Environmentalists Blast Obama Mining Reversal: (CBS) Obama Signals Support for Giving Mining Companies Access to Public Land to Dump Toxic Waste, Fueling Criticism. The same week President Barack Obama riled environmentalists with plans for offshore oil drilling, he faces criticism for signaling he will support a Bush-era policy criticized as giving mining companies unlimited access to public lands to dump toxic waste.
The administration asked a federal judge Tuesday to dismiss a challenge by environmental and community groups to a rule that lifted a restriction on how much public land companies can use. The groups are also challenging a 2008 rule that says companies aren't required to pay the going rate to use the land.
Environmentalists said the administration's decision conflicts with its pledge to overhaul the nearly 140-year-old law regulating the mining of gold, silver and other hard-rock minerals on public land.
"The Obama administration can't have it both ways," said Jane Danowitz of the Pew Environment Group in Washington. "Either it stands by its earlier commitment to bringing mining law into the 21st Century, or it continues to allow the industry to dump unlimited toxic waste on public land at the expense of taxpayers and the environment."
National Mining Association spokeswoman Carol Raulston said Friday that her group is pleased with the Obama administration's decision to support the Bush policy.
"It's a necessary provision to conducting mining in the West," Raulston said.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees minerals on federal lands, declined to comment because of the pending litigation, spokesman Matt Spangler said.
The dispute stems from the interpretation and enforcement of the 1872 mining law, which has changed little since Ulysses S. Grant was president. The law made it easy to stake claims and buy public land for mining, in part to encourage westward expansion.
Critics of the law argue it is outdated and was never intended for the large mining operations that tie up thousands of acres of federal land in the West without paying fair market value. The Clinton administration, in its waning days in 2000, issued a policy saying that mining companies' use of land should follow the law's ratio of 5 acres for processing and waste for every 20 acres of mining claims.
The Bush administration quickly eliminated the acreage restriction and issued a rule in 2008 saying that companies don't have to pay fair market value for public land not directly used for mining. The policy came despite a 2003 decision by the U.S. District Court in Washington that companies should pay the going rate.
Mining companies already pay rock-bottom prices to stake claims or buy public land for hard-rock mining, critics say. The 1872 law also gives preference to mining over other uses of the land, they say.
"This would be the perfect opportunity to reform the law," said Jeff Parsons, an attorney with the Colorado-based Western Mining Project, which is representing the groups challenging the Bush-era policy. "It's a disappointment to see them defending what are illegal and poorly analyzed rules."
Economic Recovery Boosts Employers' Confidence: (CBS) Labor Department Report Shows Strong Hiring Numbers for Manufacturing, Retail, Construction. The Labor Department reported Friday that the unemployment rate held steady in March at 9.7 percent. Employers added 162,000 jobs, the most in three years. For four of the past five months now, private industry has added workers.
President Obama applauded the news, saying "Today is encouraging day. We are beginning to turn the corner."
Still, he acknowledged there is still a long way to go to put Americans back to work. Nearly a third of the gains in March - 48,000 jobs - came from the hiring of government census workers.
More importantly, business hiring was strong too. The economy added jobs across most sectors, including manufacturing with 17,000 more jobs and retail with 15,000 more jobs. Even the construction industry added 15,000 jobs, its biggest gain in three years.
"It does look like we've seen a turnaround over the last few months in the nature of the economy and in the labor market," said David Wyss of Standard & Poor's. "I think it's going to be a slow recovery, but it looks like a recovery."
Also, businesses are gaining confidence that recovery can be sustained...
Temporary hiring also continues to surge. About 313,000 temp jobs have been added since September 2009, but many are surviving on temporary work because they can't find full time jobs...
Still, the March hiring surge is a striking turnaround for an economy, which only a year ago lost 700,000 jobs...
