Latest indicators from the Institute Index, a feature of the Institute's Facing South e-newsletter:

Out of "America's Richest 400" as ranked by Forbes magazine, number that are billionaires: 400

Number of richest 11 individuals that are heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune: 5

Rank of "facelifts" among expenses that have increased for the wealthy over the last year, as part of Forbes' "Cost of Living Extremely Well Index": 5

Rank of "silverware": 1

Amount by which the number of people living in poverty increased from 2000 to 2005: 5 million

Number of children in the U.S. that live in poverty: 1 in 6

Percent of African Americans that live in poverty: 24.7

Out of 10 states with highest poverty rate, number in the South: 6

Amount the median family incomes dropped from 2000 to 2004: 2.9%

Number in U.S. who work full time and still live in poverty: 3 million

Percent in the U.S. who believe "American society is divided into haves and have-nots": 48

Percent of African Americans who believe "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer": 81

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As Facing South regulars know, the Institute has a special interest in how the South is uniquely tied to the military, including how the region has been impacted by Iraq and the broader "war on terror."

Over the last few months, we've been working on an exciting research and polling project with the excellent School of Public and International Affairs at NC State University to get a better handle on how the public views Iraq and U.S. foreign policy, especially in the South.

The results of our polling and research are rolling in -- with some very surprising results. We'll have some interesting pieces of information ready by early next week ... so stay tuned.

In the meantime, Congress has approved $70 billion more for war spending, bringing the total price tag up to $507 billion for Iraq alone. But the bill passed today was also rebuffed the Bush Administration by blocking the U.S. from building permanent military bases in Iraq or controlling the country's oil sector.

As for the most recent polls, two-thirds of the U.S. public believes Iraq is in a civil war and a shocking 60% of Iraqis support attacks on U.S. troops.

March 2004 was a turning point in the Iraq war. That's the month that TV networks broadcast the grizzly images of dead and mutilated U.S. military contractors -- employees of the security firm Blackwater International -- being dragged through the streets of Fallujah.

No longer could Bush Administration officials deny -- as Bob Woodward's new book shows they aggressively tried to do -- that the Iraq insurgency was gaining in power and confidence (and it kept growing; Iraq now averages 100 insurgent attacks a day). The episode also sharpened the war debate, with war supporters emboldened for revenge, and war detractors decrying Fallujah as a symbol of all that was wrong in Iraq.

It also brought the troubles of private contracting in Iraq to the fore, especially the use of for-hire security firms like Blackwater, based in North Carolina. This debate sharpened yesterday, when in a Congressional hearing it was revealed that Blackwater was not even authorized to do security in Fallujah -- and that the saga involved the scandal-ridden Halliburton/KBR. As Joseph Neff reports in today's News & Observer:

On Thursday, the Army said that Blackwater was not authorized to guard convoys or carry weapons.

The revelation came at a congressional hearing that offered a window into the murky world of private contracting in Iraq. Representatives fumed about billions in misspent money, shoddy construction projects and the hiring of unqualified political operatives to rebuild Iraq.

One unsolved mystery at the hearing was whether Blackwater, based in Moyock in North Carolina's northeast corner, was ultimately working for U.S. taxpayers when its contractors were killed.

U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen held up a copy of Blackwater's contract, which said Blackwater was ultimately working for the Army's main contractor in Iraq, Kellogg Brown & Root, with two companies in between.

The Army and Kellogg Brown & Root denied in a letter that Blackwater had done any work for them.

Like many Iraq contracts, Blackwater's deal ran through a maze of subcontractors including Halliburton/KBR, food supplier ESS, and Regency Hotel so convoluted that even the Army, which issued the contract, couldn't follow it:

At the hearing Thursday, Van Hollen held up a copy of Blackwater's contract that showed the trail of subcontractors -- Blackwater, Regency, ESS -- leading to Kellogg Brown & Root. Did the Army contend that Blackwater provided no services to Kellogg Brown & Root?

Tina Ballard, an undersecretary of the Army, said that is correct.

"Was this contract authorized?" Van Hollen asked. "Did the American taxpayer pay [Kellogg Brown & Root] for those unauthorized contracts?"

Ballard promised that the Army would provide answers.

The Blackwater fiasco wasn't the only contracting problem revealed in the House Minority Office on Government Reform hearing held by Rep. Waxman (D-CA) yesterday:

[Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart] Bowen made available copies of an inspection report on one of the 13 substandard projects, a $72 million police college in Baghdad where plumbing work was so poor that the pipes burst, dumping urine and fecal matter throughout the college’s buildings.

And this:

[A] multimillion-dollar contract to build 142 health clinics that resulted in only six being completed.

An exasperated Rep. Chris Van Hollen called the degree of incompetence "mind-boggling." Rep. Waxman went further, arguing that the abuse and scandals surrounding private contractors, who have been shoveled billions of taxpayer dollars with little accountability, was defining the U.S. mission in Iraq:

"This debacle is not just a waste of taxpayers'’ funds, and it doesn't just impact the reconstruction,"” Representative Henry A. Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said of one of the failed projects. "“It impedes the entire effort in Iraq. This is the lens in which the Iraqis will view America."”

For more about Blackwater, including its domestic operations in New Orleans, see the excellent series of stories by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation.

Families USA has released a new report highlighting a disturbing aspect of our nation's health care crisis: the fact that 9 million children have no health insurance.

Even more disturbing is the fact that most of these children have parents that work. As the AP reports:

Most of the 9 million uninsured children in the U.S. live in homes where at least one parent works full time. In more than one-quarter of the cases, there are two working parents. [...]

"I think they believe these are low-income people who don't work, who are very different from themselves," said the group's executive director, Ron Pollack. "These are people who work, who are doing the right thing." [...]

Overall, 88.3 percent of uninsured children age 18 and under live in households with a working parent. About 70 percent live in households were a parent works full time, year-round, according to the report.

States in the South and West lead the list for most uninsured children:

The five states with the highest rates of uninsured children are Texas, 20.4 percent; Florida, 17 percent; New Mexico, 16.7 percent; Nevada, 16.4 percent; and Montana, 16.2 percent.

Vermont had the lowest rate of uninsured children -- 5.6 percent. Michigan, Hawaii and New Hampshire were next at 6.4 percent. The national rate is 11.6 percent.

Many assume that children still find coverage through Medicaid and state-based Children's Health Insurance Programs. Yet the report notes that because the parents work, many children aren't eligible because the programs are aimed at families below the poverty line (Medicaid) or just above it (CHIP). On top of that,

"The reason these children are not participating is that, No. 1, many don't know about it, and No. 2, the enrollment process is cumbersome," [Families USA's Ron] Pollack said.

