Monday, October 5, 2009

“Tester quietly works on lower-profile issues - Great Falls Tribune” plus 4 more

“Tester quietly works on lower-profile issues - Great Falls Tribune” plus 4 more

Tester quietly works on lower-profile issues - Great Falls Tribune

Posted: 05 Oct 2009 06:23 AM PDT

WASHINGTON While Sen. Max Baucus was working to fix America's health care system, Montana's other senator slipped into a hearing room last week and pressed the man in charge of the administration's corporate bailout program about General Motors' decision to buy a metal from a foreign producer rather than the Montana mine that had been its longtime source.

Was it appropriate, Democrat Jon Tester asked Assistant Treasury Secretary Herbert Allison, that the federal government provide billions of taxpayer dollars to stabilize GM and then do nothing when the country's largest carmaker cancels a contract that could cost scores of American jobs?

They've "basically sold our workers down the tube," Tester said, peering over his reading glasses at Allison during a Senate banking committee hearing. "How do we hold GM's feet to the fire?"

"Well, sir, I think you're holding their feet to the fire right now by raising this issue as effectively as you are," responded Allison, who promised to air those concerns with administration colleagues.

Unlike his fellow Montana senator, Tester isn't shadowed by throngs of TV cameras and reporters hanging on his every word. People aren't stacked up outside his office hoping for a minute of his time. President Obama doesn't invoke Tester's name on a regular basis.

While Baucus has been working on what could be the biggest change in health care in nearly half a century, Tester has gone about the people's business too, working on a wilderness and forestry bill, pushing for increased veterans' benefits and marshaling money for Montana, particularly for rural water projects, through his perch on the Appropriations Committee. On Tuesday, for example, he won approval for a measure postponing fee increases for cabins on land managed by the U.S. Forest Service small, perhaps, but important to Montanans.

At 53 and serving his first term, Tester doesn't seem to mind the attention gap one bit.

With his signature flattop haircut emphasizing a rural, no-frills attitude, the barrel-chested organic farmer plows along with plenty to keep him busy. A typical work day on Capitol Hill finds him shuttling among committee hearings and constituent meetings, like most senators.

It’s not easy to type with gloves on — PATTY FEDELI'S VINTAGE ... - North Bay Nugget

Posted: 05 Oct 2009 05:54 AM PDT

Posted By PATTY FEDELI

Posted 1 hour ago

Wow. That was fast.

Fall, in a word, fell. It dropped out of the two-week long clear sky and hit us with bleak, dreary, rainy days and nights colder than the reception Sarah Palin would get at Berkeley.

Traditionally, fall sneaks up on us. The hot, humid days of August begin to slowly cool and shorten in the third week of September, and you begin seeing a tinge of red, orange, or yellow here and there along the escarpment. By the first week of October you find you need a jacket on an afternoon walk and another blanket at night.

This easing into winter has been a staple of life in Northern Ontario all my life.

Not so this year. I noticed a fully-turned oak tree on O'Brien Street the third week of August, I've been wearing a jacket since May, and since Hubby refuses to turn the furnace on before November 1, every night I cook dinner wearing so many sweaters I can't bend my arms. In order to stir the pots I have to hold the spoon in my teeth.

For three weeks I have been wearing snow pants when I vacuum the living room, mittens when I clean the bathtub and have covered the bed with so many blankets that we can't roll over in the night. And October has just barely begun.

What climate change?

I have always looked forward to the seasonal predictions of good, solid country folk who spend their lives reading the signs in nature. Earlier this summer I ran into our local expert at the post office and asked him what he thought the winter was going to be like this year. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "Beats me."

So, it looks like this year, I'm on my own.

I have been purposely making my own nature observations from my couch cushion for a few weeks now. The foliage is falling so fast the only way to enjoy a leaf peeping tour this fall will be to open the car door and stare at the ground.

This is the first year I swapped the summer clothes for the winter ones and didn't bring about a heat wave. And it's just my luck that the minute the cold weather kicked in, so did the effectiveness level of my new hot flash medication.

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Water economist says we can invest, profit, help people - The State

Posted: 05 Oct 2009 04:50 AM PDT

Hoffmann thinks "Planet Water: Investing in the World's Most Valuable Resource" (John Wiley & Sons, 2009) is every bit as compelling as any business book on the market today.

