Inc. and Michael Dell agree to pay $100 million and $4 million, respectively, to settle SEC charges they improperly hid $6 billion in payments from Intel. Michael Dell gives $2,000 to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), bringing his family's total federal campaign contributions to more than $920,000—99% of which went to Republicans and GOP-leaning groups. By the end of 2010, Dell Inc. shares have gained nearly 80% from February 2009's low. Michael Dell tells Reuters that one of his biggest problems is finding skilled American workers: "I want to put a massive 'we're hiring' sign out."

Illustrations: Jason Schneider.

    

Read also: Kevin Drum on the decline of Big Labor, the rise of Big Business, and why the Obama era fizzled so soon.

Before he became the 15th-richest American, Michael Dell was hailed as a corporate wunderkind. His eponymous computer company's "dazzlingly efficient" factory in Austin, Texas, "may be the best hope of keeping blue-collar jobs in the United States," proclaimed the New York Times in 2004. Recently, Dell Inc. has been better known for gobbling up federal contracts and pulling financial shenanigans to line its executives' pockets—all while exploiting tax loopholes, outsourcing production, and laying off American workers.

1984	19-year-old Michael Dell builds and sells computers from his University of Texas-Austin dorm room. He drops out, and by 1987 Dell Computer's sales hit $60 million.
1992	At 27, Dell becomes the youngest CEO to ever make the Fortune 500.
1993	Dell Inc. builds its HQ in an Austin suburb, lured by sales-tax rebates, property-tax cuts, and $50 million in tax-free financing. Austin's mayor calls Dell, known for his "made in the USA" computers, "a model corporate citizen."
1997	Dell and his wife, Susan, build a $30 million, 33,000- square-foot granite and stainless-steel mansion with 8 bedrooms, a gym, an indoor pool, and (reportedly) 21 bathrooms. Dubbed "the castle" for its elaborate security, it's appraised at $22 million; the Dells argue it's worth only $6.5 million, and the county eventually settles at $12 million. Feds fine (PDF) Dell Inc. $50,000 for selling computers in Iran in violation of sanctions.
1998	Michael Dell forms a private-equity firm, MSD Capital, to manage his family's money. Today, their $12 billion in assets include a $100 million collection of Magnum photos; Dollar Rent-a-Car; real estate in Hawaii, Mexico, and California; and the companies that run Applebee's, IHOP, and Domino's. Dell Inc. opens a production and sales center in China, overseen by a subsidiary. By 2010, it has subsidiaries in 77 countries, including holding companies in tax shelters such as Bermuda and the Caymans that allow it to avoid at least $3.7 billion in US taxes. In 2010, it paid an effective tax rate of 7.5% on its foreign income.
1999	Dell Inc. gets an estimated $200 million in city and state incentives to build a factory in Nashville, Tenn. Three years later, half of the plant's jobs are relocated to a nearby town, where Dell gets $6 million in tax breaks. George W. Bush names Michael Dell to head his campaign's information technology advisory council. Dell Inc. becomes the country's top PC seller. Dell writes the bestselling Direct From Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry.
2000	Dell Inc.'s stock price hits all-time high. The New York Times declares Michael Dell the richest Texan ever. (He's now No. 2.) Dell buys two ranches outside Austin for an estimated $75 million. One gets its property taxes slashed 99.8% by claiming an agricultural exemption (proof: turkey feeders, birdhouses, and deer "habitat control"). Recently asked by Time about reducing his carbon footprint, Dell answered, "I'm sequestering way, way more than I'm using. I have a lot of land and a lot of trees." Dell and his wife give $250,000 to the Republican National Committee.
2001	Susan Dell's personal fashion label, Phi, makes Jenna and Barbara Bush's inaugural gowns. President Bush appoints Dell to his President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which warns that outsourcing is destroying the US tech industry. Dell builds a four-story villa on the exclusive Caribbean island of Anguilla.
2003	Dell Inc. replaces its call-center employees with part-time temps. Annual turnover soars to 300%. The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation gives $250,000 to a charity run by then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who's later convicted of illegally funneling corporate money to candidates. The "Dell Dude" actor is busted for pot possession.
2004	Dell Inc. employs more workers overseas (23,800) than it does in the US (22,200). After heavy lobbying by Dell Inc., Congress passes the American Jobs Creation Act, which lets US companies "repatriate" overseas profits at a one-time tax rate of 5.25%, rather than the normal 35%. The company brings home $4 billion.
2005	Michael and Susan Dell give $250,000 for President Bush's second inaugural celebration.
2006	President Bush: "It's tough in a time of war, when people see carnage on their Dell television screens." Dell Inc. recalls 4.1 million fire-prone laptop batteries. Dell Inc. discloses that it's been audited by the SEC, says it won't reveal details of any "misconduct," but revises four years' worth of financials. Dell Inc. says it's doubling its factory and call-center staff in India to 20,000.
2007	Michael Dell returns as CEO after a three-year hiatus. Less than six months later, his compensation exceeds $153 million, making him the sixth-highest-paid CEO in the US. His benefits include more than $1 million for security, second only to Oracle's Larry Ellison. By year's end, Dell Inc. announces 8,800 layoffs, about 10 percent of its global workforce. Investors sue Dell Inc.'s executives, alleging inflated profits and billions in secret kickbacks from chip maker Intel. The company will settle for $40 million. Customer service employees file a class-action lawsuit claiming that Dell Inc. routinely underpaid them. The case also is settled out of court. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sues Dell Inc. for luring customers into expensive finance plans. In 2009, Dell Inc. settles another case with 34 state AGs and agrees to reform its marketing and financing practices.
2008	Dell Inc. announces $3 billion in cuts, including the closure of an Austin plant, eliminating 900 jobs. It imposes a hiring freeze, offers buyouts, and asks workers to take unpaid days off. Four former middle managers file (PDF) a sex- and age-discrimination suit. None of Dell Inc.'s 14 top executives are women.
2009	Dell Inc.'s quarterly profits fall by nearly half; its shares have lost 80% of their value since 2004. The company announces another $1 billion in cuts. Opposition by Michael Dell helps defeat a proposal that would require federal stimulus money to be spent on American-made goods. Dell Inc., the 43rd-largest federal contractor, now makes most of its computers abroad. Lebanon, Tenn., threatens to sue Dell Inc. for eliminating 700 of the 1,000 jobs it had offered as part of a tax deal. Dell Inc. then shutters its last large US factory, in North Carolina, and sends its 900 jobs abroad. Michael Dell's MSD Capital and other investors buy the remains of the failed IndyMac Bank from the FDIC, putting up $1.3 billion for a $158 billion mortgage-servicing portfolio. The FDIC, which expects to lose up to $9.4 billion on the deal, promises to reimburse the investors for their potential losses. By year's end, the new bank has made $700 million in profits and a New York judge excoriates its "harsh, repugnant, shocking, and repulsive" practices. Susan Dell closes Phi, citing the poor market for items such as $1,495 suede harem shorts. Michael Dell's net worth hits $14.5 billion. He bills his company $4 million for using his private jet, reportedly the priciest flying habit of any public company's CEO.
2010	Since 2008, Dell Inc. has cut 7,300 jobs in the US while creating 4,300 jobs overseas. Dell Inc. announces a "flagship" factory and customer center in China that will employ 3,000. It plans to spend $100 billion in China over the next decade. Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that makes many Dell PCs, erects suicide nets around its dorms' roofs after 12 workers jump to their deaths. White House seeks to end a tax loophole that has let Dell Inc. save $546 million in three years by transferring patents and other properties to foreign subsidiaries. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Dell lobbyists targeted the plan; the company denies it. Dell Inc. discloses (PDF) that it's received nearly $1 billion in "tax holidays" from governments around the world in the past three years. Dell Inc. and Michael Dell agree to pay $100 million and $4 million, respectively, to settle SEC charges they improperly hid $6 billion in payments from Intel. Michael Dell gives $2,000 to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), bringing his family's total federal campaign contributions to more than $920,000—99% of which went to Republicans and GOP-leaning groups. By the end of 2010, Dell Inc. shares have gained nearly 80% from February 2009's low. Michael Dell tells Reuters that one of his biggest problems is finding skilled American workers: "I want to put a massive 'we're hiring' sign out."

Illustrations: Jason Schneider.

    

Here it is!

The gist?

Things are improving across the board:

Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts indicated that economic activity generally continued to improve since the last report. While many Districts described the improvements as only moderate, most Districts stated that gains were widespread across sectors, and Kansas City described its economic gains as solid. Manufacturing continued to lead, with virtually every District citing examples of steady improvement, often with reports of increased hiring. Retailers in the Boston District reported mixed sales results and retail sales remained weak in the Richmond District, but all other Districts experienced at least slight gains in consumer spending and the New York District cited robust sales. Business services, including freight-related activities, improved in most Districts. Loan demand was either unchanged or up slightly in most Districts, with New York, St. Louis, and Kansas City citing weaker lending. Residential and commercial real estate performance varied across Districts. Seven of the Districts described commercial real estate as slightly improved, while five noted that their markets were flat. While most Districts noted little change in their residential real estate markets, half of the Districts cited at least pockets of weakening.

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Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts indicated that economic activity generally continued to improve since the last report. While many Districts described the improvements as only moderate, most Districts stated that gains were widespread across sectors, and Kansas City described its economic gains as solid. Manufacturing continued to lead, with virtually every District citing examples of steady improvement, often with reports of increased hiring. Retailers in the Boston District reported mixed sales results and retail sales remained weak in the Richmond District, but all other Districts experienced at least slight gains in consumer spending and the New York District cited robust sales. Business services, including freight-related activities, improved in most Districts. Loan demand was either unchanged or up slightly in most Districts, with New York, St. Louis, and Kansas City citing weaker lending. Residential and commercial real estate performance varied across Districts. Seven of the Districts described commercial real estate as slightly improved, while five noted that their markets were flat. While most Districts noted little change in their residential real estate markets, half of the Districts cited at least pockets of weakening.

Reports focusing on the near-term outlook were most often upbeat. Some Districts, however, also noted that uncertainties remained high. Boston, Philadelphia, Richmond, Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Dallas all noted actual or expected disruptions to sales and production as a result of the tragedy in Japan. Most Districts reported signs of improvement in at least some of their labor markets and Boston, Richmond, Chicago, and Kansas City cited examples of concern among their contacts about being able to obtain certain types of skilled workers. Some businesses in the Philadelphia and Cleveland Districts still preferred to hire temporary over permanent workers.

Wage pressures were described by most Districts as weak or subdued, but higher commodity costs were widely reported to be putting increasing pressures on prices. Energy prices were cited most often, but raw materials in general were an increasing concern of businesses. The ability to pass through cost increases varied across Districts, with manufacturers generally finding less resistance to price increases than either retail or construction (where weak demand was a limiting factor).

Consumer Spending and Tourism
Consumer spending picked up modestly across most Districts since the last report. Consumers were shopping for necessities and looking for lower-priced options or promotional items in the Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco Districts. New York reported strong retail sales in February and March, but noted weaker sales at two major retail chains in New York. Retailers in the Cleveland District reported higher sales relative to a year ago, although a few contacts cited considerable stress in the low- to mid-market segments. Richmond reported weak sales, including for big-ticket items, and Boston received mixed sales reports. Big-ticket sales, particularly for home furnishings, picked up in the Boston, Philadelphia, and Dallas Districts, but remained subdued in the San Francisco District.

Automobile sales rose in most Districts. Dallas noted higher foot traffic at auto dealers and Cleveland, Atlanta, and San Francisco indicated that improved availability of credit helped to boost car sales. In the Richmond District, however, vehicle sales were generally unchanged or sluggish, while dealers in the Chicago District reported a slight decline. Contacts in several Districts expressed concern about potential supply chain disruptions due to production problems in Japan.

Tourism strengthened in the New York, Richmond, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Kansas City, and San Francisco Districts, although Japanese tourism in Hawaii dropped. Tourist activity picked up in the Minneapolis and Kansas City Districts, as visitors enjoyed late-winter sports, and early attendance at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. was above average. New York noted that hotel occupancy and attendance at Broadway theaters rose above year-ago levels.

Nonfinancial Services
Non-financial service firms generally reported expansion, although Minneapolis and Atlanta heard mixed reports. Demand for business-to-business services increased in the Boston, Philadelphia, Richmond, Minneapolis, and San Francisco Districts. Boston and Minneapolis cited stronger demand for advertising and marketing services. In addition, respondents in several Districts reported higher demand for seasonal accounting services. Contacts at firms providing travel-related services in the Atlanta and Richmond Districts also reported an uptick in demand. Kansas City District restaurateurs said sales were up, but the average check amount had declined; in contrast, restaurant contacts in the Atlanta District gave mixed reports and some in the St. Louis District planned to decrease operations.

Reports from transportation services firms were mostly positive. Contacts in the Cleveland, Richmond, and Atlanta Districts reported an increase in freight transportation volume, notably for vehicles and construction materials. Dallas received mixed reports, however, citing weaker international demand for intermodal transportation; container volume flattened, while railroads reported moderate increases. Carriers in the Atlanta District reported increased air travel for business and leisure, while airlines in the Dallas District indicated traffic was steady. New York and Richmond cited a strengthening in freight trucking, and port activity rose in the Richmond and San Francisco Districts. Shippers in the Atlanta District anticipated temporary disruptions resulting from the disaster in Japan.

Manufacturing
All twelve Districts reported that manufacturing activity increased since their previous reports. Ten of the twelve Districts cited a further pickup in production, while Cleveland and Dallas observed steady to slightly improving activity. Dallas said overall demand in manufacturing rose slightly from low levels, noting gains in food, plastics, and construction-related products. Richmond and Chicago reported substantial increases in auto and auto parts manufacturing. Cleveland indicated that auto production overall dipped slightly, but that domestic automakers showed a substantial rise in production. Moreover, St. Louis mentioned that automobile parts and electrical equipment manufacturers reported plans to open new plants in their District. Boston and Kansas City reported that growth of high-tech goods was strong, but several contacts in the Dallas District said that high-tech shipments to Japanese factories declined. Boston and Richmond District respondents attributed a lack of new contracts from federal government agencies to the uncertainties surrounding the budget for fiscal year 2011. San Francisco reported that makers of commercial aircraft and related parts had modest growth in new orders, which they attributed in part to increased demand for aircraft with greater fuel efficiency. Philadelphia said that manufacturers of fabricated metal products and industrial machinery cited higher demand. Similarly, steel producers and metal service centers in the Cleveland District reported that shipping volume met or exceeded expectations, with shipments driven by energy-related, transportation, and heavy equipment.

Comments on the outlook were generally positive. Boston mentioned that manufacturers generally remained cautiously optimistic but voiced greater uncertainty about the outlook for the rest of the year, based on the disruption at Japanese facilities, the geopolitical climate worldwide, and ambiguity about U.S. government spending plans. Likewise, Chicago commented that contacts' optimism was tempered by elevated uncertainties surrounding recent global events. New York and Kansas City stated that contacts remained optimistic about the near-term outlook, and Philadelphia indicated that more than two-thirds of their manufacturers expected business conditions to improve in the next six months.

Real Estate and Construction
Real estate markets for single family homes for the most part either were little changed from low levels or continued to weaken across all Districts. Residential construction was described by Chicago as subdued and the spring building season is likely to be slower than previously anticipated. Market activity was still declining in the St. Louis and Minneapolis Districts, while activity in the New York, Cleveland, Kansas City, Dallas, and San Francisco Districts remained weak. Atlanta characterized the market as mixed, with Florida brokers providing most of the signs of improvement. Both Philadelphia and Atlanta noted that brokers expected the market to improve, and builders in the Cleveland District were more optimistic than in the past several months. A few Districts found pockets of improvement. For example, Philadelphia reported that agents were seeing a pickup in inquiries, showings, and traffic, although there was little increase in sales or construction. Boston noted higher activity in just the last few weeks, due in part to improved weather, and Richmond said that the market for lower-priced homes improved. The multifamily markets strengthened in several Districts, including Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis, and San Francisco, both in terms of leasing and construction activity.

Commercial real estate activity remained weak across all Districts, although seven reported slight improvements since their last report. Market activity was still slow in the St. Louis and Philadelphia Districts and remained at low levels in the Boston, Atlanta, and San Francisco Districts. Markets in the San Francisco District were characterized as subdued, but leasing activity increased among technology firms. Most other Districts noted improvements, albeit slight, in activity. For example, Chicago and Kansas City cited moderate gains in construction, with Chicago highlighting gains in healthcare and automotive industries. Improvements in the Cleveland District were also driven by healthcare projects and, to a lesser extent, by manufacturing and energy. Office and industrial leasing improved in the Richmond District, although retail was little changed.

Banking and Financial Services
Most Districts cited loan demand as either unchanged or slightly improved since the last report, although many of the Districts citing improvements noted weak demand in some market segments. Banks in the Chicago District noted that their pipeline was still not robust, although manufacturing, food processing, and healthcare experienced some growth. Cleveland reported that business lending was strongest in healthcare and in energy. Consumer loan demand showed some improvement in the Richmond and San Francisco Districts, but was little changed in the Chicago District. Overall loan demand was weak or little changed in the Philadelphia and Kansas City Districts, although Philadelphia noted some improvement in commercial and industrial loans and in some types of commercial real estate loans. However, New York described household demand (for both consumer loans and mortgages) as weakening in its District, and St. Louis noted declines across most segments of its market, including real estate, commercial and industrial, and personal loans.

Several Districts reported that credit standards were unchanged or slightly tighter and that competition for quality loans was intense. For example, Cleveland described credit standards as unchanged, while New York noted no change for consumer loans but tightening for other categories in its District. San Francisco noted that credit standards remained somewhat restrictive. Cleveland characterized loan quality as stable or slightly improved and delinquency rates as stable or trending down. However, New York mentioned an uptick in delinquency rates for commercial and industrial loans. Competition for quality loans was described as intense in the Chicago, Dallas, and San Francisco Districts, putting downward pressures on rates and fees.

Employment, Wages, and Prices
Most Districts reported that labor market conditions were generally stronger than in their last reports. New York, Richmond, Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City, and Dallas all noted increased employment activity, while Boston and Atlanta reported modest or gradual improvement. However, Philadelphia, Cleveland and San Francisco mentioned limited or delayed hiring, while labor market conditions were mixed in the St. Louis District. Boston, New York, Cleveland, Richmond, and Dallas cited noticeable improvements in the manufacturing sector, and Boston and Kansas observed increased labor demand in the technology sector. New York, Cleveland, Richmond, Chicago, and Minneapolis received upbeat reports from staffing agencies. New York said that a major employment agency experienced a marked pickup in hiring activity in March, describing it as "the best month in years." A staffing contact in the Cleveland District noted moderate growth in the number of new job openings, with vacancies concentrated in health care, energy and professional business services. A large staffing firm in the Chicago District reported solid growth in billable hours and a substantial increase in permanent placement and recruiting activity, while contacts in the Philadelphia District were inclined to delay additions to permanent or temporary staff. Employers in the Boston, Richmond, Chicago, and Kansas City Districts said that they were experiencing difficulty in recruiting highly specialized workers. Despite signs of improvement in most labor markets, St. Louis and Minneapolis reported examples of layoffs in the manufacturing sector of their regions.

