Why are some of the people saying the sky is falling because there is a political stalemate to keep the government running. The truth is life goes on and this is were the states have to take responsibility for themselves without federal help. The dirty little secret federally mandates funded or unfunded bleed the state budgets of unnecessary cost just to comply with the guild lines as part of the agreement. Many of the states voluntary or not were coerced into taking federal money or complying with a directive with the threats of no highway funding if they don't play ball.Even if the Federal government gives funds to the states.All with strings attached cost more to comply with than what Washington gives as I say again.
This is the time were state lawmakers need to go into special secession or use procedure to put contingency measures in place in case the Federal government collapses is imminent because there is no more money to keep it functioning. First all states should follow Utah's example and have an alternative currency in place backed by natural resources and commodities the state possesses. State lawmakers should not hold their breath waiting for Washington to come to the rescue. To think Washington will fix the economy and the budget shortfalls is just an illusion.This is a spell that needs to be broken.
We may see states to declare sovereignty or independence if Washington completely shuts down and no end in sight because of the political gridlock.We can see Montana seceding and many states will follow in a chain reaction to break away from the Federal government and the choke hold of the bankers on the economy.A government shutdown can be a blessing in disguise.We need to call our state lawmakers in whatever state we may live in and demand they take special measures.This they must act on to keep the state government running starting with a monetary system issuing interest free currency and keep the carpetbaggers out.
The first act of the states in post Federal shutdown is to be self sufficient and self reliant without any outside help from Washington.To demonstrate real state sovereignty is being not being dependent or subjected to Federal control. The first step in responsibility as a people of a sovereign state. We as a people and the several states we live in must be ready to make that transition from dependence to self reliance.It is up to We the People to chose our destiny and not put it in the hands to decide for us. This is our chance and opportunity to reclaim lost ground.If we step outside the box and not buy into the propaganda of the controlled media.We can have a desired result that other side did not want.That is being free from the Bankers and no more Federal Control.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
If Oil Reaches $175 A Barrel. It is Time To Arrest all Responsible is Long Overdue
There is no reason for oil to be at this price. We are not short on oil.We have plenty of oil in this country to support our energy needs for many centuries. What our problem is we have a cabal of Bankers and Oligarchs in the oil companies all the way to high finance colluding to create artificial scarcity as an excuse to raise the cost on the price of a barrel of oil. It has been on record many of these energy giants funded the Environmental groups as cover to use the arm of the the court, government regulation and laws passed by congress to shut down drilling and exploration.To prevent the building of new refineries and uncap wells that already exist.
The lack in enforcing the anti trust laws allowing oil companies like Exxon-Mobile and Shell-Texaco to merge.These energy giants colluded and agreed to shut down refineries so a bottle neck starts to create an artificial scarcity. Anti trust laws were not enforced to protect the people from unfair business practices and unfair competition that hurts the people.Smaller oil companies can not not start up or build any new refineries to compete because the force of government keeps the monopoly in place so no real competition can take place selling oil at an affordable price. Monopolies only grow when there is government collusion with corporations.They do not happen in a free market economy.
Seeing the surge in the price of oil over $110 a barrel with speculators predicting $175 does not have to happen. The President says"get use to high gas prices". I have no confidence when he makes such statements.We have oil wells capped ready to send oil to refineries in Alaska in the north slope and gull island. There are plenty of oil wells in Texas capped and not used that can be going through the cracking process to be refined. We do not need to drill and explore for anymore reserves.The illusion of we need to drill offshore and find new reserves is just a rouse to me.To me that is a delay tactic to keep the price up. There are plenty of capped wells ready to go online all over America.
How much more can we take with all the criminality of these money addicts enriching themselves at the expense of the hard working people trying to keep a roof over their heads.When Glass Steagall Act was repealed.It was a recipe ready for disaster. How much more will we tolerate? How much more will we take from law makers on the state and federal level not willing to challenge the power that be in high finance and banking.Are they for the people or the bankers. Are they for a free market economy or corporatism swallowing up the wealth of a nation. Are they going to protect the too big to fail or the little guy?With this shutdown coming anything can happen. I do not care if the government shuts down or not.Just as long we do not send money to Israel and the money addicts do not have their way.
It is long overdue these people get arrested fro the criminality going on cause unnecessary economic pain on the people. How much more can we tolerate before the breaking point comes were we will say"We had enough!Off with their heads!"