There's also a racial bias in which children fall through the cracks:

Families USA said that about 3.4 million of the uninsured children in the U.S. are white, about 1.5 million are black, and about 3.5 million are Hispanic.

It's no secret that the U.S. meat industry -- not long ago made up of a patchwork of small- and medium-sized family farms -- is now dominated by a handful of agribusiness goliaths.

One of the biggest is Smithfield Foods, the nation's biggest pork company, which over the last year has embarked on a merger spree, seizing greater and greater shares of the market. And the latest news is that they plan to grow even more:

[Smithfield] said Monday it has agreed to buy Kansas City-based Premium Standard Farms -- the country's second largest pork producer and sixth-largest pork processor -- for $674 million in cash and stock, plus the assumption of $117 million in Premium Standard's debt. [...]

The deal means that Smithfield -- already by far the largest hog producer and processor -- will become even larger. Before the purchase, Smithfield had 52,500 employees at various locations, including thousands in Smithfield. The company did $11.4 billion in annual sales of pork, beef and poultry in its last fiscal year.

The purchase is only the latest in a continuing slew or purchases by Smithfield. In July, Smithfield bought out the branded meats business of ConAgra Foods -- including ConAgra's famous Butterball brand -- in time for the holidays. In June it acquired Sara Lee's European meats division.

The deal is so big -- and Smithfield's potential meat empire so vast -- that the story quotes a Prudential analyst as saying "there's less than a 60 percent probability the deal will go through" on anti-trust grounds.

If the merger does happen (target date: early 2007), what will it mean for the public? After noting the dangers to consumers from price-fixing, a New York Times editorial spells out the consequences for rural America:

There is little or no role for the independent farmer in this landscape. The logic is simple: Why bother to buy pigs from farmers when you can own them yourself? If this deal closes, more than half the pigs Smithfield kills would be pigs it already owns, a percentage that is sure to increase. The hog farmers’ job would no longer be farming. They would be janitors in confinement barns across rural America where the packers’ huge herds of pigs are crammed in stalls to live out their short lives.

[T]hat would be the ultimate efficiency of American agriculture — doing away with the farmer by doing away with competitive markets.

Meanwhile, workers at Smithfield -- especially its main plant in southeast North Carolina -- continue to speak out and organize to change plant conditions that have made the company a poster child for labor rights violations (pdf). Workers and their allies will be rallying at Smithfield Corporate headquarters in New York City tomorrow, where the city council is also considering a resolution against the corporation:

Civil rights, faith, immigrant rights and labor leaders will gather in front of the Smithfield Corporate offices at 499 Park Avenue on Friday, September 29 to protest the company’s widespread abuse of workers and its failure to recognize their desire to join a union.

Smithfield Packing is the target of a growing national consumer campaign because of its abusive treatment of the over 5,500 predominantly Latino and African-American workers at its Tar Heel, North Carolina plant where workers have been fighting to organize a union for over 12 years. New York City is one of the company’s largest markets. The city council will consider a resolution at its next meeting in October, introduced by Councilman Miguel Martinez, to stop purchases of pork products from the plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina. The bill will also urge supermarkets in the city to no longer stock the product.

For over two decades, the religious right -- the "hard base" of the Republican Party -- has grown to be a driving force for GOP political success. The "values voters" base will be especially important to Republicans this November. Lower mid-term turnout and general public dissatisfaction with the country's political direction make a solid showing among the conservative faithful critical to GOP success. Double that in the South.

That's why Republican strategists are terrified by the news they're reading in dispatches such as this one from the AP earlier this week, which reveals a growing sense of frustration and betrayal from the church pews to the religious right leadership:

"Conservative Christians are somewhat disenchanted with Republicans," said Kenyn Cureton, vice president for convention relations with the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination with nearly 16 million members.

Religious conservatives are unhappy the Republican-led Congress hasn't paid enough attention to "values issues," he said, noting that even a push this summer against same-sex marriage came too late.

"It has not escaped our notice that they waited until just a few months from the November elections to address our agenda," Cureton said.

Polls show Cureton of the SBC isn't alone, and that Bush's job performance is a lightning rod:

Exit polls showed 78 percent of white evangelicals voted for him in 2004. But an Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted Sept. 11-13 indicated 42 percent of white evangelicals disapprove of the job Bush has done as president.

His approval rating among evangelicals is still better than he gets among Americans generally, but the poll shows Democrats have made slight gains among moderate white evangelical voters.

Rather than running into the arms of Democrats, what the GOP really fears is that dispirited "values voters" will just stay home -- a scary prospect with tight races developing in states like Tennessee and Virginia.

How do conservative leaders hope to move these voters from the pews to the polls? As my colleague R. Neal reported yesterday, the weapon of choice is ballot initiatives against gay marriage -- which now rivals abortion as the calling-card issue for the religious right.

Fortunately for the GOP, battleground states Tennessee and Virginia are among the three Southern states that haven't already decided the gay marriage question (South Carolina is the other). The AP notes that James Dobson of the emerging powerhouse Focus on the Family is especially interested in Tennessee, building up an army of "church and county coordinators."

But the religious right is also being hurt from within. The Christian Coalition continues to crumble, causing conservatives to lose a coordinating force in their election machinery, now being scattered to a host of competing groups.

Recent events have isolated hard-right evangelicals even further.

Last weekend, a widely-touted "Values Voter Summit" hosted by the Family Research Council drew stars of the Republican Party including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to Sen. George Allen (R-VA) and Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AK). Designed to boost spirits and turn around GOP fortunes, the gathering instead descended into controversy when a Bishop Wellington Boone took the stage and announced, “I want the gays mad at me.” He succeeded, and made others mad as well when he revealed his strategy to get "the gays" to be more forceful in challenging him:

Back in the days when I was a kid, and we see guys that don’t stand strong on principle, we call them “faggots.” … [People] that don’t stand up for what’s right, we say, “You’re sissified out!” “You’re a sissy!” That means you don’t stand up for principles. [Listen to the audio here; the awkward silence is deafening.]

Another Christian soul, Rev. Dwight McKissic of Texas, later declared to the GOP gathering that the gay rights movement was "inspired from the pit of hell itself."

This week, Rev. Jerry Falwell picked up on the theme and kept the negative controversy surrounding conservative fundamentalists at a high boil, refusing to back down from statements equating Sen. Hillary Clinton with Lucifer.

UPDATE: Diane Rehm and I must be having a mind-meld: her show today is focused on "Christian Voters," and has this description:

A recent poll suggests a growing number of conservative Christians have become disillusioned with the Republican party. We'll hear what's mobilizing Christian voters on the right and left of the political spectrum.

