It might kill you if you don’t.  One of the nation’s oldest publications, Harper’s has seen its share of wars and corporate misdeeds come and go, and it’s still on the lookout.  Here David Gargill relates why the Hudson River will never be clean of industrial poisons generated by General Electric and others throughout the 20th century.  So many PCBs have been released, stored, or forgotten about that it’s basically hopeless to try to remove them, though the EPA is overseeing a half-billion-dollar cleanup effort to try and get rid of some of them.  Since many people believe the river dredging will end up causing more damage than it mitigates,  the point of this depressing article is that we have to keep a sharp eye on present environmental threats from other megaprojects such as the Marcellus Shale gas exploration effort.  Abrahm Lustgarten of ProPublica explains why, if we don’t take a very hard look right now, the Marcellus Shale could be the next big problem that it’s already too late to do anything about.

A great example of the connection between solid reporting and improvements in government can be found in the Washington Post’s initial reporting on the alleged effort by Umar Abdulmutallab to incinerate himself aboard AA 253 in an attempt to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of people.  Three top Post reporters — Dan Eggen, Karen DeYoung, and Spencer Hsu — look at how Abdulmutallab got on the plane and begin tracking the policy and political implications for the Obama administration.  They report that the suspected terrorist was already on a federal watch list — but not on a no-fly list.  Joby Warrick and Ellen Nakashima manage in the space of 24 hours to get Abdulmutallab’s biography and compare his alleged crime to similar tactics used by Al Qaeda in the recent past.   Peter Slevin gets us inside the plane and talks with the man who first tackled the suspect and helped put out the fire.  But these reporters weren’t alone:  the print edition lists how many other reporters and researchers contributed to these stories — fifteen at least — including journalists in Yemen and London.

If the Post makes a profit this year, it won’t be because of stories like these.  And yet the Post’s and other papers’ detailed and up-to-the minute reporting will have profound long term effects.  This kind of journalism drives the Sunday talk show narratives, shapes first comments from every congressperson who gets in front of a microphone, and forms initial public opinion.  More important, this kind of reporting shapes the trajectory of government actions from day one — and in an organization the size of the U.S. government, first steps really count. Officials from TSA, the FAA, and from FBI, CIA, and many other agencies will be influenced by reporting from the Post and other national news sources even as they work with information the public may never know.

Approaching the end of a tumultuous year, we can be thankful for the contribution to national security made by professional journalists who, consistently and accurately, help us understand the way world works — and help citizens judge how well our government reacts to threats like the one on American Airlines 253.

Ned Hodgman

To understand what is going on with public pension funds across the country, you have to be a determined number cruncher and master an array of investing strategies, state-level rules and regulations.  You also have to be ready to read a lot of bad news.  David Cho of the Washington Post has taken his charge at the problem and come up with a very depressing picture that can only be solved by concerted action, including at the national level.

Cho writes that state pension funds and OPEBs (Other Post-Employment Benefits) have lost “about $1 trillion” in the worth of their investments, which means that “within 15 years, public systems on average will have less than half the money they need to pay pension benefits.”  Whoops!  This means that police, paramedics, firefighters, teachers, health workers, and a host of other government employees may face major reductions in their pensions, especially as the elderly population grows.  (more…)

As Americans continue to ponder the question of whether “there is such a thing as clean coal,” the New York Times’ Charles Duhigg looks into whether you can clean the air without dirtying the water.  When coal-fired power plants scrub the smoke from their smokestacks, they dump wastewater from the scrubbing process into nearby waterways.

Duhigg visits Hatfield’s Ferry, PA, where residents were overjoyed to have their air finally clean — until they found out that coal plant wastewater can contain “high concentrations of dissolved arsenic, barium, boron, iron, manganese, cadmium, magnesium and other heavy metals that have been shown to contribute to cancer, organ failures, and other diseases.”  And even when landfills are used, the chemicals can leach into groundwater.  Duhigg writes that “EPA officials [have] said that toughening pollution rules for power plants was among their top priorities.”

The people in Hatfield’s Ferry may not have long to wait, but then again, time is working against them.

Dan Berry of the New York Times has it right when he says that $6 million in federal stimulus funds fighting something called “cogongrass” in Alabama could invite derision from anti-big government critics. But if these critics look a little closer (including at the barebones office set aside for the commanders of this effort) they’ll see that this might be money well spent. One expert from the contractor the state of Alabama has hired to eradicate the plant says “cogongrass can replace an entire ecosystem.” This will be no easy battle, but if the folks in Alabama don’t succeed, the grass could easily move north . . . and invasive species don’t care if your state is red or blue.

Charles Duhigg of the New York Times looks at a dangerous pesticide called atrazine that has been around — and probably in your particular organism — for many years. Scientists now believe it may be hazardous in much lower concentrations than previously believed. -NH

Keith Bradsher of the New York Times went to Shenzhen, China (pop. 14 million) to see what happens to that city’s trash.  China has now overtaken the U.S., Bradsher reports, as "the world’s largest producer of household garbage."  This prize may still be shared with the rest of the world, including the U.S., since the incinerators China is building to deal with all its household trash "have become a growing source of toxic emissions that can damage the body’s nervous system" and these toxins "float on air currents across the Pacific to North American shores."  China has better, cleaner incinerators, but they can cost ten times as much as the one Bradsher describes as "pouring out so much dark smoke and hazardous chemicals that hundreds of local residents" have been protesting. That’s an activity in China that can also be hazardous to your health.  But Bradsher notes that most Chinese have no interest in recycling and internal Chinese efforts to tighten regulations on incinerators are mired in bureaucracy. -NH

There’s a kind of background hum of concern about uncontrolled technological progress in American life, a lot of which comes from science fiction and movies like 2001, The Matrix, or  the Terminator series.  The idea is that humankind will create computers or robots with the power to control our destinies, and that eventually we will face a final battle with these superintelligent machines.  Well, as John Markoff of the New York Times points out, robots capable of killing people are nearly a reality, and the trend line is enough to worry scientists who understand the dangers of uncontrolled scientific progress.  Markoff reports on a recent meeting of AI and robotics experts in Monterey, California where possible threats from uncontrolled technological development were viewed

as plausible and unnerving by some scientists like William Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Other technologists, notably Raymond Kurzweil, have extolled the coming of ultrasmart machines, saying they will offer huge advances in life extension and wealth creation.

If the guy from Sun Microsystems is worried, then I’m worried.  And scientists getting in front of this process is essential, because the sooner we are all informed about the choices we face, the sooner we can understand how easy it would be for criminals, corporations, or even governments to develop these tools for use against us.  If you think I’m being paranoid, note that the conference organizer said

the panel was looking for ways to guide research so that technology improved society rather than moved it toward a technological catastrophe. Some research might, for instance, be conducted in a high-security laboratory.

High-security laboratory for building potentially dangerous robots? Coming soon (but not just to a movie theater) near you. -NH

Things are going to get worse before they get better.  And that applies to the news we’re getting from reporters around the country, too.  But the quality of that reporting — and the story it tells about public officials who bury the truth about their mistakes and misteps — is still very high, as Sydney Freedberg and Connie Humburg’s solid story in the St. Petersburg Times makes clear. 

The reporters tell the unfortunate citizens of Florida a story that should make people all over the country pick up the phone and start calling their state pension fund administrators.  It turns out it’s pretty easy to hide the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars — as long as you "[cloud] . . . public statements in complicated language and corporate speak that obscures the truth" or provide answers "that [are] technically correct but [give] a distorted picture." 

In Florida, the State Board of Administration (SBA), which includes Governor Charlie Crist as a trustee, has lost money due to investments in collateralized debt obligations and other risky vehicles.  Actually, pension funds across the country have been hit hard.   But Florida’s pension fund managers appear to be standouts for misinforming and stonewalling worried citizens and local government officials from around the state who called in to find out where their money was after credit markets began to crumble.  Jefferson County, for example, had invested with the Florida SBA and then found it could not meet an $850,000 payroll because, as an SBA representative told the county, "the board took control out of our hands, so there is really nothing I can do." 

The city of Stuart was a bit more fortunate, removing their $26 million from SBA control one day before their investment pool was frozen and withdrawals were blocked.  Their administrator, Dorothy Zaharatko, had been calling the SBA "for two weeks" but "no satisfactory response was forthcoming."  Those with money still invested were stuck when Governor Crist moved to freeze the Local Government Investment Pool.

This problem is widespread and requires both citizen and government action before it’s too late.  Understanding Government will continue to track this issue and would appreciate hearing from readers who have encountered similar problems around the country. -NH

Ready for some new neighbors?  The Washington Post’s Shankar Vedantam has the beginnings of a story which includes Americans moving to New Zealand, Israelis moving to Indiana, and 100,000 citizens of the Pacific island nation of Kiribati seeking a new home in anticipation of rising seas.  These are the "early adopters," though — and exceptions to the rule of countries and people who could be caught off guard by climate change much sooner than we think.  In the U.S., Vedantam writes, some folks are moving out of coastal territories now rather than face the next big hurricane.  But most people won’t think about moving until the water’s six feet high and rising. -NH