The lack in enforcing the anti trust laws allowing oil companies like Exxon-Mobile and Shell-Texaco to merge.These energy giants colluded and agreed to shut down refineries so a bottle neck starts to create an artificial scarcity. Anti trust laws were not enforced to protect the people from unfair business practices and unfair competition that hurts the people.Smaller oil companies can not not start up or build any new refineries to compete because the force of government keeps the monopoly in place so no real competition can take place selling oil at an affordable price. Monopolies only grow when there is government collusion with corporations.They do not happen in a free market economy.
Seeing the surge in the price of oil over $110 a barrel with speculators predicting $175 does not have to happen. The President says"get use to high gas prices". I have no confidence when he makes such statements.We have oil wells capped ready to send oil to refineries in Alaska in the north slope and gull island. There are plenty of oil wells in Texas capped and not used that can be going through the cracking process to be refined. We do not need to drill and explore for anymore reserves.The illusion of we need to drill offshore and find new reserves is just a rouse to me.To me that is a delay tactic to keep the price up. There are plenty of capped wells ready to go online all over America.
How much more can we take with all the criminality of these money addicts enriching themselves at the expense of the hard working people trying to keep a roof over their heads.When Glass Steagall Act was repealed.It was a recipe ready for disaster. How much more will we tolerate? How much more will we take from law makers on the state and federal level not willing to challenge the power that be in high finance and banking.Are they for the people or the bankers. Are they for a free market economy or corporatism swallowing up the wealth of a nation. Are they going to protect the too big to fail or the little guy?With this shutdown coming anything can happen. I do not care if the government shuts down or not.Just as long we do not send money to Israel and the money addicts do not have their way.
It is long overdue these people get arrested fro the criminality going on cause unnecessary economic pain on the people. How much more can we tolerate before the breaking point comes were we will say"We had enough!Off with their heads!"
Official: wind farms are totally useless
Wind farms: scarring the English countryside (Photo: John Taylor)
Before I take my break, I cannot resist drawing your attention to a new report on wind farms - perhaps the most damning I have ever read. What makes it even more significant is that it has been sponsored by an environmental charity. Normally the people most busily pushing these bird-chomping, bat-crunching, taxpayer-fleecing monstrosities on our magnificent landscape are those who claim, ludicrously, to be “green.” Thank you, John Muir Trust, for reminding as that being “green” doesn’t necessarily have to include economically suicidal schemes to destroy perhaps our greatest national asset: the British countryside.
Here’s its summary:
PRINCIPAL FINDINGS in respect of analysis of electricity generation from all the U.K. windfarms which are metered by National Grid, November 2008 to December 2010. The following five statements are common assertions made by both the wind industry and Government representatives and agencies. This Report examines those assertions.
“Wind turbines will generate on average 30% of their rated capacity over a year.”
“The wind is always blowing somewhere.”
“Periods of widespread low wind are infrequent.”
“The probability of very low wind output coinciding with peak electricity demand is slight.”
“Pumped storage hydro can fill the generation gap during prolonged low wind periods.”
This analysis uses publicly available data for a 26 month period between November 2008 and December 2010 and the facts in respect of the above assertions are:
Average output from wind was 27.18% of metered capacity in 2009, 21.14% in 2010, and 24.08% between November 2008 and December 2010 inclusive.
There were 124 separate occasions from November 2008 till December 2010 when total generation from the windfarms metered by National Grid was less than 20MW. (Average capacity over the period was in excess of 1600MW).
The average frequency and duration of a low wind event of 20MW or less between November 2008 and December 2010 was once every 6.38 days for a period of 4.93 hours.
At each of the four highest peak demands of 2010 wind output was low being respectively 4.72%, 5.51%, 2.59% and 2.51% of capacity at peak demand.
The entire pumped storage hydro capacity in the UK can provide up to 2788MW for only 5 hours then it drops to 1060MW, and finally runs out of water after 22 hours.
The Theory That’s Killing America’s Economy—and Why It’s Wrong
I wrote in a previous article how America’s disastrous embrace of free trade is ultimately based on a false theory of how the global economy works: the so-called Theory of Comparative Advantage. This is what economists, from the government on down, believe in. This matters.
But I didn’t explain why the theory is wrong—which it is. Understanding its flaws is the price of admission to serious criticism of free trade, so it’s well worth getting a grasp on them. Economic theory can be a tough chew, but it’s worth the effort, if only to gain the intellectual confidence not to be intimidated by the so-called experts. So… let’s take a look at some of that machinery behind the wizard’s curtain, shall we?