"The global condition of our water resources has never been in more peril, nor have the investment opportunities ever been greater," Hoffmann says.

Why?

There is no substitute for pure, life-sustaining water, and it's getting harder to get by the day, Hoffmann says.

Sure, there's an abundance of water. That's why Earth is known as the Blue Planet. But there are serious disconnects: Most water isn't drinkable or isn't accessible in sufficient quantities to major population centers.

Some big cities - including Shanghai; Mumbai, India; and Lagos, Nigeria - already face monumental challenges of matching explosive population growth with limited water supply. Droughts, storms and contamination create massive disruptions.

There's money to be made in fixing all this, Hoffman says.

He wrestled with the idea of profiting from a worldwide predicament but concluded that clean water for all depends on private investment in technology and infrastructure. "It just isn't going to happen without it," Hoffmann says.

Kevin Commins, executive editor of John Wiley, agrees. "We felt a book alerting investors to those opportunities would sell well. Steve's background in the water industry and the investment industry made him an ideal author for the book."

While sales of "Planet Water" haven't exactly created a tsunami, Commins says the book is catching on. It was named one of the top investment books of 2009 by Stock Trader's Almanac.

You see, nobody knows water quite like Hydro Steve.

Hoffmann earned his master's degree in resource economics with a focus on water from the University of North Texas in 1986. His 25-year career has included everything from academics to private-equity funding.

But most impressively, Hoffmann is the architect of the first water-based exchange-traded fund, which was created in 2005.

ETFs bundle stocks with defined similarities so that investors can be diversified within a category or industry. In this case, his index, Palisades Water Index, is 30 stocks, all traded on U.S. exchanges, including water utility, treatment, infrastructure and resource management companies.

PHO, which is licensed and tracked by Invesco PowerShares, is now a $1.5 billion ETF.

Hoffmann's second fund, Palisades Global Water Index, with an international slant, was launched by PowerShares in mid-2008 and is now a $500 million ETF.

Hoffmann pushes ETFs as a good way for individuals to invest in water.

"It's the third-largest industry in the world, yet it is extremely fragmented and diverse," he says. "So it is difficult to identify even a dozen stocks that you could invest in. It makes far more sense to take a market-basket approach."

The Almanac - Oct. 5 - Post Chronicle

Posted: 05 Oct 2009 04:00 AM PDT

Today is Monday, Oct. 5, the 278th day of 2009 with 87 to follow.

The moon is waning. The morning star is Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn. The evening stars are Neptune, Jupiter and Uranus.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Libra. They include French philosopher Denis Diderot in 1713; Chester A. Arthur, 21st president of the United States, in 1829; rocket pioneer Robert Goddard in 1882; restaurant entrepreneur Ray Kroc (McDonald's) and comic Larry Fine of The Three Stooges (the one with the wild wavy hair) in 1902; actor Donald Pleasence in 1919; political activist and defrocked priest Philip Berrigan in 1923; actress Glynis Johns in 1923 (age 86); actor/comedian Bill Dana in 1924 (age 85); Vaclav Havel, president of the Czech Republic, in 1936 (age 73); rock singer/songwriter Steve Miller in 1943 (age 66); actress Karen Allen and Irish rock musician Bob Geldof, organizer of the 1985 Live Aid famine relief concert, both in 1951 (age 58); race car driver Michael Andretti in 1962 (age 47) and actress Kate Winslet in 1975 (age 34).

On this date in history:

In 1813, the Shawnee Indian Chief Tecumseh was killed while fighting on the side of the British during the War of 1812.

In 1918, Germany's Hindenburg Line was broken as World War I neared an end.

In 1965, Pope Paul VI made an unprecedented 14-hour visit to New York to plead for world peace before the United Nations.

In 1973, Egypt and Syria, hoping to win back territory lost to Israel during the third Arab-Israeli war, launched a coordinated attack against Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

In 1989, TV evangelist Jim Bakker was convicted on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy for fleecing his PTL flock.

Also in 1989, the Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize for nonviolent efforts to free his homeland from China.