I ran across an interesting article about elections and ballot initiatives in Louisiana. Folks down there love to hold elections, and they loves them some Constitutional Amendments even more:

We have already had four election dates this year, and guess what? We still have three more elections to go. And what little interest there was seems to be waning. The forty percent turnout being ballyhooed by elections officials a few weeks ago could well drop in the 30 percent range.

What about all of these constitutional amendments? Are any of them really necessary? There are thirteen constitutional amendments on the ballot this Saturday, with eight more to go on the November ballot. That means the 1974 Louisiana Constitution has been amended 127 times so far, and we still haven’t gotten it right.

Thirteen amendments on the ballot? Reading through them, you have to wonder how long it's going to take to vote, even for informed voters who study up on them ahead of time. You also have to wonder if the state legislators are too worn out from Katrina to legislate so they're letting the voters do it for them.

Other Southern states have ballot initiatives, too. Eminent domain is a popular issue, with Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina all weighing in. (And Louisiana has no less than three questions relating to eminent domain, if I count correctly.)

Here in Tennessee, we will vote on an anti-gay marriage amendment, along with an amendment that allows local governments to freeze property taxes for seniors. Tennessee is joined by South Carolina and Virginia in voting on "defense of marriage" amendments. (Virginia's amendment modifies Article I of the state's Constitution, which is entitled the "Bill of Rights". Go figure.)

If I'm not mistaken, these three states are the last Southern holdouts, with Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas having already passed their anti-gay marriage amendments. [Ed. Note: We are reminded that North Carolina is another Southern state that has not passed an anti-gay marriage amendment, and that it has failed in three straight legislative sessions.]

The anti-gay marriage amendments are widely seen as a right-wing ploy to get out the conservative vote. Some say Ohio's 2004 amendment may have been a factor in that state deciding the presidential election. The stakes aren't quite as high this time around, but there is at least one Senate race (in Tennessee) where it could be a factor.

GOP election mechanics might be surprised, however. There are plenty of Democrats who will vote for this in Tennessee, including our Democratic Governor (who is up for reelection and expected to win in a landslide). He recently said "the only question is whether it will pass by 90% or 92%." Perhaps some previously disenfranchised-feeling Dixiecrat Democrats will come out to vote for the amendment, and vote a straight 'D' ticket while they're at it out of sheer orneriness.

Apparently, the Christian Coalition isn’t radical enough for some state chapters. Alabama, Iowa and Ohio recently left the national organization, and now Georgia is the latest to secede:

Today Christian Coalition of Georgia officials announced the formal notice of a name change. In a letter sent overnight via Federal Express to Roberta Combs dated September 25, 2006, Christian Coalition of Georgia State Chairman Sadie Fields stated, “I have been authorized by the Board of Directors of the Christian Coalition of Georgia, Inc. to notify you as Chairman and President of the Christian Coalition of America of our plans to change the name of our state organization.” Georgia joins Iowa, Ohio and Alabama state chapters in the departure as state affiliates of the Christian Coalition of America.

Today Fields confirmed: “Our new organization will maintain the same board of directors, officers and staff and will be issues driven based on our long-standing, tried, true and tested mission and tenets that have guided our organization since 1989.”

Our standing mission statement is: “We believe that people of faith have a right and a responsibility to be involved in the world around them; that involvement includes social, community and political action.” The long-standing tenets that bring unity among conservative members of our coalition of Christians are: strengthening the family, protecting innocent human life, returning education to local & parental control, easing the tax burden on families, punishing criminals & defending victims’ rights, protecting young people & our communities from the pollution of pornography and the expansion of gambling, defending the institution of marriage and protecting religious freedom.

“In every major public policy debate, it is almost guaranteed that the liberal forces opposing our view will try to redefine who we are and feverishly attempt to amend our tenets and mission. The Christian Coalition of America has demonstrated by their actions in word and in deed a desire to drift from our founding tenets. The Christian Coalition of America has left us, we have not left them,” Fields concluded.

News reports cite the Christian Coalition’s involvement in environmental issues (perhaps resulting from founder Pat Robertson's recent conversion) and their backing of an increased federal minimum wage as examples of how the CC has left the state chapters behind. Other news reports also mention Ralph Reed and revelations about his involvement in the Abramof scandal.

Whatever the reasons, there appears to be a growing rift among the once-solid core of right-wing conservatives. This is the latest example. Perhaps some on the right are coming to the realization that their policies aren't working and that there might be other approaches to solving national problems, holdouts in Georgia and Alabama notwithstanding, and that their faith and progressive social policy needn't be mutually exclusive.

The N-word has reared its ugly head in two political races in recent days. The first case takes us to the trouble campaign of Sen. George Allen (R-VA). Michael Sherer broke the story on Salon.com on Sunday:

Three former college football teammates of Sen. George Allen say that the Virginia Republican repeatedly used an inflammatory racial epithet and demonstrated racist attitudes toward blacks during the early 1970s.

"Allen said he came to Virginia because he wanted to play football in a place where 'blacks knew their place,'" said Dr. Ken Shelton, a white radiologist in North Carolina who played tight end for the University of Virginia football team when Allen was quarterback. "He used the N-word on a regular basis back then."

A second white teammate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution from the Allen campaign, separately claimed that Allen used the word "nigger" to describe blacks. "It was so common with George when he was among his white friends. This is the terminology he used," the teammate said.

Sherer's story had more details, but the N-word allegation broke into the Associated Press today, making it a bona fide news story.

Sen. Allen calls the charges "ludicrously false." But Allen is now dealing with a pattern -- first his "macaca moment," and also the little-covered photograph of Allen with fellow enthusiasts of the Council of Conservative Citizens, which, among other repellent positions, opposes "race mixing."

Allen's not the only one: last week, the NAACP called on Texas independent and self-styled populist candidate Kinky Friedman to renounce his use of the N-word in comedy sketches dating back to 1980. As with Allen, the issue is the pattern:

Earlier this month, Friedman referred to Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston, most of whom are black, as "crackheads and thugs." [...]

Then a television interview from a year ago resurfaced in which Friedman was asked what to do about sexual predators. He said: "Throw them in prison and throw away the key and make them listen to a Negro talking to himself."

Current and would-be politicians should definitely be held accountable if they use racist speech, although the narrow focus on "gotcha" moments and N-word bombs can have the feel of election-year opportunism. For example, there's been little outcry recently against Sen. Trent Lott, whose nostalgia for Jim Crow and other dubious racial views is also well-documented. There's also the 13 Senators who declined to support a resolution against lynching last summer, who seem to have escaped that episode scandal-free.

