The Business Facilities Blog

WHERE THE JOBS ARE!

2009-09-28T12:23:00.004-04:00

Each year, our LiveXchange event provides a fertile meeting ground for site selectors and senior economic developers.

This year -- as every sector battles its way from the depths of recession into the sunlight of an emerging recovery -- we believe LiveXchange presents a crucial, not-to-be-missed opportunity for locations to zero in on pre-qualified, viable projects in an economy that has winnowed the field and intensified the competition.�No other event can offer this kind of an�value in return for time well spent.

We have lined up 20 delegations for this year's LiveXchange who will be representing shovel-ready projects that have the potential to create 6,100 new jobs with more than $86 million in payroll. These projects amount to an astounding $438 million in capital investments, and they all are looking for a home!

Business Facilities LiveXchange is an invitation-only event that provides senior economic developers from across the nation the unique opportunity to meet with representatives from pre-qualified projects in two days of intense face-to-face meetings at a first-class resort. Site selectors can learn everything they need to know about candidate locations directly from the economic development specialists representing their prime site targets.�

Not a minute is wasted during these pivotal meetings -- which often are the precursors to major site selection decisions -- because the itinerary for each attendee is created using our proprietary Group C-Link software, which ensures that site selectors meet all of the attending representatives from the locations they want to scout. Because the event takes place in a resort setting, there also is time for casual interaction during luncheons, dinners and at what often is the most productive business venue: the golf course!�

LiveXchange 2009 will take place October 18-20 at the Sanibel Harbour Resort & Spa in Fort Myers, FL. A limited number of location slots are still available. If your economic development agency still has not seized this crucial job-creating opportunity, we suggest you give one of our reps a call as soon as you can (contact jsemple@groupc.com, bnachsin@groupc.com or dgoldstein@groupc.com for more information about a LiveXchange sponsorship).�

As in past events, the unique LiveXchange experience will be supplemented by an all-star list of guest speakers, who will be making presentations and leading discussions on a number of hot-button issues. This year, we are paying particular attention to an emerging sector which rapidly is becoming an economic driver from coast to coast: alternative energy. Fueled by $3 billion in federal stimulus grants, alternative energy projects focused on solar, wind, biomass and other renewable fuels are being pulled off the drawing board and rushed into reality, blossoming like hundreds of ''green shoots'' across the national landscape.

Our keynote speaker at this year's LiveXchange has been in the forefront of the ongoing debate over an issue that has become central to the transition to a green economy: the introduction of a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. Delivering an address entitled ''What You Need To Know About Carbon Trading'' will be William Sloan, is an attorney in the global law firm Morrison & Foerster's Cleantech Group.

Sloan previously served in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Justice, and is a member of the Energy Bar Association's Emission Trading Commission, the Climate Change Advisory Committee for the California Manufacturers and Technical Association, and the Environment, Energy and Resources Section of the American Bar Association.

In his keynote presentation, Sloan will explain how the creation of a carbon-credit marketplace could make the cost of carbon emissions a primary factor in the site selection, expansion, relocation and facilities management decision-making process.

In addition to the keynote, several of our seminars and workshops at this year's LiveXchange will focus on the emerging green economy:

� George Tobjy, a Director at KPMG Global Location and Expansion Services, will make a presentation entitled ''Green Economy: Opportunities/Best Emerging Sectors.''

� David Brandon, Senior Vice President, Site Selection Group, will conduct a seminar on ''Renewable Energy: Target Industry Analysis and Location Trends.''

� Jerry Szatan, Principal, Szatan and Associates, also will examine the impact of green building and smart growth considerations in his LiveXchange think-tank session on ''Location Strategies for Consolidating Facilities.''

Globalization is another hot-button topic that will be analyzed at LiveXchange. Don Holbrook, Partner, The Vercitas Group, will conduct a seminar entitled ''The Art Of The Deal In Tthe Era of Globalization.''A presentation discussing the ins-an-outs of evaluating locations for high-tech investments will be made by Matt Szuhaj, Director, Strategy and Operations, Deloitte Consulting LLP.

Once again, LiveXchange 2009 will take place October 18-20 at the Sanibel Harbour Resort & Spa in Fort Myers, FL. We look forward to seeing you there. �

Texas-sized venue

2009-09-22T17:40:00.005-04:00

If King Kong was the Eighth Wonder of the World, the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, TX surely is the Ninth.

The Cowboys new home is the largest domed stadium in the world, measuring a whopping 2.3 million square feet. To get a sense of just how big this place is, consider this: its volume of 104 million cubic feet is large enough to fit the entire Empire State Building sideways (minus the antenna).

The new $1.3-billion football palace, designed by Dallas architects HKS Inc., is capable of holding 111,000 fans, far more than any other venue in the NFL.

This marvel of engineering includes a retractable roof, a retractable glass front entrance, and, most amazing of all, a seven-story-high, 11,520-square-foot, high-definition video screen that hangs directly over the middle of the playing field and stretches from 20-yard-line to 20-yard-line. The mammoth HD TV screen runs parallel to several tiers of luxury boxes in the stadium, but Cowboy loyalists in the end zone seats aren't neglected. Two more giant HD screens are attached to either end of the video monster.

The Cowboy's new digs are so spacious each deck has its own set of Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.

Construction was completed on the stadium in May. The Cowboys played their home opener against the New York Giants on Sunday night. Before the national anthem was played at the world's largest domed field, the world's largest American flag was unfurled over the entire playing field. We didn't catch a glimpse of the concession stands, but we imagine the world's largest chili-dogs are being consumed there.

The eye-popping 160 x 72 ft. TV screen already has resulted in a hasty rule change by the NFL. Because the screen superstructure is hanging low enough over the field to make it a tempting target for punters (the big TV received its maiden deflection during an exhibition game), the lords of the NFL have ruled that any kicked ball that hits the structure will require a ''do-over.''

There will be no do-over of the home opener at Dallas Cowboys Stadium. We'd tell you the score, but Jerry Jones just switched off the big TV set.

Golden State vs. Silver State

2009-09-16T15:31:00.011-04:00

Everyone is familiar with those cheeky TV commercials with the tagline ''Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.''

Well, we recently came across something that has created a lot of controversy since it came out of Vegas -- a $1 million ad campaign from the Nevada Development Authority that aims to lure businesses to the Silver State by attacking its huge neighbor to the west, California.

Some examples of this pitch can be found at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pDKoX0uTwM

Here's a quick synopsis. One of the ads, entitled ''Apples 2 Apples,'' shows two apples sitting side by side. One apple is labeled ''Nevada'' and the other is labeled ''California.'' While the announcer ticks off a list of tax benefits for people doing business in Nevada, the California apple shrivels up and goes rotten. Get the picture?

Needless to say, our friends on the West Coast aren't turning the other cheek. They're filling the blogosphere with ripostes which point out that the economic crater in Nevada is as deep -- or deeper -- than the Golden State's fiscal valley.

California economic development agencies have been circulating this salvo from Jim Boren, a columnist for the Fresno Bee:

''You gotta love the sleight of hand Nevada economic development officials are using in their $1 million advertising plan to lure California businesses to their state. In ripping California, they suggest that all is well in the Silver State. So here's what you won't hear in those ads: Nevada has had the nation's highest home foreclosure rate for 31 consecutive months. U-Haul dealerships in Nevada can hardly keep moving trucks on their lots as residents fishtail out of the once-booming state. Nevada casino revenues report double-digit declines...''

When Nevada's ad blitz against California was announced a couple of months ago, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman boasted to reporters ''It's going to drive them bonkers. We're going to crush them.''

To which Mr. Boren responded:

''Nevada isn't going to crush anyone right now, and this latest campaign has a feeling of desperation. Nothing worse than being a gambler and out of money. I'm almost feeling sorry for them, even though they were gloating when Nevada was riding the economic boom. But right now, Nevada is kissing its own assets goodbye.''

And so, in the midst of the worst national economic calamity since the Great Depression, we now have two states with double-digit unemployment firing broadsides against each other.

One year later

2009-09-15T16:45:00.010-04:00

It has been exactly one year since Lehman Bros. vanished into a black hole and almost took the global financial system with it. The nightmare that followed is still hard to fathom.

On the first anniversary of the Big Collapse, there's good news, bad news, and, hopefully, really good news.

First, some good news:

The combined market capitalization of the 29 largest U.S. financial institutions, which shrank from $1.86 trillion in Oct. 2007 to a paltry $284 billion in March of this year, now stands at $947 billion. The fiscal behemoths are beginning to pay back billions in bailout bucks to the U.S. Treasury.

Bad news:

Only 22 of the 29 financial giants are still in business, and overall more than 90 banks have been shut down in the U.S. Credit still is not flowing, and about $2 trillion in shaky commercial real estate loans may be nearing default.

Good news:

The recapitalization of the large banks and the robust recovery in bank stocks have stabilized the financial system. The emerging recovery may permit banks to show forebearance on commercial real estate debt, rather than move to foreclosure, which would be another huge shock to the system.

Bad news:

At least 15 states are suffering from double-digit unemployment, and close to half the state budgets are facing huge deficits totaling nearly $300 billion (thanks in part to the failure of Congress to include state budget aid in the stimulus package). Unemployment in Vegas topped out at 18 percent, which disproves our theory that only the Apocalypse could prevent Americans from gambling.

Good news:

The U.S. auto industry has been rescued and the two former basket cases have emerged from bankruptcy restructuring in record time. And yes, that new Camaro looks really snazzy.

Bad news:

Not a single bank fraud has been arrested, much less convicted (Madoff doesn�t count because he confessed). The bonus-grabbing vampires on Wall Street who nearly destroyed the global economy are up to their old high-risk tricks: their latest scheme is bundles of securitized life insurance. They want to buy Grandma's policy and then bet on how long she will live! No, we are not making this up.

More bad news:

The bogus credit rating agencies are still being paid by financial hustlers to give pristine grades to worthless junk. Tough new financial regulations and reforms are stalled in Congress and lobbyists are cooing that these are no longer needed since we are entering a recovery.

Enough of that. Are we ready for some Really Good News?

Okay, here it is:

THE UNITED STATES HAS SLAPPED A 35-PERCENT TARIFF ON TIRES MADE IN CHINA.

