Well this should shake up Nashville a bit.

Even with country radio stations still giving them the cold shoulder for a comment critical of President Bush that lead singer Natalie Maines made in 2003, the Dixie Chicks' new album has debuted at #1 -- on the pop and country charts:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Despite a cool reception from country radio, the Dixie Chicks returned to No. 1 on the pop and country charts with their first album since publicly criticizing the president three years ago.

The album "Taking the Long Way" took the top spot on country albums chart and the Billboard 200 overall chart _ which are based on sales rather than radio airplay _ with 526,000 units sold in its first full week.

The saga has many Chicks fans outraged ... and some are even changing their political stripes, like the woman who wrote this letter to the newspaper in Chattanooga, TN:

Due to the local radio stations not playing the Dixie Chicks music, I went out and bought the CD and I plan to never listen to 107.9 and 100.7 or 92.3. again.

I have lived in the South all my life (49 years) and I have never been ashamed of southern folks as I am today. What happened to freedom of speech? How come some people can say whatever they want, but if someone else speaks the truth or what is in their heart they get blacklisted and their life threatened?

So, my solution is to buy CDs and not listen to the one-sided radio stations, which means I won't buy products advertised by their sponsors.

I think the Chicks won this battle. They were embarassed to be from the same state? I could kick myself everyday for voting for him.

The Dixie Chicks' latest CD has many good songs with good lyrics. I hope that you will buy it and listen and try to understand where they are coming from. It's what we need to hear for these times.

They aren't Communists. They are women, business owners and mothers with opinions. Kinda like me. Don't be scared, it will be alright.

Rebecca LeVally
rebeccalou1957@msn.com

In September of last year, President Bush declared from Jackson Square in New Orleans that this country would "do what it takes" and "stay as long as it takes" to revive the city.

But with June 1 marking the start of the 2006 hurricane season, lack of federal leadership has left New Orleans' storm defense system in shambles, leaving thousands at risk if another storm where to arrive.

That's the conclusion of "Storm Cloud over New Orleans" (pdf), new report from Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, the Institute's spin-off project to watchdog the post-Katrina rebuilding process.

Many media accounts are putting a positive spin on the city's progress in repairing levees and preparing for another storm. But the ground-breaking report by Watch editor Sue Sturgis finds a more alarming reality:

Sometimes it helps to know who's on which side of an issue:

The KKK recently held an anti-immigration rally in Russellville [AL] during which it had 20 or so people apply for membership, said Ray Larsen, imperial wizard for the National Knights of the KKK from South Bend Ind. The rally drew a crowd of more than 300 that included a mix of supporters, on-lookers, and a few dozen counter protesters.

[..]

Attacks by white supremacists and other extremists also are increasing against legal and illegal immigrants, according to a report released last month by the Anti-Defamation League.

"While most hate crimes targeting Hispanics have not been the work of the extremist groups themselves, the groups' virulent anti-Hispanic rhetoric has contributed to a broader climate of hate," the league said in a statement.

[..]

Don Black, a former KKK grand wizard who now runs the white nationalist Web site forum Stormfront, said the immigration issue has increased visits to his Web site to about 25,000 visitors a day, up by about 5,000 a day in the past couple of months.

"A lot of people are going to be attracted to our movement because of it and get a greater understanding of what we're all about because of that one issue," said Black.

The Russellville, AL website says: "Old fashioned values and pride make Russellville one of the safest places to live in the country, with crime rates well below the national average."

It's going to be a long, hot summer.

Outgoing Florida Gov. Jeb Bush uses his line-item veto power to "reward allies" and punish critics in his final budget action. He also says "...if there was some liberal Democrat in this office, it would have been a hell of a lot worse."

As evidence of contracting scandals in Iraq and beyond proliferate, a campaign is mounting for Sen. John Warner (VA) to call for a thorough investigation:

Two leading Senate Democrats are asking Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) to investigate allegations of Iraq contracting abuses highlighted by Democratic Policy Committee hearings.

"These matters fall clearly within your committee's jurisdiction, and they have a direct bearing on our troops' mission and safety in Iraq, as well as on the use of taxpayer dollars," Policy Committee Chairman Byron Dorgan (N.D.) and Minority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) wrote yesterday in a letter to Warner. "In the alternative, we would hope that you would support the creation of a special committee of the Senate - modeled after the Truman Committee during World War II - to conduct oversight hearings on Iraq contracting."

Democrats have long complained that the Republican-controlled Congress is not conducting proper oversight of the administration's prosecution of the war in Iraq and its awarding of reconstruction contracts.

Dorgan and Durbin attached an 18-page "findings" document detailing what they say are a pattern of abuses related to contracting in Iraq.

It's time for a new Truman Commission to investigate war profiteering and contracting scandals.

After numerous delays over the past few weeks, it appears the Tennessee House may finally be voting on the minimum wage bill.

It was scheduled for a vote yesterday in both the House and the Senate, but was postponed again until today.

It now appears that the House is voting on several amendments at this moment, indicating that a vote on the bill could be imminent.

More details as they emerge...

UPDATE: The minimum wage increase has passed in the Tennessee House of Representatives, 52 to 43. Still waiting for a Senate vote...

UPDATE: It appears that more amendments, in addition to removing any regulatory enforcement or oversight, have severely gutted the bill. Employers with less than 50 employees appear to be exempt (it is not clear whether this amendment was voted on or included in the bill which passed "as amended").

Another amendment appears to exempt employees who do not have a high school diploma or GED equivalent. (This sounds unconstitutional, and I predict a court challenge.)

It also appears employers are only required to pay half the difference starting in 2007, and the bill will not go into full effect until 2008, depending on the status of these amendments.