Global warming isn't the only issue where science, politics and media coverage live in different worlds. Take, for example, the lead of this story from last Friday's Washington Post, which ran under the headline "EPA Cuts Soot Level Allowable Daily in Air":

The Bush administration imposed stricter standards on the nation's air quality yesterday for the first time in nearly a decade, ruling that communities across the country must cut back on the amount of soot in the air on any given day.

After this upbeat start, reporter Juliet Eilperin goes on to admit there was controversy, but she suggests that the Bush administration's EPA successfully navigated a middle-of-the-road position between the extremes of environmental activists and industry executives:

The agency did not go as far as its own scientists had urged in curbing soot, which is linked to heart and lung disease as well as childhood asthma. The decision sparked complaints on both sides of the pollution debate, with public health experts saying it was inadequate and industry officials calling it too stringent.

But nowhere does the Post tell you that the EPA's own Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee -- the experts tasked with evaluating EPA rules with real science -- strongly supported tougher rules on soot pollution. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

The EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, which includes scientists from environmental and industry groups and EPA staff, had pushed [EPA administrator Stephen] Johnson to lower the annual [soot pollution] limits set in 1997. [...]

Rogene Henderson, chairwoman of the science panel, said 20 of the 22 members [of the Scientific Advisory Committee] wanted the more stringent annual standard. [...]

Each of the seven EPA staff members on the committee agreed that a lower limit was preferred, documents show.

In other words, 91% of the EPA's own experts -- including industry representatives and EPA officials -- agreed that tougher rules on soot pollution was the right policy. To see going against the expert consensus on this issue as a legitimate compromise in the clean air "debate," one has to leave the world of science and facts, and enter the world of politics and media spin.

Forbes has released its latest list of the "Richest 400" in the country. For the first time in the magazine's rankings, all on the list are billionaires.

How does the South fare? Nine of the top 25 are based in the South, although if it wasn't for heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, the region would only have one (Dell in Texas) of the top 10 elites of our times. Here's how the list starts:

1 William Henry Gates III -- Medina, WA Microsoft
2 Warren Edward Buffett -- Omaha, NE Berkshire Hathaway
3 Sheldon Adelson -- Las Vegas, NV casinos, hotels
4 Lawrence Joseph Ellison -- Redwood City, CA Oracle
5 Paul Gardner Allen -- Seattle, WA Microsoft, investments
6 Jim C Walton -- Bentonville, AR Wal-Mart
7 Christy Walton & family -- Jackson, WY Wal-Mart inheritance
7 S Robson Walton -- Bentonville, AR Wal-Mart
9 Michael Dell -- Austin, TX Dell
9 Alice L Walton --Fort Worth, TX Wal-Mart
11 Helen R Walton -- Bentonville, AR Wal-Mart
12 Sergey Brin -- Palo Alto, CA Google
13 Larry E Page -- San Francisco, CA Google
14 Jack Crawford Taylor & family -- S t Louis, MO Enterprise Rent-A-Car
15 Steven Anthony Ballmer -- Bellevue, WA Microsoft
16 Abigail Johnson -- Boston, MA Fidelity
17 Barbara Cox Anthony -- Honolulu, HI Cox Enterprises
17 Anne Cox Chambers -- Atlanta, GA Cox Enterprises
19 Charles De Ganahl Koch -- Wichita, KS oil, commodities
19 David Hamilton Koch 1-- New York, NY oil, commodities
21 Forrest Edward Mars Jr -- McLean, VA candy
21 Jacqueline Mars -- Bedminster, NJ candy
21 John Franklyn Mars -- Arlington, VA candy
24 Carl Icahn -- New York, NY leveraged buyouts
25 John Werner Kluge -- Palm Beach, FL Metromedia

It's a good thing they're all billionaires; Forbes helpfully notes that "the cost of living extremely well" has increased 7% over the last year, with costs of fur coats, silk dresses, facelifts, and especially silverware (who knew?) especially on the rise, putting great strains on the budgets of our national tycoons.

Meanwhile, how is the rest of America faring? First there are the growing ranks of the poor:

Poverty is alive and well in the world's richest nation, according to a recent report by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Law and Social Policy.

The nation's poverty rate rose to 12.6 percent in 2005, up from 11.3 percent in 2000. Now, one in eight Americans and more than one in every six children lives in poverty, and more than one in every six children.

A total of 37 million Americans are poor, up 5 million from 2000. [...]

The picture is particularly bleak for African Americans, 24.7 percent of whom lived in poverty in 2005, compared to 22.5 percent in 2000. Nearly one in three black children under 18 years of age is poor, compared to 18.5 percent nationwide.

The United States ranked second behind Mexico of the world's wealthiest countries with the highest childhood poverty rates, according to UNICEF's Child Poverty in Rich Countries report for 2005.

And then there's the struggling working and middle class:

The vast working and middle classes in America have not fared well over the last six years and, in fact, have not fared well since 1973 (excepting about five years in the 1990s). [...]

• The median family's income has fallen by 2.9 percent from 2000 to 2004. Aside from the very rapid growth of the late 1990s (up 11 percent), median family income growth has been very modest, rising just 6 percent from 1979 to 1995.
• Middle income married-couple families with children did a bit better, seeing incomes rise by 10 percent from 1979 to 1995, jump 13 percent in the late 1990s before falling 2.6 percent thereafter. Meanwhile, the hours worked in these families grew 18 percent from 1979-2004, so overall incomes grew just slightly faster than hours worked over 25 years.
• The CBO reports even more pessimistic trends, with middle incomes rising just 8.6 percent from 1979 to 2003. Note that productivity grew 62 percent over this time period, so middle-class income growth barely exceeded the growth in hours worked (from more wives working and working more weeks and hours per week) and fell far behind the pace at which the pie grew. Yet, the incomes of the upper 1 percent grew by 111 percent. Populism anybody?

Populism -- now there is something Southerners can get behind.

With the economy still sluggish and tax-cut pressure starving state budgets, many states have yet to fully emerge from the financial crises that took hold a decade ago. So what's a broke state government to do? According to a report in USA Today, start selling stuff:

State governments are putting more of their surplus goods on sale rather than in the dump. That's giving bargain hunters the opportunity to pick up everything from computers and desks to a car crusher and a statue of Smokey Bear.

South Dakota unloaded the car crusher for $95,000 on the Internet, according to Rick Voorhes, the state's surplus property manager. Alabama got about $30 for the "life-size" Smokey Bear statue, says Shane Bailey, director of that state's surplus property agency. [...]

The officials in charge of selling such items say tighter state budgets and a desire to reduce the amount of stuff deposited into landfills have bolstered their sales efforts.

"There has been a big push for it," says Dick Graves, president of the National Association of State Agencies for Surplus Property and director of federal and state surplus for Indiana.