No, we haven't taken leave of our senses. And we are not endorsing protectionism.

Here�s the way we see it ---

The U.S. sending a message to our friends in China and everywhere else:

We took a hard fall and we hit the canvas, but we were not counted out. We have picked ourselves up and not only are we still standing, but we are getting ready to rumble.

The recovery is real. The mighty engine of the world's largest economy is sputtering back to life, and it is going to be leaner, faster, greener, smarter and stronger. We intend to do more than just survive. We're going to defend the title.

We're going to put a new set of wheels on this baby -- and yes, comrades, we prefer to buy our tires where they were invented and are still made, in Akron, OH -- and then we are going to burn rubber and leave you in our rear-view mirror.

WE'RE BACK.

Pay no attention to the man behind the label

2009-09-14T12:14:00.007-04:00

Ever since the U.S. surgeon general warned in the early '60s that cigarettes cause lung cancer, the tobacco industry has waged a fierce battle to water down warning labels the government mandated on the side of cigarette packages.

As a result of this battle, it took nearly 40 years for the wording on these labels to morph from a gentle warning that smoking coffin nails ''may lead to'' cancer, heart disease and an assortment of other deadly ailments to more direct declarations that cigarettes will, in fact, kill you.

Today, the battleground over warning labels is focused on nutrition and environmental stewardship. The industries at the center of these battles appear to have hit upon a new strategy to avoid getting tagged with scarlet letters from the government -- they are creating their own labeling systems.

Pick up a box of Froot Loops at your local supermarket this week. Your eyes immediately will be drawn to the top of the box and a handsome new ''Smart Choices'' label, created by the nation�s largest food manufacturers and ''designed to help shoppers easily identify smarter food and beverage choices.''

The food manufacturers are hoping you won't be smart enough to turn the box on its side and read the government's official Nutrition Facts label, which will inform you that the breakfast of choice among five-year-olds is loaded with enough sugar to fuel an army of diabetics.

Now comes news that a purportedly non-profit group backed by the paper and timber industries appears to have the upper hand in wresting the certification of ''green'' wood products from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which for years has been the established judge of whether wood or paper products deserve to be labeled environmentally friendly.

According to reports, an alternative label from the industry-backed Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) is close to gaining acceptance from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), which rates buildings as environmentally acceptable under its LEED certification system. This would permit wood products carrying the SFI label to be used in green buildings without jeopardizing LEED certification of the building.

Public-interest lawyers for Forest Ethics, a nonprofit group dedicated to protecting forests, have filed administrative complaints with the Federal Trade Commission and the Internal Revenue Service challenging the credibility of the SFI label and SFI�s nonprofit status. However, an FTC ruling on the complaint may not come before USGBC polls its membership on whether to accept the SFI certification.

LEED officials reportedly are leaning towards accepting the SFI label because the SFI program certifies more forest acreage than FSC, which was formed in 1993 by international environmental groups (FSC includes forest industry representatives on its board). USGBC president Rick Fedrizzi was quoted in a newspaper report suggesting that inclusion of SFI in the labeling process would help convince major players ''to do better in forest management.''

For some reason, this festival of dueling labels reminds us of our favorite scene in one of Woody Allen's early comedies.

In his film Sleeper, Woody goes into the hospital for a minor medical procedure and wakes up in the future, a la Rip Van Winkle (he finds himself wrapped in a BirdsEye cooking bag when he wakes up).

When he is served his first meal in the future, Woody is handed a tray carrying a fatty steak covered with mounds of butter and a huge ice cream sundae. Sitting next to the plate is a pack of cigarettes.

''This stuff will kill me!'' Woody exclaims.

His genial host in the future responds soothingly: ''We used to believe that, but now we know these are the healthiest things you can consume!''

Hangar 17

2009-09-10T16:01:00.010-04:00

Hangar 17 at New York's Kennedy Airport is large enough to accommodate several jumbo jets, but it is not used to house aircraft.

Strewn across the hangar's concrete floor are nearly 2,000 pieces of steel. Some are easily recognizable as I-beams used in the construction of a large building. Others have been twisted into contorted shapes impossible to reproduce by man or machine. Most are huge, weighing tons, but a few are slivers and sheets the size of a road sign.

Here lies the remains of the World Trade Center, destroyed in the terrorist atrocities of September 11, 2001.

Hangar 17 has been a busy place. According to a recent report in the New York Times, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey -- which owned the Twin Towers -- has been fielding a steady stream of requests for pieces of WTC steel. These requests have come from all over the world:

A 15-year-old Boy Scout in Windermere, FL, earned his Eagle rank by arranging for the town to receive the steel for the centerpiece of a 9/11 memorial.

A fire department in Saint-Etienne, France, asked for the steel to memorialize the 2,752 victims, including 343 firefighters, who died at the World Trade Center.

The Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas asked for a 79-inch piece to fit into a custom case.

All who have asked for pieces of what used to be the tallest skyscrapers in New York City have treated these artifacts with respect and sensitivity, evidenced by the driver of a flatbed truck from York, PA, who placed a large American flag on the bed of his truck and then gently loaded a steel beam onto the flag before hauling it to York's memorial.

Unfortunately for all of us, this respect has been missing at the place where it is needed the most -- at Ground Zero.

In the eight years that have now elapsed since the 9/11 attacks, three New York governors, one New York City mayor, the Port Authority, and one very stubborn real estate developer have been mud-wrestling in public over the 16-acre World Trade Center site.�We won't recount in detail the internecine maneuverings of this group, which has been entrusted with rebuilding the WTC site, including a memorial to the victims of 9/11. Suffice it to say that the developer, who acquired the World Trade Center lease a few months before the attack, is collecting millions of dollars in penalties while he argues with state and city officials over who will finance some mediocre buildings that he is no longer in a hurry to build due to the collapse of the real estate market.

The stalling tactics have included at least a half-dozen alterations to the design of a train station and underground shopping mall also planned for the site. While this tawdry spectacle has unfolded, Ground Zero has remained a gaping, open wound in the national psyche. The victims' memorial remains unfinished.

This is a national disgrace.

Imagine, for a moment, if 10 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor the denizens of Honolulu were still arguing over whether to build a seafood restaurant and a surfboard shop over the wreck of the U.S.S. Arizona.

It is time to end this travesty. It is time to take Ground Zero away from the political hacks and their commercial allies who have been toying with it.

Congress should act immediately to designate the World Trade Center site a national landmark, and to enforce by eminent domain the claiming of all 16 acres in the name of the American people. Congress also should fund the victims' memorial and a National Firefighters Museum, to be completed on the site in time for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in 2011.

Nothing else should be built there, so the place where the Twin Towers once stood can forever remain what it became on September 11, 2001:

Hallowed ground.

Dollars for dishwashers

2009-08-31T11:11:00.005-04:00

Are you ready for Round Two of cash-for-clunkers?

Fresh from the success of its rebate program for car trade-ins, the U.S. government is gearing up for a similar effort covering old appliances like dishwashers, refrigerators and air conditioners.

The automotive version of cash-for-clunkers proved to be extremely popular, reportedly generating sales of about 700,000 new cars as consumers scooped up the $4,500 rebate the government was offering them to trade in their gas guzzlers for fuel-efficient vehicles.

The application of the clunkers concept to appliances initially will be a much smaller program than the automotive initiative, which was financed by more than $2 billion in federal funds.

Thus far, about $300 million in federal stimulus funds have been earmarked to provide rebates to consumers who junk their energy-hogging appliances for new energy-efficient models, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Rebates are not expected to exceed more than $200 per appliance.

However, if the appliance effort proves as popular as the auto clunker bonanza, it is likely that funding will be increased and the program extended.

The Department of Energy, which oversees the program, wants states to focus on 10 categories of appliances carrying the federal Energy Star seal of approval for efficiency, including washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, tankless gas water heaters, refrigerators, freezers and room air conditioners.

According to the Journal, the program allows each state to pick qualifying models and tailor rebate amounts. Manufacturers and retailers have indicated a reluctance to ramp up appliance production and inventories until it is clear which models qualify.

If the �dollars for dishwashers� program takes off, we can envision the clunkers concept being applied to other sectors in need of a trade-in rebate. To wit:

Pennies for Presents:

Don�t know what to do with that tie-rack you got for Father�s Day last year, or the hideous yellow sweater you found under the Christmas tree? Uncle Sam wants to help you out!

Cash for Congressmen:

Tired of seeing the same old hack schmoozing with lobbyists while he pretends to represent you? Trade him in!

Benjamins for Bonus Babies:

Is your investment advisor telling you he doesn�t know how that crater developed in what used to be your 401k? Did your bank go belly up? Turn these turkeys in and get a brand new mattress!

Miracles for Mistakes:

Don�t have any use for those Mets season tickets you bought? Your government will help you convert them into a lifetime supply of bowling shoes!

Get busy, folks. Let�s put those tax dollars to work for us.��

�

Lion of the Senate

2009-08-27T19:06:00.016-04:00

Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.

William Shakespeare -- Twelfth Night

Shakespeare would have had a field day with the Kennedy brothers.

There were four of them, driven into a life of public service by their Lear-like father, Joseph, who pushed them to grab for power that was beyond his grasp. Joe Kennedy instilled in his sons a relentless drive that left an indelible imprint on the course of American history for more than half a century. The Kennedy brothers also inherited first-class political genes from their mother, Rose, whose father John F. Fitzgerald had been the beloved mayor of Boston known to all as ''Honey Fitz.''

In the first four acts of this Shakespearean epic, all-too-brief moments of exhilarating triumph were enveloped by overwhelming tragedy. This poignant history is familiar to all Americans of a certain age, seen here in snapshots:

Joseph Jr., the oldest, volunteered for a dangerous World War II mission involving an aircraft loaded with explosives and died when the plane blew up over Europe. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a skinny and sickly boy who wanted to become a writer, joined the Navy and was commanding a small patrol boat in the Pacific when PT-109 was cut in half by a Japanese ship and sunk. Jack swam with an injured sailor on his back and shepherded his crew to a deserted island. Then he swam to a nearby island and left a message carved in a coconut with the natives that resulted in the crew�s rescue.

