Earlier this year, the national board of the Sierra Club voted to suspend the organization's Florida chapter for four years. That meant the immediate dismissal of a 27-member executive committee elected by the state's membership -- and its replacement by a body appointed by the national board of the prominent environmental group.

The chapter's sin? Well, that depends on who you ask. The national body says the problem was in-fighting on the state board, which members dispute. They in turn charge that the real problem was that the Florida chapter took positions at odds with the national organization, including bucking its pro-biofuels agenda and opposing the national board's paid endorsement of a new line of home cleaning products from Clorox, a major corporate polluter.

Today's Grist magazine has a terrific overview of the controversy. The article by Emily Gertz captures the anger the group's former Florida leaders are feeling at their national overseers, as reflected in this quote from former state chapter secretary Pedro Monteiro:

"This suspension process is rife with the same problems that plagued the misguided invasion of Iraq and Panama, and the illegal holding of citizens in Guantanamo Bay," he wrote in his email, comparing the board's actions to "the crimes of the Bush Administration." He continued, "If there really are problems in the Florida Chapter, allow the voters to express their will and elect a new leadership at the next regularly held election." In a follow-up email, Monteiro called the chapter's new interim steering committee "a national staff-appointed junta."

Read the full story online here.

Labels: Clorox, environment, environmental politics, Florida, Sierra Club

As Fair Food activists gather today in Miami to deliver the first 75,000 signatures on a petition urging Burger King to eliminate slavery and human rights abuses from Florida's tomato fields, new information has come to light about who was behind online postings attacking the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an advocacy group that has been pressuring the company to take action. Turns out Burger King Vice President Stephen Grover posted the remarks using his daughter's online identity, the Fort Myers News-Press reports:

...[O]ften during the past year, when articles or videos about the coalition were posted on YouTube and various Internet news sites, someone using the online names activist2008 or surfxaholic36 would attach comments coalition member Greg Asbed has called "libelous."

This one, from surfxaholic36, is representative: "The CIW is an attack organization lining the leaders pockets ... They make up issues and collect money from dupes that believe their story. To (sic) bad the people protesting don't have a clue regarding the facts. A bunch of fools!"

Although Shannon Grover also uses the name surfxaholic36 -- mostly on social networking sites -- she said the anti-coalition posts are her father's alone.

"I don't really know much about the coalition and Burger King stuff," she said, reached by phone at the family's Miramar home Friday. "That was my dad. My dad used to go online with that name and write about them."

Asked if she'd ever written about the coalition online, she was adamant: "No, that was my Dad. That was him."

The petition campaign was launched following the December 2007 discovery of a slavery operation in which farm bosses in Immokalee are accused of locking tomato pickers inside trucks and beating those who tried to escape. The case represents the seventh slavery prosecution in Florida agriculture in the past decade. A Senate hearing held earlier this month focused on the inhumane conditions.

The petition calls on Burger King to follow the lead of Yum Brands and McDonald's by signing an agreement with CIW to improve wages for tomato pickers, adopt a zero-tolerance policy for slavery and monitor conditions for farmworkers. The company is currently working with the Florida tomato growers' lobby to fight the advocates.

Labels: coalition of immokalee workers, Fair Food, farmworkers, Florida, slavery

In Florida, car drivers have over 100 choices for personalized license plates. But a Florida lawmaker now wants the state to offer a more divine option:

The Florida Legislature is considering a specialty plate with a design that includes a Christian cross, a stained-glass window and the words "I Believe."

Rep. Edward Bullard, the plate's sponsor, said people who "believe in their college or university" or "believe in their football team" already have license plates they can buy. The new design is a chance for others to put a tag on their cars with "something they believe in," he said.

If the plate is approved, Florida would become the first state to have a license plate featuring a religious symbol that's not part of a college logo. Approval would almost certainly face a court challenge.

The legal problem, the Florida ACLU says, is that such a plate "sends a message that Florida is essentially a Christian state" and gives the "appearance that the state is endorsing a particular religious preference."

Critics have good reason to fear religious favoritism is involved: when asked if he'd support an "I Don't Believe" plate for atheists, Rep. Bullard said probably not.

Labels: ACLU, church and state, Florida, religion, religious right

by Jeffrey Buchanan, Guest Contributor

Last Tuesday, Chairman Edward Kennedy and Sen. Bernie Sanders of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing on modern-day slavery, persistent labor abuses and stagnant sub-poverty wages facing farmworkers in Florida's tomato fields. Two hundred years after the U.S. Congress banned the transatlantic slave trade and 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, America is still dealing with human trafficking of workers on our soil and an agricultural industry dependent on unspeakable labor practices standing in the way of human rights and social justice.

The hearing included testimony from Lucas Benitez (in photo), co-founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and winner of the 2003 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. The CIW is a membership organization of migrant farmworkers, with over 4,000 members in Immokalee, the heart of Florida's fruit and vegetable industry, and elsewhere around the country. Immokalee and the surrounding portions of Florida are also where the majority of U.S.-grown tomatoes come from during the winter months.

As you read this article, chances are you have a Florida-grown tomato in your pantry. Chances also are, according to testimony of Detective Charlie Frost, investigator for the human trafficking unit at the Collier County Sheriff's Office, that as you read this article human trafficking is occurring in Florida’s agricultural fields. Katrina vanden Heuvel and Greg Kaufmann at TheNation.com chronicled Frost's response to Sen. Sanders after being asked if he believed modern day slavery, also called human trafficking, was occurring "as we speak" in Florida’s fields.

"It's probably occurring right now while we sit here," Frost said. "Almost assuredly it's going on right now."

"Detective, would you agree that in these slavery cases, there are people higher up the economic chain who are complicit and who benefit financially from what goes on?" Sanders asked. "[And if so,] do you believe we need to change the law to prevent the growers from shielding themselves from responsibility?"

"They isolate themselves from what is occurring, and they benefit from what's going on," Frost said. "We have to do something. We have to hold them accountable. This is occurring in their backyard, this is occurring in our fields, this is occurring in our country."