The theory’s flaws, which are fairly well known to economists but mostly ignored, consist of a number of dubious assumptions upon which the theory depends. To wit:
But I didn’t explain why the theory is wrong—which it is. Understanding its flaws is the price of admission to serious criticism of free trade, so it’s well worth getting a grasp on them. Economic theory can be a tough chew, but it’s worth the effort, if only to gain the intellectual confidence not to be intimidated by the so-called experts. So… let’s take a look at some of that machinery behind the wizard’s curtain, shall we?
The theory’s flaws, which are fairly well known to economists but mostly ignored, consist of a number of dubious assumptions upon which the theory depends. To wit:
Dubious Assumption #1: Trade is sustainable.
The problem here is that the theory of comparative advantage pays no attention to the long term. So it can quite easily recommend a trade policy that gives us the highest possible living standard in the short run—but by way of selling off our country out from under us.
This is what happens when a nation runs a trade deficit, which necessarily means that it’s either sinking into debt to foreigners or selling off its existing assets to them.
The theory of comparative advantage is blind to this problem because it treats people’s time horizons as a given. So if a nation wants a short-term consumption binge followed by long-term decline, the theory says “OK, no problem. You wanted it, you got it, what’s not to like?”
A saner theory of trade (and of economics generally) would advise people that it’s not a good idea to engage in decadent binges, regardless of how good it feels right now. It would recommend protectionist restraints on imports to force trade into balance, not free trade.
Dubious Assumption #2: There are no externalities.
An externality is a missing price tag. More precisely, it is the economists’ term for when the price of a product does not reflect its true economic cost or value.
The classic negative externality is environmental damage, which reduces the value of natural resources without raising the price of the product that harmed them. The classic positive externality is technological spillover, where one company’s inventing a product enables others to copy or build upon it, generating wealth that the original company can’t capture.
If prices are wrong due to positive or negative externalities, free trade will produce suboptimal results.
For example, goods from a nation with lax pollution standards will be too cheap. So its trading partners will import too much of them. And the exporting nation will export too much of them, overconcentrating its economy in industries that are not really as profitable as they seem, due to ignoring pollution damage.
Positive externalities are also a problem. If an industry generates technological spillovers for the rest of the economy, then free trade can let that industry be wiped out by foreign competition because the economy ignored its hidden value. Some industries spawn new technologies, fertilize improvements in other industries, and drive economy-wide technological advance; losing these industries means losing all the industries that would have flowed from them in the future.
Dubious Assumption #3: Productive resources move easily between industries.
As noted in my original article, the theory of comparative advantage is about switching productive resources from less-valuable to more-valuable uses. It’s about putting our economy to its own best use.
But this assumes that the productive resources used to produce one product can switch to producing another. Because if they can’t, then imports won’t push our economy into industries better suited to its comparative advantage. Imports will just kill off our existing industries and leave nothing in their place.
When workers, for example, can’t move between industries—usually because they don’t have the right skills or don’t live in the right place—shifts in an economy’s comparative advantage won’t move them into a more appropriate industry, but into unemployment.
In the United States, because of our relatively low minimum wage and hire-and-fire labor laws, this problem tends to take the form of underemployment, rather than unemployment per se. So $28 an hour ex-autoworkers go work at the video rental store for eight dollars an hour.
The same goes for other inflexible factors of production, like real estate. That’s why the shuttered factory rivals the unemployment line as a visual image of trade problems.
Dubious Assumption #4: Trade does not raise income inequality.
Even if free trade expands the economy overall (dubious), it can tilt the distribution of income so much that ordinary people see little or none of the gains.
For example, suppose that opening up a nation to freer trade means that it starts exporting more airplanes and importing more clothes than before. Because the nation gets to expand an industry better suited to its comparative advantage and contract one less suited, it becomes more productive and its GDP goes up.
So far, so good.
Here’s the rub: suppose that a million dollars’ worth of clothes production requires one white-collar worker and nine blue-collar workers, while a million dollars of airplane production requires three white-collar workers and seven blue-collar workers. So for every million dollars’ change in what gets produced, there is a demand for two more white-collar workers and two fewer blue-collar workers. Because demand for white-collar workers goes up and demand for blue-collar workers goes down, the wages of white-collar workers go up and those of blue-collar workers go down.
But most workers are blue-collar workers—so free trade has lowered wages for most workers in the economy!
This is not a trivial problem: Dani Rodrik of Harvard estimates that freeing up trade reshuffles five dollars of income between different groups of people domestically for every one dollar of net gain it brings to the economy as a whole.
Dubious Assumption #5: Capital is not internationally mobile.
The theory of comparative advantage is about the best uses to which America can put its productive resources, what economists call “factors of production.” We have certain cards in hand, so to speak, the other players have certain cards, and the theory tells us the best way to play the hand we’ve been dealt. Or more precisely, it tells us to let the free market play our hand for us, so market forces can drive all our factors to their best uses in our economy.
Unfortunately, this relies upon the impossibility of these same market forces driving these factors right out of our economy. If that happens, all bets are off about driving these factors to their most productive use in our economy. Their most productive use may well be in another country, and if they are internationally mobile, then free trade will cause them to migrate there.
This will benefit the world economy as a whole, and the nation they migrate to, but it will not necessarily benefit us.
This problem applies to all factors of production, but the crux of the problem is capital. Capital mobility replaces comparative advantage, which applies when capital is forced to choose between alternative uses within a single national economy, with absolute advantage. And absolute advantage contains no guarantees whatsoever about the results being good for both trading partners.
Capital immobility doesn’t have to be absolute, but it has to be significant and as it melts away, trade shifts from a guarantee of win-win relations to a possibility of win-lose relations.
David Ricardo, the British economist who invented the theory of comparative advantage in 1817, actually knew about this problem perfectly well, and wrote about it in his book on the subject. So there’s no excuse for modern economists to ignore it.
Dubious Assumption #6: Short-term efficiency causes long-term growth.
The theory of comparative advantage is what economists call “static” analysis. That is, it looks at the facts of a single instant in time and determines the best response to those facts at that instant. But it says nothing about how today’s facts may change tomorrow. More importantly, it says nothing about how one might cause them to change in one’s favor.
So even if the theory of comparative advantage tells us our best move today, given our productivities in various industries, it doesn’t tell us the best way to raise those productivities tomorrow. That, however, is the essence of economic growth, and in the long run much more important than squeezing every last drop of advantage from the productivities we have today. Economic growth is ultimately less about using one’s factors of production than about transforming them—into more productive factors tomorrow.
The theory of comparative advantage is not so much wrong about long-term growth as simply silent.
Analogously, it is a valid application of personal comparative advantage for someone with secretarial skills to work as a secretary and someone with banking skills to work as a banker. In the short run, it is efficient for them both, as it results in both being better paid than if they tried to swap roles. (They would both be fired for inability to do their jobs and earn zero.) But the path to personal success doesn’t consist in being the best possible secretary forever; it consists in upgrading one’s skills to better-paid occupations, like banker. And there is very little about being the best possible secretary that tells one how to do this.
Dubious Assumption #7: Trade does not induce adverse productivity growth abroad.
When we trade with a foreign nation, this will generally build up that nation’s industries, i.e. raise its productivity in them. Now it would be nice to assume that this productivity growth in our trading partners can only make them ever more efficient at supplying the things we want, and we will just get ever cheaper foreign goods in exchange for our own exports, right?
Wrong. Consider our present trade with China. Despite all the problems this trade causes us, we do get compensation in the form of some very cheap goods, thanks mainly to China’s very cheap labor. The same goes for other poor countries we import from. But labor is cheap in poor countries because it has poor alternative employment opportunities. What if these opportunities improve? Then this labor may cease to be so cheap, and our supply of cheap goods may dry up.
This is actually what happened in Japan from the 1960s to the 1980s, as Japan’s economy transitioned from primitive to sophisticated manufacturing and the cheap merchandise readers over 40 will remember (the same things stamped “Made in China” today) disappeared from America’s stores. Did this reduce the pressure of cheap Japanese labor on American workers? It did. But it also deprived us of some very cheap goods we used to get.
And it’s not like Japan stopped pressing us, either, as it moved upmarket and started competing in more sophisticated industries.
Oops!
When Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson— author of the best-selling economics textbook in history—reminded economists of this problem in a (quite accessible) 2004 article, he drew scandalized gasps from one end of the discipline to the other. But nobody was able to explain why he was wrong.
They still haven’t.
I don’t expect most readers to get all the above analysis the first time through. But I do hope that everyone who’s read this far now understands that there is no good reason—regardless of what most economists say—to assume that free trade is necessarily best. The economic logic of those who say it is, is riddled with enough holes to sink a container ship.
Radioactive water spilled at Onagawa nuclear plant in Miyagi
Radioactive water spilled from pools holding spent nuclear fuel rods at the Onagawa power plant in Miyagi Prefecture following the strong earthquake late Thursday, the nuclear safety agency said Friday.