Papa Joe�s buddies in the news biz magnified his son�s wartime exploits into the stuff of legend, fertile fodder for the launching of a post-war political career. With dashing good looks and a scintillating staccato speaking style -- and his father's connections -- Jack rocketed to the top of the political charts. In 1960, the 43-year-old Kennedy, an untested junior senator whose resume consisted primarily of his family name and fortune, became the youngest man elected president of the United States and the first Catholic to hold the post.

The 35th president soon was tested, and when the chips were down President Kennedy passed the test. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, with the world teetering on the brink of nuclear Armaggedon, Kennedy refused to be bullied by his generals into a potentially catastrophic invasion; for thirteen days, he coolly presided over a high-stakes diplomatic and military minuet that ultimately produced a face-saving way for the Soviet Union to back down. JFK also had the political courage to confront the moral challenge of the civil rights movement.

Then, a sunny November afternoon in 1963 was transformed into one of the darkest days in American history when the 46-year-old president was gunned down and died in his wife�s arms as they rode in a motorcade through Dallas.

Joe Kennedy's third son, Robert Francis, had been his brother's campaign manager and closest advisor. As Attorney General, Bobby launched a crusade against the Mafia and put the power of the U.S. government behind the enforcement of civil rights. In his brief time at the Justice Department, RFK made such an impact they eventually named the building after him.

Bobby Kennedy was consumed with grief over his brother�s murder, amplified by the suspicion that his own instigations against the Mob and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro may have sparked the assassination. He easily won election to New York�s seat in the U.S. Senate in 1964, but seemed to be wrestling with Hamlet-like indecision over whether to reach for national leadership.

Finally, the endless quagmire of the Vietnam War induced Bobby in 1968 to challenge his brother's successor as president, Lyndon Johnson. Moments after he made a victory speech in a Los Angeles hotel on the night of the California primary election, he was shot by a deranged Palestinian in the hotel kitchen. He died the next day.

The last Kennedy brother was born on Feb. 22, 1932, the 200th anniversary of George Washington's birthday. Jack wanted to name him George Washington Kennedy, but his parents settled on Edward Moore, and his brothers called him Teddy.

Nobody took Ted Kennedy seriously when he was tapped at age 30 to fill JFK's vacant Senate seat in 1962. The only thing of note Teddy had done before joining the Senate was to narrowly avoid getting thrown out of Harvard when he asked a friend to take an exam for him.

Until 1968, Ted labored quietly in his brothers' huge shadow, learning the rules of the Senate club as a junior member. Then, a nation paralyzed with grief over the second Kennedy assassination turned to the surviving brother and anointed him as the president-in-waiting. The 36-year-old Ted Kennedy knew he wasn't ready. He was wrestling with inner demons unleashed by the tragic deaths of his three older brothers. He resisted the call to pick up the fallen standard.

The demons got the upper hand on a July night in 1969. As the men his brother Jack had sent to the moon began their triumphant descent to the lunar surface, Ted drove his car off a wooden bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. A female companion who was not his wife drowned and Kennedy did not report the accident for eight hours. He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene and received a suspended sentence.

Shakespeare might have chosen to end the saga here, leaving us an epic tragedy of hubris punished with a harrowing fall from grace, but Ted Kennedy did not.

He went on to serve in the United States Senate for 47 years and became the most dynamic legislator of this or any time. As the remaining patriarch of the Kennedy clan, he was father and surrogate father to 13 children, and by all accounts did a remarkable job in that role as well. He championed human rights and became a voice for the disadvantaged, picking up where his brothers had left off.

The list of landmark bills that Sen. Kennedy ushered into law through the force of his personality is far too long to recount in this space, but here's a sampling: the 18-year-old voting age, the abolition of the draft, the deregulation of the airline and trucking industries, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, post-Watergate campaign finance laws, federal funding for community health care centers, the National Cancer Institute, Meals on Wheels for seniors, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family Medical Leave Act, extending health care coverage to disadvantaged children, the renewals of the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing law, No Child Left Behind.�

The list goes on and on, more than 1,000 bills in all.

Stricken with brain cancer a year ago, Ted Kennedy etched his own profile in courage as he continued to serve in good cheer, captain his beloved sailboat, and gracefully passed his family's political torch to a new standard bearer, Barack Obama.

Last week, as Sen. Kennedy neared the end, President Obama awarded him the nation's highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom. Today, he lies in state in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library overlooking Boston Harbor and the sea that he loved to sail.

On Saturday, he will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, next to his brothers.

Bait and switch

2009-08-18T13:30:00.005-04:00

The ''credibility gap'' at the new General Motors seems to be growing a lot faster than the pile of old cars GM has absorbed in the cash-for-clunkers program.

Last week, we reported in this space that GM's much-ballyhooed announcement that its Chevy Volt has received an incredible 230 mpg fuel economy ranking shriveled under close inspection. The new electric car can only achieve this standard if you don't drive it more than 40 miles. Drive a couple of hundred miles in the Volt and you get about 60 mpg.

This week comes news that GM appears to be executing a sloppy U-turn on its recent promise to the United Auto Workers union that it would re-open a shuttered U.S. plant to produce a new sub-compact vehicle, called Spark, which GM originally had planned to build in China.

When GM was bailed out earlier this year in a bankruptcy restructuring that made the U.S. government and the UAW majority shareholders in the ailing auto giant, it generally was assumed that preserving U.S. automotive manufacturing jobs would be a top priority at the ''new'' GM. But the ink was barely dry on the restructuring plan when GM created an uproar in May by announcing it planned to produce up to 51,000 of its new Chevrolet Spark sub-compacts in China under the auspices of its Chinese joint venture, Shanghai GM, starting in 2011.

Predictably, the UAW was not amused. The autoworkers union demanded that its new ''subsidiary'' change course, and quickly. In June, GM told the Beijing Times it had decided not to import small vehicles from China but instead would make the new sub-compacts in the U.S. The new mini Spark would replace the Chevy Aveo subcompact, currently produced in South Korea.

So jobs that might have been shipped to China and jobs currently sited in South Korea will move to the U.S., and a boarded-up Rust Belt factory will re-emerge as a 21st century manufacturing jewel. UAW members will keep getting paychecks and everybody lives happily ever after, right?

Unfortunately for GM, one of its top execs apparently did not get the memo.

According to a report this week in the Wall Street Journal, Nick Reilly, GM's newly installed executive vice president of international operations, told a media briefing in San Paulo, Brazil, that GM is planning to build a sub-compact that it will sell for $4,000, going head-to-head with the $2,500 mini that Tata Motors is producing in India. Then he dropped this little bombshell on the UAW:

''We are looking at lower-cost vehicles, but do not know yet where they will be made, though most likely in Asia,'' Reilly said.

Here's the rubbing salt in the wound part: Mr. Reilly, formerly head of GM's Asia business, told the press gathering that in his new position he will be based in Shanghai. And, just for good measure, he said GM plans to expand its production of micro-minivans in China.

So the company that used to be the world's largest carmaker, now owned by U.S. taxpayers and U.S. autoworkers, is talking out of both sides of its grille on the subject of where its auto manufacturing jobs will be located. Is it any wonder that car salesmen still outrank undertakers, indicted public officials and Wall Street bonus babies in annual surveys of ''least admired'' people?

Memo to GM from U.S. taxpayers: We own you. Bring the jobs home or you're fired.

Juiced

2009-08-11T14:47:00.004-04:00

While we were watching the Yankees sweep the Red Sox over the weekend, the former slugger, David Ortiz, came up to bat. Suddenly, one of those electronic advertising signs behind home plate flashed a strange message: the number 23 next to what looked like a happy face, on a green background.

For a few minutes, we thought perhaps the Yankees were preparing to re-retire Don Mattingly's uniform number. Then we looked closer and noticed the happy face was actually a plug.

This minor mystery was resolved today when the company that used to be the world's largest carmaker proclaimed that the official fuel economy rating for its new electric car, the Chevy Volt, is an astounding 230 mpg.

Unfortunately, like everything else that has come out of Detroit in the past 50 years, you have to read the fine print to discover there are some major caveats attached to this proclamation.

The Volt, scheduled to go on sale in 2010, is powered by lithium-ion batteries. Unlike the gas-electric hybrids currently on the market, this new Chevy will be able to operate solely on battery power (assuming the battery is charged) without consuming gasoline -- sort of.

Here's the catch: the Volt does not need gasoline as long as you don't drive more than 40 miles. Once you exceed the 40-mile limit, the new Chevy begins to consume gas and the loudly proclaimed fuel economy rating starts dropping like Niagara Falls.

It works like this: If you drive 50 miles, no gas is consumed for the first 40 miles and during the last 10 miles 0.2 gallons are consumed. So, for a 50-mile trip, the Volt would in fact achieve its 230 mpg standard. But if the driver continues on to 80 miles, this drops to 100 mpg.

If the driver goes 300 miles, the fuel economy would be 62.5 mpg, still impressive by current averages but certainly not as impressive as GM's earth-shattering press release would lead you to believe. And if you live in New York and want to drive to Boston to see the Yankees sweep the Red Sox again later this year, well, you get the picture.

Sort of like the difference between David Ortiz hitting a baseball before he takes his ''vitamins'' and after.

A few other minor details:

--You will need to find a place to plug your Volt in every night and give it the 10-kilowatt-hours of recharge it needs to travel its gas-free 40 miles.

-- General Motors currently is producing only 10 Volts per month and is expected to slap a $40,000 sticker price on the electric car when it is available for purchase, which gives new meaning to the term ''sticker shock.''

We're going to wait for the model that comes with fine Corinthian leather and a really, really long extension cord.

Niagara of New Jersey

2009-07-31T15:39:00.022-04:00

The city of Paterson, New Jersey, has had its ups and downs in the past 217 years.

The upward curve began in 1792, when Alexander Hamilton came upon a spectacular 77-foot-high waterfall in the middle of northern New Jersey and decided it would be the perfect place to create a water-powered factory town that could serve as the linchpin in his plan to build the economy of the United States around manufacturing and banking.

Hamilton founded Paterson, which became the first industrial city in the U.S. The heart, and engine, of early Paterson was its mighty waterfall.

Always known to locals simply as the Great Falls, this wonder of nature was created by a sharp bend in the Passaic River, a modest and meandering waterway that snakes its way through northern NJ and empties into Newark Bay. The bend is so sharp that it is easy to travel past the Great Falls at a close distance without even realizing it is there.

