"In interviews at the New York International Auto Show this month, top executives of General Motors and the Ford Motor Company, both of which make and sell a lot of cars in Europe, reiterated their support for high gasoline taxes - as opposed to stricter fuel economy regulations.

"Anything that can align the individual customer's purchase decisions with society's goals are the way to go," Ford's chairman and chief executive, William Clay Ford Jr., said, adding that his company has previously supported a 50-cent increase in gas taxes.

"(The current federal gas tax is 18.4 cents, and state taxes vary. All told, taxes account for about 24 percent of the cost of a gallon of gasoline.)

"Mr. Ford said the current regulatory system, which compels automakers to make cars and trucks that meet minimum standards for fuel efficiency, "puts the manufacturer in this tug of war that's unsustainable between what the customer wants and what society says it wants."

[...]

"If you want people to consume something less, the simplest thing to do is price it more dearly," Mr. Wagoner said. "And there is just no track record of sustainable success in the U.S. of doing that, versus Germany, for example, which just regularly says, 'Oh, we have a budget deficit; we're going to raise the fuel taxes by 10 pfennigs, or euros, or whatever,' and do that. And I think that's the rub."

[...]

"New vehicles in the United States, meanwhile, are becoming less fuel efficient, on average. In fact, in the 2002 model year, automotive fuel economy reached its lowest point in more than two decades - a result of the industry's successful lobbying to keep fuel economy regulations largely stagnant as the market has tilted to bigger and faster vehicles, like S.U.V.'s and big pickups. And the largest and most inefficient vehicles, like the Hummer, are not even covered by fuel economy regulations - paradoxically because they are so big.

Today, the New York Times reports on a new poll showing that a majority of Americans are fed up with the hailstorm of advertising we all suffer through. According to theYankelovich Partners poll:

* 65 percent said they believed that they "are constantly bombarded with too much" advertising;

* 61 percent agreed that the amount of advertising and marketing to which they are exposed "is out of control";

* 60 percent said their opinion of advertising "is much more negative than just a few years ago";

* 54 percent of the survey respondents said they "avoid buying products that overwhelm them with advertising and marketing";

* 69 percent said they "are interested in products and services that would help them skip or block marketing;"

Press Release
Raelian Movement
Wednesday March 14, 2004

Resigned Mormon Bishop becomes Raelian

Sydney, Australia, April 14th, 04 - Ron Boston, 57 years young, has been a Mormon Bishop, probably one of the highest ranking in the world, for over 17 years in New Zealand and Australia. He has resigned from the Mormon Church, deciding to free himself from its religious constraints and live his sexuality as a gay. Mr. Boston decided to join the Australian Raelian Movement.

He recently read His Holiness Rael's book "The Messages Given by Extra- Terrestrials'“ and discovered he was Raelian, understanding the truth about the true Creators of humanity. He is very happy to join the Raelian Movement and to work towards the goal of building an Embassy on Earth for the official welcoming of the 'Elohim', our Creators - a very advanced race of human beings from a distant planet within our galaxy. The ELOHIM created all life on Earth scientifically using DNA (including humans in their image) and were mistaken for Gods, which explains why the name Elohim is present in all original Bibles. The Bible is, in fact, an atheistic book describing the scientific creation of life on Earth.

Ron is also very interested in spreading 'the messages' to the Mormon community, and assisting other ex -Mormon Raelians in spreading to the Mormon community.

Mr. Boston is not the first Mormon that left their church to join the Raelian Movement. In the United States alone no less than 8% of the members of the Raelian Movement are former Mormons - including the leader of the U.S. Raelian Movement, Ricky Lee Roehr.

For more information please contact our Public Relations office at 305-690-9800 or donnajn@bellsouth.net

www.rael.org/press

“Shall the ordinance regarding the proposed development of “The Home Stretch at Hollywood Park”, a retail commercial project adjacent to Hollywood Park Race Track, be adopted?”

Wal-Mart spent over $1 million on the ballot measure—in an election where only 11,000 people vote! Despite this huge expenditure, Wal-Mart only got 39% of the vote.

What's interesting about this ballot measure was that it literally would have allowed Wal-Mart to be independent of a number of city regulations. Once passed, it couldn't be changed by the City, and it would exempt the Wal-Mart from all sorts of zoning regulations. I've extracted the first twenty pages in this PDF (2 MB). It's worth a read. This literally is secession:

Page 1: "The project requires approval of the voters of the City and cannot be changed except by the voters of the City." This means that if 04-A passed, the City Council would be powerless to adjust it. Another referendum would have to be started in order to change it.