Input prices rose in most Districts, particularly for cotton and other agricultural commodities, petroleum-based products, and industrial metals. In addition, shippers added fuel surcharges in several Districts. Boston, Cleveland and Atlanta cited increasing cost pressures, and some manufacturers in Boston were raising their selling price to pass costs along to customers. The ability to pass through increases, however, varied in both the Chicago and Atlanta Districts, with manufacturers generally being more successful than retail or construction firms. Contacts in the San Francisco District reported a limited ability to pass through higher input prices on anything other than food and gasoline. Kansas Cited stated that more manufacturers and retailers expected to raise prices in coming months.

Wage pressures were reported to be mostly contained, especially in the Philadelphia, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Dallas, and San Francisco Districts. Kansas City noted wages generally held steady, even with expanded hiring, and wage pressures were expected to be contained except for highly competitive or specialized positions. Wage pressures were described as modest in the Chicago District. However, Richmond reported slightly faster wage increases. Boston reported that nearly all of the manufacturing firms that they contacted planned to implement merit increases, and one contact planned a greater merit pool next year to compensate for previous low raises. Philadelphia noted some concern about rising nonwage employment costs, but wages for business firms in the District were mostly steady.

Agriculture and Natural Resources
Assessments of agricultural activity were mixed. Varying degrees of drought conditions persisted in the Atlanta, Kansas City and Dallas Districts, with Chicago indicating that some areas in their District did not have adequate subsoil moisture to endure dry spells. In the Kansas City District, agricultural growing conditions generally worsened in late February and March. In particular, winter wheat crop conditions deteriorated further as the drought in the southern Plains intensified. Dallas reported that drought conditions became more widespread in March, covering more than 90 percent of the District. However, Dallas noted that planting was underway despite concern about the lack of soil moisture for spring crops. Chicago also indicated that planting should proceed quickly in most of the District, as fields were in good condition with ground moisture sufficient for an excellent start to the crop year. Moreover, the Minneapolis District continued to enjoy good conditions in spite of wet weather and spring flooding. Most Districts reported that prices of fuel and feed continued to put downward pressure on margins, but prices for most agricultural commodities remained strong. Atlanta said that strong global demand contributed to elevated prices for some farm acreage, while Kansas City attributed higher farmland values to strong crop prices and a limited number of farms for sale.

Activity in the energy industry generally strengthened since the last report. Minneapolis, Kansas City, and Dallas reported increased drilling activity as demand firmed. In the Atlanta District, deep-water drilling permits were issued in late February for the first time since the Gulf oil spill last April, although the number of rigs operating in the Gulf of Mexico was still only about half the number prior to the spill. In the St. Louis and Kansas City Districts, coal production remained above year-ago levels, but was stable to moderately lower in the Cleveland District. Kansas City reported increased drilling activity, with exploration shifting away from natural gas toward crude oil, while Cleveland indicated that oil and gas output held steady. In the San Francisco District, extraction activity for natural gas expanded, while Minneapolis reported that late-March oil exploration activity increased since mid-February. Minneapolis also noted that iron ore mines in northern Minnesota were operating at full capacity, with expectations that 2011 production will be the highest in more than 10 years.

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See Also:

• A Major Economic Warning Is Coming From The UK
• The Fed Is Playing The Most Dangerous Game On Earth
• ROGOFF: The Way We Look At Sovereign Debt Is "Primitive" And We Are Facing A "Profound" Crisis

Co-blogger Steve Dickinson yesterday spoke at the Chengdu AmCham on China's 12th Five Year Plan and he will be speaking on that again on April 14 at the Swedish Chamber in Beijing. Though Steve has already written a few posts on here regarding the plan, this one is an important update because it discusses how the plan has evolved such that it now differs markedly from even its most recent drafts.

As I have mentioned previously, China tends to very much follow its five year plans and so they can make an excellent blueprint for businesses located in or doing business with China.

This post will be in two parts, with Part II to come out tomorrow. Today's post focuses on the guidance given for the Plan. Tomorrow's post will focus on the plan as actually adopted. 

By:  Steve Dickinson

Guidance for China's Twelfth Five Year Plan was adopted by the CPC [Communist Party of China] last October in two critical documents:

The Opinion of the CPC Central Committee on Establishing the 12^th Five Year Plan (中共中央关于制定国民经济和社会发展第十二个五年规划的建议) (the Opinion) adopted on October 18, 2010

Explanation of the Opinion (央关于制定国民经济和社会发展第十二个五年规划的建议的说明) authored by Wen Jiabao and presented to the CPC Central Committee on October 15, 2010.

This preliminary review is based on those documents and on government and research institutes that have been published in China in response to those documents.

I. China’s Ten Major Challenges

The goal of the Chinese regulators is for China to become a moderately prosperous country by the year 2020. The current five year period will be critical in meeting that goal. China has recently reached a level where its per capita GDP equals $US4,000. The goal is to achieve a $US10,000 per capita GDP by the year 2020. This is a critical transition. It is generally believed to be relatively easy for a country to achieve the $4,000 number. It is common, however, for countries to stall out in GDP growth and never achieve the $10,000 goal.

The goal of the 12^th Five Year plan is to prevent China’s growth from stalling. In the Opinion, the CPC identifies 10 factors that threaten the continued development of the Chinese economy

1. Resource constraints: energy and raw materials.
2. Mismatch in investment and imbalance in consumption.
3. Income disparity.
4. Weakness in capacity for domestic innovation.
5. Production structure is not rational: too much heavy industry, not enough service.
6. Agriculture foundation is thin and weak.
7. Urban/rural development is not coordinated.
8. Employment system is imbalanced.
9. Social contradictions are progressively more apparent.
10. Obstacles to scientific development continue to exist and are difficult to remove.

II. The Theoretical Solution

Before discussing the concrete outline of the plan, the party sets out the theoretical approach that will serve as the guide:

A. The Main Theme: Scientific Development

1. “During the period of the 12^th Five Year Plan, economic development remains the key to resolution of all problems.” (Wen Jiabao, quoting from the Opinion)

2. Development must be “scientific”:Practical (unconstrained by ideology),  human centered, and sustainable.

B. The Main Line:  “China must rapidly engage in a complete transformation of its form of economic development.”

It cannot be stressed sufficiently how radical is the proposed remedy. The idea is not to refine the current system, but to completely transform the current system in only five years. This is a bold goal.

The focus of transformation is as follows:

1. From export led consumption to domestic led consumption.

2. From excessive reliance on exports to balance between export, import and domestic consumption.

3. From reliance on foreign technology to reliance on domestic innovation.

4. From reliance on “old” energy, and materials and industries to creation of a low-carbon /new-materials based economy.

III. Ten Point Outline of the 12^th Five Year Plan

A. To address the ten challenges, and in accordance with the theoretical approach, the CPC proposes that the 12^th Five Year Plan focus on ten major areas, as follows:

1. Expand domestic consumption while maintaining stable economic development.

a. Unleash domestic consumption. This will be done through the measures at item seven below.

b. Coordinate consumption, investment and export to create a balanced economy.

2. Modernize agriculture to create the new socialist rural village. .

a. Modernize agriculture through mechanization and measures that allow larger farms.

b. Invest in agriculture infrastructure, especially in waterworks.

c. Create non-agricultural rural employment.

d. Improve legal and financial development mechanisms.

e. Improve agricultural service business in areas such as wholesaling, warehousing, processing, transportation and marketing.

3. Develop a modern, balanced industrial and trade structure.

a. Develop service trade. Services currently contribute to less than 40% of GDP. The goal is to         raise this number to 70% or higher.

b. Develop modern energy and integrated logistics.

c. Develop marine resources.

4. Advance the integration between regions and encourage stable urbanization.

a. Combat regional disparities.

b. Eliminate the urban/rural distinction. Cities at the second tier and lower must accept rural migrants. The goal is to provide for industrial/service employment for agricultural laborers in areas close to their current residence. This will be done to avoid a mass migration of rural residents into the cities. 

5. Promote energy saving and environmental protection.

Currently, for every 1% increase in GDP, China’s energy use increases by 1% or more. If this rate of use were to continue, China would need to increase its energy consumption by 2.5 times to achieve its 2020 economic goal. To put this into perspective, this would mean increasing the current consumption of coal from the current 3.6 billion tons per year to an astronomical 7.9 billion tons a year. No one in China thinks this can be done. One major way to reduce the amount of energy required for the Chinese economy is to implement energy saving practices throughout the economy. A second way to reduce is to shift from hydrocarbon based energy to alternative energy sources. The new plan advocates an all out program in this area.

6. Create an innovation driven society by encouraging education and training of the workforce.

The plan seeks to shift China from its role as the factory of the world to a new role as a technological innovator for the world. There are two components to this approach:

a. China will seed to become a domestic innovator in all areas of current modern technology, with an emphasis on practical industrial applications.

b. Where China is not capable of domestic innovation, China will continue to import technology from advanced economies. However, China will seek to actively domesticate that technology through a program of “assimilate and re-invent.” The recent program for production in engines for high speed rail is offered as an example of the “assimilate and re-invent” approach.

7. Establish a comprehensive public social welfare system.

In order to meet the goal of unleashing domestic consumption, China has to move to a policy that puts more disposable income in the hands of its citizens. The plan proposed the following approach:

a. Labor and employment.  

China must provide jobs for a growing workforce. There are two key areas:

1. It is estimated that over the next ten years, 200 million persons will be shifted from agricultural labor to urban industrial/service labor. Jobs for these persons consistent with their training must be provided.

2. Currently, China’s colleges produce far more graduates than its economy can absorb. Entry level jobs for college and technical school graduates must be provided. Education must also be adjusted to accord with the realities of the job market.

            b. Wages

Chinese wage are abnormally low. Most planners are pushing for tripling of the average wage for factory workers during this 5 year plan.

            c. Provide comprehensive government benefit programs, especially retirement pensions.

            d. Provide government funded medical services with comprehensive basic coverage by the end of             2011.

            e. Maintain active population control.

It is interesting to note that two major issues are not effectively considered in the plan: the first is the cost of housing and the second is the cost of high school and college education. Though there has been some discussion of constructing low income housing, the measures proposed will do little or nothing to address the problem of affordable housing in China’s major cities.

8. Encourage cultural production in order to increase China’s “soft power”.

China will seek to make its case for the world to avoid misunderstanding of China’s goals and role within the world economy.

9. Increase the pace of reform of the economy.

            a. Financial market reform, especially the RMB.

            b. Energy price reform and price reform of other economic inputs (raw materials).

10. Continue with liberalization and “opening-up” to the outside, but on a new track.

            a. Shift from export only to a balance between export and import.

            b. Shift from inbound investment only to a balance between inbound and outbound investment.               China will continue with its “going out” policy.

            c. Actively participate in international economic governance.

While I was checking the Iowa Environmental Council's calendar and April newsletter, I learned that earlier this year, the American Institute of Architects, Iowa Chapter office in Des Moines became the U.S. Green Building Council first LEED Platinum certified project in Iowa. Congratulations to the AIA for demonstrating how to do an office renovation in an eco-friendly way. Click here to learn more about the project's sustainable features.  
Monday, April 11

The Temporary Redistricting Advisory Commission is to submit a report to the Iowa legislature on public input regarding the first redistricting plan. No cohesive case against the proposed maps emerged during last week's public hearings.

From the International Food Information Council Foundation and the Council on Food, Agricultural, and Resource Economics:

Please join us for a Webinar:

"The Low-Down on Local Foods"

When: Monday, April 11th
2:00-3:30 pm ET/1:00-2:30 pm CT
12:00-1:30 pm MT/11:00 am -12:30 pm PT.
On Monday, April 11th from 2:00-3:30 EST, the International Food Information Council Foundation and the Council on Food, Agricultural, and Resource Economics (C-FARE) will host a webinar discussing the definition of "local" foods; the nutritional, economic and social tradeoffs of local versus other foods; and consumer insights regarding local foods.
Interest in where our food comes from, sparked by a desire for more healthful foods, and has spawned a newfound appreciation for local foods and communities. This webinar complements the First Quarter 2010 issue of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA ) peer-reviewed science magazine Choices - http://www.choicesmagazine.org...
Speakers:
Moderator - Lindsey Loving, Senior Director, Food Ingredient & Technology Communications, International Food Information Council Foundation
"What Does Local Mean?"   Larry Lev, Ph.D.   Oregon State University Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics
Presentation will describe current concepts of local, the central role that farm-direct marketing channels play in consumer perceptions of local, and the limited opportunities these channels offer for increasing local food consumption.
"Can Local Go Mainstream?"   Robert P. King, Ph.D.  University of Minnesota Department of Applied Economics
Talk will focus on the prospects for and barriers to local foods gaining a greater share of sales in mainstream supermarket and food service distribution channels.
"Nutritional Differences and Consumer Insights on Local Foods"   Mary Lee Chin, MS, RD
 Registered Dietitian and President, Nutrition Edge Communications
Presentation will focus on nutritional comparisons of foods that are from local, regional, and national origins, as well as discussing consumer insights.
Please join us for this exciting event!
How to Register: To RSVP for the event please register prior to the webinar at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/r...
The presentations will be saved using web-seminar technology.
Registration is free but space is limited.

Tuesday, April 12

From the city of Dubuque's website:

City Expo 2011
April 12, 2011
Five Flags Civic Center, 405 Main Street

The City of Dubuque will hold its annual City Expo on Tuesday, April 12, from 5-8 p.m. in the Five Flags Civic Center at 405 Main Street. Admission is free and all Dubuque residents are invited to attend. This year's event will include a special reception for newcomers from 5-6 p.m. in the Majestic Room on the second floor of Five Flags. City Expo is designed to inform Dubuque residents about city programs, services, and resources and give residents an additional opportunity to speak with City staff. City Expo features activities and demonstrations designed for visitors of all ages.

Free admission.
For more information, visit http://www.cityofdubuque.org

It's the deadline to RSVP for the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa's Crossroads luncheon on April 15 (see below).

Thursday, April 14

This is the first day the Iowa legislature may consider the redistricting bill.

There's an Annual Regional Green Expo and Business/Earth Day After Hours in Clear Lake at the Surf Ballroom from 4-7 p.m.. Booths on fresh, local food; energy/$-savers for your home; wellness; personal care; art; renewable energy grant programs, etc.

From the Iowa Environmental Council's calendar:

Women Caring for the Land
Location: The Arboretum, 1875 Peach Ave., Madrid, IA
Women who own or manage farmland in Boone and neighboring counties are invited to participate in a free conservation discussion and field tour on Thursday, April 14, from 8:30 - 3:30 p.m. at the Iowa Arboretum near Madrid. The program is called Women Caring for the Land. All interested women are welcome, including owners, operators and inheritors of farmland, regardless of their degree of knowledge about conservation. A free lunch will be provided. In order for us to get an accurate meal count, please RSVP by Monday, April 11, by calling Lynn Heuss at 515-201-9405 or emailing her at lheuss@gmail.com.

Friday, April 15

There's an Earth Day event at Coralville Lake in the Iowa City area. Participants were supposed to register by April 5, but it might be worth calling to see if late registration is possible:

An Earth Day Event! at Coralville Lake
Cost: FREE! But you must pre-register by April 5, 2011.
Friday, April 15, 2011; 5:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Coralville Lake, U.S. Army Corp of Engineers

Help restore the natural woodland habitat around Coralville Lake by volunteering for a day, Saturday, April 24, folks will form groups and work on various projects from painting picnic tables to pulling weeds.

There'll be free food, free camping, and free entertainment! Check in on Friday, April 15, at the Sugar Bottom Campground between 5pm and 8pm. At 8pm there will be an Earth Day Ceremony to bless the event. [...]

Please visit the Coralville Lake website for further details or call Mary Sue at 319-338-3543 ext. 6306.

From the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa:

Presenter:                Professor Todd Green, Ph.D.
                                   Assistant Professor of Religion, Luther College

Subject:                    What is driving the anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S.?
Professor Green will speak about the conflicts over mosques and minarets in Europe and the U.S. and what he believes are the underlying catalyst for those conflicts. He will address issues of freedom of religion that arise in these conflicts.  He will also address the difference between Europeans and Americans in how religious freedom is restricted for Muslims.

Date:                          Friday, April 15
 Time:        11:45 - 1 p.m.
  Location:  Plymouth Congregational Church, 4126 Ingersoll Ave, Des Moines
  Cost:         $10.00

Reservations are necessary to attend Crossroads.  Please call 515-279-8715 or email info AT interfaithallianceiowa.org by Tuesday, April 12.

Saturday, April 16

There's a big Eco-Arts Festival in Cedar Rapids, organized by the Corridor Conservation Coalition and the New Bohemia Group. Click the link for more details about the scheduled activities.

The 18th Annual Mason City Earth Day Clean Up & Festival is taking place from 9 am to noon. The litter clean-up is community-wide, and the festival will be at East Park - Prairie Playground.

The same morning, Clear Lake will also hold earth day events in the City Park. Click the link for more information.

There's an Earth Day clean up in Burlington as well, to be followed by a lunch and group photo for volunteers.

In Dubuque, there will be an Earth Day Clean Up at the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium from 10 a.m.-noon. Those interested in volunteering for the cleanup should contact Vicky Sutter at 563-557-9545. Admission charged.
For more information, visit http://www.rivermuseum.com

Earth Day Events continue at Coralville Lake:

On Saturday, April 16, the day will begin at 8:30 a.m. with a welcome message and project information for group leaders at the Earth Day Tent.

8:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.: Groups will form and work will begin. Field snacks will also be provided.

1:15 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. LUNCH - remember lunches will be provided for the FIRST 200 people to pre-register.

After lunch everyone is on their own to discover and enjoy our beautiful park!

Contact Ranger Mary Sue Bowers by clicking on the link provided to pre-register for the event. Remember, pre-registration is due by April 5th and the first 200 to register will receive two nights of free camping, lunch on Saturday. Late registrations will be accepted with no guarantee of lunch on Saturday.

The beautiful commemorative t-shirts will be available for purchase this year. See the registration form for pricing and ordering information.

Please visit the Coralville Lake website for further details or call Mary Sue at 319-338-3543 ext. 6306.

For those in the Davenport area:

Earth Week Fair

Saturday, April 16th, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM

Public Works, Parks and Recreation and Community Planning and Economic Development Departments have developed an interactive exhibit sure to capture the interest of all ages. The exhibit will feature interactive activities related to water quality and water quality protection.

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

Saturday, April 16th 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM

The Davenport Public Library is kicking off Earth Week with a festive party at the Quad Cities greenest library, the LEED-accredited Eastern Avenue Branch, located at 6000 Eastern Avenue. The party will feature The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss. Attendees will also enjoy games and crafts celebrating our awesome planet.