Unless, of course, it has been raining recently. Then you hear it, and it sounds like a combination of thunder and an express train. This is because the Great Falls is second only to Niagara Falls as the largest waterfall in the northeastern United States.

The man who created the U.S. Treasury designated Paterson as the nation's first big infrastructure project, enlisting Pierre Charles L'Enfant--who went on to become the master designer of Washington, DC -- to build a system of waterways to bring water from the Falls to factory sites.

Soon some large 19th-century manufacturers, including Rogers Locomotive Works and the Colt gun factory, set up shop in red-brick buildings near the Falls. It also was in the 1800s that a huge textile industry took root in Paterson, giving it the moniker ''Silk City'' as it became one of the largest producers of silk in the world.

But, beginning in the 1950s, Paterson began a descent from prosperity from which it still has not completely recovered. Like many other urban centers in America, the middle class fled, taking the tax base with them and leaving behind a broken infrastructure, a dearth of jobs, and poverty.

Paterson, once the proudest hub of northern New Jersey, was hit harder than most. It had the dubious distinction of being cited as one of the five poorest cities in America. The area around the Great Falls became a desolate landscape of crumbling red buildings and empty streets, its historic legacy hidden beneath layers of grime and neglect. The power plant that had been built beside the Falls sat silent and rusting.

In recent years, particularly under the leadership of Mayor Bill Pascrell, Paterson began to pull itself up by its bootstraps, aided by new attention and support from the state. We can report without hesitation that it is in much better shape today than it has been at any time in the past 40 years.

About 35 years ago, a movement began among civic leaders to revive the area around the Great Falls. The movement was kicked off by the first annual Great Falls Festival, a combination craft fair and circus. The high point of the Great Falls Festival, literally and figuratively, came when the legendary tightrope artist Karl Wallenda walked across the Falls at night.

Anyone who was there that night will never forget the sight of the 70-year-old Wallenda in a billowy white shirt and black pants standing precariously over the waterfall on a one-inch-wide steel cable without a net beneath him. As a 15-foot-long balancing pole clenched in his hands jittered seismically, Wallenda squinted into huge spotlights that were focused on him and carefully placed one slippered foot in front of the other as he moved across the wire, enveloped by mist and spray from the Great Falls.

As Wallenda took his final steps on the wire and stepped off onto the western cliff of the Falls, he fell into the arms of a relieved and jubilant crowd of Patersonians. People reached out to hug him and shake his hand and then stared at their hands and arms in amazement: Wallenda was soaking wet.�

Three years later, Wallenda was walking across a wire strung between two high-rise buildings in San Juan, Puerto Rico, when he was knocked over by a gust of wind and fell to his death.�

Paterson's civic leaders managed to get historic landmark status for many of the deteriorating factories of the Falls District, and a few years later began to spruce them up. But the Holy Grail of preservation -- designation of the Falls as a National Park --proved elusive.

For the past 10 years, Paterson�s representatives in Congress have put forward bills every year to make the Falls a U.S. park, but none of these bills were brought to the floor for a vote -- until 2007, when one of the measures, sponsored by former Mayor Pascrell (now a Congressman), finally passed the House of Representatives. Last fall, it was passed by the U.S. Senate.�

On March 30, President Obama signed the bill into law and the Great Falls of the Passaic River became America's newest National Park.

So America's first industrial city, which for so many years teetered like the Great Wallenda on his wire, is now taking its rightful place in our national heritage. After 217 years, Paterson is still here, and now, Americans from all over the country will be coming to visit.

And the mighty Great Falls, which for an epoch has carved its spectacular crevice in the Passaic River singing a thunderous song of amazement and possibility, awaits them.

Ask the guy who carved them

2009-07-28T20:16:00.008-04:00

Easter Island sits in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. Known to its natives as Rapa Nui and governed by Chile, this tiny volcanic outcropping is famous for its enigmatic moai statues, monolithic human figures carved from rock.

Nobody knows who carved the huge stone figures, or why. There are 1000 of them, ranging from 6 feet to more than 30 feet in height. The biggest weighs about 270 tons. All have the same appearance: a long shaped head with an upper torso, a chin and long ears, with arms along the body or arms that rest on the stomach. Some of the statues contain eyes, made in white and red stone and coral. Some of them even sport stone hats that the natives call ''pukao.''

Archaeologists believe the first humans arrived on the island between the 4th and 7th century A.D., probably from Polynesia, and almost immediately began work on platforms for the famous statues. About 300 years later, the platforms were complete and they started building the big stone figures using rock from the inner core of the Rano Rarku volcano.

During the next 500 years, about two statues per year were completed and moved to their final resting place on the edge of the island. The natives apparently cut down all of the trees on the island to use the logs to move the statues. It must have taken longer to move them than to carve them, because almost 400 of the statues are still sitting in the volcanic quarry.

Suddenly, around 1680, the chiseling and moving stopped. Nobody knows why. Sociologists speculate that war or disease may have caused a catastrophic collapse of the island society (they do not believe the current inhabitants of Rapa Nui are descendants of the people who built the statues).

Perhaps the statue-builders ran out of chisels. Or maybe the movers unionized and demanded a higher wage for shlepping the big stone figures from the quarry. Or maybe the natives elected a new king who said ''Enough with the statues, already!'' and ordered them to use the last of the trees to build a big boat so they could all leave.

There is one other theory, however, and it is quite plausible. We'll get to that later.

Anyway, the spooky stone figures have stood on Easter Island -- so named by a Dutch explorer who ''discovered'' it on Easter Sunday in 1772 -- for the past 300 years without anybody bothering them. Until now.

The expanding reach of international tourism finally has enveloped the most remote and exotic locations on Earth. ''Eco-tourists,'' looking very much like the family from Dubuque in our favorite Far Side cartoons, have descended on the Galapagos Islands, where they are now threatening to trample Darwin's famous turtles into extinction. Tour boats are cruising up the heart of the Amazon.

On Easter Island, which officially is designated as a UNESCO world heritage site, the current residents are scrambling to accommodate a growing number of visitors who are creating a strain on the Rapa Nui infrastructure and its delicate environment. The Rapa Nuians need to build roads and hotels, but they don't want to disturb the big stone heads.

Enter Autodesk (the 3D modeling experts), METCO Services (provider of surveying and scanning services), and Leica Geosystems (maker of GPS and laser scanning instruments and something known as point-cloud processing software). For the past 18 months, high-tech engineers from the three companies have been mapping the big statues. They've also been training Rapa Nui officials to use the sophisticated technology and Autodesk digital modeling software, so local developers can evaluate the impact of their plans on the ancient statues and make sustainable development decisions.

''We are at a pivotal time in our history,'' says Pedro Pablo Edmunds Paoa, mayor of Rapa Nui. ''Sustainable development, protection of our historical artifacts and natural resources, and ongoing education about our resources are the key challenges we face today. Autodesk design technology and engineering expertise supports our need to make better, more informed decisions about the future of our Island. We appreciate our partners who are helping us modernize without destroying our rich cultural history.''

According to Lisa Campbell, vice president, Autodesk Geospatial Solutions, Autodesk design software is helping Rapa Nui officials digitally visualize and analyze how their development plans ''could impact roads, buildings and infrastructure, as well as historical artifacts throughout the island.''

''This unique opportunity to work directly with Rapa Nui officials and archeologists to bring state-of-the-art 3D prototyping technology and visual models to tackle their development challenges is especially rewarding for us,'' she adds.

Local developers and engineers on Rapa Nui are working their way up from existing AutoCAD software to advanced 3D modeling and visualization technologies from Autodesk, including AutoCAD Civil 3D, Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise, and Revit Architecture design software.

So 21st century technology is being deployed to enable sustainable development next to a bunch of stone figures that have been standing around for almost a millennium, hundreds of years after the people who carved them suddenly disappeared without a trace.

Maybe we've seen too many science fiction movies, but isn't this the part where the super-confident modern technoids, having awakened an ancient power far greater than their nifty gadgets, suddenly have to run for their lives?

Which brings us back to that other theory about why the original Rapa Nui natives disappeared. Here it is:

Even though many of the stone figures on the island are standing next to the ocean, all of them are facing inward, staring up at the crest of the volcano that rises above the island.

The first natives created the big figures to protect themselves against the evil volcano spirit. The statues are "guarding" the volcano. Unfortunately for the natives, the volcano spirit was not impressed, and eventually let them know it with a huge belch of fire. The stone figures are still here, but the natives are gone.

In the last scene in our movie, a handful of ash-covered Autodesk engineers and Mayor Paoa are paddling a handmade boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, trying to find the nearest island with the only GPS device that survived the wrath of Rano Rarku.

.

A fire on the moon

2009-07-17T14:06:00.014-04:00

Forty years ago this week, three men were strapped into a metal capsule perched atop a 36-story marvel of engineering that had three million parts, enough liquid hydrogen to blow up a small city, and five titanic rocket engines, but less computing power than you can find today on your desktop PC.

On July 16, 1969, the fuse was lit and the three-stage Saturn V, the most powerful machine ever built, lifted majestically off the launching pad at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The Saturn V did not exist eight years earlier, when President John F. Kennedy declared that the United States would send a man to the moon before the end of the decade.

Human beings had never escaped the gravitational pull of the Earth, and even our best scientists were not certain of what it would take to get to the moon, or if it was even possible to land on its surface. The technology, manpower and expertise had to be organized and created from scratch in the most complex enterprise ever undertaken.

The race to the moon was filled with breathtaking episodes of triumph and touched by tragedy.

Alan Shepard's flawless 15-minute flight in a tiny Mercury capsule, the first American in space, was followed by Gus Grissom's adventure. As a nervous Gus sat in his bobbing capsule waiting for an aircraft carrier to pick him up after he parachuted back to Earth, he prematurely blew the hatch, sending the capsule to the bottom of the ocean.

Gus was plucked out of the water by a Navy helicopter, but he and two other astronauts met a tragic end five years later when a spark in their Apollo capsule -- which had been filled with pure oxygen during a test run on the launch pad -- caught fire, incinerating the crew in a matter of seconds.

