Al Gore

Many articles written over the past year have questioned if President Obama will be able to reach his goal of having a million electric vehicles on US roads in 2015. A more important fact has been overlooked. That is, even if we get a million EVs on the roads in four years, we will have done practically nothing to reduce oil consumption in America. To be more specific, we will reduce consumption by approximately 0.15%. Is it worth the billions of taxpayer dollars spent producing controversial vehicles like the Chevy Volt in order to lessen foreign oil dependence four years from now by 0.15%?

Greenpeace, which has been blown off by one of its co-founders because of its radical behavior, often leaves itself open to easy ridicule – for example, by the promotion of dirty energy sources. Now they’ve done it again.

Only 1½ years ago Greenpeace cheered Apple Computer for its departure from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its disagreement on cap-and-trade and federal climate change policy. With Al Gore on the board of directors, you understand what side of the issue the company is on.

The Nat'l Legal & Pol'y Ctr., a union corruption watchdog group, filed a complaint with the Fed. Election Comm'n Oct. 30 against Gore/Lieberman, Inc., AFL-CIO and Am. Fed'n of State, County & Mun. Employees for an apparent violation of federal election law. The complaint concerns a full page advertisement that appeared in the Washington Post on Oct. 11, which attacked Tex. Gov. George W. Bush's tax cut plan and listed 300 economists.

The ad stated: "Paid for by the working men and women of [AFSCME] and the AFL-CIO." It also said: "We, the undersigned, oppose the large-scale tax cuts that are the centerpiece of presidential candidate George W. Bush's economic proposals." It states: "Targeting the surplus to these families as proposed by Vice President Gore makes more sense." It said: "To waste that opportunity with this tax  scheme would be economically and socially irresponsible."

The ad could be considered express advocacy or a coordinated "issue ad." Either interpretation of the ad results in a violation of the Fed. Election Campaign Act.

Employers experiencing labor unrest are about 6.5 times more likely to be inspected by the Occupational Safety & Health Admin. than the average employer, according to a government report released Aug. 31. The Gen. Accounting Office produced the report at the request of Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, and Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-N.C.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections.

GAO conducted the study from June 1999 to June 2000 and covered about 22,000 employers GAO researched 1) the extent to which employers experiencing labor unrest are more likely to be inspected than those with more tranquil labor relations, 2) whether OSHA has policies for performing inspections during periods of labor unrest, and 3) whether those policies are followed.  GAO noted that "labor unrest" means dissatisfaction among workers, but there is no consensus about the ways in which labor unrest develops or the forms it takes.

"[I]t is clear that there is some relationship between labor unrest and employees' dissatisfaction with wages and working conditions," wrote GAO.