From the Iowa Environmental Council's calendar:

Johnston Invasive Work Day
Location: Crown Point, Johnston, IA
Meet at Crown Point Community Center from 8:30am to 11:00am to remove invasive trees and shrubs in the Beaver Creek Natural Resource Area. Gloves and some tools will be provided. Wear sturdy shoes and long sleeve shirts and pants.
Time: 08:30 AM - 11:00 AM

Bike trail enthusiasts may want to join the "Lemonade Ride" from Panora to Bayard and Coon Rapids, scheduled to start at 11 am. Click here for background on the Guthrie County supervisors' incredibly short-sighted decision to reject this bike trail project. More info from Creating Great Places:

The Lemonade Ride is being organized for April 16 and 17 to support the future Herndon to Coon Rapids Trail through Guthrie County in West-Central Iowa .

The Guthrie County Supervisors just cancelled a $365,000 federal grant rather than own a bike trail through their county to Coon Rapids . But when life gives you lemons, make lemonade!  For starters bikers are going to make it to Bayard and Coon Rapids with or without a trail, just to show their support for the future trail.  

This ride is now the top featured ride on the www.BikeIowa.com website home page.

I am writing to ask you to please help publicize this ride via your biking friends, face book friends, etc.  
A good turn out coming to Bayard and Coon Rapids would really help to show locals the great potential of this future trail connection.

On April 16th, one team is coming from Panora, meeting at PJ's diner there at 11:00 am.

Another team could come from Jefferson, and then (after traversing about 1.5 miles of gravel) could come into Coon Rapids on County road E63.

All rides are encouraged to patronize Bayard and Coon Rapids businesses.  There are various local lodging options, including staying at Whiterock's Garst Farm (www.whiterockconservancy.org) at the Riverside campground at NE corner of Coon Rapids (has showers and septic dump) or by camping in the yard of the Raychelle's diner and that of Creating Great Places (both located at south entry of Coon Rapids on South 5th Avenue ).  Creating Great Places is at 401 5th Avenue and has a covered wagon in the front yard.

There will be a concert in the Library at 7:00 and a street dance later that night organized by the Raychelle's Diner.

Please help support our future trail connection to Des Moines by making you way to Coon Rapids on April 16th!

Donations to the trail maintenance fund are also very welcome (This fund will help us find a new public entity to take over the trail grant). These can be made on-ling at www.creatinggreatplaces.org or mailed to the address below. All donations to the trail fund are tax-deductible.

Sunday, April 17

The 6th Annual Earth Day in the Junction takes place in West Des Moines' Valley Junction neighborhood from 10am - 4pm. This community celebration of Earth Day includes a 5K Run & Kids Fun Run,a diverse group of exhibitors, children's activities, live music, demonstrations and food. Free for the whole family.  

In Afghanistan, living off the grid isn't a tree hugger's dream -- it's reality. but a renewable-power startup called Sustainable Energy Services Afghanistan is lighting up Afghans' lives, with help from the sun and the wind.

ON A PLEASANT AUTUMN DAY, Shakibullah Hedayat Rustaqi and his colleagues began to prepare for their next job. They grew out their beards. They stopped showering a week before their start date. They chose their most raggedy clothes. "We had very dirty shawls that we turned into turbans," he recalls.

Their destination was Paktika, an Afghan province just over the border from Waziristan, the lawless Pakistani region that's said to be home to Taliban and Al Qaeda bases. Their mission: to install four windmills.

Rustaqi and his team could never have gone to the countryside dressed as they typically would for work at a Kabul-based renewable-power firm called Sustainable Energy Services Afghanistan (SESA); to bandits, who are as common on Afghan highways as rest stops are on American ones, engineers look like ATMs. "If anyone asks, 'Who are you?' we tell them we are laborers," says Rustaqi. "If they get engineers, they cut off their heads. You know the Taliban: stupid people."

Get in, get the windmills up and running, get out as quickly as possible -- that's the basic game plan for each job. This mission, in Taliban territory, did not go smoothly. Partway through the afternoon, gunfire exploded in the air, followed by sirens crying out through the hills. Suddenly, a convoy of Afghan National Army vehicles sped by the work site. As the sounds of a firefight grew around them, Rustaqi was tempted to seek shelter. "It was very dangerous!" he says. But he had two engineers 100 feet up a half-finished windmill. "We couldn't leave our friends up there. We just kept working."

Within an hour, the fighting had passed as quickly as it had started. Their job finished, the engineers descended.

"What did you see?" Rustaqi asked them anxiously.

They stared at him blankly. They hadn't heard the gunfire or the sirens or his shouts. A hundred feet above the valley floor, all they'd heard was the sound of the wind whooshing past.

IN THE WEST, LIVING OFF THE GRID MAY BE AN ASPIRATION FOR SOME bleeding-heart eco-warriors. In Afghanistan, it is reality. Eighty percent of the country does not have electricity. In the villages where SESA typically works, the only form of it that some residents regularly encounter is lightning.

Even if someone were to build a new major power plant, it would be largely useless because there is no national electrical grid, and given Afghanistan's devilish terrain, with the jagged skyscraping peaks and the gash-in-the-earth valleys, there never will be. "You just can't string power lines all over the country," says Ahmad Saboor Arya, an engineer at the Afghan Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development.

That makes Afghanistan the perfect place for small renewable-power installations with enough capacity to electrify a village. With unique coalitions of consumers and clients -- the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. military, which fund most of the construction; not-for-profits that often help secure local buy-in; tribal elders who welcome SESA teams into their communities and then oversee the completed power projects -- the company is gradually bringing power to one village after another.

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The U.S. and its NATO allies have plowed more than $56 billion into Afghan reconstruction and development. "We have to make sure we leave a sustainable solution," says British Major General Nick Carter, who, until November, commanded allied forces in southern Afghanistan. But a recent report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said that USAID and the Departments of State and Defense together were responsible for $17.7 billion in spending that they could not now account for. In that context, the $4.8 million that the U.S. has spent with SESA seems like a very good deal. That money has bought more than electricity; it has also created a surprising model of local development. "What our clients purchase is not solar power or wind power -- they actually don't give a shit about solar," says Tony Woods, the affable Kiwi-American who is the company's founder, CEO, and majority owner. "It's a means to an end -- to stability, to employment, to growth."

Woods is convinced that with some minor modifications to suit local cultures, his strategy will work across the world, in inhospitable business environments from Asia to South America. By going where most businesses would fear to tread, his company is creating jobs and boosting agricultural output. It is aiding improvements to health and education -- and showing there is money to be made in some of the world's unfriendliest nooks and crannies.

KABUL IS AFGHANISTAN'S BEST-LIT CITY. MOST OF THE CAPITAL'S electricity is imported from Uzbekistan, via a transmission line completed in 2009 with foreign-aid funding. What little power there is in the rest of the Texas-size country comes almost entirely from fume-spewing diesel generators, but Afghanistan has no significant domestic crude-oil supply, refining capability, or affordable diesel fuel.

Before 2001, under Taliban rule, "only Taliban houses and ministries in Kabul had electricity," says an engineer at the Afghan Ministry of Energy and Water, who asked not to be named because he did not have permission to speak. Even in homes that had once had power, "people passed five or six years in darkness." Electricity wasn't the only thing most Afghans lacked. In a 2003 survey by the National Solidarity Program, Afghans were asked what they would want the government to do with the approximately $200 per family in development funds available through foreign aid. Thirty percent said water and sanitation, another 30% said transportation, and 11% made electricity their top choice. "When you bring even small amounts of electricity to a rural area, income, literacy, and health generally advance," says Chris Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, D.C., research group that specializes in energy and the environment. "Understanding this link is key to improving the lives of the rural poor."

Helping the poor was never the primary goal for Woods, who came to the energy business -- and Afghanistan -- circuitously. Born in the U.S. but raised in New Zealand and trained as an engineer, he had noticed nonoperational micro hydropower generators while biking through Pakistan. (He was en route from South Africa to China.) After the trip, he put together a proposal for New Zealand Aid, the national development agency, and got hired as a consultant to return to Pakistan and fix them.

In 1999, he made his first visit to Afghanistan. One blue-sky day, he ran into a platoon of Taliban soldiers enjoying a picnic by a lake near Kabul. They were shooting ducks, and they directed a gun at him -- so that he could have a go at the ducks too. Maybe it was the weather or Woods's disarming Forrest Gump-like charm. "They were quite helpful," he says, recalling that they offered excellent driving directions and local knowledge, including tips on which roads were mined.

On that trip, Woods had an epiphany: Afghanistan seemed perfect for renewable energy. The northeast region has abundant water, the west has steady wind, and the south is blessed with strong sunshine. The only thing it did not have was someone who was willing to take on the challenge of harnessing those natural resources and turning them into locally distributed, grid-free sources of electricity. So in 2007, he moved to Kabul and founded SESA.

Kabul's dusty streets are full of expats -- aid workers, journalists, ex-military. If you didn't know them by their skin color, you'd know them by the hunger in their eyes. The prototypical Kabul foreigner is a former idealist now angling for an ever-bigger piece of the lucrative war-and-aid pie. Woods stands out from that crowd. In one of the world's hairiest countries -- a decade ago, an engineer who now works for Woods spent a week in jail for shaving his beard -- Woods never even sports a five-o'clock shadow. Amid the cynics, he is, even after four years in Afghanistan, endlessly optimistic about doing business in a poor, corruption-plagued land. "We're willing to do this where nobody else wants to go," he says. "We've always been about helping -- we grew out of the development field -- but we are unashamedly commercial."

Woods's company, which turned a profit in the fourth quarter of 2010, draws almost all its revenue from the American taxpayer; USAID and the U.S. military are his biggest clients. But they are not his end consumer -- the Afghan villager is -- and Woods views his operation as being as much about sales and marketing as it is about electrification. "We understand what our clients are actually buying," he says, explaining how he constantly switches between two languages: that of the people who pay for a facility and that of those who will use it. "The funder talks about employment and stability. But the villagers talk about TV and lights and refrigerators. We put as much, or often more, time and effort into nontechnical parts of a project. If the social, environmental, or economic sides fail, then the project will fail even if the engineering is done to a high standard."

The first priority on every job is to prep the territory. Woods and his team are often hired in disputed regions where the government is seeking to wrest influence from the Taliban, so it is important, as Woods puts it, "to call ahead." "The community must be involved at the earliest stage or else they will blame problems later on the lack of consultation," he says. "They must help along the way, providing security and labor. If the village wants us there, then they will protect us." SESA also requires that the village provide land for the installation, a tangible investment in the project.

Woods's team does the installation, which doesn't require much wiring since everything stays local, and the training. Communities must agree to collective ownership and co-op-style management for the installed system. Villagers pay for power -- "Otherwise, there's no revenue for service and support" -- and Woods recommends using prepaid electricity meters. The concept works because nearly all Afghans already know the prepay model from pay-as-you-go mobile-phone cards. It also avoids the dirty work of cutting anyone off for delinquency. In these tightly connected communities, "nobody wants to be the one to disconnect Auntie Maud," Woods says with a smirk.

Woods trains locals to do the maintenance, which creates one or two well-paid jobs. "Someone has to run it and maintain it," he says. The Soviets built hundreds of micro hydropower plants throughout the north of the country, but none of them work now because they weren't maintained. (SESA has $1.5 million in USAID contracts to help resuscitate some of them.) In the background of Taliban training videos, you can see arrays of solar cells. These systems need faithful maintenance of the type that only a committed organization -- say, a close-knit group of insurgents or a village -- can provide.

Woods brings a deft diplomatic touch to his work. Before launching a solar project in 2009 in the Gardez Province village of Sayed Karam, for instance, he rented a van to bring eight tribal elders to a meeting in Kabul. The men tumbled out of the van, all with long beards, black turbans, and scars from previous wars (one was missing an eye, another a finger). Over tea, nuts, and kebabs, they peppered Woods with questions and comments: Why should anyone have to pay for power? Even the mosque? Even the school? How does a meter work? Where does the equipment come from? Please don't send low-quality gear from China!

Woods patiently answered each question. "They're Taliban with a small t," he says later. "They'll tolerate some foreigners if there is something in it for them. They're traditional Pashtuns and mostly want to stay that way, but with satellite TV."

The appeal of his company's product has been helped by an unforeseen agricultural benefit. Because of the delicacy of some turbine components, they must be shipped to the installation site in 40-foot cold-storage containers that should then be shipped back out. Woods wondered, What if I left the container at the delivery site?

One of the Afghan agriculture industry's great limitations is the lack of refrigerated storage. Most produce can't make it to market before rotting. Also, each community tends to grow the same crops and harvest them all at once, pushing prices down and leaving surpluses to spoil. After SESA installs a turbine, it can hook up the leftover container to the new power supply, creating refrigeration that can extend a harvest's shelf life by up to two months. It has done this in two communities so far, and is bidding on a U.S. Marine-funded solar project, for Helmand Province, that would power cold storage for pomegranates.

THE WORK OF ELECTRIFICATION HAS GIVEN DIFFERENT KINDS OF new power to Woods's 25-person staff, including the freedom that a steady, middle-class salary brings. In a nation where there are few jobs outside the home available to women (even hotel housekeeping staffs are typically male), this is particularly true for the four women he employs -- and no other has a story like Samiya Amiri's.

A bubbly 27-year-old with warm, dark eyes and a fleeting smile, Amiri, just over a decade ago, was forced by her parents to marry. Her suitor was rising in the Taliban hierarchy. A top official in the Badakshan Province, he wanted Amiri as his second wife, and he offered her parents an irresistible dowry: their own lives. He pledged to kill them if they didn't let him wed her.

After the birth of her second child, Amiri says, she fled from her husband, taking her two children and living for a time in a women's shelter. She had missed high school because the Taliban eliminated schooling for girls, but the shelter had an adult-education program that included English tutoring. That's when Woods found her. "She showed technical competence but lacked confidence and field experience," he says. "She also has courage and tenacity. We needed both." So he hired her and spent another three years training her. Today, she manages an all-female team of technicians.

The office is an oasis for Amiri. After she left the shelter, she moved in with her parents, but they so despised the circumstances around her marriage that they would not allow the kids, now 7 and 9, to join her. She put them in an orphanage.

At times, Amiri speaks about her job with an air of wonder. "We're the only women installing solar in the field in Afghanistan," she says. "Out of 12 women who passed the exam in my engineering class, just 3 found work. The other 9 are at home." She is paid $450 a month -- more than the average Afghan earns in an entire year -- and now makes enough money to rent a room in a Kabul apartment. A few months ago, she reclaimed her children.

ON PAPER, IT SEEMS THAT SESA HAS THE POTENTIAL TO TRANSFORM lives not only across Afghanistan but also around the world. Its small-scale, locally based model works. Its training regimens create skilled labor. Its technology is solid -- so much so that Lockheed Martin approached Woods for advice about a big solar system it's building on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan.

Yet there's one wild card Woods cannot always account for: human meddling. To understand this, you have to go 90 miles north of Kabul to Panjshir Province, where the flat of the valley floor greets the foothills of the Hindu Kush and the road up-country traces gorges carved by tumbling lime-green rivers fed by snowmelt. During the Cold War, guerrillas would descend from the cliffs to ambush Soviet convoys. Today, old Soviet military vehicles sit rusting on the roadsides. Kids use the upside-down ones as playground equipment, a testament to the ultimate futility of the Russians' Afghan adventures.

SESA has installed 19 systems in the Panjshir: 18 solar and one wind. The solar arrays power 18 health clinics, which previously relied on kerosene lamps and generators that ran only intermittently because of fuel prices. (Diesel costs about 20% more in Afghanistan than in the U.S.) Presently, the clinics have clean water, spirited to the surface by new solar-powered pumps. Several of them even have a steady supply of hot water, thanks to solar heaters installed by Woods's team. This setup has run flawlessly.

Then there is the wind system, paid for by the U.S. military and overseen by Panjshir Province technology director Muhamad Tahir, a former mujahid who seems bent on proving that one of Afghanistan's biggest problems is the tyranny of small-time officials. In his spacious, sunny office in the governor's compound in the provincial capital of Bazarak, you will find no computers, no TVs, no photocopiers -- just expensive plush carpets and seven sofas lining the bare walls.

Two years ago, Tahir says, he asked the U.S. military for turbines along the roaring Panjshir River; hydropower could generate more kilowatts per dollar of investment, he argued. Instead, the Americans plowed $1 million into 10 windmills, he says with irritation. (Some news stories proclaimed this Afghanistan's first wind farm, though one engineer describes it more as a "wind garden.") Tahir grudgingly admits the investment has paid a decent return. Prewindmill, the generator in his compound burned 600 liters of diesel a month. With wind, it burns just 200 -- a savings of nearly $5,000 per year. "It was expensive," he says, fingering his prayer beads. "Now it's wind, and wind is free from God."

Alas, wind power is not free from human interference. In recent months, Tahir has unplugged every building in the compound but his own from the wind-powered mini-grid. "No more AC, no more fridges," he declares. He claims he doesn't want people to be spoiled by the abundance of affordable power, even though so little of it is being used that nearly all the electricity generated by the windmills is being wasted.

The power struggle befuddles the keeper of the windmills. Kefa- yatullah Muhammadi, 22, was trained by SESA to maintain the wind farm, which sits high on a hill above Bazarak. There's usually little to do, so he reads the Qu'ran, as well as books on agriculture and, of course, electricity. From his vantage point, he identifies the army outpost, the finance department, the bureau of refugees, and, on a neighboring crag, the local TV station. His windmills once powered all four. All four went back to burning diesel.

This kind of internecine battle is the one thing that can crack Woods's optimism. "It probably has something to do with money and budgets... . Or maybe the television station said something [Tahir] didn't agree with," he says. "Who knows?"

Whatever the case, Woods wasn't having any of it. In November, he drove up from Kabul. He stopped by the TV station, which broadcasts six hours a day from a one-room converted shipping container. SESA had covered the cost of laying cable from the wind farm to the station. Woods's hope was that, with the reliable energy, it would be able to broadcast around the clock.

"I asked them why they used diesel," he says. "They were not sure why. But they agreed it was better to use wind. I told them to just not be so silly. I looked at the TV-station manager and the wind-power manager together and just said, 'Come on, guys. Jesus. Sort it out.' "

Then he walked over to the unplugged cable that once connected the windmills to the TV station. He picked it up, and he plugged it right back in.

A version of this article appears in the April 2011 issue of Fast Company.

Now that we’ve discussed nutrition and conservation programs in the Farm Bill, the time has come to direct our attention to the elephant in the room: agricultural subsidies. The commodity programs represent 15% of Farm Bill spending, which is $42 billion, the second largest Farm Bill allocation (you’ll recall that nutrition spending is the largest). And it’s a controversial topic that requires some careful consideration.

Since the commodity support programs are such an important topic, we’ll spend a few weeks on them. This time, we’ll try to understand how the commodity programs came to be and how they work, and next time we’ll talk more about their implications. 

What is the argument for agricultural subsidies? After all, the government doesn’t directly subsidize most industries. In order to understand this, a quick review of Econ 101 is in order (I think you’ll find it useful, but if you want to skip class you can meet me in a few paragraphs). 

As my favorite professor always said, prices are a language. Recalling the laws of supply and demand, as the price of a good goes up, supply of that good increases and demand for it decreases.  Let’s put it in terms of something interesting, like beets (local, organic ones of course). If the price of beets is high, people might opt to buy turnips instead, but as the price of beets falls, consumers will purchase more beets. On the other hand, if the price of beets is low, farmers won’t want to produce many because they won’t make much money, but as the price increases, farmers will grow more beets to sell. In a perfect economic system, the price of beets communicates to farmers how much to produce based on consumer demand at that price. 