At the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant or at another plant in Fukushima Prefecture, meanwhile, no new problems have surfaced since the magnitude 7.1 aftershock of the deadly March 11 quake.
While the spent fuel pools at the Onagawa plant and the Higashidori nuclear power station in Aomori Prefecture, both operated by Tohoku Electric Power Co., lost their cooling functions for 20 to 80 minutes after the quake, the temperature hardly rose, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.
A small amount of contaminated water spilled on the floor was observed inside the buildings at all three reactors at the Onagawa plant, which has suspended operations since the mega earthquake and tsunami last month, according to the agency.
In all, water spilled or leaked at eight sections of the plant as a result of the 11:32 p.m. quake, according to Tohoku Electric.
As much as 3.8 liters of water leaked at one of them, with the highest level of a radioactive isotope -- 5,410 bequerels per kilogram -- found in the spilled water on the floor beside a spent fuel pool in the building housing the No. 1 reactor.
A spent nuclear fuel disposal facility in the village of Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, lost external power supply and switched to an emergency generator but power was restored at 9:44 a.m. Friday, according to the agency.
The Higashidori nuclear power plant in Aomori also got power from an emergency generator after the Thursday quake, but its external power supply was restored at 3:30 a.m. Friday, according to Tohoku Electric and the government's countermeasure headquarters.
No changes in radiation readings have been observed at any of the facilities, including Fukushima Daini, a nuclear power plant just south of Daiichi, both operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. Nor is there any information that radioactive materials have leaked outside due to the aftershock.
Higashidori's only reactor was undergoing regular maintenance at the time of the temblor, and its fuel rods were not inside the core but were stored in a spent fuel pool, the agency said.
The Onagawa nuclear plant lost three of its four external power connections but one of them was restored on Friday morning, with its cooling system for the spent nuclear fuel pools temporarily stopped.
Tokyo Electric said no new abnormalities have developed in any of the six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, which it has struggled to bring under control since the plant was crippled by the disaster and began spewing radioactive materials into the environment.
No workers at the plant were hurt in the aftershock, the power supplier said, adding that its damage control steps of pumping fresh water into the No. 1 to No. 3 reactors to prevent them from overheating and injecting nitrogen into the No. 1 unit to prevent hydrogen from exploding were unaffected.
The quake late Thursday, which was off Miyagi at a depth of about 66 kilometers, jolted areas in the prefecture already hit hard by last month's quake.
Meanwhile, Tokyo Electric continued to release relatively low-level radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean to make room for far more contaminated water that has flooded the basement of the No. 2 reactor's turbine building.
Once the utility finishes releasing the low contaminated water, it will check a facility that had held the water to see if there are any cracks to ensure that there would be no leakage when the more contaminated water is diverted there.
The turbine building needs to be cleared of radioactive water to restore sustainable cooling systems for the No. 2 reactor, which lost normal cooling functions and suffered a partial meltdown of the core since the deadly quake last month, along with the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors.
The No. 4 reactor had no fuel in its core but suffered a loss of cooling functions for its fuel pool. The No. 5 and No. 6 reactors have since been brought to a stable condition.
On Friday, the power company reinforced the earth around a cracked pit, from which highly radioactive water had leaked into the sea before it was successfully plugged by injecting sodium silicate, a chemical agent known as ''water glass.''
Since the leakage had stopped, the company observed about a 7-centimeter rise in the level of contaminated water in a vertical tunnel connected to the No. 2 reactor building, from which the tainted water is believed to have originated.
==Kyodo
Rush to Use Crops as Fuel Raises Food Prices and Hunger Fears
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| rush to biofuel stressing markets? - Wiki |
The starchy cassava root has long been an important ingredient in everything from tapioca pudding and ice cream to paper and animal feed.
But last year, 98 percent of cassava chips exported from Thailand, the world’s largest cassava exporter, went to just one place and almost all for one purpose: to China to make biofuel. Driven by new demand, Thai exports of cassava chips have increased nearly fourfold since 2008, and the price of cassava has roughly doubled.
Each year, an ever larger portion of the world’s crops — cassava and corn, sugar and palm oil — is being diverted for biofuels as developed countries pass laws mandating greater use of nonfossil fuels and as emerging powerhouses like China seek new sources of energy to keep their cars and industries running. Cassava is a relatively new entrant in the biofuel stream.
But with food prices rising sharply in recent months, many experts are calling on countries to scale back their headlong rush into green fuel development, arguing that the combination of ambitious biofuel targets and mediocre harvests of some crucial crops is contributing to high prices, hunger and political instability.
Read Full Article
Unlikely Libya rebels can oust Kadhafi: US general
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| General Carter Ham © AFP/File Filippo Monteforte |
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A top US general said Thursday it was unlikely that Libyan rebel forces could oust the regime's leader Moamer Kadhafi, saying the conflict appeared to be turning into a stalemate.
General Carter Ham, who led the first stage of the coalition air campaign in Libya, said the international intervention had succeeded in protecting civilians for the most part but that Kadhafi's regime probably would not be removed by military means.
Asked at a Senate hearing about the chances that the opposition could "fight their way" to Tripoli and replace Kadhafi, Ham said: "Sir, I would assess that as a low likelihood."
And when pressed by Senator John McCain whether the situation was essentially a stalemate or an "emerging stalemate," Ham said: "Senator, I would agree with that at present on the ground."
Under tough questioning, the general said a stalemate is "not the preferred solution" in Libya but that outcome appeared "more likely" now than at the outset of the air campaign launched March 19.
But Ham said removing Kadhafi was not part of the UN-mandated mission to protect civilians, and that the US administration wanted to rely on diplomatic and other means to force him to step down.
His comments underscored growing concern in Washington and European capitals that the fight in Libya could be deadlocked, with Kadhafi firmly in control in Tripoli and badly-organized rebels unable to turn the tide even under the cover of NATO-led air power.
France's Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, however, took a more optimistic view, saying Kadhafi's regime would inevitably fall.
"The question today is to know under what conditions Kadhafi goes, not how he's going to be able to hold on to power," Juppe told lawmakers in Paris.
In Washington, McCain and some other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee slammed the Obama administration for taking what they called a half-hearted approach to the war, saying removing Kadhafi should be part of the military mission.
But Ham said the administration wanted to employ diplomacy and sanctions to oust Kadhafi and warned that the United States had tried "regime change" elsewhere before.
"We have some history in trying to apply military force to regime change where we have been less than successful," he said, alluding to Iraq.
The general said it was possible an international ground force might be deployed if and when Kadhafi leaves, but warned that an American presence might trigger a backlash in the region.
"I suspect there might be some consideration of that. My personal view at this point would be that that's probably not the ideal circumstance, again, for the regional reactions that having American boots on the ground would entail."
Amid calls by some senators to arm and train the rebels before it was too late, Ham said that he had "some indication that some Arab nations are in fact starting to do that at present."
But the general expressed caution, saying any effort to supply arms had to be carried out carefully to avoid weapons getting into the hands of extremists.
After edging to within 60 kilometers (37 miles) of Kadhafi's hometown of Sirte on March 28, the rebels have been steadily pushed back almost 400 kilometers by the superior fire power of Kadhafi's forces, despite coalition air strikes.
Ham said bombing raids had undercut the regime's ability to target civilians -- except in the besieged city of Misrata.
The rag-tag rebels are struggling to defend Misrata, Libya's third city, under an onslaught from better armed regime forces.
Ham said Kadhafi had moved tanks and troops into parts of the city and that had made air strikes more difficult to carry out without endangering civilians.
The US military pulled back about 50 combat aircraft this week from the air campaign as NATO took command of the Libya operation.
But Ham said the US AC-130 gunships, which can target tanks and ground targets with powerful guns, were now available to the NATO commander of the air operation if he needed them.
US military leaders had previously said the side-firing AC-130 aircraft, along with other ground-attack planes and fighters, would be withdrawn and placed on standby, pending a request from the NATO alliance.
© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license
US House votes to curb climate regulation
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| © AFP/Getty Images/File |
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US House of Representatives on Thursday approved a bill aimed at preventing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
The 255-172 vote in the Republican-held chamber came a day after the Democratic-led Senate rejected such a move, making it highly unlikely lawmakers will actually move to curb EPA's regulatory powers.
US President Barack Obama has already signaled he opposes such a step, but Republicans have said EPA's moves to limit such emissions could dampen job creation as the economy drags itself out of the worst downturn in 80 years.
Republicans have also sought to tie the measure to a sharp rise in gasoline prices, saying new restrictions would drive energy costs sharply higher.
The US House of Representatives approved a cap-and-trade bill to fight climate change in 2009, but the Senate never approved such a measure.
© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license
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