"You need more money everywhere," Graves says. "There is wealth sitting here with some of this stuff."

At least 11 states, including Georgia, Arkansas, South Dakota, Washington and South Carolina, are using online auctions to sell surplus goods, according to a survey by the National Association of State Chief Administrators.

It's great that state surplus stuff is finding a good home besides the dump. But what's next, a campaign to check state office furniture for loose change that can fund school programs?

Cataloochie Elk (click image for larger view)

Info about the Cataloochie Valley and the elk.

The Knoxville News Sentinel has a report today about a local coal mining company that has been cited by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation for mining without a permit or a mitigation plan:

Using expanded powers, state regulators have ordered National Coal Corp. to halt mining part of its Zeb Mountain mine and fined the company up to $173,000 for mining through two streams without first obtaining required water quality permits.

This is particularly good news for Tennessee's environment, because it is the first time the state has used a newly acquired enforcement authority:

The order is also the first use of new powers under granted in the spring by the Tennessee General Assembly to TDEC under an amendment to the state's water quality control act.

"It authorizes the department to issue a stop-work order to a coal mining operation when there has been a violation that has caused pollution of a stream," Leiserson said.

According to the article, the company's lawyers say this is much ado about nothing, and that they have all the proper permits. TDEC disagrees:

According to the order, TDEC has twice rejected National Coal's permit application "because it did not provide adequate detail" about the proposed work.

"While this was pending they went ahead and mined in the area of these two streams," Leiserson said.

TDEC personnel met with National Coal representatives on Aug. 1 in Knoxville about the requirements to obtain the necessary permits. TDEC workers inspected the mine two days later and found the company had mined through the two streams.

See the online article for before and after photos of one of the streams.

This is not the first time National Coal has been in the local news. Last summer, activists protesting mountaintop removal mining showed up at the company's annual shareholder's meeting and the company had some of them arrested. The following month, the same group protested the company's Zeb Mountain project and there were more arrests.

Another, more moderate environmental justice group, Save Our Cumberland Mountains, is engaged in an ongoing struggle to address the environmental problems caused by strip mining and mountaintop removal. A member of the group praised TDEC for using their new authority. Cathy Bird was quoted in the article as saying "I don't care how they do it, as long as they get things fixed. That's been a very discouraging aspect of this thing for all of us."

It's good that Tennessee's mining and conservation laws now have more teeth. It's even better that TDEC is using this new authority to aggressively enforce compliance with state environmental regulations.

According to Think Progress, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson "instructed staff to award HUD contracts to President Bush’s political allies and withhold them from his political opponents." The revelations came to light as a result of a HUD Inspector General investigation into an allegation that Jackson had "canceled a government contract because the contractor criticized President Bush."

Think Progress refers to this Dallas Morning News article, which says an incident similar to the first allegation did occur, and that in the process of the investigation the Inspector General obtained testimony from a former assistant secretary of public affairs indicating that Jackson said in a staff meeting, in effect, that "it was important to consider presidential supporters when you are considering the selected candidates for discretionary contracts." Other testimony appears to corroborate this. As Think Progress notes, this would be in violation of federal law.

You may also recall that Jackson, who is responsible for public housing and other aspects of Katrina recovery in New Orleans, said at a press conference that "'only the best residents' of the former St. Thomas housing complex should be allowed into the new mixed-income development that replaced it," suggesting that public housing in New Orleans was "gang-ridden by some of the most notorious gangs in this country," that residents protected them, and that others didn't pay rent on time, didn't have jobs, and didn't work.

Perhaps a better policy would be to appoint "only the best public servants" to important cabinet posts. It would be easy to cite this as more evidence of a "culture of corruption" in Washington (and you can make up your own jokes about "notorious gangs"), but in this case it sounds more like blind, and misguided, loyalty to party politics. Either way, the results are not in the best interests of the American people.

I just got a call from an official with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) about our post earlier today on how global warming research is being politicized.

Specifically, she wanted to correct our claim that Chuck Fuqua was a press officer for NOAA when he muzzled an agency scientist in 2005 who supported the link between human activity and global warming.

She's right, and I appreciate her call -- although one could also call it a technicality. Chuck Fuqua actually works in the communications division for the Department of Commerce. But NOAA is part of Commerce, which is why Fuqua was allowed to vet which scientists have media time.

What's more interesting is how closely federal officials are monitoring the political fallout of Rep. Henry Waxman's revelations this week about Fuqua's heavy-handed attempts to squelch the scientific consensus about global warming.

The fate of Georgia's law requiring that citizens have a photo ID to vote -- pushed hard by Gov. Sonny Perdue and the state legislature to go into effect before the fall elections -- suffered its latest setback yesterday, reports the New York Times:

A state judge ruled Tuesday that a Georgia law requiring voters to present government-issued photo identification violates the State Constitution and could not be enforced.

In issuing a permanent injunction against the latest version of the Voter ID Act, the judge, T. Jackson Bedford Jr. of Fulton County Superior Court, said legislators overstepped their authority when they imposed a condition on the right to vote by requiring a photo ID.

“Nowhere in the Constitution is the legislature authorized to deny a registered voter the right to vote on any other ground, including a possession of a photo ID,” he wrote.

Judge Bedford wrote he was particularly troubled by a provision in the law that allows a registered voter without an approved photo ID to cast a ballot on Election Day but says that vote would not be counted unless the voter returned with an ID within two days.

“The result of this provisional-ballot scheme,” he wrote, “is to disenfranchise an otherwise qualified voter who does not comply with the additional conditions imposed by the legislature.”

The times quotes a voting expert who echoes what many feel the bill is about:

“This is really a vote-suppression measure,” said Daniel Tokaji, an assistant professor at Ohio State University and an expert on election law.

“There’s very little evidence for the proposition that people are going to the polling place and pretending to be someone else.” Mr. Tokaji said

Here's where the global warming "debate" stands right now: On the science of global warming, there is little debate -- just an overwhelming consensus among experts that temperatures are rising, and human activity is a major factor.

But the idea that there is a "debate" stays alive, largely because politicians and the media are plied with a steady stream of dubious data -- produced by academics who are funded by energy companies -- which argues that either global warming isn't a problem, or that human activity isn't to blame.

As long as industry-backed "studies" are available, officials dedicated to inaction can bog the issue down -- like NOAA press officer (and media head for the GOP's 2004 convention) Chuck Fuqua, who denied CNBC an interview with a NOAA scientist because he disagreed with business-backed researchers that denied a link between human activity and global warming. [SEE UPDATE ABOVE.]

Paying scientists to say global warming isn't an issue has been a successful industry strategy for decades. But the tide may be turning, as scientists and political leaders attack the issue at its roots by exposing science-for-hire.