There is also a provision that the minimum wage only applies to natural born and naturalized citizens, or workers here on valid work visas. It's hard to argue with that, except the flip side is that they are acknowledging that undocumented workers are a source of cheap labor, and they are still looking the other way to protect it, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. It's illegal to hire illegals, so this provision would seem to be redundant. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Say no more.

So the minimum wage is now effectively voluntary (the only recourse for employees being cheated is to sue their employers, and most will not have the means) and the bill exempts pretty much everyone who might have been covered, including college students, people working for tips, those without a high school diploma, and those working for employers with less than 50 employees.

UPDATE: It appears that the Senate has substituted the House bill as amended, indicated that there might be a vote forthcoming in the Senate this evening.

UPDATE The Tennessee Senate has killed the minimum wage hike. So I reckon that's that.

Yesterday's White House press conference came 30 minutes after a jury convicted Enron heads "Kenny Boy" Lay and Peter Skilling on multiple counts in one of the biggest corporate fraud cases in U.S. history (WorldCom technically remains the largest). And how many times did the assembled press gaggle ask press secretary Tony Snow about the historic trial?

Twice. And one was a follow-up question:

Q Tony, the President often mentions corporate crime in his speeches, as recently as yesterday. We've had the Enron convictions now over the noon hour. Any comment from the White House?

MR. SNOW: Well, any comment is that the Justice Department -- you know, we congratulate the Justice Department on successfully concluding a highly complex conviction, a set of legal proceedings that led to the convictions today in the Enron case. I mean, the administration has been pretty clear there is no tolerance for corporate corruption. And furthermore, the Justice Department has been going aggressively after those who are involved in corporate corruption.

[...]

Q Can I ask one more on Enron? Does the administration favor compensating the victims now in some way?

MR. SNOW: I honestly don't know. I mean, I don't know.

And that was it. Of course, today the papers are overflowing with stories -- some quite good -- anaylzing why the government's legal strategy was so good, what the trial missed, and so on.

But the media's silence yesterday points to another sordid piece of the saga: the media's complicity in allowing the White House to disentangle itself from Enron. As the house of cards tumbled in 2001, the Bush team went from embracing "Kenny Boy" to shrugging Mr. Lay off as a mere "supporter" that Bush happened to meet in 1994 (and just happened to become Bush's "#1 career patron," donating $140,000 for his state and federal campaigns).

The media (mostly newspapers) would throw in a story about Bush and Enron here and there, but most (especially TV networks) let the White House spin of "Ken who?" slide.

Journalists are reluctant to call anything a lie. This was only magnified in the wake of 9/11, when the media apparently decided its role was to genuflect to Bush's every pronouncement and let things pass for the sake of national unity.

But if there was ever a time to say a president wasn't being honest, this was it. For example, Robert Parry outlines three specific ways that Bush and the White House were still very much connected to Ken Lay and Enron as the scandal unfolded:

*** Bush personally joined the fight against imposing caps on the soaring price of electricity in California at a time when Enron was artificially driving up the price of electricity by manipulating supply. Bush’s resistance to price caps bought Enron extra time to gouge hundreds of millions of dollars from California’s consumers.

*** Bush granted Lay broad influence over the development of the administration’s energy policies, including the choice of key regulators to oversee Enron’s businesses. The chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was replaced in 2001 after he began to delve into Enron’s complex derivative-financing schemes.

*** Bush had his NSC staff organize that administration-wide task force to pressure India to accommodate Enron’s interests in selling the Dabhol generating plant for as much as $2.3 billion.

All these dirty dealings received passing notice in the press, but were grossly under-reported. More importantly, they were never used to challenge the White House attempt to wash their hands of Lay and the Enron scandal.

Business ethics teachers across the country are using the Enron verdict as a critical object lesson in their teaching. I can only hope journalism schools are doing the same.

With Washington apparently uninterested in acting on issues from good-paying jobs to environmental protection, the burden is increasingly falling to the states. What's interesting is how leaders even in "red" states are embracing progressive positions in response to public sentiment (and organized pressure).

Over at Huffington Post, Sierra Club director Carl Pope shares this example about Georgia is challenging the pollution lobby and pushing for stronger health standards:

When the Bush administration successfully undid President Clinton's mercury-control regulations, and put their own "delay, dilute, and pollute" plan in place, Georgia looked like one of the last places where we would see cleanup. After all, [local power company] Southern had spent a fortune and ten years trying to protect itself from having to clean up its huge coal-fired turbines.

But this year, as the public in Georgia began to wake up the threat of mercury, something surprising happened. Governor Perdue announced that he was considering overriding the weak Bush plan and putting his own in place. Then, this week, something amazing happened. Georgia announced that, yes, it was going to stand up to both Bush and Southern and require a very ambitious cleanup plan:

"Eighty (percent) to 90 percent of the time we go with the federal rule," said Ron Methier, the air branch chief of the state Environmental Protection Division. "But where we see an environmental need to go further ... we do. Georgia is fairly unique in that we have a lot more mercury problems than most states."

The Atlanta Journal Constitution weighed in with strong support, anticipating, I suspect, that Southern will not go gently in that clean night:

"Georgia doesn't always get high marks for protecting the environment and human health. But state officials can make top grades on this issue by adopting tougher mercury rules that will help safeguard some of our most vulnerable residents."

Cades Cove Wild Turkeys

(Click to open in full browser window)

Today, the North Carolina House voted 68 to 39 to pass a $1 increase in the state's minimum wage. Also today, the state Senate also voted in favor of an identical increase in their 2006-2007 budget, although the measure was tied to cuts in sales taxes and income taxes for the wealthiest 2% of North Carolinians.

The campaign, led by North Carolinians for Fair Wages, isn't over. The House will do another reading of the bill next week, and the Senate will decide whether it will vote for the minimum wage bill on its own, or will include it in a budget package that the House and Senate must agree on later.