That’s how it’s supposed to work, but the case of agricultural production is actually more complicated than the example about beets above. Consumers don’t respond to changes in the price of food by buying proportionally larger or smaller amounts of it. If food prices soar, consumers will still need to buy food, while there is a limit to how much food people will purchase, even if it is cheap (extra credit if you recognized this as price inelasticity). Because there are constraints on land and other resources, farmers often can’t respond to price fluctuations by producing more or less. Add to this unpredictable weather and the lag between planting decisions and harvest during which conditions can change, and farming becomes risky business with volatile swings in income. The goal of the commodity programs is to stabilize farm income by shifting some of these risks to the government, allowing farmers to remain in the business of producing food and fiber for the nation and the world.  

As a Midwesterner, when I think of crop subsidies, King Corn and Queen Bean come to mind.  However, the production of many other crops, including rice, chickpeas, and sunflower seeds, is subsidized. In all, there are about two dozen commodity crops, but five – corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice – account for 90% of subsidy payments.

The Farm Bill provides for three types of payments to prop up farm income: direct payments, countercyclical payments, and marketing assistance loans/loan deficiency payments. Direct payments are issued to farmers who produce an eligible crop and are paid regardless of the current market price of the crop. They are based on how many acres have been planted in that crop in the past, and the historical yield. Corn farmers currently receive $0.28 in direct payments per bushel. The other two types of payments require the market price to fall below a specified level. To determine if farmers will receive these payments, a target price is set for each commodity crop. For example, the target price for corn for the 2011 production year is $2.63 per bushel. If the market price for corn dips low enough that the price the farmer receives plus the direct payment amount doesn’t add up to the target price, countercyclical payments (so called because they go up as prices fall) are triggered to make up the difference. For the 2009 crop year, countercyclical payments weren’t offered for corn because the market price was high enough. 

If this post has left you with more questions than answers – are direct subsidies the best way to ensure farmers a reasonable income? Who benefits most from subsidies? How does the structure of the commodity programs influence what farmers grow, and, in turn, what we have to eat? – that’s okay. In fact, that’s a good thing. Over the next few weeks, we’ll delve into all of these questions and more. 

Sources:

If you haven't yet "Liked" our Facebook page, Understanding the Farm Bill: A Citizen's Guide to a Better Food System (jointly created with folks from IATP), please visit us there, let us know what you think, "Like" us, and tell your friends.

Ann Butkowski is happy to be back in her native Minnesota after spending the last two years in Boston. She’s learning to bike the streets of Minneapolis and grow tomatoes in her backyard. Ann has a master’s degree in nutrition science, but doesn’t let that stop her from eating ice cream right out of the carton. Ann is Simple, Good, and Tasty's resident Farm Bill expert. Her most recent post for us was Understanding the Farm Bill: Good Soil and the Programs that Protect It.

 About WeatherBill

Weather is unpredictable.  Your bottom line doesn't have to be.

   That's what former members of the Google team, David Friedberg and Siraj Khaliq set out to prove when they founded WeatherBill in 2006.

Globally, tens of billions of dollars are at risk each year due to adverse weather conditions, and historically, weather insurance has been difficult to get. WeatherBill has launched technology-driven risk management products, allowing companies to proactively manage weather risk in a world affected by climate change.

Historically, weather risk insurance was purchased by a few large companies, and the underwriting process was intensely manual.   Today, HHsiWeatherBill offers affordable, accessible, easy-to-purchase insurance policies to consumers and businesses online.  Using a unique software platform that delivers accurate risk profiles, WeatherBill enables the agriculture, events, outdoor leisure, ski, energy and public works industries to manage their weather risk to protect revenue and control costs.    And if bad weather does happen, there is no lengthy claims adjustment process; WeatherBill’s software platform confirms and pays out benefits within 10 days.

WeatherBill recently launched its Total Weather Insurance product to the $200B+ agricultural market, providing multi-peril coverage (e.g., coverage for drought, heat, rain) to allow growers to lock in profits not covered by the federal crop insurance program.  

WeatherBill also claims title to the first company in the United States authorized to sell weather insurance to individual consumers with its RainCheck product. For the first time, travelers can get their money back for a rained-out vacation. Payment is based on weather data, not human assessment, so there is no claims process and payment takes place immediately. Unlike trip cancellation, weather insurance is not about if a vacation happens, but rather the weather’s impact on the quality of the experience.

WeatherBill has a successful track record of shipping quality products and generating revenue, and is well-funded by New Enterprise Associates, Index Ventures, and Allen & Company. WeatherBill is backed by Nephila Capital, one of the world's largest weather risk and catastrophe reinsurance fund managers. 

WeatherBill insurance is safe and reliable; all WeatherBill insurance products carry an A.M. Best “A” rating. There is no unnecessary paperwork, no claims process and no waiting for payment. WeatherBill is the only service that enables customers to customize, price and buy weather insurance online in just minutes—and get paid if bad weather happens.

Position Overview

WeatherBill seeks a Director of Marketing to lead marketing efforts across several markets, with an initial focus on the $200B+ Agriculture space.   The position will grow with WeatherBill’s product offerings and global expansion.  Do you have a passion for unlocking new markets with unique offerings? If so read on. We are looking for someone who will strategically conceptualize and deliver comprehensive programs through our channel partners to businesses as well as consumers.

The Director of Marketing will work closely with field Sales Managers, WeatherBill's product team and partner marketing teams to develop programs to meet those demands. 
 
Our ideal candidate has a rich background in defining go-to-market plans and driving integrated campaigns. This person has significant experience in creating, executing and measuring marketing programs, with a successful track record of driving business growth in the small and medium enterprise (SME) markets. In addition, the candidate will be passionate about marketing innovative technology/financial products and services to non-technology buyers, highly collaborative, and results driven.

Much of the work is highly collaborative and fast-paced, and requires responding to multi-faceted industry dynamics as well as competing internal priorities. 

What You Will Do

• Develop relationships with subject matter expert on industry trends
• Manage creation of go-to-market plans and drive agreement on themes, market segment, audience, messaging, creative, and engagement model
• Work with Product Marketing to develop messaging that is solution based and focused on customer pain points and/or critical business issues
• Ensure integration and adaptation of campaigns across all target audiences including Channel and Strategic Partners
• Coordinate campaign planning and marketing program process with Field & Channel Sales
• Lead the cross-functional launch process for product and service introductions and inline releases
• Provide content and create deliverables as needed
• Deliver training to internal and external audiences in support of channel development opportunities
• Drive sales acceleration by producing compelling, high-impact presentations that effectively communicate WeatherBill's products

What You Offer

• Bachelors degree in a business or technical discipline required; MBA preferred
• 8+ years experience in demand generation (program creation and execution)
• Has a complete understanding of the enterprise marketing mix, as well as how the customer and channel in the SME market works, thinks and is influenced
• This person must possess a passion for customers and unflinching desire to exceed their expectations 
• Must be a master at creating clear, differentiated, and customer-focused product positioning and messaging
• Must have excellent follow-through, be able to work with minimal direction, and balance the requirements of multiple stakeholders within an organization.
• Proven ability to balance multiple priorities, prioritize projects and meet deadlines
• Able to think creatively and strategically about customer, market, and business issues
• Planning/organizational skills and analytical decision making capability
• Team player with a dynamic personality and powerful intellect
• Must be flexible and enjoy working in an extremely fast-paced environment

Key Success Factors

• Analytically & strategically focused- ability to translate business objectives into marketing strategies
• Customer focus- passion for internal and external customers and unflinching desire to exceed their expectations
• Great communicator and leader- across customers, dispersed field teams, executives, engineers and partners
• Decisive- Ability to make and support decisions under tight timing and pressure. Must be able to balance decision-making with teamwork and collaboration
• Self-starter– must be able to operate effectively without supervision in a dynamic, entrepreneurial work environment
• Agile- Must be able to quickly adapt strategies to rapidly changing market conditions
• Broad marketing knowledge - must possess a deep understanding of the elements of the marketing mix and how they connect to the enterprise sales process

What We Offer

• A driven, motivated and talented team.
• Energetic, idea-driven and transparent work environment.
• Exciting, world-changing opportunity - weather impacts consumers and a multitude of businesses - WeatherBillen are striving to do something very big about something that affects everyone.
• Competitive salary and great benefits.

Click Here to Apply

by Parke Wilde.

The New York Times published a front-page exposé by Michael Moss on Nov. 6 about the federal government’s efforts to get us to eat more cheese, even working with Domino’s Pizza to make it happen. (Grist’s Tom Philpott lauded it here.)

The government’s semi-public commodity checkoff programs are a big deal, collecting more than $600 million each year to promote a variety of products (PDF). These programs support many advertising campaigns you may know, for example “Beef. It’s what’s for dinner,” “Pork. The other white meat,” “Ahh, the power of cheese,” and “Got milk?” The biggest funding shares are for dairy, beef, and pork. There is no checkoff funding for poultry, and very little for fruits and vegetables.

Of course, there has been a backlash to the Times story. In their counterattacks, several recent commentators have come close to denying that these checkoff programs are federal government programs. James McWilliams writes in the Atlantic: “Funding for Dairy Management’s domestic marketing campaign does not come from the USDA, but rather from private producers who tax themselves to pay for the organization’s marketing strategies.” The Daily Yonder wrote that the checkoff programs are industry initiatives and that the Times’ headline should have been “Industry Group Uses its Own Funds To Promote Its Products.”

These claims by McWilliams, the Daily Yonder, and Grist commenters understate the federal government’s role. Here’s why:

If these were independent industry entities, then producers would be able to opt out, right?  The Daily Yonder claims that producers “tax themselves.” Think about heritage pork producers who are proud of their fat Berkshires and get no benefit from a checkoff advertising slogan that compares pork to chicken. Can they decide freely whether to make a voluntary contribution? No, the assessment is mandatory. Are they being taxed by “the industry”? No, the industry has no such power of taxation. The producers are being taxed by the federal government.

When dissident producers challenged the legality of the checkoff programs, the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 in favor of the checkoff programs, only because the federal government attorney convinced the justices that these programs are from top to bottom federal government programs, and their every message has official status as “government speech.” In his legal analysis of that case, John Crespi explained that the checkoff programs had to pass the following standards to be ruled Constitutional (PDF): “First, the government must exercise sufficient control over the source of the message to be deemed ultimately responsible for the message. Second, the main purpose of the message and the program must be identified as the government’s.”

If the checkoff programs were not government programs, the government would not be allowed to support them using the power of taxation, and the Supreme Court would have ended them.

For this reason, nobody at USDA or the checkoff programs will ever directly deny that they are government programs. Instead, McWilliams and the Daily Yonder have to hint that they think of these programs as private-sector operations, without quoting anybody at USDA or the programs themselves to corroborate this point.

In the backlash against the Times article, misdirection rather than clear statements is the order of the day. For example, the Daily Yonder denies that the programs are using “your tax money.” This is like telling you that the government is not using “your tax money” for the war in Iraq or welfare checks or whatever you object to. The government might be collecting the tax that funds those activities, but it can reassure you that your particular tax payment was not the actual dollars used.

Who cares which tax dollars were used for which purpose? If the federal government collected the tax, and the purpose is bad, we have a right to object.

I say, Congress should either: (a) stop having the federal government enforce the checkoff assessments, or (b) expect that the checkoff messages serve our stated public-health goals at a time when health care costs are threatening to bankrupt the government.

The meat and dairy industries can do what they like with their own money. The public power of taxation should be used for the public good. Michael Moss’s article exposed the government’s hypocrisy in trying to serve industry marketing goals and the public good at the same time.

Related Links:

U.K. gives up, hands food policy over to McDonald’s, KFC, and friends

Fast food wrappers and popcorn bags leach fire-fighting chemical into food

The fast-food industry’s $4.2 billion marketing blitz

by Grist.

The Senate has just voted for cloture for the Food Safety Modernization Act. For those who need a civics refresher—and Grist’s food editor did—that means up to 30 hours’ worth of debate can now commence, which will begin later today. Fifty votes are needed on the motion to proceed, and then there will be votes on the amendments (including Tester-Hagan, which our Hill insiders say is still very much in play and may yet get into the manager’s amendment).

Meanwhile, here is our final installment in our Food Fight over the bill. Our participants have debated—passionately, articulately, and at great length—whether there is in fact a food-safety crisis, whether S. 510’s provisions will improve food-safety for most Americans, whether S. 510’s provisions will harm small farms or producers, and whether the Tester-Hagan amendment designed to mitigate that harm puts more consumers at risk.

We’ll have a recap of the major points made in this epic series once the bill passes (or fails). Now, the final question:

Does the bill give the FDA too much power—or not enough? Or is it just right?

David E. Gumpert, health and food issues reporter: If S. 510 were just about food safety—encouraging education of producers and helping FDA to more easily go after scofflaws—I might be for it. But S. 510 is about much more than that. It gives the FDA vast new powers to inspect any company’s records at will (with no cause having to be shown), to require all producers to have HACCP plans (with FDA having arbitrary power to approve or disapprove), and to implement Good Agricultural Practices (once FDA decides what these are).

Unfortunately, as I’ve said in previous discussions, FDA has shown itself repeatedly to treat “food safety” as a political matter rather than a safety matter. My big concern is this: Who will oversee the FDA’s implementation of the vast new powers this legislation will give the agency? Presumably this is Congress’ responsibility, but when you come down to it, no one truly oversees the agency now, and calls it to task when it comes down on small food producers. So how can we expect any different situation once FDA gets vast new powers?

I think you all are being naive in thinking the FDA will somehow change its stripes and be a fair enforcer of new regulations. A tiger doesn’t change its stripes. Arrogant bureaucrats just become more arrogant if you reward their hostile behavior with additional power.

Judith McGeary, founder and executive director of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance: I agree with David about the agency’s motivations and the lack of oversight of its decisions. And I think there’s another layer to the problem, namely that even those people who may be well-intentioned clearly do not understand the realities of local, sustainable food production. Giving people power to regulate what they don’t understand is a recipe for disaster.

Invariably, whenever we talk about the safety of local, sustainable food production, the FDA or an advocate of S. 510 will bring up the spinach contamination in California, noting that it was from a “small” (3-acre) farm that was transitioning to organic. As others pointed out in earlier threads, the example is flawed from the beginning, as we don’t really know where the contamination came from.

But even leaving that aside, the idea that the spinach farm at issue is an example of local, sustainable agriculture is simply wrong. It was growing a monocrop, harvesting it by machine, and shipping it to a centralized processing facility where it was mixed with spinach from many other farms, bagged, and then shipped all over the country. The isolated elements of size and government certification do not make this equivalent to local sustainable farms.

Compare it to the farm where I buy my spinach: a 10-acre farm that grows over 100 different crops each year, harvested by hand, and sold directly to customers usually within a day or two of harvesting. The farmers eat their own produce every single day, along with their workers and families. Hundreds of families have bought leafy greens from this farm for the last 18 years, and none of them have ever reported any illnesses resulting—even though, like me, many eat the baby spinach raw while driving home because it’s just too good to wait for.

As has been said in previous threads, the safety and quality of food is the result of the entire system that it is grown in. Even the well-intentioned people within FDA simply do not understand this paradigm. FDA is staffed by people who come from within the industrial food system, many of whom are looking to get jobs in that food system when they leave the agency. Expanding their authority over the local sustainable food system gives them too much power.

Michael Bulger, a master’s candidate in food studies at New York University: The farm Judith describes as her source for spinach does not sound like a food facility required to register with the FDA.

The FDA’s compliance guide has an exemption that reads: “Farms, which are establishments devoted to the growing and harvesting of crops, the raising of animals (including seafood), or both. Washing, trimming of outer leaves of, and cooling produce are considered part of harvesting.” Packing food from ones own farm is also exempt.

This might be a good point to let the readers in on the fact that S. 510 applies to around 150,000 domestic facilities (the rest are overseas). There are over 2 million farms in the United States; and not all the facilities covered by S.510 exist on farms.

Next, the idea that FDA regulates small producers and ignores the larger companies just doesn’t hold up to the facts. The majority of food recalled in the United States is not from small businesses. Just recently the FDA recalled cilantro products in California and Cal-Maine eggs because of positive tests for pathogens.

If we listened only to David, we’d think that [raw-dairy crackdowns] were the only type of work FDA was doing. That’s just clearly not the case.

Raw dairy is consumed by a very, very small percentage of Americans, yet it manages to account for over 70% of the dairy-related illnesses. We expect the FDA to take action when a large company tests positive for a pathogen. Why would we want them to ignore dangerous bacteria from a small business?

Regarding oversight of the FDA, the implementation of S.510 would fall on the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and the commissioner of the FDA. The FDA would be under the oversight of Congress to a significant extent, as they are required in the bill to make annual and biennial reports to Congress regarding many of FDA’s activities. Reading through the bill, required reporting to Congress appears, on average, every 15 pages. The clear intent of the bill would also be a matter that would be upheld by law, should a justified case be brought to court.

So, we see it is neither a matter of a one-sided regulatory agency exclusively harassing small businesses, nor is it a case of the FDA being granted excessive powers with no oversight.

McGeary: That’s not really relevant to the point I was making, namely that neither the FDA nor the proponents of S. 510 understand the complexities of small-scale, sustainable food production. The farm I referred to will be directly impacted by Section 105 of the bill, which gives FDA authority to set standards for how fruits and vegetables are grown and harvested.

But Michael’s comment shows yet again how proponents of S. 510 don’t appear to understand the full impact of the bill they are promoting. The farm I was discussing actually is a “facility” under FDA’s regulations because of their famous sun-dried tomatoes, made from heirloom varieties picked by hand and carefully processed. Under the FDA"s definitions and S. 510, a farm that processes any of its foods is a facility if they sell any of that food.

FDA has seriously underestimated the number of “facilities” in this country. Thousands of farmers do some level of “processing” of their foods, from drying fruits to mixing salad greens to making jams. Without the Tester-Hagan amendment, all of those farmers would be required to write HACCP/HARCP plans and be inspected by the FDA.

And then you have to account for all the other small-scale processors— people who buy produce from local farmers to turn into canned or baked goods, cheeses, etc. At best, millions of taxpayer dollars will be wasted on federal regulations and inspection of these facilities that have not been the source of widespread outbreaks. At worst, FDA will selectively use its resources to focus on these facilities and continue to give the large industrial facilities a pass. The bill’s directive to FDA to inspect facilities every X years means little if there simply are not enough resources to do so.

Mark Kastel, co-founder of The Cornucopia Institute and director its Organic Integrity Project: I am very impressed with the thoughtful answers, from many different perspectives.

Some thoughts: Something needs to happen here. In pursuit of profit some corporations are poisoning the citizenry. It’s a scary thing when you feel you’re playing Russian roulette with your family’s health when you go grocery shopping. Yes, this has to do with scale and fundamentals but it also has to do with the bottom line.

We have a “cheap food policy” in this country. We spend less for food than any other country in the world. And the byproduct is an obese and unhealthy populace .... with the highest health care costs in the world and certainly not the best outcomes.