Who is Michael J. Sulick and Does al Qaeda Have a Mole Inside the CIA?: (Commentary Magazine: conservative view) Michael J. Sulick is the man CIA Director General Michael Hayden has put in charge of gathering HUMINT, i.e., human intelligence, i.e., old fashioned man-on-man, man-on-woman, and woman-on-man espionage.
According to Newsweek, “Sulick learned his tradecraft—the James Bond side of spying—in the old Soviet Union. Like other Western spies, he learned to follow ‘Moscow Rules,’ the rigorous countersurveillance measures used to avoid detection by the ubiquitous KGB...”
The CIA has been repeatedly castigated for weakness in collecting HUMINT. And one root cause of its perpetual weakness is undoubtedly our national fascination with technology, which has led us to invest in hugely expensive satellite-reconnaissance systems while neglecting the relatively cheap art of recruiting spies in enemy ranks...
To Sulick’s credit, as evidenced by the talk he gave last month at the Harvard Seminar on Intelligence, Command, and Control, he has an acute understanding of what he is up against:
Unlike the Soviet Union—one large land mass—the terrorists operate in very small cells. They cross borders easily. They’re very compartmented. They screen their recruits probably better than the U.S. government does. They can work in a bank, in the real-estate industry, or for an Islamic relief organization. Basically they are less vulnerable as targets to all the other means of intelligence collection the United States has at its disposal. In the cold war, the satellites in the sky could see if Russian missiles were moving between silos or if troops were moving. The NSA was even able to intercept conversations between members of the Politburo as they traveled around Moscow in their cars. You can’t do that with terrorists. You don’t know where to point those eyes and ears in the sky unless you have a human agent—a spy—who tells you where to direct those things...
Obama Welcomes Jobs Report as Rare Good News: (CBS) The President Told Workers at a Battery Plant in North Carolina that their Industry is Key to Long Term Economic Growth. Obama spoke Friday at a North Carolina company that has hired new workers and expanded its operations with grants from the economic stimulus program. Obama's team wants to marry much-needed job creation with the politically sour stimulus, hoping that will help Democrats gain favor with voters after a bruising, yearlong battle with Republicans over health care.
The president hailed a new government report showing the largest job creation number in nearly three years. "We are beginning to turn the corner," he told employees of a manufacturing plant that received government stimulus money.
"We've broken this slide," Obama said several hours after the Labor Department reported businesses adding 162,000 jobs to their payrolls in March. He said the new figures point the way toward "helping us climb out of this recession," the deepest in 80 years.
Yet, the positive news reported by the government was tempered by some sobering statistics. For instance, many of the 162,000 new jobs went to temporary Census workers. And more than 40 percent of those without jobs have been unemployed for more than six months. Since the recession began in December 2007, some 8.4 million have lost their jobs.
"We shouldn't underestimate the difficulties we face," Obama said. "We're still going through a hard time."
Obama told workers at a plant that makes high-tech battery components that his aggressive -- if unpopular -- policies helped add jobs. He spoke at the Celgard LLC factory, which received a $49 million grant from the U.S. Energy Department last August.
The president said the grant was creating nearly 300 direct jobs for the company and more than 1,000 jobs for its contractors and suppliers. He also pledged that a new emphasis on oil and gas drilling will not undercut alternative energy work.
"I've often had to report bad news during the course of this year as the recession wreaked havoc on people's lives," Obama said. "Today is an encouraging day. The economy actually produced a substantial number of jobs instead of losing a substantial number of jobs..."
Poll: Americans Losing Faith in Pope: (CBS) As more sexual abuse cases involving priests in both the United States and Europe have made headlines -- among them cases with connections to Pope Benedict XVI -- Americans have become less positive about the pope, according to a new CBS News poll.
While the pope's favorable rating has held roughly steady since 2006, coming in at 15 percent in the new poll, his unfavorable rating has jumped to 24 percent -- up from just four percent four years ago. (The other respondents were either undecided or said they haven't heard enough to have an opinion.)