Page 4: "The Home Stretch Specific Plan shall only be amended by another initiative measure(s) approved by a two-thirds vote of the electorate.

Page 5: "Chapter 12 of the Municipal Code contains the City's Zoning Ordinance…the Home Stretch Specific Plan shall, with respect to the Plan area…preempt and replace all of the standards, criteria, procedures for review…and other requirements of Chapter 12…" This means that the development would be exempt from zoning of the City of Inglewood.

Page 5: "No ordinance or regulation shall be adopted…if applied to the Plan Area…would conflict with the Home Stretch Specific Plan…impose development standards, criteria, design, signage and landscaping requirements, restrictions, subdivision requirements, review procedures, exactions, mitigations, and other requirements…" With this, we are moving back to company-owned towns, where private interests literally control the law!

What's also interesting is that in the voter guide (600k PDF), opponents to the Wal-Mart articulated verifiable and cogent arguments against the development's legal standing. Wal-Mart's response was wholly unsubstantive. It didn't answer the accountability objections to the provisions on pages 4 and 5 that exempt the development from zoning laws. Instead, Wal-Mart used mindless PR messaging, such as: "How can anyone suggest that a new shopping center with hundreds of new jobs would be bad for Inglewood?…And it's pretty obvious that having convenient retail outlets like Wal-Mart that offer quality goods at low prices is important to families who want more value for their shopping dollar."

The full ballot application is online here (20 MB PDF).

The Cultural Division of the Department of Foreign Affairs,
together with Irish Embassies around the world, and in association
with universities and centres of culture, has organized an exhibition
entitled International Joyce on the life and works of James Joyce.
This is to mark the centenary of the day in 1904 on which his novel Ulysses is set.
The exhibition will be shown at the following places:
City Venue Dates
Aarhus Statsbiblioteket May 27 - June 11
Beijing Peking University May 28 - June 10
Berlin Lichthof April 2 - 18
Boston Public Library Sep 17 - Oct 14
Budapest Eötvös Lóránd University Oct 1 - 8
Coimbra University of Coimbra May 25 - June 4
Copenhagen Hovedbiblioteket June 16 - 30
East Jerusalem Centre Culturel Français June 24 - July 2
Florence European University Institute June 7 - 17
Lisbon Casa Fernando Pessoa May 10 - 21
Ljubljana University of Ljubljana Dec 6 - 19
Moscow Foreign Literature Library June 16 - July 4
Nagoya Aichi Shukutoku Daigaku June 9 - 16
New Delhi India International Centre June 21 - 30
Paris Centre Culturel Irlandais June 15 - 26
Porto University of Porto April 20 - May 5
Shanghai Lu Xun Museum June 16 - 30
Sofia National Library April 21 - May 7
St Petersburg Nabokov Museum July 9 - 31
Szombathely Berzsenyi Dániel College Oct 11 - 18
Tel Aviv Tel Aviv University May 2 - 14
Tokyo Waseda University June 22 - July 2
Zadar University of Zadar Nov 22 - 29

Additional venues in prospect include Addis Ababa, Athens, Cairo, Lillehammer, Madrid,
Melbourne, Mexico City, New York, Nicosia, Oslo, Rome, San Francisco, São Paulo, Stockholm,
Sydney,Washington and Zurich.
Cultural Division, Department of Foreign Affairs, Ireland

The Washington Post reports that:

"Only 0.73 percent of business tax returns were audited in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, down from 0.88 percent in the previous year, TRAC found. In 1997, 2.62 percent of business tax filers could expect to be audited.

"There was also a dramatic slide for corporations with assets of at least $250 million. Among those, audit rates slid to 28.98 percent last year from 33.68 percent in 2002. In 1995, more than half of such companies were audited.

"From 1999 to 2003, the number of civil negligence penalties aimed at corporations fell to 12 from 62. Civil fraud penalties dropped to 170 last year from 247 in 1999. Tax prosecutions fell last year to 538, from 563 in 2002. Ten years ago, the IRS and Justice Department prosecuted more than 1,000 cases.

The New York Times also covered the report:

"The severe drop in audits of corporations raises questions about corporate income tax receipts, which have fallen to historically low levels when counted as a portion of the economy. In 2003, the receipts were a little more than 1 percent of the economy. From 1996 through 2000, no corporate taxes were paid by 60 percent of large corporations, according to a report two weeks ago by the General Accounting Office.