That leaves time for lobbying, as the NC Justice Center reports:

Small business associations were working hard to defeat the bill or at least to get tax cuts in return – and we may still see future bills which do this. But Many House members spoke in strong favor of the bill and the immediate need of low-wage workers to earn a better wage.

So much could still happen. But today's events send a strong signal that North Carolina may well join 20 other states in filling the vacuum of federal inaction, and give the state's lowest-paid workers a boost.

As many opponents of state run lotteries warned, revenue for North Carolina's lottery that are supposed to fund education may end up being used to offset general operating costs and reduce taxes:

Mecklenburg taxpayers weren't supposed to win the lottery this way.

But the three most powerful men in state politics said Wednesday that's what County Manager Harry Jones proposed when he suggested a property tax cut funded by gaming proceeds.

Gov. Mike Easley, House Speaker Jim Black and Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, all Democrats, swiftly condemned the plan, even though it is legal under legislation they helped pass.

The lottery, supporters have said, was meant to create more dollars for education.

But Easley and others say Jones' plan fulfills the fears of skeptics who said lottery money would just replace dollars already devoted to schools. Before passing the lottery by whisker-thin margins in both the House and Senate last year, lottery proponents reassured opponents that such a diversion wouldn't happen.

Now, they say, Jones' plan could prompt them to take action. "We need to redistribute the funds going to Mecklenburg County. They have more than they need," Basnight said.

Jones proposed a 2006-07 county budget Tuesday that would use $9 million in expected lottery money to pay debt on school construction. Jones said that allowed him to free up county money for a tax cut.

Several other states have drawn criticism for spending lottery money on costs the public would have picked up anyway.

In Virginia, for instance, 60 percent of lottery profits are used to pay for routine operating costs of the state's public schools. In South Carolina, the legislature required lottery profits to support education and said lottery money couldn't replace existing spending. Most of the profits have gone to new programs. But at least some has been spent to assist existing classrooms and to purchase school buses.

There are similar issues in Florida. This was also a concern when Tennessee debated its lottery, but the laws are written and the program is structured to prevent it, so far. Proceeds from the Tennessee lottery provide scholarships only, and are not used for any other K-12 programs, although I believe there was talk of using lottery revenues to fund a new Pre-K program. Georgia's lottery program is similar.

But even in states such as Tennessee and Georgia where the programs are structured to enhance education as opposed to replacing taxpayer funding of education, there are concerns regarding how the funds are distributed. A recent study in Tennessee showed that a disproportinate number of wealthier families were taking advantage of the scholarships, leaving many disadvantaged families behind. Some say this is a tax on the poor for the benefit of the wealthy, prompting conservative foes of public education and gambling and other sinful pursuits to call for replacing the scholarship program with a voucher program.

Regardless of such unanticipated problems, Tennessee's lottery scholarship program has sent thousands of kids to college who otherwise might not have gone. And that seems like a Good Thing. Every state should be careful, though, to make sure lottery funds aren't used to offset taxpayer funding of public education, and to make sure the distribution of funds is fair and equitable.

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed the rash of anti-sex toy legislation sweeping the South? South Carolina is the latest to consider a ban, and legislation has already been passed in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas. Similar legislation was proposed in Tennessee earlier this year, but it was quickly withdrawn. Apparently nobody in Nashville wanted to touch the sex toy issue.

I had no idea this was such a big problem in the South. I guess we've solved all the problems of poverty, equality, jobs, and health care, and sex toys are now our number one priority.

But seriously, there must be a genesis for all of this somewhere. A cursory search doesn't turn up any sort of organized anti-sex toy effort, but one would assume that the Dr. Dobsons of the world are somehow behind it. Sponsors don't seem to want to talk much about their bills or why it's such an important issue.

Perhaps someone in the know can fill us in on who is hanging around state capitol lobbies demonstrating the dangers of sex toys to our legislators?

This may be old news for some of you, but I just stumbled across this story the other day:

JACKSON, Miss. - Mississippi, where violence in the 1960s came to epitomize the struggle for racial equality, could become a pioneer in offering civil rights history lessons from kindergarten through high school.

Gov. Haley Barbour announced Monday [March 20, 2006] he had signed a bill that authorizes the state's public school districts to make civil rights and human rights a part of the curriculum in all grades.

Under the bill, which becomes law July 1, a commission would be appointed to help districts develop the curriculum and find resources to offset the costs. Implementation would be left to individual school districts.

Susan Glisson, executive director of the Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi, spearheaded the bill.

The article says that one of the goals is to teach more about "contributions made by grass-roots people, some of whose names we may never know."

I have nothing to add, except to say this sounds like a Good Thing.

The Tennessee legislature will vote today on whether to boost the minimum wage, joining several others states (including North Carolina) seeking to shore up the federal wage floor which languished nationally since 1997.

Powerful business interests are, predictably, claiming the heavens will fall if family wage earners bring another $1 home an hour. As for Tennesee's Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen, he's waffled -- at first echoing the business line that small boost would drive business to other states. He now says he supports higher wages.

As my blogger-in-arms R. Neal persuasively argues in a recent Knoxville News-Sentinel editorial, Bredesen needn't be flip-flopping -- a wage boost makes both good political and economic sense:

If Bredesen truly supports higher wages, this would seem like a good opportunity to join 18 other states in setting a higher minimum wage.

Politically, he's ten feet tall and bulletproof. Until recently, he wasn't facing any serious opposition for re-election, and a state minimum wage would appease his more liberal and progressive Democratic base, which isn't too happy with him right now because of the TennCare cuts.

As for a higher minimum wage sending jobs to other states, do we really need more minimum wage, no-benefit, low-skill call-center jobs in Tennessee?

Besides, who's going to turn down $200 million in incentives, such as the package Nissan received?

