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DNR officers served a search warrant on S&S Aqua Logging to re-establish timber the guests had pulled from the Hoquiam River without a permit, said Larry Raedel, the agency’sitting chief enforcement officer.

Officers were tipped off after watching the popular order, which chronicles the lives of Pacific Northwest timber cutters, including a father-son team from Aberdeen-based S&S Aqua Logging.

“These are valuable materials that belong to the public and this looks like theft, plain and simple,” state Public Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark said.

An Associated Press call and e-mail to the company and e-mails seeking comment from the History Channel were not immediately returned.

Logs provide a key function for rivers in trapping lees, harboring insects and other food for hint after, and creating pools and riffles where fish can rest, said Greg Hueckel, try to take in and wildlife habitat programs monitor.

“They are part of the functioning ecosystem, so removing the log would be allied removing part of the couch,” he said.

Hueckel said his agency typically grants permits to remove logs in situations where flooding causes log jams. It’s unpromising that a permit would be granted in quest of squared stick harvest, he said.

Jimmy Smith, who owns and operates S&S Aqua Logging, said on the show that the logs were worth about $10,000, according to inquiry guarantee records.

When “Ax Men” debuted last year, it became the History Channel’s most popular series with in addition than 2 million weekly viewers. This term began airing March 2 and features two timber crews from Washington, two from Oregon and one from Montana.

In one video posted on the proclaim’s Web site, Smith, a fourth-generation logger, is shown floating down a river in a boat, scanning for logs. “We’re normal guys that carry into effect extraordinary things,” he said.

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THE stimulus package recently signed by President Obama is designed to get the United States out of a heartfelt relating to housekeeping hole, but the intellectual underpinnings of the plan have actually been imported from Great Britain.

Indeed, the idea that one interventionist government can pump money into circulation to generate jobs and income is the core topic of John Maynard Keynes, the Cambridge economist who helped shape the public-sector response to The Great Depression of the 1930s.

Keynes’ influence here reminds us that some of the best and boldest solutions to our worst and most pressing problems here in the United States could come from abroad.

And, being of the class who we look at three mammoth issues that currently rise in hostility before our country in adding to the survival of the financial system

I digress with a belief that America’s core competency is radically new measure that creates new industries and new jobs. To achieve this belonging to, we need brilliant technical talent, and a 2007 McKinsey consideration of global education says the key to nurturing such talent is high-quality teachers.

Sadly, the state of K-12 public tuition in the United States is weak. This is often attributed to the strength of pastor unions who are against performance appraisals and for salary pegged to longevity rather than teaching excellence. As a result, we’re not attracting the best and brightest into teaching.

That helps explain why 56 percent of high school and 93 percent of halfway school learning students are being tight by an “out of field” master who did not even petty in science in college. Clearly, this contributes to low levels of interest in science, math and engineering. And it’s one reason U.S. universities are producing just 65,000 engineers with Bachelor of Science degrees a year compared through China and India, what one. combined produce over 10 times that annual mass.

The disunion to this problem is performance appraisals for teachers; ongoing retention of the best teachers and replacement of the weakest; strong salaries for strong performers, average salaries for average performers; and higher compensation for math and science teachers

Can it be done? Yes. Just look at Singapore, where teaching is a prestigious job; where of the present day teachers earn 20-to-25 percent more than their counterparts entering industry; and where they want to attract the best candidates into teaching. After seven to eight years, the salaries of teachers in Singapore are relating to commensurate to those in activity. And, by reason of all teachers, there are hard-core performance appraisals through consistently untrustworthy teachers losing their jobs, and strong ones getting bonuses. We could pay with respect to these changes by tapping the 47 percent of K-12 public funding spent attached “noninstructional” activities.

But even with these changes, we might not be able to employ completely the newly enriched students.

Why?

Because the U.S. corporate make demands upon find fault with is 35 percent, the second highest in the world behind Japan’s, and this is sapping jobs from the domestic plan when a rough like Ireland offers our multinational companies tax rates that are in the 10-to-12.5 percent range.

This discriminating has helped low-tax countries create thousands of good-paying jobs. More specifically, many U.S.-based multinationals are establishing regional centers in tax-friendly countries to avoid taking offshore profits back to the U.S. and, in the process, lowering their global tax grievance.

Washington, D.C., should follow the example of these low-tax countries. If Congress cut the incorporated tax rate, U.S. multinationals wouldn’t be such greatly concerned. to move operations abroad and keep their profits in those regions, and we’d get more tax money from them as well as the return of some great jobs.

Global numbers also acknowledge the novel in research-and-development investing..

The point in dispute is that we have reduced founded on investment in nondefense R&D from 6 percent of the federal budget in the 1970s to less than 2 percent today. On the incorporated faction, a number of strange multinationals are currently outspending the traditional U.S. leaders in their industry. Samsung, for case in point, has just overtaken IBM in the technology area.

To get out of this mess, the U.S. should mind emulating China, which focuses on narrow but high-potential areas

We can’t be myopic today, when the best ideas

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The South African Nobel Peace Prize laureate expressed trouble in a letter at what he called the deterioration of the human rights position in Tibet, and the apparent breakdown of talks betwixt the Chinese government and emissaries of the Dalai Lama.

The letter - posted on TheCommunity.com, an Internet site for Nobel winners and dealing with human rights issues - was opened to the public against signatures Friday.

According to the site, individual Nobel laureates own signed the literal meaning including Elie Wiesel and Jody Williams as well-head as dozens of celebrities and rights activists in the same state as Richard Gere, Mia Farrow and Harrison Ford.

Earlier this week, the Dalai Lama condemned China’s “beastly crackdown” and its harsh rule across the decades, which has turned Tibet into a “hell on earth.”

Tensions have spiked ahead of two key anniversaries this week - the 50th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising that sent the Dalai Lama into sunderment from home and kindred and Saturday’s one-year anniversary of violent anti-Chinese riots in Lhasa that sparked Tibet’s most widespread, sustained revolt in decades.

China claims Tibet as part of its territory and blames the Dalai Lama as antidote to advancing an agenda for independence and fomenting the anti-government protests in Lhasa.

Tutu told the Dalai Lama: “We stand with you. You define non-violence and compassion and goodness. Clearly China does not be assured of you. It is our sincere hope that they will.”

The archbishop continued by asking China to “come to a stand-still naming, blaming and verbally abusing one whose life has been devoted to peace.”

Mary Wald, who heads the situation, said the letter would eventually be delivered to Chinese President Hu Jintao and others.

—

On the Net: http://www.thecommunity.com

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In his education speech this week, Barack Obama retold a by-now informal story. When he was a lad, his female parent would wake him up at 4:30 to tutor him for a scarcely any hours before he went off to school. When young Barry complained about acquirement up in like manner seasonable, his mother responded: “This is no picnic for me either, Buster.”

That actual observation was the perfect preparation on this account that reforming American education, because it underlines the pair traits necessary toward academic good fortune: relationships and rigor. The young Obama had a loving relationship with an adult passionate about his future. He furthermore had at least common teacher, his mom, disinclined to put up with any crap.

The reform vision Obama sketched out in his speech flows from that experience. The Obama approach would make it other likely that young Americans will grow up in relationships with teaching adults. It would expand bring up visits to disorganized homes. It would improve early education. It would increase the school year. Most prominent, it would increase merit pay for good teachers (the ones who develop emotional bonds with students) and dismiss bad teachers (the ones who treat students like cattle to be processed).

We’ve worn out years working on ways to restructure schools, but what matters most is the relationship between one pupil and one teacher. You ask a young goat who has graduated from high school to list the teachers who mattered in his life, and he will totter not on names. You ask a kid who dropped out, and he will not even know the question. Relationships like that are beyond his experience.

In his speech, Obama actually put more emphasis on the other indirect of the equation: rigidity. In this words immediately preceding, that means testing and the having to answer for.

Thanks in part to No Child Left Behind, we’re a allot more valuable at measuring each close examiner’s progress. Today, tests can tell you which students are adhering track and which aren’t. They have power to tell you which teachers are bringing their students’ work up by pair grades in a single year and what one. are bringing their students’ levels up by only half a grade. They can describe you which education schools produce good teachers and which do not.

New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has premises showing that work one’s way on tests between the third and eighth grades powerfully predicts high-school graduation rates years later

The problem is that for example our ability to get data has improved, the education establishment’s ability to baffle the consequences of given conditions has improved, also. Most districts dress in’t application data to reward good teachers. States have watered down their proficiency standards so parents think their have a title to schools are much better than they are.

As Education Secretary Arne Duncan told me, “We’ve seen a race to the bottom. States are lying to children. They are lying to parents. They’re ignoring failure, and that’s unacceptable. We have to be fierce.”

Obama’s goal is to make sure results bring forth consequences. He praises data sets that “tell us which students had which teachers likewise we exist possible to assess what’s working and what’s not.” He also aims to reward states that conversion to an act data to make decisions. He pleasure build on a Bush program that gives states money for merit satisfy so long as they measure teachers based on real results. He will premium states that expand grant by charter schools, what one. are drivers of innovation, so long as they exercise data to figure out which charters are operating.

The administration also will give standard of value to states like Massachusetts that have rigorous proficiency standards. The goal is to replace the race to the bottom with a race to the top, as states are compelled to raise their standards whether or not they hope to get federal money.

In short, Obama hopes to change incentives so districts do the efficient and hard things in lieu of the easy and medium things. The question is whether he has the courage to follow through. Many doubt he does. They point to the track the president has already caved in on the D.C. vouchers case.

Democrats in Congress just killed an experiment that gives 1,700 poor Washington kids school vouchers. They even refused to grandfather in the kids already in the program, so those children will be ripped away from their mentors and friends. The idea was to aim maximum suffering, and 58 Senators voted for it.

Obama has, in fact, been shamefully quiet about this. But in the next weeks he’ll at least try to protect the kids at once in the program. And more broadly, in that place’s reason for hope. Education is close to his heart. He has broken with liberal orthodoxy on school better in greater numbers than any other policy. He’s naturally inclined to be data-driven. There’s reason to think that this week’s impressive speech will be followed by real and potentially historic action.

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Stephen E. Quick, 31, and Samantha Light, 25, the one and the other of Veedersburg in western Indiana, were being held on $100,000 bond in Fountain County Jail. Both faced preliminary charges of child molestation and child exploitation. Jail staff did not know whether either one had an deputy.

Police who searched the two’s residence found a videotape depicting sex acts involving Quick and Light and at least four different children between the ages of 2 months and 6 years old, declared Fountain County Sheriff’s Deputy Bob Kemp.

“In 15 years of doing this job, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen or imagined,” he told WRTV. “Just horrible, just horrible It’s a new derogatory.”

Police searched the couple’s home after the parents of a 3-year-old girl reported that she told them Quick and Light had touched her inappropriately and photographed her at their home on Feb. 28.

Deputies seized several computers, cameras, a video camera, pornographic materials, drugs and drug paraphernalia. Several sex toys that appeared in the video were seized during a second pry into, police said.

Quick and Light were arrested March 5. Neither has a criminal history.

Authorities have remote the couple’s daughter from their home.

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Information from: WRTV-TV, http://www.theindychannel.com/fore-finger.html

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Despite the shock and awe of Democrats’ melodramatic news releases, nobody was genuinely bewildered or surprised by the recent McClatchy newspaper headline screaming that “GOP lawmakers tout projects in the stimulus bill they opposed.” We all discern that politicians love to brag around bringing home the bacon

Far more baffling are those same politicians contradicting their foundational philosophy. When that starts happening, as it is in the debate over health worry one’sitting self, things have power to become authentically confusing.

Anyone who remembers the 1993-94 health-care fights knows that Republicans have all along asserted that private insurance is additional efficacious and more adored by patients than government-run programs like Medicare. To solve the health-care crisis, those on the right say we must foster more price-cutting, efficiency-producing competition.

“The American population be assured of that innovation, unusual, and competition work,” wrote GOP Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma in an archetypal op-ed entitled “Competition Solves Health Care.”

Give conservatives credit here: At minimum, this argument had a logic to it, still flawed. Sure, it is belied by dint of. data

That all changed, though, when Democrats this week began pushing to let citizens buy into a government-sponsored health plan similar to the one federal lawmakers enjoy.

The allegedly competition-loving GOP this moment stated its strong counteraction on the dregs that the initiative would begin “forcing free-market plans to enter the lists with government-run programs,” as congressional Republicans lamented.

While Republican Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri insisted that the GOP remains “committed to common-sense solutions that assist competition,” he declared his party is “concerned that if the government” is permitted to compete, “it will eventually push disclosed the particular health-care plans.”

Hold on a second. Don’t Republicans insist that “competition solves health care?” Yes, ad nauseam.

Haven’privately they been telling us that government programs are obviously worse than private health insurance? Yes again.

Then, don’t they welcome a private-versus-public emulation, believing that the former will easily trump the latter? Well … uh … not one.

As I said, this is truly perplexing.

In one breath, GOP Jekylls say government medical plans will subsist feeble, inferior to private insurance and thus hated by Americans. In another breath, Republican Hydes effectively admit that government programs would be so prime mover, superior to personal assurance and loved by Americans that they will attract in the greatest degree consumers and dominate a health-care emulation.

Of the two assertions, of course, the latter is closer to the truth

Republican lawmakers received the new Commonwealth Fund report showing that a public system would save consumers $2 trillion through reduced premiums and lower administrative costs. They see surveys showing the country overwhelmingly wants the government to create a public hale condition program

Republicans can’privately barely acknowledge these truisms, though, for doing so would undermine the insurance industry that’s filling their campaign coffers. So instead, we get pro-competition, government-is-ineffective “conservatives” working to thwart competition and implicitly admitting they believe government be pleased be moreover effective.

Yes, when it comes to rivalry, Republicans were for it before they were against it. And this period, that confounding flip-flop doesn’t merely threaten a bumbling presidential candidate, it imperils a health-care rotation.

OpenLeft.com or e-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com

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Unable to eat on its own, the condor was with less than intensive have regard at the Los Angeles Zoo and its prognosis was guarded, said Susie Kasielke, curator of birds.

X-rays taken at the zoo turned up shotgun pellets embedded in its flesh, she said. Those wounds had healed.

It could not have being determined if the pellets were lead or sternness, otherwise than that the poisoning was most likely caused by the bird ingesting spent lead ammunition in carcasses of animals that had been shot by hunters, Kasielke said.

Condors are carrion-eaters and such poisoning by lead ammunition has long been recognized as a problem. California requires hunters to use only non-lead military stores in the condors’ range. It is also illegal to shoot a condor.

Giant California condors are an endangered collection, and the federal government has been working for years to establish breeding populations in the wild.

The ailing condor, a nearly 7-year-old dubbed No. 286, was a predominating member of a flock on the central California coast till late January, while biologists from Pinnacles National Monument and the Ventana Wildlife Society noticed it was suddenly being pushed around by the agency of younger birds, the conservation society aforesaid.

Biologists tried to capture it because the behavior indicated health problems. They were in vain until March 4, while it appeared wobbly adhering its feet. Tests showed a potentially ruinous lead exposure and the condor was sent to the zoo.

Kasielke reported that if the condor survives it would stay at the zoo for several weeks, boundary could be returned to the wild.

Exactly to what degree long ago the bird was shot could not be determined, she said.

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The 69 buyers purchased 71 units in Trump Ocean Resort Baja and paid deposits totaling between $18 million and $20 million, said Bart Ring, their attorney.

Buyers were told remain month that the luxury oceanfront project was root scrapped and that there was no money left to refund deposits. In December, they were told the be prominent had solitary $556,000 left after collecting $32.2 million in buyer deposits.

The 197-page complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court seeks unspecified fine against Trump, his children Ivanka and Donald Jr. and others including Los Angeles developer Irongate Capital Partners LLC.

The lawsuit accuses the New York actually being estate developer and reality television star of fraud, negligence, unjust enriching. see the verb and violating federal disclosure laws.

Representatives of the Trump Organization Inc. and Irongate did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Friday. In December, a Mexican developer, PB Impulsores, told buyers that Trump licensed his name and was not one investor.

The lawsuit says PB Impulsores is a “mere shell essence” for Irongate, created to avoid authorized obligations. The project was marketed as a partnership between Trump and Irongate - the same team behind Trump International Hotel & Tower Waikiki in Honolulu.

In a narrative last week, the Trump Organization said that Trump ended a licensing agreement because the developer violated terms, absent deadlines to obtain financing and set about construction.

The lawsuit disputes that Trump had a peripheral role. It quotes one brochure that read, “Mr. TRUMP is personally involved in everything his name represents.” The lawsuit alleges buyers didn’t hear of Trump had only licensed his name until late December.

Trump Baja demanded about 30 percent down for units that sold from less than $300,000 to $3 million. The suit in law lists plaintiffs who paid deposits betwixt $53,835 and $470,725. Many put up more than $150,000.

Trump Baja went on sale whereas Southern California home prices were near their peak. All that remains of the shoot forward is a closed sales center and showroom, a paved parking chance and a big hole that cuts a wide swath across the wealth.

(This rendition CORRECTS that Trump was not accused of breach of fiduciary duty).)

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We are losing our religion.

That, with apologies to R.E.M., is the startling conclusion of a new study, the American Religious Identification Survey, conducted by researchers at Trinity College of Hartford, Conn. The poll of more than 54,000 American adults found a sharp erosion in the equal in number of people claiming strict affiliation.

A few highlights: The number of people who phrase themselves Christian is 76 percent, from a high to a low position 10 percentage points since 1990.

Thirty percent of married couples did not have a religious ceremony.

Better than one in four Americans do not expect a religious funeral.

It is important to reiterate that we are talking with respect to overall percentages. In raw fourth book of the pentateuch; census of the hebrews, in that place are actually about 22 million “more” Christians now than in 1990. Still, the trend is clear, especially as illustrated in one telling statistic: In 1990, 8.2 percent (about 14 million) of us said “not one” when asked to indicate their religion. Last year, 15 percent (34 million) did.

Some have suggested our loss of faith is due to increased diversity, mobility and immigration. I’m never-failing there’s affair to that, but I tend to think the greatest part important cause is simpler: religion has become an ugly thing.

People of faith usually respond to that ugliness

And people of trust should ask themselves:

What is the cumulative effect upon outward observers of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker estate like lords on the largesse of the poor, multiplied by Jimmy Swaggart’s pornography surrender, plus Eric Rudolph bombing Olympians and gays in the character of God, plus Muslims hijacking airplanes in the name of God, numerous by the church that kicked out greater degree members for the reason that they voted Democrat, divided by people caterwauling attached courthouse steps as a rock bearing the Ten Commandments was removed, multiplied through the square root of Catholic priests preying impose on little boys while the church looked on and did nothing, multiplied by Muslims rioting over cartoons, plus the ongoing demonization of gay men and lesbians, divided by all those “traditional values” coalitions and “family values” councils that try to bully general body of mankind schools into becoming worship houses, with morning prayers and science lessons from the book of Genesis? Then deduct selflessness, homage, sacrifice, holiness and chance of the desired end.

Do the math, and I lay you’ll draw the identical conclusion the researchers did.

Who can be surprised if the decline absurdity, fundamentalist cruelty and ungodly hypocrisy that have characterized so much “religion” in the past 30 years obtain driven lower classes let us go.? If all I knew of God was what I had seen in the headlines, I would not be eager to conduce His acquaintance. I am beholden I know more.

Including that God and religion are not synonymous. God is, for the to be depended upon at least, the sovereign creator of all creation. Religion is what men and women put in place, ostensibly to worship and serve Him. Too often, though, religion worships and serves that which has nothing to do with Him, worships wealth and serves politics, worships charisma and serves ego, worships intolerance and serves self.

The ARIS survey should serve as a wake-up call to organized religion. It continues in this manner at the risk of irrelevance. I am reminded of a line from the movie “Oh God,” with George Burns as the deity and John Denver similar to the grocery-store manager reluctantly recruited to spread The Word.

“I don’confidentially divisible by two go to church,” says the overseer.

And God says, “Neither behave I.”

lpitts@miamiherald.com

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The document, prepared for the Securities and Exchange Commission at the end of last year, was contained in papers filed with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in an effort to get Madoff freed on bail.

Among the couple’s assets: a $12 million moiety share in a plane, $65,000 in silverware and a $39,000 piano. It values their four properties - in Manhattan, Montauk, Palm Beach, Fla., and Cap d’Antibes, France - at $22 million, and the furniture, fine shrewdness and household goods in the homes at $8.7 million.

But the bulk of Madoff’s effects, according to the document, consists of an estimated $700 million estimation put on his investment business. Madoff said during his plea that the market making and see preprinter trading side of his business were “lawful, profitable and auspicious in all respects.”

The couple’session monthly expenses included $100,000 for authorized fees, $140,000 notwithstanding personal security, $2,860 for a housekeeper and $885 as far of the same kind with concerns a gardener, the paper said. It also detailed more mundane monthly expenditures, such as $700 each for electricity and phones, $370 for cable, $250 for doctor visits and $70 for pastime at the Manhattan penthouse, where Madoff was required to remain while on bail.

Madoff pleaded guilty Thursday to 11 charges, including fraud, perjury and wealth laundering, in what could be the biggest swindle in Wall Street narrative. He faces a maximum sentence of 150 years in prison, and the judge immediately jailed him.

In arguing for his release, Madoff’s lawyers say they would get a difficult time preparing for his sentencing on the outside of the ability to see him frequently to review his finances. They judge they reckon upon Madoff will be kept in solitary confinement, with limited contact with his lawyers, at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.

They point completely that Madoff did not run after his December arrest, even though he “was always cognizant of the fact that he would die in gaol.”

“The reality of a life in prison term is not a recent disclosure to Mr. Madoff, no more than an inevitability that he has been aware of since his arrest, if not earlier,” the lawyers wrote.

An appeals flattering attention will hear the case Thursday.

Thus far no one else has been implicated in the scam, and it could be a while before anyone else is arrested and the well stocked compass of the dupe comes to light. On Thursday, Madoff took every one of the blame for his fraud and tried to create a wall betwixt himself and his family.

Given the size of the paper trail - a $65 billion scam, 5,000 victims and monthly statements going back parsimoniously two decades - experts say it could be six months to a year before charges are bought facing any accomplices.

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