The two-man Gemini program, which followed the solo Mercury flights, featured a series of astonishing firsts: the first space walk by an astronaut, the first rendezvous and docking by two space vehicles, the first weeklong space mission.

The debut of the Lunar Module (LEM), the strange, spider-shaped craft designed for the moon landing, was not inspiring. Neil Armstrong, already a space veteran in the Gemini program, took the LEM out for its first test flight on Earth and promptly crashed in a parking lot.

Apollo 8 provided an unforgettable and welcome respite to the unrelenting bad news of 1968 when it circled the moon and, on Christmas Eve, sent back the first incredible view of Earth rising over a lunar landscape as astronaut Frank Borman read the words of Genesis from the Bible.

On July 20, 1969, Armstrong, a soft-spoken pilot from Wapakoneta, Ohio, and Buzz Aldrin, a hyperactive space engineer from Montclair, New Jersey, descended to a barren, crater-filled field on the moon's Sea of Tranquility in a LEM they called Eagle.

Armstrong manipulated the small thrusters on the LEM and gently coaxed the craft over boulders and craters, looking for a smooth spot to set it down. With less than 30 seconds of fuel left -- and a decision to abort the landing on the lips of frazzled mission controllers in Houston -- Armstrong calmly counted off the last few feet on the altimeter and noted that the LEM was ''kicking up some dust.''

For a few agonizing seconds, an entire planet about 250,000 miles away in the airless black void of space held its collective breath. Then:

''Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.''

A few hours later, after patiently listening to Buzz Aldrin's numerous requests to let him go first, Neil Armstrong gingerly stepped down the Eagle's ladder in his bulky white spacesuit. He paused at the last step, perhaps contemplating the theories of some skeptics at NASA who had postulated that the surface of the moon could not support the weight of a man. The first man who stepped on the moon would simply sink and never be heard from again, they said.

Armstrong jumped off the ladder, and said ''That�s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.''

Forty years later, human beings on Earth are still grappling with age-old problems of war, poverty and disease, and some modern human-created nightmares like global warming and nuclear proliferation. From time to time, we wonder if the inexorable march of progress has faltered, if perhaps we are sliding backwards.

We wonder if we still have the right stuff.

But high above us in the nighttime summer sky, the moon beckons, carrying Neil Armstrong's footprint and waiting for us to take another giant leap.

They said it couldn�t be done. We did it.

East wind

2009-07-14T13:43:00.010-04:00

Later this year, a global summit meeting will be convened in Copenhagen in which world leaders will try to craft a successor agreement to the Kyoto treaty, the last worldwide effort to establish a meaningful target for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The scientific experts on climate change have warned that any agreement in Copenhagen must go much further than the Kyoto accord if the world is going to avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming. Basically, we have been told, this is our last chance to prevent climate change from becoming irreversible.

In the run-up to Copenhagen, President Obama has changed the position of the United States -- which was one of only a handful of nations which refused to ratify the Kyoto treaty -- from foot-dragging to frontrunning. He persuaded his colleagues at the recent G8 summit of leading industrial nations in Italy to endorse a 50-percent reduction in current carbon emissions by 2050.

However, the two growth leaders of the developing world -- China and India -- thus far have refused to join the party, claiming that their growth will be stymied if they accept the same carbon-reduction standard as the fully industrialized powers.

China, in particular, has in recent years tied its emergence as a global economic power to fossil fuels. The world's most populous nation has fueled its astounding 10-percent annual growth rates by firing up a new coal-burning power plant every two weeks. By the end of this year, China is expected to surpass the United States as the country that spews the largest volume of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

So it might be logical to conclude that the U.S., which is now embracing a green agenda, and China, which has an expanding appetite for the world's dirtiest fuel, are moving in opposite directions.

Not so.

According to a report in The New York Times, China aggressively is positioning itself to become the world's most dominant producer of renewable energy. Its strategy involves building up an alternative energy manufacturing base by shutting out foreign competition for huge domestic projects while at the same time using this expanded manufacturing sector to flood overseas markets with exports.

The Chinese are rapidly applying several variations of this strategy to solar and wind power, and they are laying the groundwork to become a world power in electric cars as well.

The Asian giant is building not one, but six of the world's largest wind farms on its territory, each with a capacity of between 10,000 to 20,000 megawatts. By comparison, the largest wind power project in the U.S. -- a 4,000-megawatt wind farm in Texas proposed by oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens -- still sits on the drawing board. Pickens recently announced he is putting the project on hold, primarily because he does not expect transmission lines needed to support it to be built during the current economic downturn.

According to the Times, the bidding process for the huge Chinese wind power projects was skewed by the Chinese government to award manufacturing contracts to domestic companies. The 25 largest contracts for the PRC's wind initiative all were awarded to Chinese firms earlier this year. As soon as these domestic projects are completed, analysts expect China to unleash a wave of wind-power component exports.

To corner the solar power market, the Chinese used this formula in reverse. They created the world's largest solar panel manufacturing industry by exporting 95 percent of their output to Europe and the U.S. But when China authorized its first solar power plant this spring, it required that 80 percent of the panels be made in China.

While we're not privy to the diplomatic dialogue between the great powers that is going on behind the scenes, we suspect the U.S. and Europe are doing most of the talking in the current conversation with China on the subject of global warming.

The Western powers are urging China to adopt their timetable for carbon-emission reductions, and they undoubtedly are threatening to file a complaint with the WTO over China's protectionist stance regarding its emerging alternative energy industry.

We suspect the Chinese aren't saying anything. They are waiting for it to occur to U.S. and European leaders that China already has established its global warming ''negotiating position'' through its actions.

From where we sit, it seems that China's position is as clear as a pollution-free sky:

''There can be no solution to global warming without us, and we intend to dominate the market for green technologies and alternative energy. If you want one, you have to accept the other.''

The Chinese are waiting, and they are smiling. Eventually the Americans and the Europeans will understand they are caught between a bituminous rock and a hard place.

And if we in the West don't have this epiphany soon, well, our friends in Beijing know they can speed things up by suggesting they may want to convert the $2-trillion worth of U.S. dollars they are holding into another currency.

They wouldn't do that, would they?

Rat Pack

2009-07-13T16:25:00.008-04:00

We caught up with Fred, our favorite talking mouse, in Vegas this week. We found him sunning himself by the pool at the Bellagio, wearing some oversized Ray-Ban sunglasses.

What's with the shades?

''Too much neon. It's messing up my Circadian rhythm,'' he said.

''Besides, I've got to keep a low profile. CIA may want me to take over for their chief Congressional briefer. The last piece of limburger they sent over there to testify had more holes in his story than a wheel of Swiss.''

When we last left Fred, the loquacious rodent was tucked away at a secret government lab in Wisconsin. As you may recall, Fred granted his first exclusive interview to us after he was successfully implanted with the human gene that governs language and speaking skills.

This time, Fred was not alone. He was accompanied by six other mice, who like Fred were hidden behind Ray-Bans and reclining on miniature lounge chairs.

''I like to think of them as my grad students, but one of the Vegas papers is already calling them the Rat Pack. The one with the crooked tail over there is Dino. The clueless one is Joey, and the guy spreading clotted cream on his cracker is Lawford.''

The three other members of Fred's crew suddenly produced top hats and canes and began tapping their way around the pool, humming what sounded like a cross between Motown and Alvin and the Chipmunks.

''They've got an audition at the Mirage. Calling themselves The Three Blind Mice. The showstopper is a Four Tops medley.''

Fred shrugged his little shoulders and sighed. ''Yeah, I know, it's pretty cheesy. They can sing, but they can't count. Maybe they'll get eaten by Seigfried's cat.''

We asked Fred what he was doing in Vegas. Without missing a beat, he replied: ''Economic stimulus.''

We told Fred we had a hard time believing he could write off a trip to Sin City as part of the federal recovery effort.

''Are you kidding? Those bozos are falling all over themselves trying to figure out how to spend it fast enough. I had six federal agencies begging me to come up with a project.''

We asked Fred what he came up with. He took a sip from his frosty drink, pausing to flip the lever on a poolside poker slot machine with his tail.

''Small-Scale Urban Infrastructure Survey for HUD. Assessment of Climate-Change Variables in a Dry Desert Environment for DOE and NASA. Swine Flu Casual Contact Vector Threat Level for DHS and NIH.''

We must have raised our eyebrows, because Fred got exasperated.''You don't believe me? Go ahead, ask me how many germs you can pick up at a blackjack table. It's 3.4 trillion per shoe, wiseguy.''

As in our first interview with Fred, this interlude was interrupted by the ringing of his iPhone. We assumed it was Fred's lawyer, so we asked him for a progress report on his legal battle with the Disney people.

''Nah, we dropped that. Statute of limitations expired,'' Fred said. ''Besides, we got bigger fish to fry.''

Bigger than the Magic Kingdom?

''The Big Cheese himself. Thought he was being cute fessing up to smoking in the White House. When my ambulance chaser finishes calculating the impact of second-hand smoke in mouse years, we'll be rolling in cheddar.''

Talk to the hand

2009-07-02T16:42:00.005-04:00

The fiscal calamity in California moved closer to the brink of total collapse this week, as the state -- which has yet to pass a budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 -- printed up nearly $600-million worth of IOUs.

Unless Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger manages to miraculously find a way to close a mammoth $24-billion budget gap during the holiday weekend, the first wave of 30,000 promissory notes will start flowing out to recipients, including residents awaiting their income tax rebates from the state. The IOUs will require California to repay the owed amounts, along with substantial interest.

The Governator thought he had a deal with the state legislature to approve a budget and stop the fiscal bleeding, cobbled together after months of arm-wrestling, but this package fell apart when voters decisively rejected a referendum authorizing new taxes. Without a budget deal, state officials have confirmed that California will run out of money by the end of this month.

The Golden State was among several states, mainly in the West and Southeast, that were clobbered by the collapse of the real estate market. Unemployment in California currently stands at close to 12 percent. In the desperate scramble to avoid a default by the nation's largest state, which could further drag down the struggling U.S. economy, Arnold has proposed everything from selling the L.A. Coliseum to releasing thousands of prisoners from state penitentiaries.

As far as we know, the Golden Gate Bridge is not on the auction block yet, but there are some unconfirmed reports that several Terminator costumes and a Mr. Universe belt have turned up on Ebay.

Of the 46 U.S. states that have fiscal years ending on June 30, Illinois and Pennsylvania also have failed to pass balanced budgets while Arizona has passed a partial budget. Connecticut, North Carolina and Ohio have measures in place to keep their governments running until they pass full budgets.

So as California residents prepare to celebrate the Fourth of July -- which marks, among other things, a declaration that taxation without representation is not acceptable in America -- they may find an IOU in their mailbox instead of a tax refund. We're guessing these notices feature a picture of Arnold over the caption, ''Refund? Talk to the hand. I'll get back to you.''

Which raises some interesting questions:

If the citizens of California had simply written ''IOU'' on their state income tax returns when they sent them in, would Arnold still be proposing to reduce the state's prison population?

Or would the Governator be rounding up all the delinquent taxpayers and building more jails?

Have a glorious Fourth, taxpayers.

Edelweiss meets Evita

2009-06-25T11:14:00.009-04:00

''Don't cry for me, Ben Bernanke.''

''You were supposed to be a genius. That's all we asked for--''

''You mind your business.''

''We kept our promise.''

''You keep your distance.''

The beleaguered Federal Reserve chairman is scheduled to appear before a Congressional committee this afternoon to offer a belated explanation for the government's handling of Bank of America's troubled merger with Merrill Lynch. Mr. Bernanke is rapidly running out of fig leafs and deodorizer to conceal the dubious nature of the forced marriage in January between the banking giant and the bankrupt speculative house on Wall Street.

Sooner or later, we all are going to know whether the Feds ordered BOA's former chairman to swallow Merrill while concealing its staggering losses from his shareholders, or if BOA squeezed $100 billion in TARP booty from the government by threatening to take the entire financial system down.

The suspense is palpable, but there's no need to wait until this afternoon to find out what Gentle Ben is going to say. We've obtained an advanced copy of his testimony. Put on your favorite Zamfir flute CD and pour yourself a lukewarm glass of Chardonnay, and enjoy.

Bernanke: ''First and foremost, I apologize to the nation. I have made decisions that have hurt and will continue to hurt you, and for that I'm sincerely sorry. Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner have stood by me through bailout after bailout, through hard time after hard time, and neither of them deserve this. Please offer them your prayers.''

Committee Chairman: ''What exactly are you apologizing for, Mr. Bernanke?''

Bernanke: ''I apologize to my staff. I misled them about this whole thing, and as a result the people of the United States believed something that wasn't true. I want to make absolutely clear that over the past six months at no time did anyone on my staff intentionally relay false information to other federal officials or the public at large. What they've said over the past six months they believed to be true, and I'm sorry to them for putting them in this position. There are many people out there right now who are hurt, angry and disappointed with me, and rightfully so. Over the time that I have left in office, I'm going to devote my energy to building back the trust the American people have placed in me. I ask for your forgiveness, and your prayers for everyone who I've hurt."

Committee Chairman: ''Mr. Bernanke, please get to the point. Tell us how this merger came about.''

Bernanke: ''It started with a really earnest conversation between two dear, dear friends eight months ago. Then something sparked between them. During this sparking thing, a grace and calm and a level of sophistication overcame them, and two magnificent parts of our financial system were drawn together in mutual feelings of attraction. I sat between them and observed that we were in a hopelessly -- some might say impossible -- or perhaps a hopelessly, impossible situation in the fading glow of our shrinking GDP. How in the world this lightening (sic) strike snuck up on us I am still not quite sure.''

Committee Chairman: ''Can you be a little more specific?''

Bernanke: ''As I have said to you before, the parties had a special feeling about each other from the first time they met, but these feelings were contained even though they enjoyed this special friendship. I suspect I felt a little vulnerable sitting between them because this is ground I had never certainly never covered before, so I asked Bob Rubin for some pearls of wisdom.''

Committee Chairman:''And what did Mr. Rubin tell you?''

Bernanke: ''He told me to sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart would cry out for the union of these two lovers. And from the merging of their voices, the swapping of their credit default derivatives, the combination of their delicate cash flows, as billions of crisp new Franklins sprang forth in a new birth of financial freedom, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that no executive compensation package is too big to be negated by abject failure --''

Committee Chairman: ''Mr. Bernanke, we'll have to end here. Three committee members have booked seats on the 2 p.m. flight to Buenos Aires out of Reagan National. I assume you will make yourself available for further questioning?''

Bernanke: ''That's correct, Mr. Chairman. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.''

Last call in Steel City

2009-06-24T14:15:00.008-04:00

About 30 years ago, you could walk into just about any self-respecting saloon in America and get the same response to a word-association game matching beers and the towns that made them famous.

Such as: Schlitz -- Milwaukee, WI, Iron City -- Pittsburgh, PA, Rheingold -- Brooklyn, NY, Rolling Rock -- Latrobe, PA-- and so on and so forth.

Not any more.

This week, the historic red-brick brewery in Pittsburgh that has been churning out Iron City beer since 1861 will produce its last few drops of the Steel City's favorite golden liquid.

The brewery, which survived the Civil War, two World Wars and a Great Depression, is closing -- but Iron City will not disappear. It soon will emerge from the taps at a brewery in Latrobe, PA, that used to produce Rolling Rock.

Rolling Rock is now produced in Newark, NJ. And the last time we checked on Rheingold, the long-defunct New York staple was briefly produced at Schmidt's Philadelphia brewery (although they still attempted to market it as a ''great New York beer'').

Confused? Well, here are some sobering statistics that may clear things up for you.

In the mid-1990s, the Iron City brewery cooked up about a million barrels of suds annually. According to reports, this year's output at the Pittsburgh landmark will total less than 171,000 barrels.

By comparison, industry titans like Anheuser-Busch InBev and Miller each put more than 50 million barrels of beer on the American wall every year. For several decades now, about two dozen large regional breweries have waged a valiant fight for survival against these giants, who pour out an ocean of industrial-strength lager each day at 20 mega-breweries throughout the U.S.

But the continued dominance of the national beer icons is not putting the final nail in the coffin of our favorite local brands. This is being hammered home by the emergence of the craft beer and microbrewery business, which has grown exponentially throughout the country.

According to www.beertown.org, there now are more than 1,500 craft breweries operating in the U.S., including 65 small regional breweries, 446 microbreweries and 990 brewpubs. A craft brewery is an outlet that produces less than 2 million barrels annually (with at least 50 percent of its volume malt beer); a microbrewery produces less than 15,000 barrels per year (with 75 percent or more of its product sold offsite); a brewpub is a restaurant/brewery that sells 25 percent or more of its beer on site (i.e. -- the beer is brewed primarily for sale in the restaurant or bar).

The Beertown site reports that output of U.S. craft breweries increased to nearly 8.6 million barrels in 2008, compared to about 8 million barrels the year before, while output for non-craft regional breweries remained, well, flat. The craft brew industry is generating more than $6 billion in annual revenue, growing 6 percent by volume and more than 10 percent by dollars annually. Within the craft suds sector, microbreweries are proliferating at an even faster rate.

So don't waste too much time crying in your last mug of ''authentic'' Iron City, beer fans. While some of the great old names are going the way of the dinosaurs, these are being replaced by a kaleidoscopic universe of new labels and flavors. We'd give you a breakdown of the mindboggling number of choices now available, but we're getting thirsty.

However, before we head out to hoist a few, we will serve up one heady factoid that absolutely knocks our socks off --

It turns out that the state with the greatest per capita number of breweries in the United States is -- you may want to sit down before you read this --VERMONT. That's right, the Green Mountain State has a brewery for every 32,698 citizens. The runners up are Montana, Oregon, Maine and Colorado.

Wait a minute. We just received a challenge from the great state of New Jersey. A guy in Kearny, NJ, claims his town has more bars per street corner than any city in America. He wants a recount.

In the interest of fair and balanced journalism, this calls for a thorough investigation.

Return to sender

2009-06-15T11:16:00.004-04:00

''Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.''

These words are etched in stone atop the nation's largest post office building in midtown Manhattan. For well over a century, they have served as a credo repeated with pride by mail carriers throughout the land.

Unfortunately, this famous motto soon may require a dismal addendum --

''However, an economic downturn and the widespread use of electronic communications have necessitated severe cutbacks which may curtail your service at certain times and places.''

The U.S. Postal Service has been on a downward trajectory for the past 20 years. As use of the Internet for primary communications, including payment of bills, has increased exponentially, the overall number of postal workers has shrunk dramatically. In 2000, there were more than 800,000 postal workers. Today, the total is barely more than 636,000. The seemingly annual increase in postage fees has worked to accelerate this trend, rather than stabilize it.

Throughout this downsizing, the Postal Service has managed to keep its commitment to deliver the mail six days a week and to maintain post offices in just about every community in the United States. This commitment is now being challenged by the economic downturn, and it may be down for the count.

According to reports, the Postal Service currently is evaluating at least 3,100 of its 36,700 post offices and retail outlets for closure or consolidation. It also is considering eliminating Saturday mail delivery. A decision is expected by Oct. 1.

The numbers confronting the government's decision-makers are grim: the nation's mail-carrying service reported a $2-billion loss for the quarter ending March 31; mail volume is down almost 15 percent from last year. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, postal officials are predicting the agency will handle about 180 billion pieces of mail during this fiscal year, about 32 billion pieces less than the volume handled just two years ago.

Predictably, the American Postal Workers Union has pledged to fight the proposed cuts, calling them ''desperate.''

A spokesman for the local dog population told us his brethen would join the postal workers in opposing the curtailing of Saturday service.

''Yeah, I know we�re mortal enemies and all that, but the weekend is going to be very dull if we don�t get a least one shot at the mailman,'' he said.

We were going to ask his opinion of electronic bill-paying services, but he rolled over on his back and started snoring before we could pose the question.

The mouse that roared

2009-06-05T11:12:00.011-04:00

The New York Times reported today that scientists have successfully implanted inside a mouse the human gene that governs language and speaking skills.

The mouse already is talking, and he's got a lot to say. We caught up with this impressive specimen at a secret government lab. We can't disclose the precise location, but we can tell you it is in Wisconsin.

Our subject was working out in a makeshift gym next to his cage. He was doing some laps on a hamster wheel, a poster of a huge slice of Jarlsberg taped to the wall in front of him for inspiration. A Green Bay Packers ''cheesehead'' hat rested jauntily atop the cage.

We asked the mouse his name.

''You can call me Fred. Call me Mickey and I'll snap your tail!''

We immediately noted Fred's New York accent.

''You got a problem with that?''

We asked Fred what was on his mind. Turns out he has been reading the newspapers that line his cage every day. He also watches a flat-screen TV on the wall. Fred has a remote he controls with his tail. He says he's been switching back and forth between the financial channels and the NBA playoffs lately.

''What's up with this Bernanke guy? He prints a trillion in new bills and then he warns us that inflation is going to ruin the economy? I could have told him that. You make too much Swiss and soon it's gonna to be worthless. Then everybody is gonna start hoarding Jarlsberg and Roquefort.''

Fred was particularly upset about something he read in a copy of Crain's New York Business the other day.

''That 35 percent vacancy rate in Manhattan office space is a killer. My cousin Vinnie doesn't even bother to crawl onto the F train in Flatbush anymore. What's the point of dragging your tail to the city every day if there aren't even any crumbs on the floor when you get there?''

Fred said he was pleased with President Obama's choice of a new pet.

''Dogs are loyal. Dogs are friendly. You can always count on a dog. Cats have an agenda, and it's never yours.''

Fred stepped off the wheel and asked us to pass a small white towel over to him. While he was rolling around the towel, he told us he is disappointed the showdown between Lebron and Kobe didn't materialize in the NBA finals.

''I was dreaming about it for months. Massive consumption of Doritos and nachos all over America. Coast-to-coast crumbs.''

''Well, maybe next year,'' he sighed.

Much to our surprise, Fred said he caught Keith Olbermann's critique of Detroit Economic Growth Corp. director George Jackson the other night on Countdown. Olbermann put Jackson on his ''Worst Persons'' list for allegedly not working hard enough to keep the old Tigers Stadium from being torn down.

''The humans have enough stadiums, and those stupid luxury boxes are hermetically sealed. Leave the old dumps for the rest of us.''

Fred also told us he recently got an angry phone call from his cousin Sean in Beantown.

''He's griping that Big Papi is stinking up the middle of the lineup like a piece of aged provolone. Says he can't even bear to sit in the Fenway scoreboard and watch anymore. Besides, not much to eat in the scoreboard since Manny left town.''

We asked Fred if he is ready to become a global celebrity when word gets around about his speaking skills.

''I'm keeping a low profile right now because I'm doing some off-the-books work for the CIA. Those jokers finally realized that all those high-tech gadgets don't measure up to some paws on the ground.''

However, Fred assured us that, when the time is ripe, he's ready for what he called his "closeup."

''I've got an endorsement package with Jarlsberg that's gonna give me two points on every wheel, a book deal, two movie cameos, and they're trying to work me into a Super Bowl commercial for a new cellphone camera. By the time I'm done, it'll be bigger than Lebron and Nike.''

We had dozens of other questions for Fred, but his iPhone rang and we had to cut it short.

''Gotta take this,'' Fred said, stepping on the touchscreen. ''It's my lawyer. He's trying to get an injunction to stop a screening of Fantasia at the Disney World IMAX.''

Fred made a face. Then he got really worked up.

''Terrible stereotype. A mouse wearing gloves. You ever see a mouse wearing gloves? We're really fed up with it and we're not gonna take it anymore. In this day and age, we don't have to. Are we mice or are we --- aw, you know what I mean.''

Something tells us we're going to be hearing from Fred again soon.

Homeland security on the range

2009-05-27T14:02:00.009-04:00

Like many of the small towns across America, Hardin, MT (pop. 4,300) is hurting for jobs these days. It also has a surplus of prime real estate, assuming that anything other than buffalo steaks can be called prime in the microscopic hamlet in southeastern Montana.

Downtown Hardin, not a bustling city center even in good times, is quieter than ever. The Dollar Store reportedly is going out of business and the Mini Mall soon will be shuttered. A few blocks away, a new $27-million detention facility also sits empty.

When they floated some bonds a few years ago to build the Two Rivers Regional Correctional Facility, Hardin's city fathers hoped the prison would generate employment opportunities beyond the handful of guards that would be needed to keep the local cattle rustlers under lock and key. Obviously, some short-order cooks would be engaged to feed the staff and inmates, and a couple of locksmiths would be on call to keep the latches working. Eventually, perhaps, a Walmart would arrive to provide all the sundries yearned for by a growing population.

It didn't work out that way. The facility has yet to house any prisoners, even though it was ready to receive them two years ago.

The 464-bed prison has scores of surveillance cameras, a magnetometer, and dozens of orange prison jump suits in a storage room filled with shoes, towels, blankets, razors and underwear. It also has a generous supply of riot helmets, gas masks, batons, shields, and guns for guards. Just no prisoners.

Confronted by a collapsing economy and little prospect of a sudden crime surge, Hardin's leadership did what Westerners are famous for -- they improvised. When he caught wind of the hubbub in Washington over President Obama's decision to close the infamous prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, Greg Smith, Hardin's economic development administrator, sprang into action.

While the rest of the country was fixated on the debate over whether to transfer any of the terrorist detainees now housed at Guantanamo into the United States -- and most of the members of Congress were shouting an emphatic ''No!'' -- Smith announced to Hardin's city council that he had come up with an idea that could solve everybody's problem.

Let's take all of the detainees in Guantanamo and bring them here to our prison in Hardin, he declared. ''It would bring jobs. Believe it or not, it would even bring hope and opportunity,'' he later told CNN.

Hardin's prison has single, double, and dorm-style cells, but Smith says it could be modified to keep detainees separated. He points out that because only terror detainees would be housed at Two Rivers, they couldn't radicalize run-of-the-mill felons. Smith also told CNN that a large dormitory room in the prison, now filled with empty bunk beds, could be converted into a mosque. Smith, who apparently doesn�t have any correctional facility experience, also claims it would be simple to upgrade the medium-security prison to meet maximum-security standards.

Even more startling than Smith's proposal was the reaction of Hardin's city council: they voted 5-0 to endorse the idea.

Since we already are about 14 minutes into Hardin's 15 minutes of fame, here's a brief synopsis of what happened next.

Montana's congressional delegation rose as one and did their best imitation of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's seminal painting, The Scream. When they were able to speak after the initial shock wore off, the state's two U.S. senators made it clear that Smith's proposal is a non-starter.

"Housing potential terrorists in Montana is not good for our state," said Sen. Max Baucus. ''These people stop at nothing. Their primary goal in life, and death, is to destroy America.''

Sen. Jon Tester also weighed in -- ''I just don't think it's appropriate, that's all. I don't think they know what they're asking for.''

According to CNN, the opinions of Hardin natives are mixed. A sampling taken on North Central Avenue in the heart of downtown Hardin ranged from a waitress who said she would move out if the terrorists moved in, to a manicurist who said bringing the detainees to the poorest county in Montana would create jobs and make the place safer since it would get special attention from law enforcement.

When we last checked, economic development director Smith was offering to give any doubters a free three-day test lockup so they can see for themselves how secure the prison is.

Sorry, Mr. Smith. We enjoy taking economic development tours, but we'll pass on that one.

We will, however, tip our hat to your moxie and can-do patriotism. And we're pleased to offer a helpful suggestion for filling Two Rivers if your Guantanamo transfer plan doesn't work out --

Round up your posse and ride on over to Wall Street, pardner. They got more criminals there than you can shake a lasso at.

The Blago Infamy Factory Expands

2009-05-19T10:54:00.007-04:00

On April 23rd, I declared as the "Best Idea of the Week" an Illinois' court's denial of Rod Blagojevich's participation in an upcoming reality show, "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!" Citing reasons such as his pending criminal charges and the fact that he is not a celebrity, I felt Blago did not deserve to use his impeachment as a launching pad to TV stardom and monetary reward.

Well, the Chicago Sun-Times reports today:

In another bizarre chapter of Illinois political history, the wife of onetime governor Rod Blagojevich is likely to finalize a deal this week to appear in a reality TV show.

"It appears she's going to do it," said Sheldon Sorosky, attorney for Rod Blagojevich.

Sorosky said Patti Blagojevich plans to fly to Los Angeles this week to finalize a deal to appear on the new NBC prime time TV show: "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!" There's no indication what NBC has offered to pay Mrs. Blagojevich, but her husband's onetime deal called for up to $123,000.

NBC executives sought to woo Patti Blagojevich onto the show almost immediately after U.S. District Judge James Zagel last month blocked the former governor from being a contestant.

The show will be filmed in Costa Rica. Because of the federal charges against Rod Blagojevich, he needed approval to leave the country.

Meanwhile, Sam Adam Jr., onetime lawyer for R&B star R. Kelly, formally filed his intent with the court to act as the ex-governor's lawyer.

"I'm ready to go," he said Monday.

I'm really not a fan of the advancement of despicable people due to their despicable actions. "Profane Patti" is even less of a celebrity than her husband, for starters, but NBC's hasty move to replace the ex-governor with one of his (life) partners in crime is nauseating. Surely there are other fame-hungry, D-list attention seekers who would be willing to compete for cash in Costa Rica. Give Ann Coulter a call. I hear Manny Ramirez has some time to spare. Pluck out one of the Jackson 5 or one of the Brady Bunch....anyone but ousted politicians and/or their spouses.

An even better idea for NBC: fill the Costa Rican jungle with Americans who were recently laid off from their jobs. Let THEM compete for cash.

Paging Little Caesar

2009-05-15T13:41:00.005-04:00

California is making preparations to hold a fire sale of some its most iconic properties as it continues to grapple with a gargantuan state budget shortfall.

The nation's largest state, which patched together an emergency budget fix in February that closed a $42-billion deficit, now projects at least $15 billion in red ink for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signaled that his initial strategy for dealing with the latest budget gap may include deep cuts in state education spending and the auctioning off of some of the most famous state-owned addresses in California.

The potential for-sale list released by the governor's office this week includes the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which has hosted two Olympics and can seat almost 100,000 patrons, and San Quentin Prison, currently home to some of the state's most hardened criminals. Also under consideration for privatization are the Cow Palace concert hall in Daly, CA, and the Orange County fairgrounds.

According to reports, San Quentin isn't considered an attractive property simply because it evokes memories of tough guys and machine guns. The legendary prison sits on a prime piece of scenic waterfront real estate north of San Francisco. So, presumably, the prison would be shut down if the property is purchased by private developers.

However, there may be a considerable snag to any plan to raise money by selling San Quentin. Gov. Schwarzenegger has hinted that the sale of the prison would be accompanied by an early-release program that would spring about 40,000 inmates currently incarcerated in the state's overcrowded prison system. California legislators have rejected the early-release idea in each of the past four years, most recently in April.

The proposed $400-million price tag for the Coliseum also may prove to be unrealistic: according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, a 2001 appraisal of the landmark stadium pegged its value at just $16 million -- a figure that may drop when currently depressed market levels are included in the calculation.

We've given some thought to the identity of the ideal buyer for both the Coliseum and San Quentin. Since we assume that it would need to be someone with a ''Caeser-like'' persona who also may be comfortable in a prison setting, the first name that came to mind was...Edward G. Robinson!

Unfortunately, the star of one of our all-time favorite gangster flicks died in 1973. So that leaves us with ---

Donald Trump in a fedora?

Hydrogen bombshell

2009-05-11T10:48:00.007-04:00

A few months ago, we reported in this space about a test-drive we took in a hydrogen-powered Chevy Equinox. The car was one of about 100 fuel-cell-powered prototypes that had been hand-built at General Motors' Fuel Cell Activities Center in Honeoye Falls, NY, a few miles from Rochester.

The only sound coming out of the hydrogren-powered Chevy as it accelerated was the hum of the tires, and the only exhaust it produced came out in the form of water vapor.

We left the General Motors facility near Rochester last year hopeful that we had just experienced a preview of the car of the future. We looked forward to the mass-production of fuel-cell powered vehicles as a key solution to a carbon-based transportation system that is contributing to the looming catastrophe of climate change.

However, we noted in our report that the limited range of the prototype (160 miles on a full four-kilogram tank of hydrogen), the high cost of producing it, and the lack of a network of hydrogen gas stations in the U.S. were major hurdles that would have to be overcome to make hydrogen-powered cars a reality.

It now appears that the U.S. Department of Energy has concluded that these hurdles are insurmountable, at least for the next couple of decades.

Releasing energy-related details of the federal budget last week for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, Energy Secretary Steven Chu disclosed that the government has determined that development of hydrogen fuel cells is not feasible at this time. Therefore, Dr. Chu said, the government will cut off funds for continued development of hydrogen-powered vehicles.

Chu indicated that coming up with a way to transport hydrogen across the country as part of a new fuel system was the biggest obstacle to commercializing the technology. As a result of the Energy Department's decision, government funding will be steered toward the continued development of electric car batteries that can be plugged directly into the power grid.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is indicating it is preparing to authorize an increase in the amount of ethanol that can be blended with gasoline. The percentage of ethanol permitted in the blend likely will increase from 10 percent to 15 percent.

Engine manufacturers and consumer advocates have raised concerns about the impending ruling, suggesting that warranties for many of the estimated 500 million gasoline engines in use in cars, trucks, lawn mowers and other products prohibit use of fuel containing more than 10 percent ethanol.

EPA is responding to a request from Growth Energy, an ethanol lobbying group, which joined with 54 ethanol manufacturers to ask for a waiver of the Clean Air Act to permit more ethanol to be added to gasoline.

According to the American Petroleum Institute, nearly three-quarters of the gasoline sold in the U.S. last year contained some ethanol. EPA previously has approved the use of ethanol blends of up to 85 percent ethanol, but only for cars and trucks certified by manufacturers as ''flexible fuel'' vehicles. The requested 15-percent blend would replace the standard blend that is sold across-the-board for all vehicles.

POTUS envy

2009-05-07T17:33:00.015-04:00

You've probably heard by now that former President George W. Bush already has raised $100 million for his presidential library in Texas, outpacing previous fundraising efforts for the mausoleums built to honor other U.S. chief executives.

We're not sure why it became a tradition to build a mammoth facility dressed up as a tourist attraction to house all of the papers a president hasn't shredded, burned or buried on his way out of the White House.

The first official presidential library honored Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, who grabbed the big prize in 1876 in a disputed election with Samuel Tilden, then New York's governor. Tilden appeared to have won the popular vote, but some wild shenanigans blocked the Electoral College from confirming the result. After several weeks of ugly political mud-wrestling, a special "commission" of five U.S. senators, five House members and five Supreme Court justices handed the presidency to Hayes by one vote, an eerie precursor to the Bush v. Gore fiasco of 2000.

Hayes wasn't exactly Rushmore material. The most interesting items found at his library in Fremont, OH, are the pair of fuzzy slippers Abraham Lincoln was said to be wearing the night before he was shot (they have deer antlers on them) and a piece of the actual White House fence, which surrounds the building.

There's even a presidential library honoring Gerald R. Ford, who became the 38th president when Richard Nixon crawled out of Washington in disgrace in 1974. In the first application of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, Ford had been appointed vice president by Nixon after Spiro Agnew resigned as part of a plea bargain to avoid jail time for accepting envelopes stuffed with cash from Maryland contractors. Unable to get elected president on his own after he pardoned Nixon, Ford only served for two years.

Speaking of Nixon, there are some rather unusual displays at his museum in Whittier, CA. A glass case devoted to Nixon's war record includes a pair of deuces said to be the hand Tricky Dick deployed to bluff a colonel out of $1,500 while he spent WWII playing poker on a supply-chain outpost in the Pacific. There's also a picture of the future president in uniform manning a grill at ''Nick's Hamburger Stand.''

Because Nixon resigned after the Watergate scandal consumed his presidency, his was the first library built entirely with private funding. Nixon's devotees came up with a novel solution to deal with the scandal: visitors walk through an empty room with mirrored walls fronted by what appear to be knee-high benches. It is only by leaning over the benches and looking at the mirrors that one sees the Watergate timeline, which is reflected from the back of the benches.

You can almost hear the 37th president telling the designers: ''We could do that -- but that would be wrong!''

In recent years, architecture has become almost as important as substance in our presidential libraries.

This trend was established by I.M. Pei's spectacular homage to John F. Kennedy's love of the sea. The Kennedy library, which sits on a small peninsula jutting out into the middle of Boston Harbor, is shaped like a huge white sail. Every accoutrement in the building has an ocean-going theme, right down to the door knobs.

Which brings us back to George W. Don't tell anybody, but a guy who runs a liquor store in Crawford, TX sent us a detailed plan for the George W. Bush Presidential Library. W. apparently left it on his counter when he stopped in recently to purchase a bottle of Jim Beam.

We don't want to spill all the beans, but we can tell you that the governing principle of the library's design will be ''Fun and Games.'' The place is going to be set up like an amusement park, with several nods to the 43rd president's quirky sense of humor and his penchant for going on vacation, which is where he spent at least a third of his presidency.

According to the plan, architect Frank Gehry is the leading candidate to design the building, if he can figure out how to make a 1-million-square-foot structure shaped like a 10-gallon hat.

Visitors will enter through the brim of the hat, where they immediately will be confronted with the quandary of whether to step on a mosaic, imbedded in the floor, that bears the likeness of W.'s father, George H.W. Bush, the 41st president.

This was W.'s idea. He had the mosaic removed from the entrance to Baghdad's biggest hotel (where it had been installed by Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War). W. can't wait to see the look on Poppy's face when Bush 41 enters the new museum after the ribbon-cutting.

Once inside, visitors will board a roller-coaster tram about the size of the Space Mountain ride in Disneyland but shaped like an old-fashioned Western stagecoach.

We don't want to spoil all the surprises, but here are some coming attractions:

The roller coaster starts slowly, moving past a marble gateway with the giant words HALL OF GREAT ACCOMPLISHMENTS chiseled on its front. It enters a huge empty space with some fuzzy photos of W. greeting various luminaries hanging on the walls. As visitors try to focus on the pictures, huge jets of steam start spraying from nozzles in the ceiling, the lights dim, and everyone is showered with a substance that feels and smells like baby powder. A neon sign flashes: WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION!

The coaster does several spins upside down in a series of tunnels labeled STRATEGERY ALLEY. In the last tunnel, the walls change colors as a sign flashes THREAT-LEVEL HIGH! All of the visitors' cell phones suddenly start ringing at the same time. Then the coaster climbs a steep hill labeled BUILDUP TO WAR.

Once the tram reaches the top, it plunges into a deep abyss at bloodcurdling speed. At the bottom, what looks like a huge data punch-card swings down and threatens to decapitate the visitors. The bottom half of the card breaks off harmlessly at the last second. ''Hanging chad,'' says the tour guide.

The coaster hits another incline labeled THE SURGE and then enters a hall of funhouse mirrors where the visitors see grotesquely distorted images of themselves under the label COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISORS.

Near the top of the second incline, a Dick Cheney robot dressed as Darth Vader douses everybody with a bucket of water. They are dried off by hot air shooting out of nozzles embedded in the mouth of a bust of Karl Rove.

When the coaster hits the peak, a group of beauty queens in swimsuits with sashes labeled WALL STREET will appear offering the visitors flutes of Cristal champagne. But before anyone can grab a free drink, the lights suddenly go out and the coaster drops off the edge of a 90-degree, 10-story embankment and takes a plunge that will, according to the plan, ''create G-forces equivalent to those that induce blackouts on jet fighter pilots.''

At the end of the ride, dizzy visitors will stagger across the faux deck of an aircraft carrier, where they can have their photos taken next to a cardboard cutout of W. in his flight suit under a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner.

Then it's on to the doghouse-shaped snack bar, called Barney's Cafe, for some dog dishes filled with pretzels. Visitors will be handed thick menus by waitresses wearing Barbara Bush masks.

Opening the menu, they will be startled by an incredibly realistic hologram of George H. W. Bush throwing up on the Japanese prime minister. A cardboard cutout next to the lunch counter of W. with a bullhorn will play a recorded message from the 43rd president:

''HEH...HEH...HEH -- HOPE Y'ALL ENJOY THE FOOD!''

The George W. Bush Presidential Library will be rated PG-13, meaning the average 13-year-old will really like the place.