Furthermore, Florida's higher minimum wage -- which was approved by more than 70 percent of voters and signed into law by Republican Gov. Jeb Bush -- doesn't seem to have hurt Florida's economy. The last time we were down there, we saw "help wanted" signs everywhere. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, December 2005 unemployment in Florida was 3.4 percent. It was 5.4 percent in Tennessee.

Keeping the standard federal minimum wage doesn't seem to be helping South Carolina, either, where unemployment was 7.2 percent, or Mississippi, where it was 8.8 percent.

It should also be noted that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median hourly wage in Tennessee is already $12.59, more than twice the federal minimum wage. The average hourly wage is $15.74, more than three times the federal minimum.

According to an Economic Policy Institute report on the effects of higher minimum wages on small businesses, "the number of small business establishments grew twice as quickly in states with higher minimum wages (3.1 percent vs. 1.6 percent)," and "employment grew 1.5 percent more quickly in high minimum wage states."

Read the whole piece here.

In the wake of the immigrant rights protests that convulsed the nation -- and the South -- over the last two months, the U.S. Senate is now taking up the issue. The Center for Community Change in D.C. offers an overview of what's at stake:

America's immigration system can be fixed in a morally responsible way that does not compromise the values we all cherish. It is time for common sense solutions.

A few months ago, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would require the government to round up and deport millions of men, women and children. It would have also made it a crime to provide assistance to undocumented immigrants and would deny them basic civil rights and workplace protections. Legislation like this is bad for immigrants and is bad for all Americans.

This week, Senators have been debating a bill that would not require the deportation of all undocumented immigrants – just millions of them. Like the House bill, the Senate legislation would split millions of families apart. The Senate legislation would overturn Supreme Court decisions that prohibit the indefinite detention of immigrants, would facilitate the deportation of immigrants – even asylum seekers – without judicial due process, and treat minor offenses differently for immigrants than for non-immigrants.

As an alternative, the Center is asking people to write their Congressional representative and only support legislation with these features:

1) Respects our values of fairness, hard work and family

2) Provides a clear path to earned citizenship for undocumented people now living in the United States

3) Fixes America's broken immigration system to make it safe, legal, and orderly

4) Unites families which have been torn apart by decades of bad immigration decisions

5) Ensures strong workplace and civil rights protections, including due process for everyone

6) Includes the DREAM Act, which would enable thousands of undocumented immigrant youth to pursue avenues of higher education and the American dream

As a nod to Chris, the South's Biggest Idol Fan, there are a couple of interesting sideshows to tonight's part one of the big two-part finale when the world finds out whether Hollywood Pretty and Polished trumps Alabama Grits and Soul, or if voter turnout will exceed turnout in the last presidential election.

(Disclaimer: I have not been following Idol, and only watched my first episode last week. I must say, though, that I was thoroughly impressed by the three finalists, but I don't think that's what the show is really about. At any rate, I'm rooting for Taylor Hicks.)

It seems that American Idol is the destroyer of all who dare challenge in their time slot. Tonight's victim is the Academy of Country Music Awards. The ACM says that after this year, they are throwing in the towel:

The Red Sox won a World Series. Susan Lucci won an Emmy. Vandy knocked off the Vols in football.

But not even here in Sin City will anyone gamble on the Academy of Country Music Awards beating part one of a two-part "American Idol" finale in national TV ratings, especially after "Idol" trounced the country awards three years in a row.

The ACMs are throwing in the towel.

The Academy will work with CBS to air the awards show in late April next year to get it away from any "Idol" season ender, ACM board president Rod Essig told The Tennessean this past weekend.

"We will change that," vowed Essig, a powerful Music Row booking agent who counts Tim McGraw and Faith Hill among his clients.

"American Idol" has more than doubled the country music show's average audience in each of the last three years. In 2005, the "Idol" episode wasn't even a finale, but rather still had three contestants left; that show still clobbered the ACMs, drawing 19.4 million viewers nationwide to the ACMs' 8.3 million.

That's what us folks down here in the South would call a serious ass-whuppin', if you will pardon my French.

But one must wonder if the ACM is giving Idol too much credit and not taking enough of the blame themselves. First of all, Las Vegas? You're having a Country Music hoedown in Las Vegas? Las Vegas Nevada? Memo to the ACM:

NASHVILLE TENNESSEE IS THE WORLD CAPITAL OF COUNTRY MUSIC AND THE RYMAN AUDITORIUM IS THE HOLY SHRINE OF ALL THINGS COUNTRY!

Furthermore, what's up with some of these acts? Big and Rich? Please. You guys call this a Country Music awards show? What's more, the ACM dissed a Real Country Singer, who therefore decided not to show up for the awards:

Lee Ann Womack, nominated for three Academy of Country Music awards, won't be here tonight after her camp and the ACM clashed over whether she'd perform on the show.

The show's TV committee at first didn't offer Lee Ann a performance spot and then offered her a 90-second acoustic slot, her manager, Erv Woolsey, told me. By that time, Lee Ann had made other plans.

"They invited her last minute at the last meeting," he said.

"It would have been embarrassing for her to sit in the crowd with three nominations and not perform."

Erv said there are no hard feelings and Lee Ann's not angry.

But, he added, "If performers are not linked to nominations, why not just have a variety show?"

It sounds like that's exactly what they are putting on. In Las Vegas, no less. With Big and Rich. And worse, they went and dissed the Dixie Chicks, too!

Maybe all of this is why viewers will be tuning in to Idol. And Idol fans can gloat over the fact that the ACM awards will boast performances by a couple of Idol "hand-me-downs" (and I mean that in the nicest way), previous winners Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood. Perhaps Idol finalist Katherine McPhee can perform a Dixie Chicks number tonight, and the circle of music industry life will be complete.

OK, then.