Tomato growers and those who purchase their produce have isolated themselves from the consequences of these abuses. Reggie Brown of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE), an industry group representing growers whose harvests account for 90 percent of Florida’s tomatoes, and Roy Renya, a management-level employee of Grangier Farms, a local tomato grower, testified they had never seen such cases in their fields, despite the seven indictments of forced labor (of which at least three cases involved tomato pickers) in Florida involving over 1,000 workers in recent years. Six of those cases were brought to light by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in cooperation with local and federal law enforcement, earning the CIW a commendation from FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Not only has the FTGE denied involvement, but indeed now they are rejecting a real solution offered by the workers to these deplorable working conditions. CIW in recent years has led historic campaigns, with the help of allies like the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, to rally consumers and negotiate human rights based agreements with fast food industry leaders Yum! Brands and McDonald’s. These agreements called for the creation of a third-party monitoring system protecting against labor abuses and for these purchasers to agree to pass a penny per pound of tomatoes purchased directly to workers who picked the produce.

Unfortunately, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange has worked to thwart the implementation of these agreements, claiming they opted out for business reasons and fear legal liability under anti-trust and racketeering laws.

On the business front, the agreements would not cost growers a penny. The FTGE had implemented surcharges on tomatoes in the past for purchasers similar to the penny per a pound on three different occasions -- for chemicals, palletizing shipments and for fuel. As Lucas Benitez testified, "The only difference with our agreement would be that instead of Monsanto or Exxon getting paid, the money would go to impoverished workers."

As for the legal fears, during the hearing Sen. Sanders introduced a letter from 26 law professors and statements from two major "white shoe" law firms with major anti-trust practices, both stating that these concerns are without legal merit.

So why would the FTGE keep up its campaign to railroad these agreements? Vanden Heuvel and Kaufmann on TheNation.com put it best:

"Indeed, it's not too much of a stretch to view [Reggie] Brown [FTGE president] and his cohorts as 21st century George Wallaces or Bull Connors, standing in the way of the progress of human rights in our own nation."

As Wallace and Connor stood between civil rights activists and progress towards Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision of "the beloved community," today FTGE stands in the way of implementing human rights-based agreements taking steps towards creating more dignified working conditions in Florida’s fields. Still FTGE dares to call itself a "progressive" industry.

In response to this standstill, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and their supporters in the Alliance for Fair Food have begun a campaign modeled after the tactics of 19th century abolitionists who led what amounted to the world's first human rights campaign which later abolished the slave trade. Their petition urges Burger King, the Florida Tomatoes Growers Exchange and food industry leaders to cooperate with the farmworkers to improve the wages and conditions for the workers who pick their tomatoes, and join an industry-wide effort to eliminate modern-day slavery and human rights abuses from Florida's fields.

Farmworkers have reached out to labor leaders, human rights activists, churches, and students. Supporters across the country have begun educating their communities on the conditions in Immokalee and how this relates to their trips to the grocery store or the salad bar or the sandwiches they purchase for lunch.

You can read more about their effort and sign the petition here.

(Jeffrey Buchanan is the communications director for the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights. He notes that another great way to support grassroots human rights activists -- including the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and groups like ACORN in New Orleans, as well as leaders in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Chad and Darfur -- is by bidding at charitybuzz.com during the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Online Auction.)

(Photo of Sen. Edward Kennedy and Lucas Benitez of Coalition of Immokalee Workers from CIW's Web site)

Labels: agriculture, coalition of immokalee workers, Florida, slavery, social movements

The business news is awash with panic today, what with financial stalwart Bear Stearns avoiding bankruptcy only by being gobbled up by J.P Morgan.

The five-alarm headlines may be a bit much: as Houston blogger Bonddad notes, "the markets are actually holding up pretty well." But there are other signs that fundamental problems in the economy are hurting the very ability of states to govern.

Today, the New York Times picks up on something we reported almost a month ago -- increasingly gloomy economic forecasts facing governors and state legislators. Thanks largely to plunging tax revenues, 25 states are anticipating shortfalls for fiscal year 2009 -- putting key programs and projects at risk:

Florida has seen its sales tax revenue decline for two straight fiscal years, the first time officials there recall that happening, the result of a collapsing housing market that has homeowners spending less. The state, which has no income tax, relies heavily on sales taxes for its state programs. [...]

Kentucky has its largest budget crisis in state history, sparked by the movement of manufacturing jobs overseas. [...]

To help close a $600 million budget gap in Virginia, the state made hundreds of thousands of dollars in cuts at universities, including dorm cleaning staff, library budgets and graduate assistantships. (The governor [Democrat Tim Kaine] wrote the state a check, giving back 5 percent of his salary, to help balance the books.)

The broader economic downturn may be out of the control of state lawmakers -- but it thrusts them into the difficult position of having to slash programs or raise taxes, both especially hard in an election year.

Labels: bear stearns, economy, financial markets, Florida, kentucky, state politics, virginia

This week, Florida state Democratic Party chair Karen Thurman has made the latest stab at resolving the battle over her state's 210 primary delegates -- nixed after the state jumped a week ahead in the 2008 electoral calendar.

Her plan: A state-wide primary re-vote, consisting of mail-in ballots and 50 regional voting offices for "disadvantaged communities" (more than Louisiana set up after Hurricane Katrina). The price-tag: $10-$12 million.

How likely is it to happen? That's not clear, given that Florida's entire Congressional delegation has come out against "any redo of any kind." Both the Clinton and Obama campaigns are refraining from publicly commenting on the proposal.

Earlier proposals had just focused on mail-in votes (for about half the cost), but drew criticism over fears that mail-in voting could bypass many voters.

Those fears are justified. Last year, the non-partisan group Project Vote did an exhaustive study of mail-in voting, which gained favor among voting reform advocates after Oregon instituted "vote by mail" in 1998. As of last year, 32 bills in 18 legislatures promoted some form of VBM.

It's true that voting by mail brings benefits; Oregon's success in boosting turnout alone has been touted as a reason to embrace VBM. But the results are mixed, to say the least. Voting by mail risks disenfranchising those who move, which tend to be low-income, poor and African-American and Latino voters:

First class mail, as its name might imply, does not treat everyone equally. In fact, it discriminates against low-income communities and dense urban areas where residents move more frequently and not every adult shares the same family name. [...]

Project Vote is especially concerned about the effects of mobility among people of lower income levels. Twenty-one percent of households with incomes under $25,000 have moved in the past year, compared to 12 percent of households with incomes greater than $100,000. Almost one in three renters moved, compared to one in 11 homeowners.

Most interestingly, new research suggests that while VBM may boost turnout, it does so largely among those who are predisposed to voting anyway -- while erecting barriers to those who have been historically disenfranchised:

To the extent that VBM increases turnout in Oregon it does so by retaining voters who are occasional rather than habitual voters. Further, these voters are demographically similar to habitual voters. In other words, VBM does nothing to expand the electorate in ways that make it more representative of the voting age population. In fact, as MIT political scientist Adam Berinsky writes: “VBM in Oregon accentuated the stratification of the electorate. Specifically, VBM mobilized those already predisposed to vote—those individuals who are long-term residents and who are registered partisans—to turn out at higher rates than before.”

The Project Vote researchers point to two others problems with mail-in voting -- possible fraud, and manipulation by election officials -- which, while important concerns, can be over-stated (consider the Department of Justice's discredited crusade for "voting integrity") and appear to be based largely on anecdotal evidence.

But voting by mail clearly presents Florida with a new set of problems, which the addition of 50 regional voting offices may or may not adequately address.

UPDATE: AP is now reporting that Thurman's plan is "unlikely," so perhaps it's all moot.

Labels: barack obama, democratic party, Election 2008, Florida, hillary clinton

This week, the Pew Center on the States released a bombshell study revealing that our country is locking up record numbers of people in jail and prison.

For the first time in history, the U.S. -- which, according to Pew, lock up more people than any other country, including China -- is now putting one out of every 100 people behind bars.

Beyond that shocking headline are some interesting details:

* The South leads: Thanks to its punitive justice policies, the South has led the country's incarceration boom over the last two decades -- and Pew finds 2007 was no exception:

The South led the way, with its population jumping from 623,563 to 641,024—a rise of 2.8 percent. Only three of the 16 states in the southern region reported a drop in inmates, while nine experienced growth exceeding 4 percent.

[Note: Pew's definition of the South is different than the Institute's, but that doesn't affect the numbers.]

* Race is a huge factor: Compared to the one-in-a-100 national average, one out of every 36 Hispanic males are incarcerated; for African-American men, that number jumps to one in 15.

* Florida tops the list: Pew offers Florida as a cautionary example in exploding incarceration rates, noting that the state's increase -- the highest in the country -- was not due to higher crime but "stemmed from a host of correctional policies and practices adopted by the state." For example:

One of the first came in 1995, when the legislature abolished “good time” credits and discretionary release by the parole board, and required that all prisoners—regardless of their crime, prior record, or risk to recidivate—serve 85 percent of their sentence. Next came a “zero tolerance” policy and other measures mandating that probation officers report every offender who violated any condition of supervision and increasing prison time for these “technical violations.” As a result, the number of violators in Florida prisons has jumped by anestimated 12,000.

Pew further notes that, while Florida's crime rate has gone down, it's not due to locking more people up -- other states that didn't incarcerate more people, or even locked up less people (like New York) also saw declines.

* Incarceration is costly: As Pew's analysis finds:

Total state spending on corrections—including bonds and federal contributions—topped $49 billion last year, up from $12 billion in 1987. By 2011, continued prison growth is expected to cost states an additional $25 billion.

The full report is available here. (pdf)

Labels: crime, criminal justice, Florida, incarceration, race and racism

The same day South Florida was paralyzed by a massive and still-mysterious power outage following a fire in an electrical substation, Texas narrowly avoided rolling blackouts after a sudden drop in wind in the western part of the state, where wind turbines are concentrated.

It's interesting to compare the immediate news coverage of the two events. The South Florida outage occurred in the service area of Florida Power & Light, which generates most of its power via fossil fuels (natural gas, coal and oil) and the rest via nuclear, and it led to the emergency shutdown of the Turkey Point nuclear power plant. So unusual is it for such a minor event to cause a blackout affecting as many as 2.5 million people that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is considering conducting its own investigation. Yet nowhere in the initial news coverage did we read that the blackout indicates the precarious nature of a traditional centralized power system dependent on fossil fuel-burning and nuclear plants.

Compare that with the report about the Texas near-incident that appeared in the Forth Worth Star-Telegram, which included this comment:

"This is a warning to all those who think that renewable energy is the sole answer [to the state's power needs]," said Geoffrey Gay, an attorney representing Fort Worth and other North Texas municipalities in utility issues. "We can't put all our eggs in one basket when it comes to any form of generation. We need to consider the cost and the reliability issues, in addition to the environmental impact."

In the same story, a spokesperson for the American Wind Energy Association pointed out that the solution is to locate turbines in different places, since the wind is generally blowing somewhere. But we find it interesting that news coverage of an averted blackout triggered by temporary problems with wind generation would raise questions about the reliability of all renewable energy, whereas coverage of an actual blackout in a system based on fossil fuel and nuclear energy didn't immediately raise similar reliability concerns.

Labels: blackouts, energy policy, Florida, texas, turkey point, wind energy

A major power outage across South Florida today brought normal life screeching to a halt, as traffic signals, schools, homes, and workplaces went dark around 1 p.m. At the peak of the outage, about 700,000 customers were left without power.

Throughout much of the afternoon, Florida Power & Light had a statement on the main page of its Web site saying it did not know the cause of the outage. But a company spokesperson assured the Miami Herald that the "failure is in no way a safety issue."

The problem reportedly began in an FPL substation in West Miami-Dade County and then spread through the transmission system, leading to an automatic shutdown of both nuclear reactors at FPL's Turkey Point power plant as well as three fossil-fuel-burning units. But that explanation raised questions for some, according to the paper:

Many experts ... remained puzzled. Normally, a problem at a single substation should not cause an outage of the magnitude that dominoed through the state Tuesday.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a statement this afternoon saying the Turkey Point reactors shut down in response to an "undervoltage" caused when two power distribution lines failed following the substation malfunction. The reactor shutdown -- a safety measure to protect plant equipment from abnormal power line voltages -- is expected to last from 12 to 24 hours.

The NRC says it's monitoring the situation.

Labels: blackouts, Florida, miami, NRC, nuclear power, turkey point

Fidel Castro, Cuba's long-sitting head of state, has stepped down. But despite new calls to end the punitive U.S. embargo against the country -- which nearly every U.N. member nation condemns -- U.S. policy towards Cuba is unlikely to change anytime soon (Bush has said as much). Why?

Florida is a highly coveted swing state. More than 1 million Cuban immigrants and Cuban-Americans live in South Florida, and they wield political clout beyond their numbers. This is an election year. And as with every election year, candidates on both sides are catering to the Cuban vote (with one notable exception -- see below).

Salon.com did a helpful run-down on the position of U.S. presidential vis-a-vis Cuba last month:

John McCain: McCain is a longtime advocate of the embargo and would like to boost U.S. spending on the anti-Castro TV and Radio Martí programs. Recently, he has spent a great deal of time and energy in Florida attempting to remind voters of this commitment. In a 2007 interview, he vowed not to use military action to end Castro's reign. But he also stated that only upon Castro's death would he offer a "package of trade, of assistance, of economic development, of assistance in democratization." Recently, McCain's supporters have also been championing him to Florida's Cuban-American leaders. [...]

Hillary Clinton: Clinton supports a continuation of the United States' current policy toward Cuba. [...] As documented by Kirk Nielsen, Clinton has essentially endorsed the policy of the Cuban Liberty Council, a Republican-leaning advocacy group that supports the Bush administration's policy of keeping Cuba as isolated as possible, although there is virtually no chance that the CLC would endorse her. She also recently voted to perpetuate TV Martí.

So who would depart from the current Bush strategy?

Barack Obama: In August of last year, Obama caused a stir among both Florida's Cuban voters and the foreign policy community when he published an Op-Ed in the Miami Herald that advocated changing the U.S. government's policy toward Cuba. In the piece, Obama stated his support for lifting travel restrictions to and from Cuba. [...] Obama endorses a change in the amount of money (currently limited to $300 per household each quarter) that Cuban-Americans can send to family members on the island. Obama has voted to end TV Martí ... on two occasions, putting him in opposition to Hillary Clinton.

The irony? Recent polls showing that Cuban-Americans themselves are in favor of easing travel and other restrictions on the U.S. relationship with Cuba.

Labels: barack obama, cuba, Election 2008, Florida, hillary clinton, john mccain, peace and security

The House Election Task Force held a hearing Friday on the contested Florida District 13 race of 2006. The Government Accountability Office presented the findings of its final report [PDF] into Sarasota County's mysterious 18,000 undervotes in that contest, which Republican Vern Buchanan won by a narrow margin over Democrat Christine Jennings.

After conducting its own tests, the GAO concluded that the technology at issue -- Election Systems & Software's iVotronic equipment, a direct recording electronic system that left no paper trail -- counted the votes accurately. However, the GAO's Dr. Nabajyoti Barkakati told the task force that the results "cannot be used to provide absolute assurance" that the technology was not a factor in the undervote. Nevertheless, the task force members unanimously approved a motion to dismiss Jennings' challenge of the election outcome.

But various voting experts are questioning the GAO's conclusions. Susan Pynchon is the executive director of the Florida Fair Elections Center, which last month released the results of its own year-long investigation into the iVotronics equipment that concluded problems with the technology were responsible for the loss of about 100,000 votes in various races during that state's 2006 election. In a brief phone interview on Friday, she called the GAO's report "terrible," noting that it focused on aspects of the technology that were not under contention and then took a "breathtaking leap" to exonerate the ES&S machines. She said her organization would release a more thorough analysis of the GAO's report soon; we will link to that here.

The Verified Voting Foundation also concluded that the GAO's findings were not sufficient to exonerate the machines from a role in the massive undervote. VVF founder David Dill, a Stanford University computer science professor, said the GAO's report "cannot be interpreted as a clean bill of health for the machines."

Writing on the Freedom to Tinker blog, Dan Wallach -- a Rice University computer science professor who with Dill co-authored a lengthy paper about shortcomings in previous investigations of iVotronics machines -- pointed out that the GAO failed to conduct any controlled human subject tests to cast simulated votes, which would shed light on whether voters are confused by the system's user interface. GAO also failed to examine warehoused machines for evidence of miscalibration, didn't inspect any of ES&S's internal change logs or trouble tickets, and failed to offer enough details about its own tests to allow a critique of whether they were done properly. Noted Wallach:

Meanwhile, you can expect ES&S and others to use the GAO report as some sort of vindication of the iVotronic, in specific, or of paperless DRE voting systems, in general. Don't buy it. Even if Sarasota's extreme undervote rate wasn't itself sufficient to throw out this specific election result, it still represents compelling evidence that the voting system, as a whole, substantially failed to capture the intent of Sarasota's voters.

The task force's motion to dismiss the challenge will now be reviewed by the full Committee on House Administration before going to the House floor for a vote.

Labels: Florida, voting rights

The presidential primary candidates are facing their first tests in the South ahead of Mega Tuesday on Feb. 5th.

The outcome of South Carolina's Republican primary last week was a disappointment for Huckabee, who found little Southern Comfort with his Bible thumping, Confederate flag waving campaign. John McCain edged out a win, and goes full throttle with NH and SC afterburners on to engage Romney in Florida. Fred Thompson drew a "line in the sand" that not many voters crossed, and ambled off the stage to the boos and catcalls of Tennessee supporters and voters who had already voted early for him.

Many polls had McCain and Huckabee close or virtually tied going in, and both had big surges in the days leading up to the primary. But Huckabee leveled off before McCain, who pushed through for the win. According to some analysts, undecided voters decided it in the voting booths at the end.

The Democrats face their first Southern test tomorrow in South Carolina's Democratic primary. All the polls show Obama in the lead, some more substantially than others. The most recent, a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll of 811 likely voters concluded yesterday, shows Obama (38%) with a 13 point lead over Clinton (25%) and Edwards at 21% with only 7% undecided. But the poll also shows Obama's lead shrinking (down from 43% on 1/22) with support moving to Edwards (up from 15% on 1/22) and Clinton holding steady.

This suggests that the infighting between Clinton and Obama is helping Edwards, who had a good showing in the SC debate that positioned him as the self-styled "adult" in the campaign and got him some much needed media attention. Settling for whatever she can get there, Clinton has conceded SC to Obama and moved on to campaign in California for Feb 5th. Edwards sees SC as a "must win" or at least a "must have a strong showing" and is still there making his case in BBQ joints and diners all around the state. Obama maintains a commanding lead among African-American voters, who represent about half of the SC Democratic primary voters, and also among women and younger voters. Obama also has a slight lead among seniors, suggesting an across the board appeal that will be tough for Edwards to overcome. The closing arguments are in, and voters will render their verdict tomorrow.

Unlike Thompson, Edwards has not drawn a line in the South Carolina sand, and indications are that he will likely do better than some expected and that he's in it through at least Feb. 5th. Beyond that will depend on how well he does then (and possibly on how badly Clinton and Obama beat each other up). Either way, speculation is that he will get as many delegates as he can and if he isn't the nominee he will do some horse trading, possibly at a brokered convention in Denver.

Florida's primary next Tuesday is turning in to quite the spectacle, with Rudy Giuliani racing his campaign bus around the track at Daytona International Speedway and Mitt Romney caught on camera posing with black kids while rapping "who let the dogs out?," an awkward moment to say the least.

The polls are showing a close race between McCain and Romney, with McCain showing a surge after NH and SC and Romney, who skipped SC, showing a boost after Michigan and Nevada. Huckabee is out of gas and out of money and hoping to pick up a few Thompson stragglers in Florida, but it appears he will be finished after Feb. 5th. Giuliani's "one state strategy" isn't working out for him, and he will be competing with Huckabee for third place in Florida after peaking out late in November. It's not clear what's after Florida for Giuliani -- probably not a NASCAR ride, but maybe Fred Thompson can get him a recurring bit part on Law and Order.

Labels: Election 2008, Florida, South Carolina, Southern Politics

Citing concerns about investments in sub-prime mortgage backed securities, Florida local governments have withdrawn billions of dollars from a State of Florida investment fund, including withdrawals of $3.5 billion in one day. The run on the State Board of Administration operated Local Government Investment Pool has resulted in a freeze on withdrawals from the fund.

The Orlando Sentinel reports:

The State Board of Administration -- the governor, attorney general and chief financial officers -- voted unanimously to at least temporarily halt a run on the fund, which has reported withdrawals totaling $10 billion in the past several weeks. That's more than one-third of the fund's assets of $28 billion.

This could put local governments who "park" money in the investment pool in a bind:

Alarmed local officials said the move by the SBA could jeopardize local governments' payrolls, if they are not able to take money out of the fund to pay employees.

The freeze on withdrawals may be partly in reaction to a Bloomberg report yesterday that said the fund had invested $2 billion in "sub-prime tainted debt" and that $900 million (5%) of the fund's asset-backed securities were in default. The article noted that Orange County (Orlando) had withdrawn its entire $370 million from the fund. Pinellas County (St. Petersburg/Clearwater) withdrew its entire $300 million, and Miami-Dade County and Pompano Beach have also withdrawn funds.

The Florida State Board of Administration responded with a "recommendation to the Board of Trustees to formally adopt a plan to provide investors in the Local Government Investment Pool (Pool) with assurance that the Pool will continue to provide safety of principal in the midst of an unprecedented absence of market liquidity."

The plan would seek protection from default for $1.5 billion in securities, including securities issued by Countrywide Mortgage, and restructure the plan to be "more liquid and conservative."

The Florida SBA also noted that the Bloomberg article was incorrect with regard to securities being in default:

"It is important that every investor in the Pool has an accurate understanding of the facts regarding our holdings, not misinformation" said Stipanovich. A November 28, 2007 article by Bloomberg News erroneously stated that: "The Florida pool's $900 million of defaulted asset-backed commercial paper now amounts to almost 5 percent of its holdings." In fact, certain Pool investments have been downgraded below purchase credit rating guidelines, but they have continued to pay principal and interest. The Pool has collected approximately $64 million in principal and interest payments since August on these downgraded investments.

Earlier in the month, the FSBA issued a report entitled "Update on Sub-Prime Mortgage Meltdown and State Board of Administration Investments" which outlined the sub-prime exposure of the various funds managed by the FSBA. The report states:

The SBA can take pride in the fact that its investments have held up well through periods of financial crisis and economic downturns. This report lays out our current exposures and responses to date dealing with the sub-prime meltdown. Although past performance is no guarantee of future results, and the financial environment may become even more challenging, we believe the SBA is positioned to deal with the current financial stress at least as well as we have with prior events."

One of the funds managed by the SBA is the Florida Retirement System Pension Plan.

An expert contacted by Bloomberg stated:

Should the withdrawals continue, Florida's [Local Government Investment Pool] may have to consider filing for bankruptcy protection, says John Coffee, a securities law professor at Columbia Law School in New York. "A bankruptcy could handle these kinds of problems if they feel they'll become insolvent," he said.

Coffee predicts the pool will likely file lawsuits to recover losses. "I'd expect the pool is going to sue the people who sold them the commercial paper, saying the risks were hidden," he said.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sold Florida most of its now- default-rated asset-backed commercial paper. Lehman spokesman Randall Whitestone declined to comment.

Bloomberg also quotes Joseph Mason, professor of finance at Drexel University:

"The first people in the withdrawal line get 100 percent of their money,'' he said. "The loss is suffered by the people behind them in line. Since nobody wants to be at the end, you get a run on the pool."

Mason says while the state of Florida has a moral duty to cover any losses suffered by the pool participants, its own shaky finances will make that difficult. The fourth most- populous state, hurt by the housing slump, cut its revenue projections by 3.9 percent for the fiscal year ending June 30, and 5.2 percent for the following year.

"The state appears to have breached the trust of the investors by putting money in new kinds of debt its managers didn't fully understand, in their search for higher yields," Mason said.

It sounds as though Florida local governments and taxpayers are the latest victims in the ongoing sub-prime lending scandal.

Labels: economy, Florida

Last January, Florida implemented a new law that requires the state to reject voter registration applications if the information provided doesn't match driver's license or Social Security records. The law was crafted with help from Hans von Spakovsky, who has been accused by his former Justice Department colleagues of being "the point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division's mandate to protect voting rights."

This week, the Southwest Florida News-Press published an analysis of the law's impact, finding that it resulted in the rejection of voting applications from 14,000 Floridians over the past 21 months -- three-quarters of them minorities:

Blacks were 6 1/2 times more likely than whites to be rejected ... Hispanics were more than 7 times more likely to be failed.

Though state law requires notification of these "lost" voters, most contacted by the paper said they were unaware of the problem.

The same month Florida's new voting law went into effect, President Bush named von Spakovsky to the Federal Elections Commission by recess appointment. But his official confirmation to the post is stymied in the Senate due to the vocal opposition of Sens. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who have called his nomination "just another example of this administration putting the fox in charge of the hen house."

Labels: Florida, race and racism, voting rights

Florida Power & Light last week announced plans to build Florida's first large-scale solar thermal power plant, which will be one of the world's largest.

The 300-megawatt facility is part of a $2.4-billion FPL investment aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions. Besides the $1.5 billion Florida facility, that investment also includes another 200 megawatts of solar thermal power tentatively slated for California, $500 million to help its 4.5 million customers better manage their power use, and $400 million over five years for a nationwide education program, the St. Petersburg Times reports.

The announcement was a decidedly bipartisan affair, made by Republican Gov. Charlie Crist in New York with former President Bill Clinton and movie star do-gooder Brad Pitt by his side, according to the paper:

"Producing solar energy in the Sunshine State just makes sense," Crist told the crowd at at the Clinton Global Initiative, which draws world leaders, celebrities and scholars for three days of panel discussions and smaller working sessions on global issues and asks them to take concrete steps on those causes.

Crist thanked FPL and Clinton, one of the best-known Democrats in the nation, "for making the world better and helping my state. God bless you."

FPL Energy is already the nation's largest generator of solar power through its operations at the Solar Electric Generating System in California's Mojave Desert, pictured above. For more details about the company's solar program and to learn how solar plants work, click here.

Labels: energy policy, Florida

Clicking through various TV news shows last night, I caught a number of reports about Andrew Meyer, the University of Florida telecommunications student and reputed prankster who was Tasered for behaving disruptively during the question-and-answer segment of a campus lecture by U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). Curiously enough, none of the reports I saw detailed what it was that Meyer was saying when school police attempted to drag him away from the microphone, leading him to resist and ultimately ending in his Tasering.

For that, I had to turn to YouTube.

As it turns out, the exchange began when Kerry was talking about the Bush administration's failed Iraq War policy and acknowledged Meyer standing at the microphone. The student, who reportedly pushed his way to the front of the questioners' line, began his remarks politely enough by thanking Kerry for his time and for being "open and honest." Meyer was holding up a copy of Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans -- Sordid Secrets & Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild by investigative reporter Greg Palast and recommended it to Kerry, who said he'd already read it. Meyer continued:

"He says you won the 2004 election -- isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing? You won in 2004! In fact, there were multiple reports on the day of the election of disenfranchisement of black voters in Florida and Ohio..."

At that point, a police officer interrupted Meyer and attempted to lead him away from the microphone. Meyer insisted he would ask his question anyway and brought up problems with voting machines in Florida, asking Kerry:

"How could you concede the election ... ?"

Meyer went on to ask Kerry why he wasn't pushing for Bush's impeachment before he could invade Iran. Then he asked Kerry about his membership in Skull and Bones, the same Yale secret society to which Bush belongs. At that point someone cut off Meyer's microphone, sparking the brouhaha that led to his Tasering. As police dragged Meyer away, Kerry can be heard saying, "Let me answer his question."

University of Florida President J. Bernard Machen announced that the school's police chief has called on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to conduct a formal investigation into Meyer's arrest, and two officers involved in the incident have been placed on paid administrative leave pending the probe's outcome.

In addition, the school plans to assemble a panel of faculty and students to review police protocols and management practices and come up with recommendations, school administrators and police officials will analyze the incident and conduct an internal review, and the State Attorney's Office will conduct an expedited review of the charges against Meyer.

Kerry released his own statement on the controversy:

"In 37 years of public appearances, through wars, protests and highly emotional events, I have never had a dialogue end this way. I believe I could have handled the situation without interruption, but I do not know what warnings or other exchanges transpired between the young man and the police prior to his barging to the front of the line and their intervention. I asked the police to allow me to answer the question and was in the process of responding when he was taken into custody. I was not aware that a taser was used until after I left the building. I hope that neither the student nor any of the police were injured. I regret enormously that a good healthy discussion was interrupted."

Labels: civil rights, criminal justice, Florida

Paul Ortiz -- a professor in the community studies program at the University of California at Santa Cruz and an Institute for Southern Studies advisor and former board member -- will be reading from and discussing his book Emancipation Betrayed at Internationalist Books and Community Center in Chapel Hill, N.C. tonight, Wednesday, Sept. 12.

Covering the hidden history of black organizing and white violence in Florida beginning in the 1870s, Ortiz's book examines the struggle of black Floridians to create the first statewide civil rights movement. Ortiz documents how blacks formed mutual aid organizations including secret societies, women's clubs and labor unions to fight Jim Crow in Florida, which at the time had the highest lynching rate of any U.S. state. The book culminates in the bloody election of 1920, where white supremacists with state sanction violently prevented blacks from casting ballots.

The talk begins at 7 p.m. and is free. Internationalist Books is located at 405 W. Franklin St. in Chapel Hill. For more details on the book and the event, click here.

Labels: Florida, race and racism, Southern Politics

Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's environmental policies are under fire from "Freedom Works", a conservative Washington D.C. "policy group" that "recruits, educates, trains and mobilizes hundreds of thousands of volunteer activists to fight for less government, lower taxes, and more freedom." The group is headed by former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey.

They have organized a petition opposing Gov. Crist's initiatives to fight global warming:

Most people who voted for Nancy Pelosi expected to get extreme left-wing public policy. But when people heard Charlie Crist’s promises to follow in the conservative legacy of Jeb Bush and voted for him to be governor of Florida, they didn't expect to get Nancy Pelosi.

Yet just months into office, that's exactly what Gov. Crist is becoming, by embracing the Nancy Pelosi agenda on global warming. It's a series of mandates on Florida businesses and citizens that will drive up energy costs without benefiting the environment. Even worse, Gov. Crist is advancing the Pelosi agenda through decree, without a vote in the state legislature.

At least the right-wing extremists are bipartisan in their opposition to saving the planet. (By way of th Florida Politics blog.)

Labels: climate, Florida, politics

Florida is one of the hot spots for Election '08. As the Institute found in a recent report, the fast-growing Sunshine State has been one of the biggest fundraising locations for candidates in both parties (as of July 15, Sen. Clinton had pulled down $3.4 million from Florida alone).

But now a battle between Florida and the national Democratic Party may strip the state of its hoped-for clout in the primaries.

Earlier this year, a bi-partisan group in the state legislature -- in a bid to put Florida at the center of the 2008 elections -- voted to move up the state's presidential primaries to January 29th, one of the first in the country.

"No way," said the national Democratic Party -- and to show they meant it, they threatened to slice the state's delegate count at the 2008 convention from 201 to 93 if they didn't move the primary back.

At first Florida Democrats held their ground. But yesterday, the Florida Dems buckled to the pressure, as Ballot Access News reports:

On August 5, the Florida Democratic Party Executive Committee voted to ask the Florida legislature to move the state’s presidential primary from January 29 to February 5. The legislature will meet in September 2007 in special session.

Unfortunately for Florida Dems, the Republican-controlled legislature is unlikely to move the primary.

If the primaries don't change -- and the national party insists on cutting Florida's delegation -- who loses most? Beside the voters of Florida -- one of the most diverse states in the country -- is could be Hillary: a July Mason-Dixon poll found Clinton far ahead of the Democratic pack in Florida, getting the nod from 31% .

(H/T to Political Wire)

Labels: Election 2008, Florida

The environmental magazine Grist reports that Republican Gov. Charlie Crist is poised to make Florida a regional -- and even national -- leader in the shift to clean energy:

What's the greenest state in the U.S.? By Friday, it could be Florida. Republican Gov. Charlie Crist is hosting a two-day climate summit in Miami, and will wrap up the event by signing three sweeping eco-executive orders. His plans include adopting California's strict vehicle-emissions law, making Florida the first Southeast state to go that route; calling for a 40 percent reduction in statewide greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025; and requiring state agencies to prioritize fuel efficiency when buying or renting vehicles and to hold events in facilities certified as green by the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Crist is also asking state utilities to produce 20 percent of their power from renewables, and creating a Florida Governor's Action Team on Energy and Climate Change. Whew! "When you look at the southeast of our country, there hasn't been a whole lot of action," Crist says. "Maybe we can be the point of the spear as it relates to making a difference, striving to lead by example."

UPDATE: There's a big hitch in Crist's plan: his likely recommendation that Florida turn to nuclear power as a major alternative to coal and gas, which brings its own host of environmental questions, as the AP reports:

One of the obstacles to building more nuclear power plants is the question of what to do with the spent fuel. Currently, much of that waste is set to eventually be taken to the national Yucca Mountain Repository in Nevada, but it won't hold it all. There's also opposition to storing it there that may pose problems for that plan.

And there's also the cost:

What to do with the safety, security and waste aren't the only obstacle to more nuclear plants - there's also the huge capital costs in building them. The last new nuclear plant in the United States, opened in 1996 in Tennessee after 22 years of construction, cost $7 billion.

Labels: energy policy, Florida

Tim Griffin -- a former aide to top Bush adviser Karl Rove and a key player in the U.S. attorney politicization scandal -- has long been haunted by charges that he was part of an illegal scheme to keep black Florida residents from voting in the 2004 elections. Appointed last year by President Bush to serve as a U.S. attorney in Arkansas, Griffin resigned earlier this month amid growing controversy over his role in possible voter suppression efforts.

Now a fresh analysis of voter data by the excellent TPMmuckraker blog suggests that the allegations against Griffin may be true.

The analysis started with a spreadsheet of names and addresses of more than 1,800 voters in Duval County, Fla. sent in an August 2004 e-mail obtained by BBC reporter Greg Palast. Griffin -- then the Republican National Committee's head of opposition research -- was copied on the e-mail, the subject line of which was "caging." That's a direct-marketing term for processing returns from a mailing. The technique has been used by Republicans in the past to generate a list of potentially ineligible voters by sending mail to them stamped "do not forward"; any returned mail is then used at the polls to challenge their residence.

To ascertain whether the "caging" list was made up mostly of African Americans, TPMmuckraker compared the names with the 2007 voter rolls from Duval County. As it turns out, most of those on the list were Democrats -- and most of those Democrats were African-American. Under the Voting Rights Act, it's against the law to target voters on the basis of race.

Michael McDonald, a George Mason University professor and elections statistics expert, says there's a very low chance that those results could come from a random sample of voters. But he also tells TPMmuckraker that there are other possible explanations for the findings:

If, for example, the list was generated in response to a mailing to new registrants as Republicans have argued, the skew might result from a disproportionate number of those new registrants being African-American Democrats. The results, he said, do not provide "a smoking gun" of a Republican attempt at voter suppression.

However, that's not how Griffin has defended himself from the charges, the blog points out:

Speaking two weeks ago, Griffin focused on the term 'caging,' saying that it's simply a direct mail term. "I didn't cage votes, I didn't cage mail, I didn't cage animals," he added. The allegations that he was involved in voter suppression, he said, were "ridiculous" and "so untrue" that he couldn't even respond to a question about them ... ."

But as TPMmuckraker asks:

If the "caging" list was really nothing more than a catalogue of returned mail, why were senior Republican officials concerning themselves with such clerical matters?

The revelation comes amid growing concern over other possible GOP voter suppression tactics elsewhere in the South. That includes an effort we've reported on extensively by the North Carolina Auditor, Republican Les Merritt, and his spokesperson, Chris Mears, to challenge legislation designed to boost voter participation by raising baseless allegations of possible voter fraud. Mears previously served as the political director of the state GOP, where he was involved in his own voting scandal.

ADDENDUM: Here's another excellent analysis of what happened in Duval County posted over at Daily Kos. Though the author has found serious weaknesses with Greg Palast's reporting, he confirms that the 2004 caging was racially biased in its effect. He also makes the point that documents obtained as part of a caging case in Ohio "revealed indisputable RNC involvement in caging (Tim Griffin and others), as well as concern about 'GOP footprints' if the caging efforts were brought to light." And he points out that a high-level official in the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign "suggested use of caging lists to challenge absentee ballots in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico."

(Tim Griffin photo from U.S. Department of Justice)

Labels: Florida, voting rights

Last week we discussed the Florida Public Service Commission's decision to deny a permit for a proposed coal-fired power plant near the Everglades, and how Florida Power and Light now proposes a nuclear power generating facility instead.

Like most states in the South, Florida is heavily dependent on fossil fuels for energy, with 80% of its electrical generating capacity based on non-renewable sources that pollute the environment. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Florida gets 37% of its power from coal, 21% from natural gas, and 22% from petroleum. Clean, renewable sources (wind, geothermal, biomass, and solar) represent only about 3% of Florida's power generating capacity, and the rest (18%) comes from nuclear power plants.

With growing political and environmental opposition to fossil fuel energy sources (not to mention the fact that they will eventually run out), and concerns about the safety and cost of nuclear power, what are the alternatives?

As the Sunshine State, Florida is uniquely situated to exploit cheap (practically free), clean, renewable solar power. In fact, so is most of the South. Only the Southwestern United States is better situated to most effectively utilize solar power:


(Source: National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

To that end, Florida's 2006 Energy Act includes a solar energy incentives program to encourage installation of solar water heating and photovoltaic (PV) systems throughout the state.

The program provides cash rebates for qualifying solar hot water heating systems, solar pool heaters, and solar PV systems. For PV systems, the rebate is $4 per watt of rated capacity up to $20,000 for residential systems and up to $100,000 for commercial installations, including apartments and condos. Solar hot water heating systems are eligible for rebates up to $500 for residential and $5000 for commercial applications. Residential solar pool heaters are eligible for a $100 rebate. (This is in addition to federal solar energy tax credits of up to $2000).

The Florida Legislature allocated $2.5 million for rebates during the first year of the program, which started on July 1, 2006. So far, the program has paid approx. $2.2 million in rebates. (Other Florida energy incentives include $11.5 million in grants, $11 million in tax credits, and $4 million in sales tax refunds for renewable energy programs involving development of hydrogen and biofuel technologies.)

We spoke with Jim Tatum, Solar Programs Manager for the Florida Energy Office in the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (which oversees the solar incentives program) about the program's success so far.

Mr. Tatum said that the program has been very popular. Since July 1, 2006, the FEO has received 2446 applications, and 1889 qualifying installations were approved for rebates. 1101 were for solar hot water heating systems, mostly residential, and 707 were for swimming pool heaters. According to Mr. Tatum, the solar system rebates represent an energy equivalent of 21 million kilowatt hours annually. (If our math is correct, this is enough energy to power 3500 homes.)

We were surprised to learn that only 76 applications for PV systems had been approved, but Mr. Tatum said that solar water heating systems are far less expensive to install and therefore more popular. He said, however, that the rebate program typically covers about 40% of the cost of installing a solar energy system.

There is no disputing that solar PV systems are still expensive. The payback period depends on a variety of factors, including system type and efficiency, geography, installation site, consumption, utility rates, incentives, and other considerations.

Using this calculator, we estimated that a typical residential PV system would cost approx. $37,500 and the payback period would be nearly 40 years for a home in Tennessee. Florida's incentives (and geography) would reduce this by more than half, with a payback of less than 18 years. These costs will continue to decrease as solar technology advances and manufacturing output increases with demand.

Mr. Tatum noted that some recent commercial PV installations in the Tallahassee area had maxed out at the $100,000 rebate limit. One is Notary Public Underwriters, which recently installed a 25.2 kilowatt PV grid-connected system. Another is the Tallahassee Antique Car Museum, which installed two 25 kilowatt systems which are eligible for a total of $200,000 in Florida solar rebates and $21,000 in federal tax credits. Another high profile installation is Ted's Montana Grill, which is owned by Ted Turner who recently started his own solar energy company.

One important, money-saving and environmentally friendly feature of solar PV systems is the ability to "net meter." In this configuration, the solar PV system is interconnected to the electric utility so that excess electricity is fed back into the power grid, effectively "running the meter backwards." This enables homeowners and businesses to sell excess power generated during periods of low demand back to the utility company, reducing both the amount of power needed from conventional sources and the related pollution they create.

Solar PV experts say this is far more efficient and cost-effective than expensive battery storage systems. Mr. Tatum said there is currently no Florida state law mandating net metering for grid-connected systems, but that "more and more utilities are agreeing to it."

Florida is clearly leading the way in solar incentives around the South. Here's a brief summary of solar water heating, photovoltaic, and renewable energy incentives, net metering regulations, and building energy codes in other Southern states:

	Solar water heating incentives	Solar electric incentives	Renewable energy incentives	Net metering regulations	Building energy codes
Alabama	Loans	No	Yes	No	Local option
Arkansas	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Florida	Rebates	Rebates	Yes	No	Yes
Georgia	No	No	Yes	Limited	Yes
Kentucky	Loans	No	No	Limited	Yes
Louisiana	Exemptions	Exemptions	No	Yes	Yes
North Carolina	Exemptions	No	Credits	Limited	Yes
South Carolina	Credits	No	No	No	Yes
Tennessee	Commercial	Commercial	No	No	Local option
Texas	Exemptions	Exemptions	Exemptions	Limited	Local option
Virginia	Exemptions	Exemptions	No	Limited	Yes
West Virginia	No	No	No	Limited	Yes

(Source: North Carolina State University DSIRE Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency)

It's interesting to note that some states are taking a more hesitant approach to net metering regulations. States listed as "limited" place various limits on the amount of energy that can be sold back into the grid, or exempt some utilities from net metering requirements altogether. For example, Kentucky exempts TVA from the state's net metering regulations. Although net metering may represent some technical challenges for local utilities, it's not difficult to imagine that some of these "loopholes" are the result of intense lobbying by big corporate utility concerns.

Uniform net metering regulations and interconnection standards would help promote distributed solar PV systems, as would more federal and state rebate/credit programs to help "jump start" solar technology development. These are environmental and economic policy issues that should be taken up in state legislatures and in Congress going forward.

Here are some other interesting solar PV energy facts from the U.S. Department of Energy:

• Compared with electricity generated from fossil fuels, each kilowatt of PV-produced electricity offsets up to 830 pounds of oxides of nitrogen, 1,500 pounds of sulfur dioxide, and 217,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, every year, according to a report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

• Studies have shown that, depending on the type of PV technology, the clean energy payback of a PV system ranges from one to four years. With life expectancies of 30 years, 87% to 97% of the energy produced by PV systems will be free of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

• Today, the PV industry generates about 3,000 jobs for every $100 million of module sales. If the industry continues to grow at the rate we've seen in the last few years -- an average of about 36% -- it could employ some 150,000 Americans in high-value, high-tech jobs within 20 years (Solar Electricity: The Power of Choice, 2001).

• Contrary to some popular notions, the landscape of a world relying on PV would be almost indistinguishable from the landscape we know today. ... In the United States, cities and residences cover about 140 million acres of land. We could supply every kilowatt-hour of our nation's current energy requirements simply by applying PV to 7% of this area -- on roofs, on parking lots, along highway walls, on the sides of buildings, and in other dual-use scenarios. ... We still wouldn't have a land use issue, even if we didn't use roofs for PV. We would need only 10 million acres of land -- only four-tenths of one percent of the area of the United States -- to supply all of our nation's energy using PV.

Labels: energy policy, environment, Florida

As my fello