Among Catholics, the pope's favorable rating has fallen 13 points, from 40 percent in 2006 to 27 percent today. His unfavorable rating has increased ten points to 11 percent. And the percentage of Catholics who are "undecided" about the pope has risen 21 points, to 36 percent.
More than two in three Americans, including a majority of Catholics, say the pope has done a bad job in handling charges of abuse by priests. Just 13 percent of people overall and one in five Catholics say the pope, who has been serving since April 2005, has done a good job on the issue.
Eugene Allen, White House Butler, Dies at 90: (CBS/Washinton Post) Longtime White House Butler Served For 34 Years Under 8 Presidents, From Truman to Reagan. Eugene Allen, who endured a harsh and segregated upbringing in his native Virginia and went on to work for eight presidents as a White House butler, died March 31 of renal failure at Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park. He was 90.
Mr. Allen and his wife, Helene, were profiled in a Washington Post story in 2008 that explored the history of blacks in the White House. The couple were excited about the possibility of Barack Obama's historic election and their opportunity to vote for him. Helene, however, died on the eve of the election, and Mr. Allen went to vote alone. The couple had been married for 65 years.
Afterward, Mr. Allen, who had been living quietly in a simple house off Georgia Avenue NW in the District, experienced a fame that he had only witnessed beforehand. He received a VIP invitation to Obama's swearing-in, where a Marine guard escorted him to his seat. Eyes watering, he watched the first black man take the oath of office of the presidency.
Mr. Allen was besieged with invitations to appear on national TV shows. There were book offers and dozens of speaking requests, all of which he declined. He also received hundreds of letters, some from as far away as Switzerland, from people amazed at the arc of his life and imploring him to hold on while thanking him for his service to the nation. People in his neighborhood would stop him and explain to their children the outlines of his life.
"He liked to think of himself as just a humble butler," his only child, Charles, said Thursday. Aside from his son, Mr. Allen is survived by five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Mr. Allen was born July 14, 1919, in Scottsville, Va. He worked as a waiter at the Homestead resort in Hot Springs, Va., and later at a country club in Washington. In 1952, he heard of a job opening at the White House and was hired as a "pantry man," washing dishes, stocking cabinets and shining silverware for $2,400 a year.
He became maitre d', the most prestigious position among White House butlers, under Ronald Reagan. During Mr. Allen's 34 years at the White House, some of the decisions that presidents made within earshot of him came to have a direct bearing on his life -- and that of black America.
Mr. Allen was in the White House when Dwight D. Eisenhower dealt with the Little Rock desegregation crisis. Eisenhower once asked him about the cancellation of Nat "King" Cole's TV show, which the president enjoyed. Mr. Allen told him that the show had difficulty attracting advertisers, who were worried about white Southern audiences boycotting their products.
When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Mr. Allen was invited to the funeral. He declined for the most generous of reasons: "Somebody had to be at the White House to serve everyone after they came from the funeral," he told The Post. When first lady Jackie Kennedy returned to the White House afterward, she gave him one of the president's ties. Mr. Allen had it framed.
Mr. Allen served entertainers including Sammy Davis Jr., Duke Ellington, Pearl Bailey and Elvis Presley. He flew aboard Air Force One. He sipped root beer at Camp David with Jimmy Carter and visited Eisenhower in Gettysburg after he left the White House. There were always Christmas and birthday cards from the families of the presidents he had served.
He looked up one evening in the White House kitchen to see a lone figure standing in the doorway: It was Martin Luther King Jr., who had insisted on meeting the butlers and maids. Mr. Allen smiled when King complimented him on the cut of his tuxedo.
Mr. Allen served cups and cups of milk and Scotch to help Lyndon B. Johnson settle his stomach when protesters were yelling outside the White House gates during the Vietnam War. He longed to say something to Johnson about his son, who was serving in Vietnam at the time but dared not -- save for acknowledging that his son was alive when Johnson asked about him.
It pained Mr. Allen to hear vulgar words, sometimes racially charged, flowing from Johnson's mouth; and it delighted him when Johnson signed the historic civil rights bills of 1964 and 1965.
Sometimes Mr. Allen's own life seemed to stop beneath the chandeliered light. First lady Nancy Reagan came looking for him one afternoon, and Mr. Allen wondered whether he or a member of his staff had done something wrong. She assured him that he had not but also told him that his services would not be needed at the upcoming state dinner for German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Mr. Allen tensed, wondering why.
"She said, 'You and Helene are coming to the state dinner as guests of President Reagan and myself,' " he recounted in the Post interview. Mr. Allen thought he was the first butler to receive an invitation to a state dinner. He and Helene -- she was a beautiful dresser -- looked resplendent that night. The butlers on duty seemed to pay special attention to the couple as they poured champagne for guests -- champagne that Mr. Allen himself had stacked in the kitchen.
Mr. Allen was mindful that with the flowering of the black power movement, many young people questioned why he would keep working as a butler, with its connotations of subservience. But the job gave him great pride, and he endured the slights with a dignified posture.
"He was such a professional in everything he did," said Wilson Jerman, 81, whom Mr. Allen hired to work at the White House in the early 1960s. "When my wife, Gladys, died in 1966, he told me not to worry about a thing. I didn't think I could get through that period, and he just took me by the hand. I'll never forget it."
Mr. Allen retired in 1986, after having been promoted to maitre d' five years earlier. He possessed a dazzling array of framed photographs with all of the presidents he had served, in addition to gifts and mementos from each of them.
The last item to be framed and placed on Eugene Allen's basement wall was a condolence letter from George W. and Laura Bush. It arrived from the White House just after the death of Helene.
White House Moves to Get Coverage for Uninsured: (CBS) "Buying Pools" Will Be Created Within 90 Days, to Help Uninsured With Pre-Existing Conditions. The Obama administration took a step Friday toward showing voters concrete benefits from the new health care law, moving to help people with pre-existing health conditions get coverage within months.
The law the president signed March 23 provides for creation within 90 days of buying pools to target uninsured people who were denied coverage because of health conditions. Five billion dollars is being spent on the program, which will remain until the sweeping health law is fully implemented in 2014, when insurance companies will have to take all comers.
The program will build on buying pools that already exist in some states. The federal government will let states take the lead in setting up new pools or will administer them in states that don't want to participate on their own. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote to states Friday asking them to report back by the end of April on how they want to proceed.
The new program will provide "immediate relief for potentially millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions, like diabetes or high-blood pressure, who have been shut out of the insurance system," Sebelius told reporters on a conference call.
The administration is under pressure to turn the health care bill from a political negative into a positive ahead of the fall elections and to undercut Republican calls to repeal the law.
Poll: Most Americans Remain Against Health Care Overhaul: (CBS) The public is increasingly skeptical of the health care reform bill signed into law last week, a new CBS News poll shows.
More Americans now disapprove of the legislation, and many expect their costs to rise and the quality of their care to worsen; few expect the reforms to help them.
President Obama has continued to tour the country to stump for his new set of reforms. This week he went to Portland, Maine, where he told people it will take more than a week for the benefits of reform to become apparent.
The poll, conducted March 29 through April 1, found that so far the president's efforts to build up support for the bill appear to be ineffective.
Fifty-three percent of Americans say they disapprove of the new reforms, including 39 percent who say they disapprove strongly. In the days before the bill passed the House, 37 percent said they approved and 48 percent disapproved.
Republicans and independents remain opposed to the reforms, and support has dropped some among Democrats. Now 52 percent of Democrats approve of the new reforms, a drop from 60 percent just before the bill was passed by Congress.
And less than one in five Americans thinks the new health care reforms will help them personally - unchanged since before the vote in Congress. Thirty-six percent think the new reforms will hurt them, while 39 percent think they will have little effect.