A textile mill company is shutting down operations in South Carolina and Alabama, and the job losses will be significant:

Avondale Mills expects to put about 1,900 South Carolinians out of work as it closes all its fabric and yarn mills in Graniteville, the cradle of South Carolina’s textile industry.

Altogether, the company will eliminate 4,000 jobs from Alabama to Graniteville as it attempts to sell its business, renegotiate its debts or shut down through liquidation, Avondale spokesman Stephen Felker Jr. said Monday.

The company says increasing imports and declining sales over the past decade contributed to the decision, but the tipping point was a train wreck and a chlorine spill that killed nine people and injured hundreds:

The Jan. 6, 2005, crash caused a leak of chlorine gas from derailed tankers, killing nine people, injuring 250 and forcing the evacuation of 5,400 people.

The company’s mills were shut down for weeks. Since then, Felker said, he and other company officials have tried to get Graniteville’s operations back on solid footing.

“We realized it just wasn’t going to be possible,” he said.

The tragic train wreck notwithstanding, increasing global competition probably made these jobs obsolete years ago. Although some Southern states are seeing a resurgence in manufacturing jobs, they come at a high cost to taxpayers for incentives. After moving from an agriculture-based economy into the Industrial Age, the South tried desperately to hold on to those jobs while the Information Age passed us by on its way to India, when we should have been preparing for the... what's next age?

For the second year in a row, the State of Florida declared a 12 day sales tax exemption on supplies and other merchandise used for hurricane preparation. The tax holiday started Sunday, and continues through June 1st, the start of hurricane season.

Tax exempt items include:

• Flashlights and portable, self-powered light sources – $20 or less


• Portable radios, two-way radios and weather-band radios – for $50 or less


• Flexible waterproof sheeting (tarps) – $50 or less


• Gas or diesel fuel containers – $25 or less


• Batteries – $30 or less


• Non-electrical food storage coolers – $30 or less


• Portable generators – $1,000 or less


• Carbon monoxide detectors – $75 or less


• Storm shutter devices – $200 or less


• Cell phone batteries – $60 or less

In addition to the 7.5% sales tax savings, Home Depot stores are offering an additional 7.5% discount and are also offering free hurricane preparation workshops.

Whether shoppers are taking advantage seems to depend on how far inland they are. According to the Orlando Sentinel, Central Florida merchants say sales are sluggish, while the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports brisk sales in Broward County, which was hit hard by Wilma last year.

In other hurricane season related news, state emergency officials are concerned that beefed up FEMA preparations will cause shortages and competition between state and federal agencies for supplies, and restructuring within FEMA is raising questions about who's in charge.

Meanwhile, New Orleans and FEMA officials will be testing an updated evacuation plan over the next two days. According to the report, the test will consist of 80 people riding a bus to the convention center and train station and being tagged for tracking. Maybe it's just me, and maybe there's more to it, but this doesn't seem to inspire much confidence.

UPDATE: Unbelievable.

Following the deaths of five more miners in Kentucky on Saturday, Jordan Barab at Confined Space issues this call to Washington:

I'm not sure if anyone is reading this who matters, but after the deaths yesterday of five more coal miners, bringing this year's total to 31, it is clear to me that Richard Stickler's name should be withdrawn as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health.

I'm not saying that Richard Stickler is a bad person, or even that he doesn't care about the health and safety of mineworkers. In fact, let's assume that Richard Stickler is sincerely interested in improving the safety of American miners and has every intention of turning MSHA around. The fact is that he is clearly unsuited for this job, and I'm not basing this only on the fact that Stickler is yet another in a long line of Bush administration industry foxes that have been appointed to guard this country's henhouses.

The job of leading one of this country's workplace safety and health agencies is much more than just having good intentions and some safety experience in the industry. Moving the health and safety agenda forward requires fighting tough political battles on several fronts. The most obvious is the battle against those companies who seek to shortcut safety in order to maximize production, particularly when coal prices are at their highest level in 20 years.

It took this country over 200 years to figure out that leaving workplace safety in the hands of employers did not ensure safe working conditions. This lesson was ignored when George Bush came into office, but it's been painfully re-emphasized since January. Even with the best of intentions, the person who heads MSHA needs a healthy sense of skepticism, a clear sense of right and wrong and strong character in order to deal with what former mine safety official Tony Oppegard calls "the greed or indifference of mine operators." Most of all he or she needs to be independent of the companies that MSHA regulates.

Issuing unpopular and costly regulations and enforcing the law against the good buddies with whom you've spent your entire career is not easy even for the strongest, most principled individuals. Richard Stickler has given us no reason to believe that he has the strength, independence or character to do the job.

Make sure and read the entire piece.

Another day, more scandal. It's hard to keep up with all the ethically-challenged behavior, but here are some highlights:

* In NORTH CAROLINA, the AP reports on the latest involving House Speaker Jim Black (D) and his connections to the state lottery: "A former political director for House Speaker Jim Black is one of three former lottery company workers who have been charged with violating state lobbying laws, according to court documents released Monday."

* In FLORIDA, the woes of senate candidate Katherine Harris continue to grow:

Rep. Katherine Harris wound up embroiled in a firestorm last month after acknowledging she had a $2,800 meal with a defense contractor convicted of bribery.

Now it turns out that wasn't her first fancy meal with corrupt contractor Mitchell Wade. Harris had dined with Wade previously at the same tony Washington restaurant and failed to pay her share as required by congressional rules, her campaign acknowledged Friday.

(Hat tip to Florida Politics, which labels this news with the headline, "A girl's gotta eat.")