So, something needs to happen. The most tangible contribution many of us can make is to continue to make sure that the “good food movement” continues to be a viable alternative in terms of quality for people seeking out superior nutrition and safety. And we need to fight like hell to make sure that these farmers are not economically injured and competitively disadvantaged in the marketplace, as we discussed in the last thread.

If S. 510 passes we’re going to have to work very judiciously, during the rulemaking process, to make sure that the benefits are not sold out and that this doesn’t end up being “payback time” for giant companies that would like to crush the fastest-growing elements in food marketing.

Normally, yes, we would look to Congress for oversight over the FDA. But we are in uncharted waters, since the Citizens United decision in the Supreme Court. We’ve always been challenged to have a balance of power, but the future could skew that power dynamic and turn congressional oversight into a façade of sorts.

Kathleen Chrismer, food-safety victims’ advocate: The general authority granted to the FDA under S. 510 is appropriate. I agree with the comments made by many contributors in the first thread that the FDA is horribly under-staffed and does not perform inspections as often as it should. However, some of Mr. Gumpert’s assertions about S. 510 are incorrect and misleading, and demonstrate the types of comments that cause people to fear something that is designed to prevent illness and death.

I know that an area of concern for small producers is the food safety requirements of the legislation, but this concern is unfounded. S. 510 contains numerous provisions that require FDA to take into consideration the impact on small businesses.

For example, FDA is required to factor in the impact on small entities when it determines which traceability methods to adopt. S. 510 also directs the agency to provide small growers and processors with tailored regulatory requirements; requires FDA to publish several user-friendly, small-entity compliance guides to assist firms with the implementation of new requirements; and authorizes grants to enhance education, training and technical assistance related to compliance with the new law.

The goal in all of these provisions is to strike the right balance between protecting public health and ensuring that small growers and processors are not unduly burdened.

Whether it comes from a small producer or large manufacturer, food must be safe and consumers have a right to demand it, without compromise.

Russell Libby, executive director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association: FDA already has extensive power to regulate almost any place where food is handled, stored, sold, etc. They don’t have the resources to do it well, or effectively.

The largest businesses have already implemented most of the systems FDA would like to see: HACCP plans, extensive recordkeeping, traceability, employee training. S. 510 would add recall authority, something that so far has remained with the companies. Although most companies
already do voluntary recalls, the ability to require involuntary recalls is a strong tool. It might be particularly important for imported foods, which are one of the focus areas of the bill.

On the other hand, FDA and its field offices seem to have a hard time drawing a clear line between a farm and a ‘facility’—i.e., processor. Most farms that direct-market perform some ‘processing’ activities. They have been exempt from facility registration because the majority of sales are direct to individual consumer—and because they’ve been invisible to FDA to date. That is likely to change as the number of regulated products increases from sprouts and juice to include a full range of produce items.

I think ultimately FDA will have too much authority, and not enough power. Their authority is, and will be, broad-reaching. But FDA’s power depends on funding, which is unlikely to be forthcoming in any major way. Their power also depends on their ability to sort out the real food safety issues, and create solutions. That will only happen if they are working with the people
who are producing food, and not perceived as a threat.

Ultimately, the public will have to make real decisions about what kind of food system we want. Who’s your farmer? If you know, this whole conversation seems somewhat irrelevant, and even potentially damaging. If you don’t know who produced your food, then there are a lot of reasons why you might want a strong FDA to act as an intermediary.

That, it seems to me, is what underlies the entire conversation about food safety that is embodied in S. 510. It won’t be resolved anytime soon.

Bulger: Section 105 states that produce standards must “provide sufficient flexibility to be applicable to various types of entities engaged in the production and harvesting of fruits and vegetables that are raw agricultural commodities, including small businesses and entities that sell directly to consumers, and be appropriate to the scale and diversity of the production and harvesting of such commodities.” It goes on to state its effects in terms of facilities.

It would take a gross misinterpretation of Congressional intent for the regulations to extend to the lowest levels of commerce and an even more significant misinterpretation for them to be unfit for the levels of business to which they do extend.

S. 510 orders FDA to publish a small entity compliance guide that is intended to clear up the confusion about what they consider a facility. That should make it clear if their estimates for the number of facilities they require to register were more accurate than you suspect. Somehow, I think the FDA has a better grasp on what they meant than the casual observer.

For those members of the panel who are so convinced the FDA inspectors are out to get small farmers, it might cheer you to know that S. 510 calls for a field staff of at least 5,000 FDA employees by 2014. Adding new blood should dilute those mean old government employees you fear.

Ferd Hoefner, policy director for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition: I can only give this thread a very quick scan, but the repeat of this 150,000 domestic facilities number jumped out at me.

For the record, FDA’s new official position on how many farms are facilities is “we have no idea” as per their written response to the question submitted by Senator Bingaman. Moreover, USDA economists at the Economic Research Service say that they do not know either, though their best professional judgment guess, looking at available NASS and ERS data sources, is that it is very likely in the hundreds of thousands. Hence, the 150,000 number is simply not an accurate reflection of reality. In fact, as long as the official FDA message is “we have no idea” about farm facilities, there is therefore no official number of domestic facilities in total.

Gumpert: I find it staggering that the FDA has no idea how many food facilities it might be policing. The agency has supposedly been watching this arena for many years; at the least, it’s had more than a year since this legislation was proposed.

Actually, if you examine the testimony FDA officials gave to the House committee, you’ll see it is very sparse in terms of justifying the new legislation —the same old stats on “76 million food-borne illnesses, yada, yada, yada.” I guess the FDA figured passage was a slam dunk, so no need to do any homework.

Michael, you question the suggestion that FDA might be staffed by “evil people.” Not quite. Evil leadership, yes. It’s the leadership that determines how the troops think and behave. Enlightened leadership could turn things around there pretty quickly—make food safety a cooperative matter between regulators and industry, and above all, bring it back from the political realm.

Libby: The language you refer to is here because there hasn’t been any clear Congressional intent, and we’ve worked hard to get that direction included in the Senate bill. It’s part of why I’m supporting S. 510, hopefully with Tester/Hagan included.

No one wants to “get” small farmers in this conversation, on either side. But the impact of the original S. 510, before the manager’s amendment, and HR 2749, is that a lot of small farmers will be surprised to learn that they are regulated facilities, and that there are many more hoops to jump through than simply regulation.

McGeary: I agree with Russell’s conclusion about the difference between people who know their farmer and people who do not, and the role that plays in their views of FDA and the bill.

In my opinion, when it comes to local, sustainable food producers, S. 510 gives FDA too much power. As we’ve discussed in previous threads, these producers use a systems approach that achieves greater safety and quality than any industrial producer using HACCP or GAPs, and are held accountable by the direct-to-consumer relationship, which creates greater transparency than any government regulation.

Section 103 of the bill, the “Hazard Analysis and Risk-Based Preventive Controls,” is effectively a recitation of HACCP requirements. The Senate simply changed one word in the title, causing the acronym to be HARCP instead. It takes the bill five pages just to list what must be included in the HARCP plan, and clearly states that the owner of a facility “shall” create and implement this plan. In addition, FDA has the authority inspect the facility and its paperwork.

Do the proponents of S. 510 truly interpret this language to mean that the facility owner could write whatever document he wants and FDA would be powerless to disapprove it?

On the produce safety standards under Section 105, I think it is accurate to say that FDA will get to decide what these are. In administrative law, an agency is not required to change its regulations to adopt any portion of the public’s comments. As just one example, FDA has repeatedly approved genetically modified foods without labeling despite significant public opposition.

It is important and useful to be involved in the regulatory process, but relying on it to ensure a positive outcome ignores both the law and the experience of the sustainable agriculture community.

As an attorney trained in administrative law, I have been involved in several cases addressing the scope of an agency’s authority. Language directing FDA to provide “flexibility” and to write regulations “appropriate” for different scaled operations will provide little, if any, enforceable limitations on the agency’s discretion in the final equation. It may well be a misinterpretation of Congressional intent for the agency to develop regulations that drive small farms and local processors out of business. But that misinterpretation would almost certainly be upheld in court as long as the FDA provided a written response to the comments.

In practical terms, these provisions give the local-foods movement the opening to present ideas and evidence to the agency, but absolutely no guarantee that the agency will address them in a reasonable fashion.

Ultimately, the power will lie in FDA’s hands, a precarious situation for the local foods movement.

Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food & Water Watch: I think Russell raises a good point about your view of the bill depending on which food system you’re in. At Food & Water Watch, we see both sides—we don’t want to make life harder for small operations that have plenty of other things to deal with, but we’ve been trying for way too long to get FDA’s food safety program to be about more than responding to the latest illness outbreak.

But at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I have to point out that the status quo is not working all that well. The liability risk is a huge piece of the puzzle on food safety and many food processors, institutional buyers, and grocery stores have responded by imposing specific food safety requirements and audits on their suppliers. Which means that a lot of our food is subject to some set of standards—but those standards vary from brand to brand, are often too burdensome for small operations to comply with (so they don’t get to sell into these channels), and are often not even disclosed because they are proprietary.

Many producers are being regulated—just not by the government, and not in a way that the public has any chance to influence. That liability issue (and the improved detection technology that links illnesses to specific foods) isn’t going away. Which means the pressure to meet some kind of food safety requirements won’t go away, even if there is no food safety legislation passed.

So that’s not an excuse to unleash a government agency with unlimited new power and no guidance on how it should operate. But it is a reason to try to find some way to make FDA better at its job - by having recall authority, by having a mandate to inspect processing facilities often enough (which we think would be more often than once every five years) and being able to inspect the facility’s paperwork before there’s a problem (rather than finding out that they haven’t been keeping records when there’s a problem.)

Directives like the Tester amendment (and the Brown and Bennett amendments and other provisions focused on flexibility for small operations) help point FDA in the right direction, focusing the agency on facilities that are producing more food that puts more people at risk.

Related Links:

Will the Tester amendment to S. 510 help small farms and processors, but put more kids at risk?

More revelations of FDA bad behavior around GE salmon

Food Fight: Will the Food Safety Modernization Act harm small farms or producers?

My column today takes a closer look at the Obamacare Waiver-mania! phenomenon, which I spotlighted over the weekend. I’ve called dozens of companies and unions on the HHS waiver list. You won’t be surprised to learn that most refused to speak on the record or failed to call me back. Torquemada Sebelius sure knows how to keep them quiet. But, as you’ll see below, a few did respond to me and a few others have bravely spoken out about how the federal health care regulations would have shut down their affordable health care plans.

One company official expressed concern to me that media coverage was demonizing businesses who applied for the waivers. I certainly don’t see these waiver applicants as villains. They were potential victims of top-down government mandates and they did what they needed to do to survive. As for the unions who all pushed hard to ram Obamacare down America’s throat and then rushed to the front of the line for tax and regulatory exemptions, thanks for proving what an ill-fated scheme the federal health care takeover was from the get-go.

Now, it’s up to all of you to spread the word, call your congresscritters, and send some choice words to the White House: Dude, where’s my Obamacare waiver?

***

Dude, where’s my Obamacare waiver?
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

More than one million Americans have escaped the clutches of the Democrats’ destructive federal health care law. Lucky them. Their employers and labor representatives wisely applied for Obamacare waivers earlier this fall and got out while the getting was good. Now, it’s time for Congress to create a permanent escape hatch for the rest of us. Repeal is the ultimate waiver.

As you’ll recall, President Obama promised repeatedly that if Americans liked their health insurance plan, they could keep it. “Nobody is talking about taking that away from you,” the cajoler-in-chief assured. What he failed to communicate to low-wage and part-time workers across the country is that they could keep their plans — only if their companies begged hard enough for exemptions from Obamacare’s private insurance-killing regulations.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website, at least 111 waivers have now been granted to companies, unions and other organizations of all sizes who offer affordable health insurance or prescription drug coverage with limited benefits. Obamacare architects sought to eliminate those low-cost plans under the guise of controlling insurer spending on executive salaries and marketing.

It’s all about control. If central planners can’t dictate what health benefits qualify as “good,” what plans qualify as “affordable” and how health care dollars are best spent, then nobody can. The ultimate goal, of course: precipitating a massive shift from private to government insurance.

McDonald’s, Olive Garden, Red Lobster and Jack in the Box are among the large, headline-garnering employers who received the temporary waivers. But perhaps the most politically noteworthy beneficiaries of the HHS waiver program: Big Labor.

The Service Employees Benefit Fund, which insures a total of 12,000 SEIU health care workers in upstate New York, secured its Obamacare exemption in October. The Local 25 SEIU Welfare Fund in Chicago also nabbed a waiver for 31,000 of its enrollees. SEIU, of course, was one of Obamacare’s loudest and biggest spending proponents. The waivers come on top of the massive sweetheart deal that SEIU and other unions cut with the Obama administration to exempt them from the health care mandate’s onerous “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health care plans until 2018.

Other unions who won protection from Obamacare:

– United Food and Commercial Workers Allied Trade Health and Welfare Trust Fund

– International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union No. 915

– Asbestos Workers Local 53 Welfare Fund

– Employees Security Fund

– Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 123 Welfare Fund

– United Food and Commercial Workers Local 227

– United Food and Commercial Workers Local 455 (Maximus)

– United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1262

– Musicians Health Fund Local 802

– Hospitality Benefit Fund Local 17

– Transport Workers Union

– United Federation of Teachers Welfare Fund

– International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (AFL-CIO)

– Plus two organizations that appear to be chapters of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA)

Several of these labor organizations did not respond to requests for comment about their waivers. But Jay Blumenthal, financial vice president of the Local 802 Musicians Health Fund in New York, did explain to me: “We got grandfathered in” (his description for getting a pass) because “things were moving so fast” and “we need time now to prepare for the law.” In other words: Policy cramdowns first, political fixes later. A supporter of Obamacare, Blumenthal told me he “sees no irony, no,” in unions supporting the very health care “reform” from which they are now seeking relief.

Chris Rodriguez, director of human resources at Fowler Packing Company in California’s San Joaquin Valley, sees things a little differently. Fowler pursued an HHS waiver because their low-wage agricultural workers would have lost the basic coverage his company has voluntarily offered for years. “We take care of our employees, and we warned (health care officials that) if they imposed this, large numbers of workers would lose access to affordable coverage,” he told me. Rodriguez said he’s grateful the firm won a waiver, but he did not lose sight of the fact that the very policies passed to increase health insurance access are having the opposite effect: “That’s our government at work.”

Indeed, some prominent government officials who lobbied hardest for Obamacare are now also joining waiver-mania — including liberal Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, who has been pushing for an individual mandate exemption for his state of Oregon, and Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who is pushing to waive Obamacare’s burdensome 1099 reporting requirements of small businesses.

Fearful of retribution by HHS Secretary and chief inquisitor Kathleen Sebelius, who has threatened companies speaking out about Obamacare’s perverse consequences, many business owners who obtained waivers refused to talk to me on the record. One said tersely: “We did what we had to do to survive.”

A new House GOP majority now has the chance to protect the rest of America from this regulatory monstrosity. We want out.

by Tom Philpott.

Ace New York Times reporter Michael Moss dropped a bombshell on the front page of Sunday’s paper, on how one arm of the USDA teams with the junk/fast-food industry to urge people to eat lots of cheese, even as another arm urges Americans to eat fewer high-calorie foods.

Moss’s article—the best piece of investigative food journalism I’ve seen since his terrific piece on a common hamburger additive known affectionately as “pink slime”—has generated plenty of comment. (See Kerry Trueman at Civil Eats; Matt Yglesias at Think Progress; Jill Richardson at La Vida Locavore; and Grist’s Tom Laskaway, this time over at Beyond Green.) It’s also worth pointing out that Tufts professor Parke Wilde has been writing well about the government “checkoff” systems that fund these weird marketing schemes since 2005.

At any rate, Moss’ piece raises two key points I want to tease out.

1) The USDA’s mission is deeply contradictory—and geared to promoting, not regulating, the food industry.

In its latest strategic plan [PDF], the USDA lists four overarching goals. One of those goals is to “ensure that all of America’s children have access to safe, nutritious, and balanced meals.” The agency’s mandate on nutrition and food safety doesn’t stop at children. It also runs the “Food Pyramid” program, which purports to define a healthy and balanced diet; and operates the Food Safety and Inspection Service, the sub-agency charged with overseeing the safety of nation’s meat supply.

Those functions put the USDA in the role of industry watchdog—one of the public’s main tools for keeping the vast food industry in check.

But another of the USDA’s major goals is to be industry’s best salesperson—to “help America promote agricultural production and biotechnology exports as America works to increase food security,” as the strategic plan puts it. In this capacity, the USDA’s role is to spur the food and ag industry on—to ramp up production, and to find ways to profitably dispose of surpluses.

As Moss graphically shows, the USDA’s control of industry marketing boards like Dairy Management stand at the nexus of how the USDA’s various functions contradict each other. Dairy Management only gets a small portion of its funding directly from taxpayers. But as Moss shows, the USDA maintains effective control over its marketing functions:

Dairy Management, whose annual budget approaches $140 million, is largely financed by a government-mandated fee on the dairy industry. But it also receives several million dollars a year from the Agriculture Department, which appoints some of its board members, approves its marketing campaigns and major contracts and periodically reports to Congress on its work.

And like other USDA-controlled marketing boards, Dairy Management has been proven to be an extremely successful marketer.

So overall, which of the USDA’s goals—reining in the food industry or promoting its wares—wins? As Moss points out, driven largely by the marketing efforts of Dairy Management and the collapse in U.S. milk prices as production has surged, Americans now consume nearly three times as much cheese per capita as they did in 1970.

Meanwhile, Domino’s Pizza, which Dairy Management helped develop and market a “new line of pizzas with 40 percent more cheese,” saw its sales “soar by double digits.”

2) The core problem here is overproduction and the collapse of New Deal-era supply management programs.

How did we get to the point where an entity managed by the USDA is helping a junk-food company develop and market a pizza with “six cheeses on top and two more in the crust”?

It all goes back to the the Great Depression, when the United States experienced the bitter paradox of widespread hunger along with crop prices that were so low that hundreds of thousands of farmers were driven to ruin. It was the climax of decades of cycles of overproduction and collapse in agriculture.

To smooth things out, Congress implemented policies designed to help farmers manage the supply of their commodities. Under what became known as the supply management regime—which I explained in a Victual Reality column three years ago—the USDA organized farmers to keep them from producing too much and forcing prices down to ruinous levels.

But to make a very long story short, the food and agribusiness industries hated supply management, because they thrive on low commodity prices. So starting in the early 1970s, U.S. policymakers began to phase out supply management. In the new era, farmers were urged to produce as much as possible. Rather than manage supply, the USDA would help find markets for excess goods.

This is the brilliant policy that has brought on such dubious products as high-fructose corn syrup, corn-based ethanol, partially hydrogenated corn oil, corn- and soy-fed meat—and, as Moss reports, “the Taco Bell steak quesadilla, with cheddar, pepper jack, mozzarella and a creamy sauce.”

Dairy farmers are urged to produce as much as possible, by any means necessary. And the USDA helps push the inevitable excess into the American diet through junk-food restaurants.