We reported last month about the office of Gov. Tim Kaine in Virginia condemning state climatologist Patrick J. Michaels -- a global warming-denier at the University of Virginia who received $150,000 from a Colorado utility company to fund his research.

Today, the Guardian in London reports that scientists are turning up pressure on Dallas-based ExxonMobil for its role in propping up bad science:

Britain's leading scientists have challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.

In an unprecedented step, the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence".

The scientists also strongly criticise the company's public statements on global warming, which they describe as "inaccurate and misleading".

The question now: on this side of the Atlantic, will the National Academy of Sciences join in calling for Big Energy to get out of meddling in climate research, and support the integrity of free scientific inquiry?

UPDATE: One item not clear in the post: the Royal Society had received a pledge from Exxon earlier this year that it wouldn't continue to fund groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which in the wake of Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth, had "welcomed increased carbon dioxide pollution." The Royal Society's latest letter (pdf) is aimed at ensuring the energy giant is honoring the pledge.

An AP report entitled "FEMA Seeking Ideas on Housing" caught our eye this morning. According to the report:

WASHINGTON - The federal government is offering $400 million in grant money to Gulf Coast states for ideas on how to provide emergency and interim housing for hurricane victims.

Competition for the grant money is open to five coastal states - Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Any one state could get all the money or it could be split by all, said Gil Jamieson, deputy director of the Bush administration's Gulf Coast Recovery.

The AP report was a little confusing and short on details. ($400 million for ideas? Would a "suggestion box" be more cost effective?).

We contacted FEMA, and a spokesperson said the grants would be for implementation of state-run pilot programs to construct and deploy various types of interim housing and monitor the effectiveness of the different approaches over a period of two years. We were directed to FEMA program guidance document (PDF format) for more information.

According to the program guidance document, FEMA outlines a number of temporary housing problems exposed by Katrina:

Although FEMA’s traditional temporary housing options are sufficient to address the unmet housing needs of residents in most disasters, the catastrophic dimensions of Hurricane Katrina challenged the efficacy of these traditional methods, which are based on the statutory supposition that such assistance will generally not be required for more than 18 months. Some of those catastrophic dimensions are identified below:

1. A significant number of homes on private lots were completely destroyed.

2. Complete neighborhoods were destroyed.

3. Protracted community recovery timelines, with the likelihood that temporary housing may be required in some cases for extended periods.

4. A shortage of resources for reconstruction of homes, uncertainty with respect to community and neighborhood recovery, labor shortages and other factors that limit the
pace of recovery.

5. Community and individual resistance to the use of travel trailers for extended temporary housing concurrent with the interest of the design community, local governments and Congress to find better options for disaster victim use while pursuing permanent housing solutions.

Recognizing the extensive and complex housing challenges facing victims and communities as a result of Hurricane Katrina and acknowledging the limitations on FEMA’s ordinary statutory authority to provide non-temporary housing solutions, Congress appropriated $400 million to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to support alternative housing pilot programs.

The pilot program objectives address these concerns:

The objectives of the Alternative Housing pilot program are to:

1. Evaluate the efficacy of non-traditional short and intermediate-term housing alternatives for potential future use in a catastrophic disaster environment.

2. Identify, develop and evaluate alternatives to and alternative forms of FEMA Disaster
Housing to assist victims of the 2005 hurricanes in the Gulf Coast.

3. Consider the feasibility of these options as part of the standard package of housing assistance that could be made available by federal government agencies or state agencies for other disasters of various sizes, locations and impacts.

4. Assure that pilot projects address the needs of a variety of populations, such as persons with disabilities and the elderly, historically underserved populations as well as renters, homeowners, single-family dwelling occupants and multi-family dwelling occupants.

The idea of a grant "competition" is intended to promote:

• Innovation and creativity.


• Alternatives that can be produced, transported, and installed in a timely manner, and in quantities appropriate to meet the projected needs of a catastrophic disaster situation.


• Alternatives that are adaptable to a variety of site conditions with minimal requirements for site preparation.


• Housing solutions that will facilitate sustainable and permanent affordable housing.

Proposals will be evaluated for selection on a number of criteria:

1. The manner and extent to which the alternative housing solution improves upon the conditions characteristic of existing temporary housing and improves long-term recovery.

2. The extent to which the option can provide ready for occupancy (RFO) housing (obtained, transported, installed, repaired, constructed, etc.) within time frames and in quantities sufficient to meet disaster related needs under a range of scenarios, including sudden onset catastrophic disasters.

3. Life Cycle cost, including the cost to acquire, transport, install/construct/repair, and maintain during the period it is occupied by disaster victims.

4. The capacity of the proposed alternative approach to be utilized in and adapt to a variety of site conditions and locations.

5. The extent to which local officials, local neighborhood associations and other community organizations are part of or support the pilot program in the community in which it will occur.

Refer to the guidance document for more interesting details regarding each of these criteria.

Winning proposals will be monitored and evaluated for two years by FEMA, HUD, and other government officials:

The two-phase approach to the evaluation is as follows: the first evaluation will include factors such as cost, building code compliance, speed of construction, consumer perceptions, community impacts, and criteria for selection. The first HUD evaluation effort will be completed after the grant period of performance ends. The second-phase of the evaluation focuses on the longer term performance of the housing provided under this effort. This will address longer-term costs (energy and maintenance), durability, consumer perceptions, and impact on long-term recovery of communities and individuals that received housing through this pilot. FEMA’s traditional temporary housing solutions will also be evaluated with the same methodology to allow objective comparison of options.

At least two companies have announced solutions for consideration by participating state programs. NOLA Homebuilder offers the "NOLA Bungalow", and EliteNet Group has the "EliteSpace Superstructure".

FEMA is admitting they don't have all the answers and that what they have in place isn't the best plan to deal with a disaster on the scale of Katrina. The Alternative Housing Pilot Program sounds like one of those "market driven solutions" we keep hearing about, and there's probably more to the story regarding where the idea originated and who lobbied for it.

Regardless, while one might expect FEMA to be the experts on interim housing following a disaster, perhaps this program will turn out to be an innovative approach that identifies new ways of looking at the problem, and maybe even result in some better solutions going forward.

One of the choicer pieces of dubious dealings revealed at the hearings today about war profiteering was the disclosure that Halliburton/KBR was offering medals to wounded employees -- but only if they agreed not to sue the company.

TPM Muckraker has the story:

Ray Stannard was a truck driver in Iraq for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. In 2003, he was part of a fuel convoy that was ambushed by insurgents. Seven Americans died in the attack and 26 were injured, including Stanner. He is suing the company.