* And then there's LOUISIANA Rep. William Jefferson (D), who is getting thumped in the media today for taking a couple hundred thousand dollars in bribes from a Kentucky businessman and stashing $90,000 of it in his freezer. No fancy Cayman Islands money-laundering here -- he just popped it in next to the ice cream! Which, as Wonkette points out, was in line with the grassroots flavor of the entire operation:

The FBI has a video of Jefferson himself meeting an unidentified witness outside an Arlington hotel (we hope this one) and, you know, placing a suitcase containing $100k into his waiting 1990 Lincoln Town Car. That’s why you’re in the lesser house, guys — a Senator would never pick up his own laundered money.

Of course, corruption and scandals are about more than the stories of individual transgressors -- fascinating as they may be -- it's systemic. What are the policy solutions that can help make corruption easier to expose (disclosure) and less necessary (campaign finance reform)? Without such lessons, focusing on scandals just breads cynicism.

UPDATE: If you're in North Carolina and are wanting to figure out what to do about the "corruption epidemic," come to a Crucial Conversations luncheon with NC Policy Watch and the NC Coalition for Lobbying Reform: "Lobbying and Ethics Reform: Taking steps to restore public confidence." Wednesday, May 24, 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m., Exploris Museum, 201 E. Hargett St., Raleigh, NC 27601.

The war over who will run the Southern courts continues to escalate. The latest flashpoint: President Bush's recent pick of Michael Wallace, Sen. Trent Lott's counsel in the 1999 Clinton impeachment trial, to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- a nominee the national ABA unanimously found to be "not qualified" for the job.

Jaribu Hill, president of the Magnolia Bar Association and a leading Mississippi human rights activist, lays out what's at stake in a recent editorial:

[A]s of October 2004, the president had a number of opportunities to appoint African-Americans to the federal judiciary in Southern states. In Louisiana, with a black population of 33 percent, Mr. Bush appointed six federal judges; not one was African-American. In South Carolina, which has a black population of 30 percent, the president appointed three judges; not one was African-American. The same message in Georgia: three appointments, none of them African-American.

Under this president, as of 2004, all seven of the judges appointed in Alabama were white. We agree with retired 6th U.S. Circuit Judge Nathaniel R. Jones of Ohio: This is "obscene" and "scandalous." [...]

Of the 17 judges who currently sit on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, only one is African-American. What is even more disgraceful is that Carl Stewart, appointed in 1994, is only the second African-American ever to sit on that court.

Wallace in particular is a major setback, Hill argues:

Aside from Mr. Bush's utter contempt to the notion of diversity, Wallace is the wrong person to sit on the 5th Circuit. In the 1980s, as an aide to then-Congressman Trent Lott, Wallace fought to protect the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University, a segregationist institution where interracial dating was banned until 2000. As a member of the board of the Legal Services Corporation, which was established to provide legal services for the poor, Wallace voted to hire outside attorneys to lobby Congress to dismantle the agency.

Finally, as a policy adviser and lawyer, Wallace has consistently fought to destroy the Voting Rights Act which, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, is generally considered "the most successful piece of civil rights legislation ever adopted by the United States Congress."

Recently, Wallace argued in the U.S. Supreme Court that Mississippi's only African-American majority congressional district should be eliminated and that Mississippians should elect their congressional members statewide, which would ensure that Mississippi's delegation would be an all-white one. Even the conservative Supreme Court rejected his position.

The latest figures are out about the staggering number of people the United States puts behind bars -- a figure that has us jockeying with countries like Russia for the highest incarceration rate of any "developed" country:

Prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each week for a year, putting almost 2.2 million people, or one in every 136 U.S. residents, behind bars by last summer. [...]

Of particular note was the gain of 33,539 inmates in jails, the largest increase since 1997, researcher Allen J. Beck said. That was a 4.7 percent growth rate, compared with a 1.6 percent increase in people held in state and federal prisons. [...]

"The jail population is increasingly unconvicted," Beck said. "Judges are perhaps more reluctant to release people pretrial."

The report by the Justice Department agency found that 62 percent of people in jails have not been convicted, meaning many of them are awaiting trial.

As has historically been the case, the South leads the way:

The states with the highest rates were Louisiana and Georgia, with more than 1 percent of their populations in prison or jail. Rounding out the top five were Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma.

The states with the lowest rates were Maine, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Vermont and New Hampshire.

It's also a race issue, raising questions about inequities that few politicians dare touch:

The racial makeup of inmates changed little in recent years, Beck said. In the 25-29 age group, an estimated 11.9 percent of black men were in prison or jails, compared with 3.9 percent of Hispanic males and 1.7 percent of white males.

Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, which supports alternatives to prison, said the incarceration rates for blacks were troubling.

"It's not a sign of a healthy community when we've come to use incarceration at such rates," he said.

Mauer also criticized sentencing guidelines, which he said remove judges' discretion, and said arrests for drug and parole violations swell prisons.

"If we want to see the prison population reduced, we need a much more comprehensive approach to sentencing and drug policy," he said.

Over at Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, the Institute's special Katrina project, we have a thoughtful look at the race dynamics of yesterday's New Orleans elections by scholar Lance Hill. Hill charts mayor Ray Nagin's rise from a candidate considered to be a sure loser to victor:

I was surprised too. But there were hints along the way.

Back in September it was hard to find an African American who had anything good to say about New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. In early September, New Orleans Rap artist Juvenile penned the song "Get Ya Hustle On" which was released as an album and video in February of 2006. The song castigated Nagin as someone that black people couldn’t trust and his video featured three figures wandering the devastated Ninth Ward wearing paper masks of George Busch, Dick Cheney, and Ray Nagin. Three peas in a pod as far as Juvenile was concerned.

Juvenile was someone to listen to if you wanted a gauge black opinion—at least poor dispossessed blacks. In 2002 Tulane professor Joel Devine published a study of public opinion of Central City neighborhood of New Orleans, an overwhelmingly black and poor neighborhood bordering the most affluent sections of Uptown New Orleans.
Devine’s poll asked residents in nine of the eleven census tracts who they regarded as the most important leaders in their community for "getting things done." Respondents were offered choices including the current Mayor, Marc Morial, and other black elected officials as well as home-grown Rap entertainers, including Juvenile.