Of course, Moss’ analysis could be usefully applied to U.S. farm policy in general, where the push has been to maximize production and the marketing of surpluses, both domestically and internationally. We’ll be digging deeper into this issue as negotiations around the 2012 Farm Bill draw nearer.

Related Links:

Another salmonella egg recall from a DeCoster-related company

Remaking school meals in Boulder

In praise of fast food

So, Aunt Toby figures that everyone is pretty well ‘sick’ (heh) of hearing about the food-borne disease of the week. So, today, we’re going to talk about where the rubber (so to speak) meets (or meats, depending…) the road, which is where the entrepreneurship road comes up to the field. This week has been a double-header for our area in terms of news stories on this topic.

First, and not the least important because I’ve been waiting for this: Dean and Deluca Come to Norwich

There is a long history of Upstate New York farms providing milk for the New York City market, and every once in a while, we read about individual growers who are providing some specific item for one specific restaurant in New York City, but almost all of these growers are within a travel radius of less than two hours from the city. It was almost as if, for the New York City market, no one was willing to recognize that there were people growing all sorts of wonderful stuff past the 100 mile mark. And, even more so, that if they’d just turn their heads to the left, up Route 17 (Future I86!!), there is even more still. With the announcement that an organic grower in the Norwich area (which is in the next county up from me and even more ‘strategically isolated’ as they say, since the only way to get there is to use the ‘dog-leg’ to my area and then take secondary roads up from here – you’ve gotta really WANT to go up there), getting a contract with a large New York City specialty grocery chain, this is huge. This means that buyers are willing to leave the city, travel what is actually a very good distance, to find produce. You can’t even claim that this is really ‘local’ – but it’s certainly more local than Florida, Texas, Arizona or California. So, obviously these folks are doing something very very right in terms of growing what D&D need and want AND being able to get it to them at the level of quality and condition that D&D’s customers expect and will pay for. As I’ve said many times before here – FANAFI (Find a need and fill it) does not have to be high tech.  . . .

Second – and an organization that I’ve mentioned a number of times here but they have now hit the ‘big time’ media-wise, Cayuga Pure Organics: Cayuga Pure Organics

My interest in these folks is historic as well as entrepreneurial: They were probably the first in Upstate New York to recently recognize two things and act on them. First, that Upstate New York was, at least until the opening up of the big grain growing areas in the upper Midwest, a huge provider of grains to the country. Buffalo and Rochester, New York basically built their economies after the opening of the Erie Canal (1825) on milling the grain grown by Upstate New York farmers. Much of the breeding and selection of wheat varieties, for example, was done by independent farmers and farmer-seedsmen in Upstate New York in this period and one variety, Genesee No. 3, became the standard wheat for milling into bread flour. So, from the aspect of climate, rainfall, soil quality, etc., Upstate New York was a very good place to grow grains in the 19th century – could it be that it would still be good now? And second, that in the area, there was a growing demand for organic feeds for livestock. Customers want organic meat – and if you want to grow your livestock organically, it is not just a case of not using antibiotics. If you are feeding grain, you need to be completely in control of how the grain is grown, how it is handled, where it is milled and packaged. You can’t just call up your standard feed mill and ask to have them make you organic feed – their milling equipment is filled with the dust and remains of grains from other places that are NOT organic, or perhaps are genetically modified, or perhaps have other additives in them that you don’t want.

What the two farmers who started Cayuga Pure Organics found was once people found out that they were growing grains organically, they wanted them for human consumption and they also wanted organically grown dried beans. This business has been grown since its beginning in 2003 to not only serve food co-ops and restaurants in the Upstate New York area, but also the Green Markets and restaurants in New York City. They have also, through their partnerships with local farmers, started a flour mill for organic flours and meals.

But, let’s look at a couple of things here in terms of how this has worked.

First, the two farmers who started this could not have succeeded if they had not been able to find other farmers in the Tompkins County area who were already growing organically (and therefore, their soils were already certified organic) and who wanted to partner up to agree to grow grains and beans that were being requested. Could farmers in other areas, in other states, find the same enthusiasm and flexibility? They might, or they might not. Tompkins County, New York is a unique place, in the middle of another interesting place, the Finger Lakes. Tompkins County is home to Cornell University, which is a powerhouse of agricultural and ag marketing research. It also is the home to probably one of the most famous farmers markets in the country – the Ithaca Farmers Market is an actual destination retail center, where everything sold must be made or grown within one hour circumference of Ithaca. It probably has one of the highest per capita consumptions of Birkenstocks, organic food, vegan restaurants, and hybrid or electric vehicles in the country. They have their own monetary system with the means of exchange being an item called “Ithaca Bucks”, which is widely accepted not only at retail but for every service from music lessons to physical therapy.

Also, being nestled in what might be considered one of the gateways to the Finger Lakes, people in Tompkins County have had a front row seat to view the incredible and explosive growth in not only ‘Finger Lakes Wine Industry’ per se, but the specialization and localization of that, with the wine ‘trails’ on Seneca and Keuka lakes to the west, and more recently, the phenomenal growth of the wine trail on Cayuga Lake, Ithaca’s lake. So, residents, businesses and farmers are surrounded in that area by the powerful ideas of ‘find a need and fill it’, ‘our area is special and our products are or can be special’ and ‘there is every advantage to selling direct to the consumer.’ All of these things, coupled with a willingness to try things out, get their feet ‘wet’ by serving a local market, and more than a bit of self-promotion and use of the internet, has grown their business and brought these farmers other people who now work for them and who are now getting ready to become the second generation to run the business.

Considering what has been going on in terms of grain growing in other parts of the country and the world, this is not a bad thing at all.

[photos courtesy of New Amsterdam Market]

Related posts:

1. Food Sunday: So, You Want a Farmer’s Market?
2. Food Sunday: Food News You Can Use

CSR-driven initiatives are simply not proportionate to the value that multinational companies extract from Africa and Asia

Has the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) finally come of age?

The concept has been vaguely defined, and still provides a source of confusion both in the corporate world and beyond, but most international corporations, particularly those with footholds in Africa or Asia, have either already implemented CSR strategies or are now drawing them up.

It is welcome progress, but it has been painfully slow and there is still a long way to go.

The majority of African countries have now celebrated 50 years of independence. Before CSR came into being, companies working on the continent felt entitled to behave as they pleased. By the 1980s, firms were promising to provide funding and to empower local communities by building health centres and schools, installing power lines and water supplies, and creating jobs. In reality, though, they were just paying lip service to the idea. Not until the late 1990s did slumbering corporate consciences begin to awaken and realise that it was time to start giving something back.

By then the continent had suffered huge damage, with many countries ravaged by the effects of war, corruption and pollution, situations often exacerbated by the direct interference or connivance of powerful multinationals.

It makes me angry to see what is happening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country which has been in a state of war for decades and where horrific crimes against women are committed, but which also has abundant natural resources. These raw materials include significant deposits of tantalum, a vital component in computers and mobile phones, products from which companies like Nokia, IBM and Siemens have earned billions of dollars.

Change is coming, with new US legislation requiring companies to disclose whether tantalum and other minerals are sourced from the DRC's "conflict mines". But it is a sad indictment of how African development has unfolded that valuable natural materials that should have brought prosperity have instead been exploited by unscrupulous multinationals to feed the appetite of western consumers for cheap electronic goods.

Taking CSR seriously

African companies are still waking up to the potential of CSR as a positive force in the shaping of the continent's economic future. The opportunity is there to give something back to the continent. But CSR initiatives worthy of the name need to be more than just marketing tools to increase the visibility of multinationals' brands in Africa. At the moment, CSR-driven schemes are simply not proportionate to the value these companies extract from Africa and Asia.

As a UK-based Senegalese woman with one foot firmly on my continent, I hope the corporations that have been operating for decades in countries like Guinea, South Africa, Rwanda, the Ivory Coast and DRC will now sit down and take the whole concept of CSR more seriously.

Encouragingly, a few companies are taking more positive steps. Google, for example, runs an active corporate philanthropy programme that has so far poured more than $7m (£4m) into projects targeting poverty, health, energy and the environment. Companies like IBM and PepsiCo are also working with NGOs and foundations to send their executives to mentor business people around the world. Rather than simply giving aid, they appear at last to be engaging at a grassroots level in Africa, working to implement CSR strategies alongside African companies.

Global corporations working in Africa need to be more responsible and show a serious interest in making a difference. They can do this by using CSR to:

• encourage access to education by building classrooms
• invest in people and professional skills
• promote good governance, transparency and leadership
• sponsor or organise ICT, innovation and mobile technology events
• invest in health systems and build health centres
• invest in young entrepreneurs and businesswomen
• employ locals and involve their communities
• promote sustainable, environment-friendly policies
• invest in agricultural educational programs

Africa still faces huge challenges, as demonstrated by the millennium development goals, which increasingly look unattainable. A greater commitment to implementing meaningful CSR programmes by the hundreds of global corporations present on the continent would mark a significant step towards meeting these targets and help put Africa on the road to a prosperous future.

DePaul Packaging VP Dean Stearman Discusses ‘Value Creation Through Enabling Technologies’ at Foundation for Strategic Sourcing (F4SS) Conference

DePaul Packaging is Premier Co-Packing Resource in the Northwest

PR Newswire — September 29, 2010

BOSTON, Sept. 29 /PRNewswire/ — DePaul Packaging’s Food & Consumer Goods Vice President, Dean Stearman was an invited speaker at the Annual Conference of the Foundation for Strategic Sourcing (F4SS), held recently in Boston, MA, and attended by leading consumer package goods (CPG) corporations in the U.S.

The F4SS organization and its members are focused on the collaboration, innovation and standardization of best practices between CPG companies and their primary and secondary packagers.

Stearman was included in a panel discussion entitled “Value Creation Through Enabling Technologies.” The multi-viewpoint panel discussed two case studies of value creation enabled by Nulogy’s PackManager technology solution. DePaul Packaging, a division of DePaul Industries, is a proven leader and real time ‘alpha tester’ of Nulogy Corporations’ PackManager operational software.

Additional panel members included Alan Weinman of Frito-Lay, Bill Floyd of Bell-Carter Packaging, and Nulogy CEO, Jason Tham. Their discussion was led by moderator Bob Heaney, Senior Research Analyst, Supply-Chain Management of Aberdeen Group.

DePaul Packaging is the leading Contract Packaging and Co-Pack facility in the Pacific Northwest. DePaul provides “Demand Driven” solutions for the consumer package goods demand chain.

Dean Stearman is a “silo-buster.” From his early days of making sure advertising and promotion agencies “played well” together, to insisting that his suppliers in the demand chain collaborate to streamline and dovetail their operations to best service his brands, Dean knocks down walls to get to the core of every efficiency. He is a systemic innovator and his calling cards are transparency and collaboration. Dean also serves on the Northwest Food Processors Association/ERI board of directors.

“People and technology need to adapt to process vs. process adapting to technology,” says Stearman, “Demand driven operations require adaptability, flexibility and ‘real time’ information accessible to all — from planning to the production work cell to visibility for customer’s access. People are the key and our focus. Ease of use is imperative.”

“The ‘Value Creation Through Enabling Technologies’ panel discussion marked a sea change that has been a long time coming,” said Dean, “and offered a peek around the corner for what needs to be done now and for the midterm.” Says Dean: “The group-think in Co-Pack and Contract Packaging has gone far beyond just plain logistic considerations. It heralds the all important issue of rising trust between supplier and client. It denotes a time now when the supplier must be pro-active in forward thinking systems and anticipation of Demand Chain need. In working as a partner with clients, co-packers can virtually operate as an additional sales arm to assist their clients in selling product beyond forecastas we have.”

It’s this level of strategic partnering and relationship building that gives brand marketing corporations a leg up on the competition. Co-Packers, who operate at the same heightened level as DePaul Packaging does in working with Nulogy’s PackManager software, and who effectively navigate the demand chain, are the ones who are ready to meet the market demands of their clients.

“This is powerful..,” says Dean, “and we deliver the innovation and silo busting on so many different levels.” For example, DePaul early on identified a soon to be large and looming challenge of a dearth of trained entry level workers in food and agricultural industries in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. In response, DePaul Industries and its Staffing division as well as Food & Consumer Goods Packaging group mounted an ambitious, interlocked and forward thinking entity and training program to provide an entry level, workforce ready stable of talent to feed what will become a gaping need in the food and agricultural industries.

DePaul created and developed their HEART OF the WORKFORCE (H.O.W.) program to get ahead of the curve. This they have achieved. “Our disciplined HOW program trains our workforce in food and personal safety compliance and many other desperately needed skills. Perhaps more importantly, our HOW program instills in all candidates the absolute necessity of workplace readiness. Or, as we like to say, ‘being there, when you get there.’ This makes for a temporary or seasonal employee that is a definite cut above the rest.” Said Dean.

The business communities in the Pacific Northwest are embracing the concept and the human output of the program with open arms. To such an extent that DePaul is now in the position of ramping up their efforts to “export” to other markets to help service similar client needs in those regions. With the HOW program a burgeoning success and the success of DePaul’s other strategic initiatives on behalf of its clients, DePaul has positioned itself as a progressive Flexible Workforce solution for CPG companies both in and outside of their plants. These solutions far transcend PRICE discussion and move to creating the custom VALUE equation that results in increased sales, with powerful efficiencies in an increasingly demand driven world.

About DePaul PACKAGING:

DePaul Packaging expertly handles assembly, kitting, packing and filling of food and consumer products for local, national and international brand marketers in its 100,000 square foot food grade plant and warehouse located just off the I-5 corridor in Portland. Services include: contract packaging, co-packing, co pack, packing, bundling and bundle wrapping, cartoning and re-cartoning, count-weigh-batch-fill, dry-fill, fulfillment, gift sets, in-packs, collating, on-packs, outsource, outsourcing, polybag and heat seal, powder filling, procurement and sourcing, logistics, supply chain, specialty packs, stand-up pouch fill, warehousing and vendor managed inventory. More information about DePaul Packaging is available by contacting Dean Stearman at (503) 331-3810 or by visiting www.DePaulPackaging.com.

� 2010, DePaul Packaging, Portland, OR

SOURCE DePaul Packaging

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The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) today approved the nomination of the National Cooperative Consumer Federation of India Limited (NCCF), the Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) and other public sector undertakings and cooperatives as central agencies for procurement of oilseeds and pulses under the Price Support Scheme (PSS).

These agencies will be in addition to the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED), which is already performing this function, an official press release said.

NCCF is engaged in supply support to the consumer cooperative and distributing agencies of consumer goods to the consumers at reasonable and affordable rates. Similarly, CWC, a public sector undertaking, has a strong network of storage facilities.

The involvement of other public sector undertaking/cooperatives in the procurement operation as and when the situation requires will ensure minimum support price to the farmers for their produce, under PSS, in a more effective manner, the release said.

NAFED was designated as the central nodal agency for procurement of oilseeds and pulses under PSS in 1976-77. It was also designated as an additional agency for procurement of cotton during Kharif season 2004-05.

The release said the Government had taken various initiatives for improving productivity and production of oilseeds and pulses in the country. These include programmes such as National Food Security Mission (NFSM), Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna (RKVY), Accelerated Pulses Production Programme (A3P) and Integrated Scheme of Oilseeds, Pulses, Oil PaIm and Maize (ISOPOM). These initiatives are expected to bring significant increase in the production of oilseeds and pulses, it said.

In view of this, it was felt that more agencies were required in the procurement operation under PSS to provide Minimum Support Price (MSP) to the farmers by strengthening the system of procurement. This would also create a more competitive environment for procurement operations resulting in better quality of service to the farmers and lower cost to the Government, the release added.

NNN

Global Waste to Energy Technologies Market (2010-2015) Now Available at ReportsandReports

PR Newswire — September 23, 2010

DALLAS, Texas, September 23, 2010 /PRNewswire/ –

- ReportsandReports Announces it Will Carry Global Waste to Energy Technologies Market Research Report in its Store.

Browse the complete Report on: http://www.reportsandreports.com/reports/34189-global-waste-to-energy-technol ogies-market-2010-2015.html

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The global energy market is witnessing a shift toward waste to energy technologies due to growing energy demands worldwide, the rapid depletion of conventional sources of energy, and concerns over environmental pollution from conventional energy sources. Governments across the globe are offering initiatives and financial schemes to encourage production of energy from industrial and agricultural wastes. The report studies the waste to energy market only for municipal solid waste (MSW), and excludes hazardous metal and other wastes. The research also does not cover the waste water treatment market.

While only a few international companies are currently active in the WTE market, it is expected to witness a double-digit growth rate in the next five years largely due to the participation of developing countries. Ongoing research is also expected to resolve current concerns of conversion and efficiency; making waste a mainstream source of energy.

MARKETS COVERED

This market research report analyzes and forecasts the markets for all the major types of waste-to-energy technologies. It also analyzes challenges such as negative general opinion, high initial cost, long production and sales cycle, rules and regulations, political indifference and compulsion of local joint ventures.

STAKEHOLDERS

The intended audience of this report includes:

- Waste to energy companies – Energy equipment manufacturers – Waste management companies – Research labs – State and regulatory bodies

About Us

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SOURCE MarketsandMarkets

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20100923T053000-0400 20100923T053000-0400

MimeType/@FormalName Global Waste to Energy Technologies Market (2010-2015) Now Available at ReportsandReports - ReportsandReports Announces it Will Carry Global Waste to Energy Technologies Market Research Report in its Store. DALLAS, Texas, September 23, 2010

201009230530PR_NEWS_EURO_ND__30016698en_Public.xml

 The intended audience of this report includes:

- Waste to energy companies - Energy equipment manufacturers - Waste management companies - Research labs - State and regulatory bodies 

 Contact: Ms. Sunita 7557 Rambler road Suite 727, Dallas, TX 75231 Tel: +1-888-989-8004

http://reportsandreports.blogspot.com/ http://reportsandreports.proarticles.co.uk/ http://reportsnreports.wordpress.com/ 

WASHINGTON – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to appoint the following individuals to key administration posts:

• Jill Appell, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Pamela G. Bailey, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• C. Fred Bergsten, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Bobbi Brown, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Michael E. Campbell, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Lisa Carty, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Governor Chris Christie, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Michael Ducker, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Mayor Buddy Dyer, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• John B. Emerson, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Bill Frenzel, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Dean Garfield, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Leo W. Gerard, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Joseph T. Hansen, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• James P. Hoffa, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Robert Holleyman, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Sandra Kennedy, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Jim Kolbe, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Fred Krupp, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• David Lane, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Kase Lawal, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Robert A. McDonald, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Harold McGraw III, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Wade Randlett, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Robert W. Roche, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Matthew Rubel, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• David H. Segura, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Bob Stallman, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• John Surma, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
• Luis Ubiñas, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations

President Obama said, “I am grateful that these highly qualified men and women have agreed to lend their talents to this administration as we work to boost our nation’s exports over the next five years. When ninety-five percent of the world’s customers are beyond our borders, it is crucial that we compete for that business and those jobs. And we need to do so in a way that is responsible and fair, and that levels the playing field for American workers. I look forward to the wise counsel these individuals will provide on these issues as we work together in the coming months and years.”

The Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations is tasked with providing policy advice on trade matters, and is made up of members who broadly represent key sectors and groups of the economy. The President will announce additional members to this Committee at a later date.

President Obama announced his intent to appoint the following individuals to key administration posts:

Jill Appell, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Jill Appell is a past President of the National Pork Producers Council and the Illinois Pork Producers Association. Ms. Appell is a member of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's Advisory Committee and has served on task forces for the Illinois Farm Bureau. In addition, she was a member of the Illinois Governor's Task Force that helped to write the Livestock Management Facilities Act, which regulates livestock facilities in Illinois.  She served as Illinois State Director of USDA Rural Development during the Clinton administration.  Ms. Appell is currently a member of the USDA Farm Service Agency Illinois State Technical Committee and the USDA Agricultural Technical Advisory Committee for Trade of Animals and Animal Products.

Pamela G. Bailey, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Pamela G. Bailey is President and CEO of the Grocery Manufacturers Association. She is the former President and CEO of the Personal Care Products Council, the Advanced Medical Technology Association, and the Healthcare Leadership Council. In 1981, President Reagan appointed Ms. Bailey to serve as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at HHS, and in 1983, she was appointed as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Affairs. Ms. Bailey is currently a Director of Greatbatch Technologies, Inc., and MedCath Corporation.  She also serves on the board of GS1 US and is a trustee of Franklin and Marshall College.

C. Fred Bergsten, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
C. Fred Bergsten has been Director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics since its creation in 1981.  He was Assistant Secretary for International Affairs of the US Treasury from 1977 until 1981 and Assistant for International Economic Affairs to the National Security Council from 1969 to 1971.  Mr. Bergsten is co-Chairman of the Private Sector Advisory Group to the US-India Trade Policy Forum, and was Chairman of the Competitiveness Policy Council created by Congress and Chairman of the APEC Eminent Persons Group. He is the author, coauthor or editor of 40 books on a wide range of international economic issues.

Bobbi Brown, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Bobbi Brown is the founder of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics. Founded in 1991 and acquired by Estée Lauder Companies in 1995, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics has evolved into a full range of color cosmetics, fragrance, skincare, tools and accessories with a global presence in 56 countries. A New York Times bestselling author, Ms. Brown has written six beauty and lifestyle books, and is the exclusive beauty editor of NBC's Today Show and the Contributing Beauty & Lifestyle Editor of Health magazine. She sits on the boards of Dress for Success and her alma mater, Emerson College.

Michael E. Campbell, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Michael E. Campbell is the Chairman, President and CEO of Arch Chemicals, Inc. and the Chairman of the Board of the National Association of Manufacturers. Prior to the creation of Arch Chemicals, Mr. Campbell served as the Executive Vice President of the Olin Corporation. Mr. Campbell was first appointed to the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations in July 2005 and currently serves on the Boards of Directors of MeadWestvaco Corporation and Milliken & Company. He is the former Chairman of the Board of Directors and current Board member of the American Chemistry Council, and the former Chairman of the Society of Chemical Industry.

Lisa Carty, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Lisa Carty is Deputy Director and Senior Advisor of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Prior to joining CSIS she served as Country Programme Coordinator for the Russian Federation for UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. From 2002 to 2007 she worked for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program as Deputy Director for Public Policy. Ms. Carty served for more than twenty years as a Foreign Service Officer with the United States Department of State.  Overseas, she has worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Russia, the UN Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, and as the U.S. Government’s Regional Coordinator for Refugee Affairs in the Middle East.

Governor Chris Christie, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Christopher Christie serves as New Jersey’s 55th Governor.  Governor Christie was also recently named to the National Governors Association’s nine-person Executive Committee.  Prior to his election as governor in 2009, he served as United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey from 2002 to 2008.  From 2004 to 2005, Christie served as a member of the seventeen-person Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of United States Attorneys.

Michael Ducker, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Michael L. Ducker is the Chief Operating Officer for FedEx Express and President of its International Division. He also oversees FedEx Trade Networks and FedEx SupplyChain. Mr. Ducker serves as Chairman of the International Policy Committee and Executive Board Member of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as a Board Member of the U.S.-China Business Council and Junior Achievement Worldwide. He was also appointed by President Bush to serve on the APEC Business Advisory Council representing U.S. business interests in the Asia-Pacific Region from 2003 to 2007.

Mayor Buddy Dyer, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
John “Buddy” Dyer is currently serving his second full term as the Mayor of Orlando, Florida. In this capacity, he serves as the City’s chief executive and also helps govern and oversee the operations and growth of its city-owned utility and the Orlando International and Executive Airports. Prior to becoming Mayor, he served for a decade in the Florida Senate, where his colleagues elected him as their Democratic Senate Leader, a position he held for three years. Mayor Dyer has also worked as an environmental engineer and practiced law for more than 20 years.

John B. Emerson, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
John B. Emerson is President of Private Client Services of the Capital Group Companies, one of the world’s largest privately held global investment management firms.  He previously served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House, coordinating GATT implementing legislation and China MFN renewal.  He was the coordinator of the Clinton-Gore Transition Team’s Economic Conference in 1992. Mr. Emerson is a member of the Los Angeles Mayor's Trade Advisory Commission, Chairman of the Board of the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Bill Frenzel, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Bill Frenzel is a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, and previously served for 20 years as a U.S. Representative from Minnesota. While in Congress, he served as the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee and a member of the Ways and Means committee. In 1993 Mr. Frenzel was appointed to serve as a Special Advisor to President Clinton, and then appointed to the President’s Social Security Commission in 2001.  He was first appointed to the Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations in 2002, and to the President’s Tax Reform Commission in 2005. He is Co-Chairman of the Center for Strategic Tax Reform, the Bretton Woods Committee, and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Mr. Frenzel is Vice Chairman of the Eurasia Foundation, Chairman Emeritus of the Ripon Society, and a member of the Commission in the Office of Congressional Ethics of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Dean Garfield, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Dean C. Garfield is the President and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), a trade group representing the information and communications sector. Prior to ITI, he served as Executive Vice President and Chief Strategic Officer for the Motion Picture Association of America. Mr. Garfield is a board member of the SEED School, Aidan Montessori School, and College for Every Student.

Leo W. Gerard, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Leo W. Gerard is the International President of United Steelworkers. He is a member of the AFL-CIO’s Executive Committee and chairs its Public Policy Committee. Mr. Gerard is co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance, and a board member of the Apollo Alliance, Campaign for America’s Future, and Economic Policy Institute. In addition, he is a member of the executive committees of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations. In conjunction with Unite the Union, Mr. Gerard was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union.

Joseph T. Hansen, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Joseph T. Hansen is the President of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) which represents more than 1.3 million workers in the U.S. and Canada. He was elected to serve as UFCW Secretary-Treasurer in 1997 and President in 2004. In 2003 he took office as President of Union Network International and was reelected as President in 2005. Mr. Hansen is also a founding architect of the Change to Win Federation.

James P. Hoffa, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
James Phillip Hoffa is the General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Mr. Hoffa was first elected General President in December 1998 and took office on March 19, 1999. He was re-elected in 2001 and 2006 to five-year terms. Mr. Hoffa served as an attorney for the Teamsters from 1968 to 1993. He also served on the President’s Council on the 21st Century Workforce and sat on the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board, both of which he was appointed to in 2002.

Robert Holleyman, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Robert Holleyman is President and CEO of the Business Software Alliance, a software industry trade association, overseeing operations in more than 80 countries. Previously, he served as Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and as Legislative Director for former U.S. Senator Russell B. Long. He was named one of the 50 most influential people in the intellectual property world by Managing Intellectual Property Magazine in 2003.

Sandra Kennedy, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Sandra Kennedy was named President of the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) in December 2002.  Prior to joining RILA, Ms. Kennedy served as Director of the Leadership Dialogue Series for Accenture, a global management consulting and technology services company. From 1993 to 2000, she was Senior Vice President of membership services for the National Retail Federation (NRF). In that position Ms. Kennedy directed NRF’s revenue-generating businesses, including membership, conferences and the annual convention, as well as the activities of retail operational committees.

Jim Kolbe, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Jim Kolbe is the Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. He is as an adjunct Professor in the College of Business at the University of Arizona and a consultant with McLarty Associates. He currently serves on the Advisory Board for the Export-Import Bank and is co-chair of the Transatlantic Taskforce. He formerly served in Congress representing southeastern Arizona, from 1985 to 2007. Mr. Kolbe has received numerous awards and tributes, including the George Marshall Award for Distinguished Service from USAID, and the Order of the Aztec from the President of Mexico.

Fred Krupp, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Fred Krupp is the President of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).  The EDF is dedicated to protecting biodiversity, stabilizing climate change, reducing environmental risks to human health and safeguarding the world’s oceans.  Mr. Krupp also helped launch a corporate coalition, the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, whose Fortune 500 members – Alcoa, GE, DuPont and dozens more - have called for strict limits on global warming pollution. Mr. Krupp is coauthor, with Miriam Horn, of New York Times Best Seller, Earth: The Sequel.  He was among 18 people named as America’s Best Leaders by U.S. News and World Report in 2007.

David Lane, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
David Lane is President and Chief Executive Officer of ONE, an advocacy and campaigning organization focused on combating global poverty and preventable disease. Prior to joining ONE, Mr. Lane was the Director of Public Policy and External Affairs and Director of the East Coast Office for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. From 1993 through 2000, he served in a number of senior positions in the federal government, including Executive Director of the National Economic Council at the White House and Chief of Staff of the US Department of Commerce. Mr. Lane is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Vice-Chair of the Board of Transparency International USA.

Kase Lawal, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Kase Lawal is currently serving his 6th term on the Port Commission of the Port of Houston Authority. Mr. Lawal is Chairman and CEO of CAMAC International Corporation, an integrated oil and gas company. He is also the Vice Chairman of the Houston Airport System Development Corporation and Vice Chairman of Unity National Bank. Mr. Lawal was a member of the United States Presidential Trade Advisory Committee on Africa during the Bush and Clinton Administrations.  In addition, Mr. Lawal serves as a member of the National Urban League Board of Directors, and a member of the Board of Trustees for Fisk University.

Robert A. McDonald, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Robert A. McDonald is Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Procter & Gamble Company. Mr. McDonald serves on the Board of Directors of Xerox Corporation, chairs the Fuqua Global Partnerships Committee at Duke University, is Vice Chair of the U.S.-China Business Council, and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Business Roundtable.

Harold McGraw III, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Harold McGraw III is Chairman, President and CEO of The McGraw-Hill Companies, a global information and education company providing knowledge, insights and analysis through Standard & Poor's, McGraw-Hill Education, Platts, and J.D. Power and Associates.  Mr. McGraw serves on the Boards of United Technologies and ConocoPhillips. He is past chairman of Business Roundtable, and chairman of the Emergency Committee for American Trade, the U.S. Council for International Business and the U.S.-India Business Council.  In 2009, he participated in the US-India CEO Forum. He chairs the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy and serves on the Boards of Carnegie Hall, the Council for Economic Education, New York Public Library, National Organization on Disability, Prep for Prep and the Council for Industry and Higher Education in London.

Wade Randlett, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Wade Randlett is the Chairman and co-founder of Enagra, LLC, a holding company for renewable energy projects worldwide, with offices in San Francisco and Kuala Lumpur. He also co-founded Technology Network, a bi-partisan political advocacy committee based in Silicon Valley. Mr. Randlett is the President of the governing council for Alice Fong Yu elementary in San Francisco, the country’s first Chinese immersion public school.

Robert W. Roche, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Robert W. Roche is an entrepreneur and investor working in China, Japan, and the US.  Mr. Roche is a Co-founder and Director of Acorn International, one of China’s largest TV shopping companies, and Co-founder and Chairman of Oak Lawn Marketing, Inc., the largest infomercial company in Japan, which is now part of NTT Docomo Group.   He is the founder of URBN Hotels, China's first carbon-neutral hotel. Mr. Roche has been Chairman of The American Chamber of Commerce/Shanghai since January 2010, and is Director of the USA Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo, and Member of the Advisory Board of the Harvard Public Diplomacy Collaborative Initiative.

Matthew Rubel, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Matthew Rubel is the Chairman of Collective Brands, Inc.  Previously, Mr. Rubel served as Chairman and CEO of Payless ShoeSource and Cole Haan.  He was also Executive Vice President of J. Crew Group and CEO of Popular Club Plan.  Mr. Rubel is active in several industry and civic organizations, including the Jay H. Baker Initiative at the Wharton School; Young Presidents’ Organization; and serves as Chairman of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Council of Shopping Centers and the University of Miami and serves on the Board of Directors of Supervalu.

David H. Segura, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
David H. Segura is Chief Executive Officer and founder of VisionIT, a global IT solutions firm with headquarters in Detroit, Michigan.  Mr. Segura is also a founding architect and current Vice Chair of the nation’s first Hispanic senior-level IT executive organization, the Hispanic IT Executive Council, as well as a long-standing member of the Information Technology Senior Management Forum which is focused on advancing African-American IT leadership. Most recently he was selected by President Obama as one of the 50 CEOs to participate in the White House Forum on Modernizing U.S. Government.

Bob Stallman, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Bob Stallman, a rice and cattle producer from Columbus, Texas, is President of the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF). Prior to becoming AFBF President, Mr. Stallman was President of the Texas Farm Bureau and a member of AFBF’s board of directors.  Mr. Stallman was first appointed to the Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations in 2007, and was also selected to serve on the Agricultural Policy Advisory Committee for Trade and the Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy. In addition, Mr. Stallman serves on the board of trustees for the Farm Foundation and the Advisory Board of the World Agricultural Forum.

John Surma, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
John P. Surma is the Chairman and CEO of United States Steel Corporation and previously served as Vice Chairman, CFO, COO, and President. Prior to joining U. S. Steel, Mr. Surma was President of Marathon Ashland Petroleum LLC, Senior Vice President of Supply & Transportation of Marathon Ashland Petroleum LLC, and President of Speedway Super America LLC. He serves on the Board and Executive Committee of the World Steel Association and the Board of Directors of the American Iron and Steel Institute. Mr. Surma is also a member of The Business Council. Additionally, he is the Chairman of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development.

Luis Ubiñas, Appointee for Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations
Luis A. Ubiñas serves as President of the Ford Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation, Mr. Ubiñas was a Director at McKinsey & Company where he led its West Coast Media Practice, advising Fortune 100 media, telecommunications and technology companies on major strategic and operating challenges. He currently serves on the UN Permanent Advisory Memorial Committee and the Board of the New York Public Library. He is a trustee of the Collegiate School for Boys and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Fatal Gas Blast Prompts Scrutiny of Aging U.S. Fuel Pipelines

The San Francisco gas pipe explosion last week along with an oil pipeline leak near Chicago is likely to draw regulators’ attention to fuel transportation networks, some of which have been in service more than four decades.

Four people are confirmed dead and four are missing after the Sept. 9 explosion of a 54-year-old PG&E; Corp. natural-gas pipeline in the San Bruno suburb. The blast happened one day after an Enbridge Inc. crude-oil line leaked near Chicago, forcing a shutdown threatening fuel supplies in the U.S. Midwest. The Enbridge pipe, which can handle 670,000 barrels a day, started service in 1968.

The U.S. is crisscrossed with more than 2.5 million miles of fuel pipelines, or enough to circle the earth about 100 times. U.S. regulators may now step up inspections and increase the industry’s maintenance costs, said Mark Easterbrook, a pipelines analyst with RBC Capital Markets in Dallas.

EPA to hold final hearings on 'fracking'

New York (CNN) -- The Environmental Protection Agency will hold its final public hearings on hydraulic fracturing to access natural gas on Monday and Wednesday.

The controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," requires drillers to pump large amounts of water mixed with sand and chemicals into shale formation under high pressure to depths 8,000 feet or greater or even wells less than 1,000 feet, according to the EPA. This process fractures the shale around the well, which allows the natural gas to flow freely, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

Enbridge cleanup continues

Workers for Enbridge continue to truck away oil from a major pipeline leaking in an industrial park in Romeoville, Ill.

The company has isolated the section of pipe that ruptured on Friday, and is now conducting a “drain-up” operation that involves sucking oil from the leak site and two other locations.

But Enbridge still cannot say how much oil spilled from beneath a roadway in an accident that has seen the company halt crude flowing through its 670,000 barrel-a-day Line 6A, a major component of its North American network.

Enbridge Says Drain Up Completed, Most Oil Recovered After Illinois Leak

Enbridge Energy Partners LP drained most of the oil from a damaged pipeline in Illinois that has disrupted crude transports from Canada to the refineries in the U.S. Midwest and helped push prices higher.

The Line 6A pipe, in Romeoville, 30 miles (48 kilometers) southwest of Chicago, remains shut and there’s no estimate for when it may start, the Houston-based company said today in a statement. “Enbridge’s schedulers are working with shippers to divert crude oil volumes to other available pipelines and storage facilities,” the company said today.

After Blast, Uneasiness for Residents Going Home

SAN BRUNO, Calif. — Hundreds of residents returned home on Sunday to the neighborhood that was evacuated after a natural gas pipeline exploded late last week.

Four people remain missing after the blast and its resulting fires, city officials said, and four are confirmed dead. But the death toll could rise. On Saturday, search dogs located additional remains, which were turned over to the county coroner.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the explosion, which occurred in this hillside community about 15 miles south of San Francisco on Thursday evening. The underground, high-pressure natural gas pipeline is owned by Pacific Gas and Electric.

On Sunday the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates utilities, ordered PG&E; to inspect its natural gas transmission system statewide.

The Oil Spill’s Money Squeeze

In May, Harriet M. Perry, the director of the fisheries program at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, was asked to examine some mysterious droplets found on blue crab larvae by scientists at Tulane University. An early test indicated that the droplets were oil, and she has continued to find similar droplets on fresh larvae samples taken all along the northern Gulf of Mexico.

Despite the potential significance of the discovery, Dr. Perry does not have research money to cover further tests. And like other scientists across the Gulf Coast who are racing to sketch out the contours of the BP oil spill’s effects, she has few places to turn for help.

The only federal agency to distribute any significant grant money for oil spill research, the National Science Foundation, is out of money until the next fiscal year begins Oct. 1. The Environmental Protection Agency, which has only $2 million to give out, is still gearing up its program. A $500 million initiative for independent research promised by BP, which was to be awarded by an international panel of scientists, has become mired in a political fight over control. State agencies, too, are stymied.

BP: Spill claims 'probably' won't top $20 billion

LONDON — BP believes compensation claims related to its Gulf of Mexico oil spill will be less than the $20 billion the oil giant has put into an independent claims fund, analysts at Citigroup said following a meeting with incoming Chief Executive Bob Dudley.

"He added that given current estimates of claims the $20 billion Independent Claim Fund (ICF) that BP established probably exceeds calls," Citigroup said in a research note.

Dudley added the $32 billion provision BP made for the total cost of the disaster remained a reasonable indicator of eventual cost.

Oil Rises For Second Day Amid Optimism Over Economic Growth in U.S., China

Crude advanced for a second day in New York on expectations fuel demand will climb in the U.S. and China, the world’s largest oil-consuming nations.