"But the most likely reason is that excommunication so far has proved to be a two-edged sword. In 1989, Bishop Leo T. Maher of San Diego, Calif., forbade Lucy Killea, a former California Democratic assembly member who was a Catholic and was running for the state Senate, to receive Communion in Maher's diocese because of her opposition to abortion restrictions. Killea cast herself as a martyr of conscience and flew to Sacramento, whose ultraliberal bishop at the time, Francis A. Quinn, assured her that she would not be denied the Eucharist in his diocese.

"...The injustice is not limited to singles who should be spared paying any tax. The initial tax threshold for all singles, including those with higher incomes, should be set so that not one of them pays a tax until their income exceeds a level we regard as necessary to meet basic living expenses. This is what Congress does for that family of four; this is what voters should insist it do for the household of one. Until that time, the great majority of singles in this country can legitimately argue that, at least for tax purposes, they are treated like second-class citizens.

"Convinced that the reports were ridiculous, and afraid that a defensive posture would only fortify impressions of Foz Do Iguacu as a forbidding place, Gonzalez said in an interview that he and his advisers decided that humor was the only way to dispel the terrorist cloud hovering over this area known as the "Triple Border," near the intersection of the Paraguayan, Argentine and Brazilian frontiers.

"In more than 160 foreign magazines and travel brochures, the city paid for advertisements with captions such as, "If he can find the time to come see the waterfall, why can't you?" under a photograph of bin Laden. Another ad juxtaposed photographs of Saddam Hussein, bin Laden, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair with the caption: "Foz Do Iguacu; All the world wants to see it, including them."

"Civic officials published public notices of "terrorist meetings" and invited journalists to attend. Tourism officials in November organized Humor at the Falls, an international festival at which artists submitted nearly 2,800 cartoons poking fun at everything from the world's water problems to sex to al Qaeda.

"The department's under secretary for marketing and regulation, Bill Hawks, said in a statement yesterday that the rapid tests, which are used in Japan and Europe, were licensed for surveillance of animal health, while Creekstone's use would have "implied a consumer safety aspect that is not scientifically warranted."

"Lobbying groups for cattle ranchers and slaughterhouses applauded the decision, but consumer advocates denounced it, saying the department was preventing Creekstone from taking extra steps to prove its product was safe.

[...]

Consumer groups were critical of the department's decision.

"It is ironic in the extreme that an administration that's so interested in letting industry come up with its own solutions would come down with a heavy government hand on a company that's being creative," said Dr. Peter Lurie, deputy director of the health research group at Public Citizen, a frequent food industry critic.

Dr. Lurie said, however, the Japanese demand for 100 percent testing was irrational because it included animals younger than 20 months. "But there is no shortage of irrational consumer demands — like cosmetic surgery or S.U.V's — that industry is only too happy to cater to," he said. "That's what capitalism does."

Andrew Kimbrell, director of the Center for Food Safety, another group often critical of the industry, said: "We're the ones who've been irrational on mad cow because of the foot-dragging and refusals to test, our head-in-the-sand attitude. And now that it's brought us to a crisis, American farmers have no way of protecting their market."

[...]

Gary Weber of the cattlemen's association called 100 percent testing misleading to consumers because it would create a false impression that untested beef was not safe. He compared it to demanding that all cars be crash tested to prove they are safe.

Asked if American beef producers were content to give up the $1.5 billion Japanese market, Mr. Weber said: "We're not going to give in to their demands. If that means in the short-to-medium term that we don't have that market, that's the price we'll pay. But in the long run, it means there's testing that's science based and that creates a level playing field."

Here is the response, according to Kamen:

"The usual suspects rounded themselves up.

"'Don't let Tiffany & Co. get away with it,' the American Land Rights Association quickly e-mailed members that day. "Here's what you can do to help.

"1. Call Tiffany and Co. for a copy of their catalogue. . . . Call all your friends to urge them to do the same. Hopefully, all the calls will overwhelm them.

"2. Send a short letter to the editor of The Washington Post."

Also, "begin to use Tiffany & Co. as a poster child for how elitists care less about family wage jobs," and attack the company for appearing to be "surrogates for extreme green groups." Also, attack Kowalski for "his seven figure salary" and "wealthy snobbery."

A few days later, the enviros got into the act, with the Mineral Policy Center/Earthworks sending its members an e-mail.

"This alert is different!" the e-mail said. "This time, we ask you to send congratulations to a business that has done the right thing." Let the company "know you applaud their leadership on this issue," send a thank-you to Kowalski, send a letter to the editor at The Post to praise Tiffany "for taking a bold public position against the outdated 1872 Mining Law." "This scenic wilderness is no place for a large silver and copper mine."

Kowalski might want to invite everyone for breakfast at the store.