Remarkably, Juvenile trounced the opposition. While only 11% of the respondents considered Morial "very important, nearly three times as many (32%) ranked Juvenile as the most effective leader. Indeed, Juvenile emerged as the most popular leader in the community, followed by rappers Master P and Jubilee. Based on his popularity, it would be reasonable to conclude that Juvenile was only giving voice to the attitudes among his supporters and fans who hesitated to express them publicly.

Things began to change in the following months. On April 1, 2006, I attended the rally and March across the Mississippi River Bridge protesting the racist the
Gretna police blockade of black refugees during the Katrina flooding. As a historian of civil rights movement, I can say that the 5,000 people who crossed the bridge were taking part in the largest protest in New Orleans history.

That fact slipped past the local media but it was still a harbinger of the growing anger and frustration that African Americans were feeling. Something else was obvious at the rally and march.For the first time I noticed public support for Nagin.

Read the rest here. Lance is a long-time observer of the New Orleans political scene, and his take is very illuminating.

For two other takes, pre-election, CC Campbell Rock (New Orleans native, now at SF Bay View) and Jordan Flaherty (in New Orleans, for Left Turn) offer important observations about the challenges a new NOLA mayor faces.

One of the great obscenities of the government response post-Katrina is that, while officials failed to provide food, evacuation buses, and other assistance, they somehow found the ability to deploy massive security detachments.

The feds proved especially adept at getting money to North Carolina-based corporate security outfit Blackwater International. Jeremy Scahill has an excellent piece in the lastest issue of The Nation detailing how Blackwater made out:

According to Blackwater's government contracts, obtained by The Nation, from September 8 to September 30, 2005, Blackwater was paid $409,000 for providing fourteen guards and four vehicles to "protect the temporary morgue in Baton Rouge, LA." That contract kicked off a hurricane boon for Blackwater. From September to the end of December 2005, the government paid Blackwater at least $33.3 million--well surpassing the amount of Blackwater's contract to guard Ambassador Paul Bremer when he was head of the US occupation of Iraq. And the company has likely raked in much more in the hurricane zone.

Perhaps most surprising, the days of disaster profiteering for Blackwater and other security outfits -- while critical services go unfixed -- don't appear to be stopping anytime soon. When confronted with the company's lavish contracts last fall, Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner said the money will keep flowing:

Skinner admitted that "the ongoing cost of the contract...is clearly very high" and then quietly dropped a bombshell: "It is expected that FEMA will require guard services on a relatively long-term basis (two to five years)." Two to five years? Already most of the 330 federally contracted private guards in the hurricane zone are working for Blackwater, according to the Washington Post. Another firm, DynCorp, is also trying to grab more of the action, offering its security services for less than $700 per day per guard.

Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky is not amused:

Schakowsky charges that the Administration has written Blackwater "blank checks," saying that the internal DHS review of the company "leaves us with more questions than answers." She points out that the report fails to address the major issues stemming from deploying private forces on US streets. In her testimony this past September, Schakowsky said, "Ask any American if they want thugs from a private, for-profit company with no official law-enforcement training roaming the streets of their neighborhoods. The answer will be a resounding NO."

Read the whole piece here, it's good.

Drivers are pretty laid back in Atlanta and Nashville, according to this study. But Miami? Not so much:

Stressed Miami drivers speed, tailgate and cut off other drivers so frequently that the city earned the title of worst road rage in a survey released Tuesday.

AutoVantage, an automobile membership club offering travel services and roadside assistance, also listed Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles and Boston among the top five cities for rude driving.

Minneapolis, Nashville, St. Louis, Seattle and Atlanta were rated as the cities with the most courteous drivers, who were less likely to change lanes without signaling or swear at other motorists.

This is good news for Southern travelers, who in past research have been found (along with drivers out West) to be disproportionately inclined towards highway hostility.

Something to think about: two of the five most-aggressive cities (Miami and Phoenix) are in states that have among the highest gun-ownership rates. In these locations, if the other driver starts reaching in the glove box and rolling down the window, I'd suggest backing off.

See the full rankings of all 20 cities that the study looked at below:

You know desperation is setting in when politicians start invoking "baby Jesus" to justify bribes:

"Even baby Jesus accepted gifts and I don't believe it corrupted him."

- North Carolina State Rep. Drew Saunders, D-Mecklenburg, arguing against a state legislative ethics bill that requires lawmakers to report gifts of $200 or more.

(Hat tip to Think Progress)

Whatever one might say about today's Congressional leadership, every once in a while they do show an uncanny ability to stick their fingers in the air and figure out which way the winds of public sentiment are gusting.

Yesterday, the House took up several measures to re-consider billions in taxpayer give-aways to Big Energy. And the results were a modest but important rollback of the staggering sums the public shovels to oil and gas interests each year. The NY Times reports:

* On a vote of 252-165 and "over the objections of Republican leaders," the House repealed $7 billion in give-aways for oil and gas companies drilling in publicly owned waters.

* "In a separate defeat for energy companies, the House voted 279 to 141 to reject a provision that would lift a 25-year ban on oil drilling in coastal areas outside the western Gulf of Mexico."

How did Big Energy get the big windfall for public drilling in the first place?

It started, the Times says, with some 1,000 leases the Clinton Administration signed in 1998 and 1999. To speed up drilling, Clinton let the companies skip paying their standard 12-16 royalties in public waters.