His company knew the convoy's route was dangerous and unprotected, he says, but sent the convoy through anyway. "What they did was murder," Stannard told CBS News recently. "And I stick by that."

The circumstances of his injuries qualified Stanner for the U.S. Defense of Freedom medal, the civilian equivalent to a soldier's Purple Heart. In offering to forward Stanner's medical records to the Department of Defense so they could confirm and appove his award, KBR required him to sign a release form.

The document, sent to Stannard in November 2004, appears to be boilerplate -- but for one curious paragraph that appears to indemnify KBR from any wrongdoing that may have led to Stanner's injuries:

". . . I agree that in consideration for the application for a Defense of Freedom Medal on my behalf that. . . I hereby release, aquit and discharge KBR, all KBR employees, the military, and any of their representatives. . . with respect to and from any and all claims and any and all causes of action, of any kind or character, whether now known or unknown, I may have against any of them which exist as of the date of this authorization. . . . This release also applies to any claims brought by any person or agency or class action under which I may have a right or benefit."

Stannard didn't sign the form. He received the medal. And he filed suit against the company the following May.

The Campaign for America's Future has released a new report today, "War Profiteers: Profits Over Patriotism in Iraq" (pdf). Although the findings aren't new, the way connected corporations are squandering billions of public resources bears repeating. CAF's report boils it down to some key bullet points -- for example:

* $20 billion of U.S. money has been spent so far on reconstruction.
* Production of oil and electricity remain below pre-war levels.
* Schools, hospitals, cars and food are less available than before the war.
* Fully 50% of the contracts were awarded without competitive bidding.
* Only 41% of those contracts were subject to full and open competition.
* In 9% of the contracts, the means of procurement is not even known.

There are also a few choice quotes, like these:

“I come from a very conservative, very patriotic, very pro-military district … And then we find out that we don't even know exactly how many private security firms are operating in Iraq. Then I think people down my way would think that's kind of ridiculous, that we don't know that. I think they would find it ridiculous that we're having to hire private firms to provide security for our troops …”
- Representative John J. Duncan, Jr. (R-Tenn.)

“I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR [Halliburton] represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career.”
- Testimony of Bunnatine Greenhouse, the highest ranking civilian in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

The report comes as momentum grows for contracting accountability in Congress. Democrats will be holding a hearing today to discuss a slew of new proposals, including Senator Patrick Leahy's (D-VT) War Profiteering Act that would make overcharges a felony punishable by up to 20 years imprisonment. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) would create a special Senate committee to investigate contracting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

On the House side, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) leading the charge to rein in "mismanagement, lack of transparency, and potential corruption…." Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) has called for an end to "US-hired paramilitaries and mercenaries in an interrogation cell" and also introduced legislation requiring that Congress receive copies of contracts in Iraq worth more than $1 million.

Hitting closer to home, a more bi-partisan effort is being led by freshman Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who are taking a fourth crack at pushing through legislation to stop FEMA's no-bid contracting and scandals like those that followed Hurricane Katrina.

The movement for accountability is also hitting the big screen: indy filmmaker Robert Greenwald (War-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed) has just released his new documentary "Iraq for Sale," including a Patriotism over Profit week of screening festivities Oct. 8th-14th (see if there's a screening in your area here).

The movement has certainly grown since the Institute first broke the story about Halliburton's no-bid contracts in the "war on terror" and began pushing for contractor accountability.

Do we finally have an opportunity to convince federal leaders it makes sense to demand accountability for billions of dollars given in our name?

Moving into the November elections, terrorism and foreign policy were viewed by the Bush Administration as the trump card issues that could lift slowly-rising-but-still-low poll numbers and minimize the White House's drag on GOP candidates in local races.

As the Institute has documented in our report "The South at War" and elsewhere, this is especially true in the South, the region most impacted by foreign policy issues.

But as the New York Times reports, this critical battle -- which could be decisive in the fall -- isn't going as the GOP had hoped:

President Bush and Congressional Republicans spent the last 10 days laying the foundation for a titanic pre-election struggle over national security, and now they have one. But the fight playing out this week on Capitol Hill is not what they had in mind.

Instead of drawing contrasts with Democrats, the president's call for creating military tribunals to try terror suspects --— a key substantive and political component of his fall agenda -- has erupted into a remarkably intense clash pitting some of the best-known warriors in the Republican Party against Mr. Bush and the Congressional leadership. [...]

Democrats have so far remained on the sidelines, sidestepping Republican efforts to draw them into a fight over Mr. Bush’s leadership on national security heading toward the midterm election. Democrats are rapt spectators, however, shielded by the stern opposition to the president being expressed by three Republicans with impeccable credentials on military matters: Senators John McCain of Arizona, John W. Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

In some ways, the opposition of Sens. Warner and Graham is more important than McCain, an on-and-off foe of Bush who's viewed as a maverick. But the vocal outcry of Warner and Graham, hailing from deeply military Southern states and holding reputations as solid conservatives, poses more of a problem:

On one side are the Republican veterans of the uniformed services, arguing that the president’s proposal would effectively gut the nearly 60-year-old Geneva Conventions, sending a dark signal to the rest of the world and leaving United States military without adequate protection against torture and mistreatment.

On the other are the Bush administration and Republican leaders of both the House and Senate who say new tools are urgently needed to pursue and interrogate terror suspects and to protect the covert operatives who play an increasingly important role in chasing them.

Given the odds in that match-up, how will the White House respond? Here's what conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan reported earlier this week:

Next week, I'm informed via troubled White House sources, will see the full unveiling of Karl Rove's fall election strategy. He's intending to line up 9/11 families to accuse McCain, Warner and Graham of delaying justice for the perpetrators of that atrocity, because they want to uphold the ancient judicial traditions of the U.S. military and abide by the Constitution. He will use the families as an argument for legalizing torture, setting up kangaroo courts for military prisoners, and giving war crime impunity for his own aides and cronies. This is his "Hail Mary" move for November; it's brutally exploitative of 9/11; it's pure partisanship; and it's designed to enable an untrammeled executive.

Dinner time for Black Crowned Night Heron
(click image for larger view)

Former Senator John Edwards said during his campaign for President that there were Two Americas: one for the privileged and another for the disadvantaged. Now, researchers at Harvard University have identified Eight Americas in terms of life expectancy:

• Asian Americans, who have a per capita income of $21,566 and an average life expectancy of 84.9 years (Neergaard, AP/Detroit Free Press, 9/12);



• Low-income rural whites in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Nebraska, who have a per capita income of $17,758 and an average life expectancy of 79 years (USA Today, 9/12);



• Middle Americans, who have a per capita income of $24,640 and an average life expectancy of 77.9 years;



• Low-income whites in Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley, who have a per capita income of $16,390 and an average life expectancy of 75 years;



• Black Middle Americans, who have a per capita income of $15,412 and an average life expectancy of 72.9 years;



• Western American Indians, who have a per capita income of $10,029 and an average life expectancy of 72.7 years;



• Southern, low-income, rural blacks, who have a per capita income of $10,463 and an average life expectancy of 71.1 years (AP/Detroit Free Press, 9/12); and



• Urban blacks in counties with homicide rates that exceed the 95th percentile, who have a per capita income of $14,800 and an average life expectancy of 71 years (USA Today, 9/12).

Among the eight groups, there is a "life expectancy gap of almost 14 years, similar to gaps between economically developed and emerging countries, note the researchers."

This article also summarizes the results by state. Sadly, the bottom twelve come as no surprise:

23. North Carolina: 75.8 years
24. Georgia: 75.3 years
25. Arkansas: 75.2 years
25. Kentucky: 75.2 years
25. Oklahoma: 75.2 years
26. Tennessee: 75.1 years
26. West Virginia: 75.1 years
27. South Carolina: 74.8 years
28. Alabama: 74.4 years
29. Louisiana: 74.2 years
30. Mississippi: 73.6 years
31. Washington, D.C.: 72 years

Florida fares better tied for 11th place. And if that isn't depressing enough, here's a map which graphically illustrates the findings. The full report can be found here.

Except for Ernesto, hurricane season has been mostly quiet so far this year. There are a couple brewing right now, but they aren't expected to pose much of a threat.

It's interesting how tracking and prediction technology has advanced in the past few years, and how it enables experts to better assess threats. And here's a fascinating article about the technology:

It was the night of Aug. 26, and the National Hurricane Center had some grim news for Mississippi, Alabama and Florida's western Panhandle: Tropical Storm Ernesto appeared to be heading their way.

But a series of squiggles on a computer screen was predicting a different path: straight up South Florida's spine.

That electronic dissent came from a massive computer program known as the Global Forecast System, run by a little-known federal agency and housed in an IBM supercomputer northwest of Washington, D.C. The program, known as the GFS, is part of a growing arsenal of cyber-forecasts that meteorologists at the hurricane center and elsewhere consult when predicting when the next storm will arise and where it will go.

And this time, the GFS happened to be right — a fact soon confirmed by other weather-predicting programs, the hurricane center's subsequent forecasts and Ernesto's eventual path toward its landfall Wednesday near Cape Sable.

The article has some interesting background on the evolution of hurricane tracking, from a proposal in the 20s for a "forecast factory" manned by 64,000 number-crunching mathematicians to today's GFS system which can perform 1.5 trillion calculations per second.

Perhaps the greatest advancement, though, is the ability to integrate global atmospheric data:

The most sophisticated models from the National Weather Service, the U.S. Navy and agencies in Europe amount to swirling, three-dimensional simulations of the Earth's atmosphere, based on millions of satellite measurements of temperature, air pressure, moisture and wind movements at points around the globe

They're a far cry from the pre-computer, pre-satellite era, when hurricane forecasts could be wrong by more than 1,000 miles. [..] Last year, the hurricane center's five-day forecasts were more accurate than its three-day forecasts were in 1990.

Despite these advances, the models aren't perfect and human judgment plays a big part in forecasts and advisories:

The models are especially poor in forecasting a storm's strength, as shown by the way Ernesto fizzled instead of intensifying as it crossed Cuba and entered the Florida Straits.

Models do much better in predicting the storms' paths. But the hurricane center says the models are still not as accurate on average as its own staff's forecasts, which combine the model results with the meteorologists' knowledge of the programs' biases.

Of course, anything involving geek-sexy technology on a scale of this magnitude is going to attract the interest of geeky amateurs. The article and sidebar list numerous sources of raw data, but experts warn that the data has to be taken as a whole and analyzed by trained experts before making decisions on it.

I'll admit to being one of those geeky amateurs when we lived in Florida. There were several PC based hurricane tracking shareware programs available. Some were simple tracking programs that generated maps, others incorporated fairly sophisticated (for the times) forecasting algorithms.

The one I settled on had built-in tracks of 800 storms going back to 1886. Its forecasting model used knowledge of these past storms to predict the track and intensity of approaching storms. It had built-in tracking locations or you could enter your own latitude and longitude, and it would forecast when the storm would arrive at that location and at what intensity. It was remarkably accurate, especially as the storm got closer.

Nowadays, this type of information, complete with impressive maps and charts, is only a click away on the internet. But back then (circa 1997) it was a little harder to come by. As the storms approached, we anxiously awaited TV news or weather radio updates with the latest readings of the storm's latitude/longitude, pressure, maximum sustained winds, and its direction and speed of movement. You entered this in to the program and got a new 12 hour forecast and a longer range "cone" map of probability.

Eventually, NOAA and the National Hurricane Center started posting real-time "dropsponde" and "vortex" reports on their reconnaissance website. I wrote a program to import these readings into the tracking software, automating the data collection and entry.

In the process, I learned a lot about NOAA's aircraft reconnaissance operations. Data for these reports are generated by measuring devices dropped into the eye of the hurricane from aircraft manned by courageous (or crazy?) pilots and meteorologists.

As sophisticated as the software and satellite data collection has become, someone still has to fly into the eye of the storm to get the raw data used by forecasters and their software models. These pilots and meteorological aviators are the real heroes of hurricane tracking, and their work has saved countless lives. It's taxpayer money well spent.

Now if FEMA would just pay attention to them...

A letter from today's Raleigh News & Observer:

President Bush in a speech last week lauded CIA prisons overseas for delivering terrorists to justice.

Some of us, however, shudder at our country's verified use of torture in these secret zones. And we seek investigation into a North Carolina link to this enterprise.

Aero Contractors, out of Smithfield's airport and the Global TransPark, has been named a CIA front organization. Records show they have flown detainees to the CIA centers, as part of what has been called a "torture taxi" system of "extraordinary renditions."

The N.C. Council of Churches is against the use of torture for any reason. Biblical mandates to love one another and love your enemy make this, to us, a clear matter of faith.

On Sept. 1 we sent a letter on the Aero situation to the governor, attorney general, SBI director, Global TransPark leaders and the members of the General Assembly. We stand with Code Pink, Stop Torture Now and N.C. Peace Action, who have spent months seeking an SBI investigation and a halt to Aero renditions.

Why care? Our tax dollars support facilities where these flights have occurred. We believe these flights violate state and national law, as well as the Geneva Conventions. And finally, we reap what we sow.

Barbara Zelter
Program Associate
N.C. Council of Churches