"The notion of speaking "on background" has been around for decades, allowing reporters to get senior administration officials to speak candidly, and sometimes critically, about their boss's policies. But somewhere along the line, administrations learned to turn background backward. The White House now organizes authorized background briefings almost weekly, in which officials are cloaked in anonymity. It appears from these sessions that the anonymity is not to protect officials who say something negative -- but to shield them from embarrassment for sounding like cheerleaders.

"Two hours before Clarke's testimony, the White House allowed Fox News to out him as the anonymous official who gave the background briefing in 2002. Clarke thus found himself in the awkward position of explaining how all those nice things he said anonymously about the administration were not what they seemed. He testified that this method of shading is quite common -- a claim that seems to be supported by a quick scan of other background briefings over the past year.

[...]

"If Clarke's testimony has exposed background briefings as so much creative oratory, this has not stopped the practice. On Sunday afternoon, the White House announced a conference call so a background briefer could say: "Friday's jobs report, the creation of 308,000 jobs and seven consecutive months of job creation totaling over three-quarters of a million jobs is a powerful confirmation that the economic policies of this administration are working."

"By the end of the briefing, reporters had had enough. "I'm just wondering," one asked the anonymous briefer, "what possible reason there is why all this isn't on the record?"

Rank Manufacturer Make/Model Thefts Production Theft Rate

1. DAIMLERCHRYSLER.. CHRYSLER NEON\1\ 1 24 41.6667
2. AUDI..... 24/QUATTRO...... 32 1612 19.8511
3. DAIMLERCHRYSLER.. DODGE INTREPID.. 1657 111491 14.8622
4. DAIMLERCHRYSLER.. DODGE STRATUS... 1254 106771 11.7448
5. SUZUKI... ESTEEM.. 108 9670 11.1686
6. DAIMLERCHRYSLER.. CHRYSLER SEBRING 611 75163 8.1290
7. DAIMLERCHRYSLER.. DODGE NEON...... 959 119253 8.0417
8. HONDA.... ACURA NSX....... 2 254 7.8740
9. MITSUBISHI....... MONTERO. 206 27266 7.5552
10 MITSUBISHI....... GALANT.. 668 92948 7.1868
11 MITSUBISHI....... MIRAGE.. 60 9240 6.4935
12 MITSUBISHI....... MONTERO SPORT... 350 57457 6.0915
13 FORD MOTOR CO.... FORD F150 PICKUP 27 4473 6.0362
14 AUDI..... S8/QUATTRO...... 2 340 5.8824
15 MITSUBISHI....... ECLIPSE. 239 41334 5.7822
16 NISSAN... MAXIMA.. 490 86036 5.6953
17 KIA MOTORS....... OPTIMA.. 155 27593 5.6174
18 FORD MOTOR CO.... FORD ESCORT..... 457 81672 5.5956
19 GENERAL MOTORS... PONTIAC GRANT AM 838 154306 5.4308
20 DAIMLERCHRYSLER.. CHRYSLER SEBRING 251 46637 5.3820
CONVERTIBLE.

What I find interesting is the position of the American Council on Education. That group is routinely contacted by reporters for positions on higher education policy. What the reporters don't understand is that ACE represents college and university executives, and thus tends to be pro-administration, pro-police, and often anti-student. The Post quotes Sheldon Steinbach, an attorney for the organization:

"Sheldon E. Steinbach, general counsel for the American Council on Education, defended the University of Maryland, which he said has a "strong tradition" of upholding students' rights. He predicted that the university would not punish the men without due process.

"Nonetheless, Steinbach noted that at many universities, "sometimes there's embarrassment and overreaction at what has transpired at an adult event."

If you do some searching, you'll see Steinbach quoted in favor of heightened information sharing and vigorous copyright enforcement against students. In December 2002, Steinbach spoke in favor of sharing student information with the FBI:

"Not all education groups and legal experts agree on the disclosure issue. Sheldon E. Steinbach, general counsel for the American Council on Education, said he does not see any problem with the FBI's request.

"Does it cause some psychological discomfort for many people? I'm sure it does," he said. "But we don't see any reason why a school should not be able to honor this request if they choose to. . . . This is part of the new landscape that we're all becoming accustomed to since September 11."

In January 2003, Steinbach was quoted again, defending the FBI's action on college campuses.

"Sheldon E. Steinbach, general counsel for the American Council on
Education, said criticism of the FBI's heightened activity on U.S.
campuses is overblown.

"Much of the concern expressed at the moment is speculative and
anticipatory," he said. "It's ascribing sinister motives to the FBI
before anything remotely akin to that has been proven."