In 1991, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, responding to unilateral U.S. action, announced cuts in nuclear weapons that would reduce the number of strategic warheads to 5,000 in seven years.

In 1992, the last of the three pathologists who conducted the autopsy on U.S. President John Kennedy broke his silence and dismissed the conspiracy theories.

In 1993, U.S. President Bill Clinton ordered the resumption in nuclear testing after China broke the informal moratorium and exploded a nuclear device beneath its western desert.

In 1994, South African President Nelson Mandela ended two days of talks with U.S. President Bill Clinton at the White House.

Also in 1994, 53 members of a secretive religious cult were found dead -- the victims of murder or suicide -- over a two-day period in Switzerland and Canada.

In 1995, U.S. President Bill Clinton announced the warring parties in Bosnia had agreed to a cease-fire.

In 1999, MCI WorldCom Inc. announced that it had agreed to buy the Sprint Corp. in a $129 billion deal that would be the largest corporate acquisition ever at that point.

In 2000, hundreds of thousands of Yugoslavians overthrew the Belgrade government, causing Slobodan Milosevic, the defeated presidential incumbent, to resign, ending 13 years of rule.

In 2001, Robert Stevens, photo editor for America media Inc. of Boca Raton Fla., publisher of the National Enquirer and other tabloids, died after being infected with anthrax.

And in 2001 sports, Barry Bonds hit his 71st home run, most by a player in one season, breaking Mark McGwire's 1998 Major League Baseball record. The San Francisco Giants slugger finished the season with 73 homers.

In 2003, in retaliation to a suicide bombing at a Haifa restaurant the previous day, Israeli planes struck a suspected terrorist training camp in Syria near Damascus.

In 2005, scientists announced that a form of bird flu that jumped directly to humans was the real cause of a 1918 pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.

In 2006, the U.S. House of Representatives ethics committee opened an investigation into the conduct of former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., who resigned after reports of sexually explicit e-mail exchanges with an underage male page surfaced.

In 2007, U.S. sprinter Marion Jones, who won five medals during the 2000 Olympic Games, three of them gold, admitted taking steroids to enhance her track performance. She drew a two-year ban and forfeiture of medals on her guilty plea to lying to federal investigators.

In 2008, strategists in both major U.S. political parties say the country's economic turmoil is changing the presidential electoral map in favor of Democrat Barack Obama.

Also in 2008, the commander of Somali pirates holding a Ukrainian ship hostage for $30 million ransom in the Indian Ocean says he is prepared for any kind of assault.

A thought for the day: Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) said: "Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest." (c) UPI

RPI employee to appear on 'Jeopardy' tonight - Times Union

Posted: 05 Oct 2009 04:28 AM PDT

 Elizabeth Barrett spent this summer cramming.

State capitals. The order of presidents and vice presidents. The world's biggest lakes.

Tonight, we'll find out if it pays off. That's when she'll be on Jeopardy, the trivia quiz show that showers winners with thousands of dollars and chance to win more and sends the person with the least money home.

"I haven't been in college in a long time," she said Sunday.

Barrett is the director of marketing at the Lally School of Management and Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She signed an 11-page contract that prevents her from disclosing how she fared, but she did say all that studying paid off.

She bought an almanac and her husband drilled her on everything where she felt weak. They carried it with them on road trips, to a baptism in the District of Columbia, Cape Cod and to pick up her daughter at camp.

There were geography categories and Barrett wasn't too worried about literature and music. Good thing she read a book on opera because that also came up. She didn't even try on sports.

"I'm hopeless, there's no way I can tackle that category," she said. "History and geography, I had a prayer."

Jeopardy has a daily audience of 9 million and has been in syndication since 1984. It has aired 6,000 shows and some contestants have walked away with millions of dollars in winnings.

It all started when she took an online exam on the show's Web site. Then she was invited to an audition in New York, where she had another test and then a mock version of the game. By the time she got to Los Angeles, for the taping, her nerves had faded. She said she was more thrilled than scared, hearing her name called on the set where she had watched host Alex Trebek for the last decade.

The best part of having the show finally reach the airwaves, as it will tonight on WTEN, Ch. 10, at 7:30 p.m. Then we'll all know how she did.

"I had to keep it secret so long," she said, "I'm happy it's going to be over."

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