But the idea was that this major break would stop once oil prices started to rise. Under Bush, that didn't happen:

For reasons that are now being investigated, the Interior Department omitted the restriction in 1,000 leases it signed in 1998 and 1999. In addition, the Bush administration offered extra "royalty relief" to companies that drilled very deep wells in very shallow water.

The lost royalties are just beginning to hit the government's bottom line.

The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated in March that the royalty incentives could cost the government $20 billion over the next 25 years.

And that doesn't include another $80 billion energy companies hope to extract from public coffers through lawsuits demanding "royalty relief."

How long will this new-found, bi-partisan courage to stand up to Big Energy last -- and how far will it go?

Mother's Day Brunch

We had an interesting situation play out this week in the Tennessee General Assembly. Gov. Bredesen proposed a "Cover Tennessee" program that would provide bare-bones health insurance for some of Tennessee's 600,000 uninsured, including nearly 200,000 who lost coverage when TennCare (the state's Medicaid program) was scaled back.

GOP State Sen. Jim Bryson, who also happens to be the only credible GOP challenger for Democratic Gov. Bredesen's reelection bid, introduced an amendment that would shift all of the risk to the insurance companies. Bryson, who is running on a platform of "protecting our values and our pocketbooks," said the amendment would protect taxpayers from more out of control state spending on health care. In fact, it would have effectively killed the program, because no insurance company would bid to write these policies without the state subsidy.

Bryson also tried to slip in a "tort reform" amendment that, in addition to being totally irrelevant, would limit medical malpractice claims to $250,000, claiming this would somehow make health care more accessible to more Tennesseans.

Bryson, who said last week that he is a gifted leader, got handed his... well, both of his amendments were defeated in the Republican controlled Senate, much to the consternation of the GOP leadership. Two Republicans crossed over and three abstained on the "tort reform" amendment, apparently not wanting to be associated with a last-minute political stunt by the presumptive GOP nominee for governor. It was a humiliating defeat and an embarrassing failure of leadership for Bryson.

The bill passed in the Senate 31-1 and sailed through the House late yesterday evening with wide bi-partisan support. It goes back to the Senate for a vote on some minor House changes, and is expected to be signed by the Governor in a matter of days. The right-wing pundits and bloviators, who were quite smug and confident they had killed the program, are curiously silent on it today.

Could this be a sign that people are tired of the right-wing rhetoric and failed right-wing conservative policies, and that their representatives in state government are finally getting the message? Let's hope so. This could be a very encouraging development for progressive politics in the South.

You may recall the report about exploding FEMA trailers from a while back. Now it appears there is a new FEMA trailer threat: toxic formaldehyde fumes. Mr. President, perhaps these are the WMD you were looking for?

By way of the People Get Ready blog ("make levees, not war"), here's an article from last week about two subsidiaries of a large New Orleans tourism company filing for bankruptcy. According to the article, more tourism bankruptcies are expected. In somewhat related news, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has placed most of New Orleans on a list of the "11 most endangered historic sites in the U.S."

The St. Petersburg Times gets down to the real issues regarding Katherine Harris' campaign for U.S. Senate.

When I first saw this story, I thought it was an attempt by FEMA to lay blame at the feet of residents for FEMA's past failures and their own unpreparedness in advance of the upcoming hurricane season.

But then I saw it was from a survey conducted by the NOAA National Hurricane Center and director Max Mayfield, whose credibility is pretty much beyond reproach and whose only motivation is to save lives. (You may recall there was video of him warning President "No one could have anticipated" Bush that Katrina's storm surge would top the levees.)

Here are some findings from the survey:

• 56% don’t feel vulnerable to a hurricane or related tornado or flooding,


• 60% have no family disaster plan,


• 68% have no hurricane survival kit,


• 83% have taken no steps to make their homes stronger,


• 13% said they might not or would not evacuate even if ordered to leave — leaving tens of thousands of residents at grave risk.

NOAA's Mayfield, along with the National Emergency Management Association, the Salvation Army and the Florida State Emergency Response Team have launched the National Hurricane Survival Initiative to raise awareness and educate coastal residents.

Commenting on the survey results, Mayfield says:

"Katrina was quite a national wake-up call, yet it seems too many residents are still asleep," said Max Mayfield, National Hurricane Center Director. "We’re facing another active and potentially deadly season in just a few weeks. It’s vital that residents of hurricane-vulnerable states take the threat seriously and get prepared."

Another finding was that one in three of the 13% of residents responsible for an elderly or disabled person have no disaster plan in place for them.

The survey also found that "68% did not know storm surge represents the greatest potential for loss of life from a hurricane – even after witnessing the destructive force of storm surge during Hurricane Katrina," and that as many as one-third do not have adequate insurance. You can read more findings from the survey here.

Their message is, be prepared, and don't depend on FEMA. In light of FEMA's performance, that's good advice. If you have an internet connection, there is plenty of great information on the National Hurricane Survival Initiative website on how to prepare. The information assumes you have the means and can afford all the necessary insurance, home improvements, supplies, and transportation.

The report and the website do not, however, address social issues such as poverty, lack of mobility, or lack of communications and outreach that plagued Katrina preparations and recovery, or what those without means are supposed to do.

At any rate, Max Mayfield is doing what he can to keep FEMA, state and local emergency planning officials, and coastal residents informed. He has sounded the alarm for the 2006 hurricane season, which is only weeks away. Will anyone listen?

Some highlights from today's progressive blogging south of the Mason-Dixon Line:

Arkansas Daily Blog links to a new report that finds branches of their home-state mega-retailer Wal-Mart are "unequivocally associated" with higher poverty rates in the community ... and the National Council of Women's Organizations will be pushing a resolution at WM's June 2 shareholders meeting about the company's glass ceiling.

North Carolina's own Pam's House Blend covers the face-off between Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Constance C. Russell, who recently declared a ballot initiative on same sex marriage and civil unions is unconstitutional. Plus,