Futures gained on forecasts that retail sales rose in the U.S. for a second month and a pipeline supplying the Midwest region remained closed. China’s oil refiners raised processing runs 7.2 percent in August from a year earlier. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. predicted crude prices will rise to a range of $85 to $95 a barrel for the rest of this year as inventories decline.

“News that Chinese production is growing more than expected is very supportive,” said Thorbjoern Bak Jensen, a Global Risk Management analyst based in Middelfart, Denmark. “U.S. data this week may further write off the prospect of a double-dip.”

Non-OPEC Crude Oil Update: First Half 2010

Global production of crude oil turned away from its year long recovery of 2009, and lurched downward again this Spring. Fresh data through June, just updated from the EIA on Friday, shows that Non-OPEC is leading the downturn coming off the Winter highs. After recovering to a 2010 high of 42.435 mbpd (million barrels a day) in March, Non-OPEC oil production has fallen in April, May and now June to 41.970 mbpd. The declines have also come via downward revisions, as even higher totals in the first half of 2010 have now been taken away.

Hedge Funds Become More Bullish on Oil First Week in Five

Hedge funds and other large speculators raised bets on gains in oil prices for the first time in five weeks on renewed signs the U.S. economy is recovering from the worst recession since the 1930s.

Russia May Lower Oil Export Duty in October After Price of Urals Decline

Russia may cut its duty on crude exports by as much as 3 percent for regular fields and as much as 6.5 percent for deposits with a discounted rate next month after prices for its Urals blend fell.

Exxon Italy refinery slashes run after fire

(Reuters) - Exxon Mobil's Sarpom refinery in Italy is operating at 30-40 percent capacity after a bigger crude distillation unit was shut following a fire on Saturday, the refinery's spokesman said on Monday.

Oil Refining Volumes in China Fall in August From July After Maintenance

China’s oil processing fell last month from July as refineries cut production because of scheduled maintenance at their plants.

Refineries processed 34.73 million metric tons in August, or about 8.21 million barrels a day, marking a third month of declines, according to faxed data from China Mainland Marketing Research Co., which compiles figures for the National Bureau of Statistics.

Kazakhstan to pump up volume

Kazakhstan, Central Asia's largest oil producer, plans to produce 81 million tonnes of crude and gas condensate next year.

Oil output is set to rise to 83 million tonnes in 2012, according to the nation's draft 2011 budget.

Turkey, Iraq to sign pipeline accord after delay

(Reuters) - Turkey and Iraq plan to sign an accord this week to extend the operation of a major oil pipeline six months after they agreed to renew the deal, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said on Monday.

Yildiz said the deal would be signed after a few "hitches" were resolved, but declined to say what issues had delayed finalisation of the accord to operate the pipeline from Iraq's northern Kirkuk oilfields to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

CNPC Starts Building China Part of Myanmar Pipelines, Yunnan Oil Refinery

China National Petroleum Corp., the nation’s largest oil company, started building the Chinese section of oil and gas pipelines linking the world’s largest energy consumer to Myanmar.

The oil pipeline is designed to receive 22 million metric tons of crude a year and the gas link will be able to pump 12 billion cubic meters annually, the state-controlled company said in a statement on its website today.

Hot, and getting hotter

ML: What are your thoughts on peak oil?

RN: I think there is a physical conclusion to oil and the world is perhaps starting to experience the early symptoms of that. Oil originates from animal and plant material, so it's in finite supply. Over the last hundred years, a vast amount of oil has been extracted. At some point in time we will end up at a natural limit and production will stop increasing or plateau. Growth of demand will exceed production. You will start to see volatile swings in the prices of oil and gas - which could be triggered by very small things - because it's so tight.

Global Macro Notes: Forget Copper, What About Oil?

As you can see from the chart, oil has done a whole lot of nothin’ over the past year and a half or so. After humping back up to the 200 week EMA like an old man climbing stairs, crude has spent most of its time in an uninspired range… trapped in the ’70s, like an endless episode of Starsky and Hutch.

If you’re a card-carrying peak oil theorist, this is kind of a weird phenomenon. If you’re a true believer in the “emerging markets century,” it’s also a bit of a weird phenomenon.

I mean, what about those three billion new capitalists? What about that $2500 car that’s selling like hotcakes in India? All the easy oil is gone! Oil should be killing it! Right?

Sasol Profit Climbs 16% on Higher Synthetic Fuel Production, Reduced Costs

Sasol Ltd., the largest producer of motor fuels made from coal, beat analysts’ earnings estimates and raised its dividend payment by 24 percent after increasing production and cutting costs.

New Australia climate minister backs coal - paper

(Reuters) - Australia's new climate change minister, Greg Combet, believes the country's coal sector has a future under government policies, The Australian newspaper reported on Monday.

Combet, a former union worker, replaced Penny Wong in the post in Prime Minister Julia Gillard's new cabinet announced at the weekend after last month's election.

Prop 23: Would it worsen gas price shocks?

California’s 2006 global warming law would save the state’s consumers as much as $670 per household in 2020, in the event of a global surge in the price of crude oil, according to a report released Monday by economists for alternative energy advocacy groups.

The U.S. economy has experienced five price shocks over the past three decades in which crude oil prices rose an average of 179% in one year.

Titled “Shock Proofing Society: How California’s Global Warming Solutions Act cuts the pain of energy price shocks,” the study is aimed at countering a November ballot initiative, Proposition 23, which would delay implementation of the global warming law. Its analysis is based on projections for 2020, and conservatively assumes only a doubling of crude oil and natural gas prices.

Merkel's Nuclear Plans Are Legally Sound, German Minister Says

German government plans to prolong the use of nuclear power are “watertight,” Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle said, rebuffing opposition claims that a bid to enact the law without putting it to the upper house would break constitutional rules.

EDF's De Rivaz Says First New U.K. ReactorShould Start Production in 2018

Electricite de France SA, the world’s biggest operator of reactors, remains “on track” to start output at its first new nuclear reactor in the U.K. in 2018, according to Vincent de Rivaz, EDF Energy’s chief executive officer.

The utility, based in Paris, plans to build four reactors at the sites of existing nuclear stations at Hinkley Point in southwest England and at Sizewell in the southeast. It’s currently constructing its 59th domestic reactor at Flamanville in Normandy, which has been delayed by as much as two years, while a plant in China is on schedule.

Pepco ready to deploy 'smart meters' in D.C.; pricing still up in the air

Pepco is drawing closer to the full-scale deployment of "smart meters" throughout the District, having rolled out 750 of the energy-tracking devices early this month and releasing preliminary findings from its metering pilot program last week.

Texas Clean Energy Hampered by Location

Texas is by far the biggest producer of wind energy in the United States, but the industry is running into a significant constraint: There are too few transmission lines to carry the power.

Production of stimulus-aided car batteries revs up

WASHINGTON — The first wave of mass-produced advanced batteries funded by the Obama administration's economic recovery program is starting to roll off assembly lines, setting the stage for new hybrid and electric vehicles.

So how will consumers respond?

Fending off criticism of the $787 billion stimulus program, the administration has cited the battery industry as one of the success stories. With new facilities coming online in the Midwest, battery manufacturers for the advanced vehicles are providing a test case for the government's attempt to revive the economy.

US DoE awards further funding to OPT

Ocean Power Technologies, Inc (OPT) has won two new funding awards totalling $4.8M from the US Department of Energy (DoE).

The company plans to use the first award, for $2.4M, in connection with the construction and deployment of one of its PB150 PowerBuoys at Reedsport, Oregon, as part of the first proposed commercial wave power project in the US. Deployment of the 150kW peak-rated PB150, which is currently under construction, is expected to occur in 2011. This is the second award to OPT by the DoE in connection with the Reedsport project. In 2008, OPT received $2Mto use towards the construction of the PB150 PowerBuoy.

U.N. nuclear body, Iran clash over barred inspectors

(Reuters) - The head of the U.N. atomic watchdog said on Monday Iran's rejections of experienced nuclear inspectors was hampering the agency's work in the Islamic state, but Tehran flatly rejected the accusation.

The dispute over the inspectors has added to international concern about Iran's nuclear energy programme, which Western powers suspect is aimed at developing bombs. Iran denies this, saying it is enriching uranium only for generating electricity.

Mapping Traffic’s Toll on Wildlife

Nearly every week for the last seven months, Mr. Ringen, 69, has driven the roads north of this college town near Sacramento, scanning the pavement for telltale bits of fur and feathers.

Pulling over, Mr. Ringen gets out, snaps photographs and uses his GPS device to record the precise location where creatures met their end. He has logged more than 1,400 animals, from the miniature (one-ounce song sparrows) to the gargantuan (a 1,500-pound black Angus bull).

“Most people don’t realize how many animals die on the road every day — they just don’t see it,” he said.

In Feast of Data on BPA Plastic, No Final Answer

The research has been going on for more than 10 years. Studies number in the hundreds. Millions of dollars have been spent. But government health officials still cannot decide whether the chemical bisphenol-A, or BPA, a component of some plastics, is safe. The substance lines most food and drink cans, and is used to make hard, clear plastic bottles, containers and countless other products. Nearly everyone is exposed to it.

USDA: The Role of Agriculture in Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Agriculture could play a prominent role in U.S. efforts to address climate change if farms and ranches undertake activities that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or take greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. These activities may include shifting to conservation tillage, reducing the amount of nitrogen fertilizer applied to crops, changing livestock and manure management practices, and planting trees or grass. The Federal Government is considering offering carbon offsets and incentive payments to encourage rural landowners to pursue these climate-friendly activities as part of a broader effort to combat climate change. The extent to which farmers adopt such activities would depend on their costs, potential revenues, and other economic incentives created by climate policy. Existing Federal conservation programs provide preliminary estimates of the costs of agricultural carbon sequestration.

Australia: End logging in risk areas say conservationists

A number of conservation groups are calling for an immediate end to the logging of forests in areas with low and intermediate rainfall.

This follows the Environmental Protection Authority releasing a report which says declining rainfall from climate change could make logging in some south west forests unsustainable.

China making inroads on emissions

Huang Huikang, as vice mayor of Tangshan in northeastern China, made energy efficiency one of his top priorities, taking aggressive steps to curb greenhouse gases from the city's many factories. Today he is China's special representative on climate change, negotiating with officials from countries worldwide.

As Huang explains it, he and his colleagues managed - at least in one city - to meet the challenge of reducing emissions while still promoting rapid economic growth.

China says rich-poor divide still dogs climate pact talks

The prospects of a new global climate change pact still hinge on resolving the divisions between rich nations and the developing world, a top Chinese climate negotiator said in remarks published on Monday.

CBI says businesses need better warning of climate risks

Climate scientists and the government must improve the way in which they communicate the risks associated with climate change if they want businesses to make the adaptations necessary to cope with rising temperatures and extreme weather.

That is the stark warning contained in a major new report released today by business lobby group the CBI, which also recommends that all firms should provide information on the climate risks they face as part of their corporate reports.

Climate change is inevitable, says Caroline Spelman

Britain can no longer stop global warming and must instead focus on adapting to the ‘inevitable’ impacts of climate change such as floods, droughts and rising sea levels, Government ministers will warn this week.

WASHINGTON – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to key administration posts:
 

• Cameron Munter, Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Department of State

• Pamela Ann White, Ambassador to the Republic of The Gambia, Department of State

• Sam E. Angel, Commissioner, Mississippi River Commission

• Marsha Ternus, Member, Board of Directors of the State Justice Institute

President Obama also announced his intent to appoint the following individuals to key administrations posts:
 

• Karen L. Braitmayer, Member, Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Access Board

• Howard A. Rosenblum,  Member, Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Access Board

• Demetria Henderson, Member, President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities

• Helen T. McAlpine, Member, President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities

• Alma Johnson Powell, Member, President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities

• E. John Rice, Jr., Member, President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities

• Dianne Boardley Suber, Member, President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities

 
President Obama said, “I am proud to nominate such impressive men and women to these important roles, and I am grateful they have agreed to lend their considerable talents to this administration. I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead.”
 
President Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to key administration posts:
 
Cameron Munter, Nominee for Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Department of State
Cameron Munter is a career member of the Foreign Service, with the rank of Minister.  He most recently served as Ambassador to Serbia. Dr. Munter has served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Iraq, the Czech Republic and Poland. Dr. Munter was the first leader of the first Provincial Reconstruction Team in Iraq in 2006, in Mosul.  In Washington, he was Director for Central Europe at the National Security Council, Executive Assistant to the Counselor at the State Department, and Chief of Staff of the NATO Enlargement Ratification Office.  His previous overseas assignments include Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic.  Dr. Munter received his PhD from the Johns Hopkins University and B.A. from Cornell University. He was also a Rusk Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.
 
Pamela Ann White, Nominee for Ambassador to the Republic of The Gambia, Department of State
Pamela Ann White is a member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Career Minister. She has served since 2008 as the USAID Mission Director in Liberia. She also served as Mission Director in Mali and Tanzania. Ms. White has served in a variety of overseas posts as the Executive Officer including Senegal, Haiti, Egypt and South Africa.  Before becoming an Executive Officer, she was the Community Liaison Officer in Burkina Faso. In Washington she was named USAID Chief of Recruitment and Personnel Planning. She also served in the Bureaus of Global Affairs and Africa. She started her foreign service career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon in 1971. Ms. White received her B.A. in journalism from the University of Maine, an M.A. from the School for International Training, and an M.S. from the Industrial College of Armed Forces.
 
Sam E. Angel, Nominee for Commissioner, Mississippi River Commission
Sam E. Angel currently serves as president of Epstein Land Company and Epstein Gin Company, director and former president of the Dumas Cotton Warehouse, and commissioner of the Chicot County Watershed District. He also has served continuously on the Mississippi River Commission since first being appointed in 1979.  He is a former commissioner of the Chicot County Rural Development Authority and the Southeast Arkansas Levee District. He is a director of the Bank of Lake Village and present director and former president and chairman of the board of the Southern Cotton Ginners Association. Mr. Angel is a former delegate and director of the board of the National Cotton Council of America and a former member of the board of the Cotton Warehouse Association of America. Mr. Angel was voted 2004 Man of the Year by the Lake Village Chamber of Commerce, and in 2008 he was presented the Arkansas Heritage Award by the governor of Arkansas. Mr. Angel served with the Army National Guard from 1957 until 1965, and the U.S. Army from 1961 to 1962.
 
Marsha Ternus, Nominee for Member, Board of Directors of the State Justice Institute
Marsha Ternus is currently the Chief Justice for the Iowa Supreme Court. She was appointed to the Court in 2003 and selected as Chief Justice in 2006. Prior to becoming a judge, Chief Justice Ternus was in private practice at the law firm of Bradshaw, Fowler, Proctor & Fairgrave from 1977 to 1993. Chief Justice Ternus serves on the Board of Directors of the Conference of Chief Justices and on the Judicial Conference Committee on Federal State Jurisdiction.  She received a J.D. with Honors, Order of the Coif, from Drake University Law School and a B.A. with high distinction, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Iowa.
 
 
President Obama announced his intent to appoint the following individuals to key administration posts:
 
Karen L. Braitmayer, Appointee for Member, Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Access Board
Karen L. Braitmayer is a registered Architect and Principal with Studio Pacifica Ltd., an architectural consulting firm focused on Accessible Design and Accessibility Consulting.  A lifelong wheelchair user, she has made accessibility consulting and design services her focus since 1990 and co-founded Studio Pacifica, Ltd. in 1993.  Braitmayer has assisted various state agencies, local governments, school districts, architects, home and building owners with compliance on ADA, FHA and state code compliance for housing, commercial, retail, institutional and educational projects.  As an appointed member of the Washington State Building Code Council from 1994 through 2001, and continuing as a member of Technical Advisory Groups, Braitmayer participates in the development of building codes to ensure that the State Accessibility code reflects the needs of the citizens of Washington. Braitmayer is an International Code Council certified Accessibility Inspector/Plans Examiner.
 
Howard A. Rosenblum, Appointee for Member, Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Access Board
Howard A. Rosenblum is a Senior Attorney at Equip for Equality, a nonprofit organization designated as Illinois’ Protection and Advocacy entity. Having served as an attorney for eighteen years, Mr. Rosenblum’s legal practice focuses on the areas of disability rights and special education. He has been involved in major litigation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and other laws impacting the rights of people with disabilities. Mr. Rosenblum is the co-founder and Chairperson of the Midwest Center on Law and the Deaf, dedicated to ensuring equal access to the legal system for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. He has also served as the Public Policy Chair for the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) since 2006. Mr. Rosenblum received his law degree from IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law and his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Arizona.
 
Demetria Henderson, Appointee for Member, President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Demetria Henderson is currently a 2010 Corps Member for Teach for America. She is also a recent graduate of Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University (FAMU), which is part of the HBCU system.  While at FAMU, Henderson has served as a HBCU Americorps member, helping to mentor incoming college freshman as well as a coach and mentor for teens in the Police Athletic League.  She received her B.A. in Psychology from FAMU in May 2010.
 
Helen T. McAlpine, Appointee for Member, President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Helen McAlpine has been the President of J. F. Drake State Technical College since 2000.  Dr. McAlpine has over 38 years of experience in the field of education.  Her prior positions include Assistant Superintendent of the Huntsville City School System and several positions with the Gadsden City School System.  She has also taught at the secondary and post-secondary levels, including at Jacksonville State University.  She received her B.A. in English from Talladega College, her M.S. from Jacksonville State University, and  her Ed.D. from the University of Alabama.
 
Alma Johnson Powell, Appointee for Member, President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Alma Powell is the Chair of America’s Promise Alliance, which seeks to enhance partnerships to ensure that students are prepared for college and work. She also chairs the advisory board for the Pew Center for Civic Change. From 1989 to 2000, she served as the chairman of the National Council of the Best Friends Foundation, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of young girls. She graduated from Fisk University and studied at Emerson College.
 
E. John Rice, Jr., Appointee for Member, President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities
John Rice founded Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT) in 1994 and has served as its CEO since 2001. MLT is a non-profit that works to develop the next generation of African American, Hispanic, and Native American leaders in major corporations, non-profit organizations, and entrepreneurial ventures. Prior to MLT, Rice was an executive with the National Basketball Association, where he served as managing director of NBA Japan from 1998-2000 and as director of marketing for Latin America from 1996-1998. Before joining the NBA, Rice spent four years (1992-1996) with the Walt Disney Company in new business development and marketing for both the Disney Vacation Club and Disney Consumer Products Latin America. From 1988 to 1990, Rice worked as an account executive with AT&T.  Rice received his MBA from Harvard Business School and his BA with honors in Latin American Studies from Yale.
 
Dianne Boardley Suber, Appointee for Member, President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Dianne Boardley Suber is the 10th President of Saint Augustine's College.  She assumed the presidency of the college in December 1999.  Dr. Suber is an experienced educator and administrator with 35 years of teaching, consulting and administrative experience in preschool and higher education. She has served as a classroom teacher, elementary and middle school principal, university professor and consultant to several national educational organizations.  Dr. Suber received a bachelor of science degree in early childhood education from Hampton University, a master’s of education degree in curriculum development from the University of Illinois--Urbana and a doctorate of education degree in educational administration from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia.