Posts Tagged ‘government’

Natural Gas Politics

From left, former Vice President Dick Cheney, Rep. John Salazar, Rep. Dianna DeGette and Sen.
Bob Casey are all trying to leave their mark on how natural gas is drilled in the U.S.
(Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica)

Four years after Vice President Dick Cheney spearheaded a massive energy bill that exempted natural gas drilling from federal clean water laws, Congress is having second thoughts about the environmental dangers posed by the burgeoning industry.

With growing evidence that the drilling can damage water supplies, Democratic leaders in Congress are circulating legislation that would repeal the extraordinary exemption and for the first time require companies to disclose all chemicals used in the key drilling process, called hydraulic fracturing.

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Military Fails to Collect From AIG for Care to Injured Contractors

Intensive care unit ward nurse Cynthia Warwick tends to a patient at the combat support hospital on the U.S military forward operating base at Camp Salerno on Nov. 25, 2008 in Khost, Afghanistan. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has failed to bill American Insurance Group and other major insurance carriers for millions of dollars in medical care provided to private contractors injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new federal report [1] (PDF).

The United States has hired hundreds of thousands of civilians to work in the two war zones. When injured on the job, their medical care is supposed to be paid for by private insurance companies, primarily AIG, under policies bought by the contractors.

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National Weed Day: marijuana legalization debate

April 20 (4/20) is the annual counterculture holiday “National Weed Day,” which is expected to spark celebrations at locations around the country, including the University of Colorado-Boulder where attendance is expected to reach more than 10,000.
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Clinton Visits Mexico as Cartel Crackdown Begins

MEXICO CITY, March 25 — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to  Mexico  on Wednesday with a stark mea culpa, saying that decades of U.S. anti-narcotics policies had been a failure and contributed to the explosion of drug violence south of the border.

Clinton’s comments appeared to be the most sweeping by a top Obama administration official accepting a U.S. role in the drug havoc in Mexico.
Mexican officials have long complained that the U.S. government pointed the finger at its neighbor while ignoring how American demand for cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines fueled the trade.

Mexican authorities also blame some of the violence on the flow of American guns, which have been used in about 90 percent of the drug killings, according to both U.S. and Mexican officials.
Clinton’s comments came at the start of a U.S. blitz to improve relations at a moment when Mexico is facing perhaps the greatest challenge to its stability in a century.
Clinton signaled that the U.S. government planned to do more.
Several U.S. lawmakers have already balked at the idea of cracking down on guns on the American side of the border, and the idea could face an uphill battle in Congress.
Seeking to heal the strain, Clinton went out of her way to accept U.S. responsibility for the problem.

“Neither interdiction [of drugs] nor reducing demand have been successful,” Clinton said, noting that “we have been pursuing these strategies for 30 years.”

One of the reasons for the escalating violence in Mexico, he said, was the effectiveness of the U.S. operations against traffickers’ transportation and financial infrastructure.

U.S. authorities, including Clinton, have lauded Calderón for dispatching 45,000 troops to battle the cartels.

SOURCE: The Washington Post

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