There are also some doubts about the specific ways in which Americans expect the reforms will affect them. Just over half think the new health care reforms will increase their health care costs, and 39 percent think the quality of their health care will get worse.
*** Click on the title link for the pie chart diagrams showing the percentages.
Thousands of Veterans Missing Better Benefits: (CBS) Military Says 77,000 Wounded Veterans Eligible to Appeal Benefits Status; Less Than 1k Applied to Improve Status. Only a fraction of wounded veterans who could get better benefits have applied in the two years since Congress, acting on concerns the military was cutting costs by downplaying injuries, ordered the Pentagon to review disputed claims.
As of mid-March, only 921 vets have applied out of the 77,000 the Pentagon estimates are eligible, according to numbers provided to The Associated Press by the Physical Disability Board of Review. The panel was created in 2008 but started taking cases in January 2009.
More than 230 cases have been decided, about 60 percent in favor of improving the veteran's benefits, while an additional 119 case were dismissed as ineligible.
Advocates and even the board members themselves want the review panel to do a better job of getting the word out.
"Quite frankly, I would like to see more opportunities for us to reach out to these people," said Michael LoGrande, president of the three-member board that has a staff of 10. "But we are doing the best we can with the limited people and resources we have."
LoGrande said the board is trying to reach eligible vets mainly through veterans groups...
Economy Adds 162K Jobs in March, Most in 3 Years: (CBS) Job Growth Falls Short of Analysts Expectations; Unemployment Rate Remains Steady at 9.7 Percent. The nation's economy posted its largest job gain in three years in March, while the unemployment rate remained at 9.7 percent for the third straight month.
The increase in payrolls is the latest sign that the economic recovery is gaining momentum and healing in the job market is beginning. Still, the healing is likely to be slow, and most economists don't expect new hiring to be fast enough this year to rapidly reduce the unemployment rate...
The Labor Department said employers added 162,000 jobs in March, the most since the recession began but below analysts' expectations of 190,000. The total includes 48,000 temporary workers hired for the U.S. Census, also fewer than many economists forecast.
Private employers added 123,000 jobs, the most since May 2007...
Still, there are 15 million Americans out of work, roughly double the total before the recession began in December 2007. More Americans entered the work force last month, which prevented the increase in jobs from reducing the unemployment rate...
Manufacturers added 17,000 jobs, the third straight month of gains. Temporary help services added 40,000, while health care added 37,000. Leisure and hospitality added 22,000...
The average work week increased to 34 hours from 33.9, a positive sign. Most employers are likely to work current employees longer before they hire new workers...
Obama's Approval Rating Hits New Low: (CBS) President Obama's overall job approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 44 percent, down five points from late March, just before the health bill's passage in the House of Representatives. It's down 24 points since his all-time high last April. Forty-one percent of those polled said they disapproved of the president's performance...
When it comes to health care, the President's approval rating is even lower -- and is also a new all-time low. Only 34 percent approved, while 55 percent said they disapproved.
Americans are still worried about the economy, with 84 percent telling CBS they thought it was still in bad condition. However, even that high number represents an improvement: nine in ten thought the economy was bad during the last half of 2008 and at the beginning of 2009, when Mr. Obama assumed the Presidency.
Concern about job loss remains high; slightly more Americans now (35 percent) than in February (31 percent) were "very concerned" that someone in their household would lose a job. Nearly six in ten Americans said they were at least "somewhat concerned" about a job loss.
As has often been the case, lower-income Americans tend to be the most concerned about job loss.
This concern is reflected in yet another low approval rating -- this time for the President's handling of the economy. Just 42 percent said they approved of how President Obama is handling the economy, only one point above January's all-time low. Half of the public disapproves.
Everything You Want to Know About the iPad: (CBS) A Day Before Launch, Hopes Run High for a Snazzy Gadget That Could Refashion Tablet Computing Product Category
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