“CORRECTIONS/CLARIFICATIONS

“The Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era wants to correct substantive errors of fact. To request a correction or clarification, please contact the news desk (291-8622) between the hours of 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. Monday through Friday and 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.”

…Now comes word from the Poynter Institute’s Bill Mitchell that Journalim Online’s system has been released into the wild; its first adopter is LancasterOnline,  which serves a swath of south-central Pennsylvania.

What will be metered?  Obituaries! Insert newspaper-audience-dying-off jokes here.

Metering lets publishers determine how much content is free before users pay. In the case of Lancaster Online, non-locals get seven obit pages before the $1.99 monthly charge kicks in.

Laugh if you want — and I’ll admit, I’m tittering — but any small-town newspaper publisher will tell you obits are a pretty big deal for readers. In this case, LancasterOnline is making money coming and going (if you’ll pardon the pun): they charge survivors to place death notices, and now they’ll charge out-of-towners to read them…

Click here to read the full article.

EPA cited the companies for violating the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), which requires companies that manufacture, use or process more than a threshold amount of listed toxic chemicals to file an annual toxic chemical release form with EPA and the state.  Under EPCRA, companies must also report both routine and accidental releases of toxic chemicals, as well as the maximum amount of any listed chemicals at the facility and the amount contained in wastes transferred off-site.

These annual reports are used to compile the Toxic Release Inventory, a publicly available EPA database that contains information on toxic chemical releases and waste management activities.  This inventory informs the public about toxic chemicals and releases in their community.  For more information, see http://www.epa.gov/tri/.

The alleged violations at the Lancaster plant, located at 1853 William Penn Way, were uncovered during an EPA inspection in 2009. The company did not report releases for lead, chromium and zinc dust for the years 2005, 2006 and 2007.  The company has since submitted these reports and agreed to pay a civil penalty of $165,000.

At the Williamsport facility, located at 3501 W. Fourth Street, and the Denver facility, located at 125 Denver Road, the companies voluntarily disclosed reporting violations in April 2010.  Under EPA?s ?Self-Disclosure Policy,? which encourages companies to monitor environmental compliance, and promptly report and correct violations, the company was eligible for 100 percent mitigation of the penalties, which could have been $227,717 at the Williamsport plant and $98,866 at the Denver facility.

As part of the settlements, the companies did not admit liability for the alleged violations.  However, High Steel and High Concrete have indicated that they have developed and implemented systematic toxic release inventory reporting processes and will conduct annual reviews to prevent violations from recurring.

For more information about EPA’s Audit Policy, visit http://www.epa.gov/compliance/incentives/auditing/auditpolicy.html.

Times have changed radically, witness the election of President Barrack Obama , same sex marriages, and regulations and modifications on behalf of the physically challenged.  Allowing human rights to be handled by State Human Rights Commission (for which we in part pay as taxpayers) may free up almost a half a million dollar of scarce resources to be used to remedy today’s more pressing matters, including more adequate funding of the library system.

Whatever the County Commissioners decide, let us praise them for having the courage to stir up a hornet’s nest in order to better serve county residents.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – It’s practically a daily ritual: Accused drug traffickers and assassins, shackled and bruised from beatings, are paraded before the news media to show that Mexico is winning its drug war. Once the television lights dim, however, about three-quarters of them are let go.

Even as President Felipe Calderon’s government touts its arrest record, cases built by prosecutors and police under huge pressure to make swift captures unravel from lack of evidence. Innocent people are tortured into confessing. The guilty are set free, only to be hauled in again for other crimes. Sometimes, the drug cartels decide who gets arrested.

Records obtained by The Associated Press showed that the government arrested 226,667 drug suspects between December 2006 and September 2009, the most recent numbers available. Less than a quarter of that number were charged. Only 15 percent saw a verdict, and the Mexican attorney general’s office won’t say how many of those were guilty…

Click here to read the full article.

Anyone wondering where all the economy’s jobs are might want to look into piggy banks of the world’s biggest companies.

Cash is gushing into companies’ coffers as they report what’s shaping up to be the third-consecutive quarter of sharp earnings increases. But instead of spending on the typical things, such as expanding and hiring people, companies are mostly pocketing the money and stuffing it under their corporate mattresses.

Non-financial companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 have a record $837 billion in cash, S&P says. That’s enough to pay 2.4 million people $70,000-a-year salaries for five years. For context, 2.2 million to 2.8 million jobs were saved or created by the $862 billion stimulus that President Obama signed into law in February 2009, according to a report released in April from the Council of Economic Advisers…

Click here to read the full article.

Two state agencies have announced new guidelines for reverse-mortgage lenders aimed at protecting older homeowners from getting bad advice or being duped by fraudulent operators.

“Because reverse-mortgage products are specifically designed for and marketed to older residents, we feel a particular responsibility to safeguard their interests by making sure that they are not unfairly taken advantage of,” said Steve Kaplan, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Banking, which joined with the Pennsylvania Department of Aging in announcing the new policy.

A reverse mortgage is a way to borrow money by using a home as collateral…

Click here to read the full article.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed bipartisan legislation tonight sponsored by Rep. William Delahunt (D-MA) which would create a national commission to study the U.S. criminal justice system and make recommendations for reform. The bill passed under an expedited process that presumes unanimity unless a member of Congress objects. No member objected.

“It is a sign of how quickly the tide has turned against punitive criminal justice policies that this bill passed without opposition,” said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. “Prisons are overflowing at great taxpayer expense, in large part because of the failed war on drugs, and members of Congress are finally saying enough is enough, we need ideas for reform.”

The bill comes at a time that the United State’s growing prison population – fueled by the war on drugs – is becoming a political issue. The United States ranks first in the world in per capita incarceration rates, with just five 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.  Roughly 500,000 Americans are behind bars any given night for a drug law violation.  That is ten times the total in 1980, and more than all of western Europe (with a much larger population) incarcerates for all offenses.

Across the country – from California to Texas to New York – legislatures, and in some cases voters, are passing legislation to divert offenders to treatment instead of jail, reform mandatory minimum sentencing, and treat drug use more as a health issue instead of criminal justice issue.

These efforts – motivated by concerns for saving taxpayer money, reducing racial disparities, and showing more compassion for people struggling with substance abuse problems – are gaining steam.

The House bill is identical to a bill in the U.S. Senate introduced by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA). That bill has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee and will most likely be voted on in the full Senate sometime this year. Sen. Webb (D-VA) has said, “either we have the most evil people in the world or we are doing something wrong with the way we approach the issue of criminal justice.” And “the central role of drug policy in filling our nation’s prisons makes clear that our approach to curbing illegal drug use is broken.”

It is widely believed that the national commission created by Sen. Webb’s and Rep. Delahunt’s legislation would make recommendations for reducing incarceration, reforming U.S. drug policy, eliminating racial and gender disparities, improving re-entry efforts, and expanding access to substance abuse treatment, mental health services and health care.

“The House has spoken decisively. Now it is time for Senators to act,” Piper said. “Sen. Webb’s and Rep. Delahunt’s bipartisan commission legislation needs to be passed quickly before the war on drugs and punitive criminal justice system bankrupt our country and destroy more lives.”

About 18.9 million homes in the U.S. stood empty during the second quarter as surging foreclosures helped push ownership to the lowest level in a decade.

The number of vacant properties, including foreclosures, residences for sale and vacation homes, rose from 18.6 million in the year-earlier quarter, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a report today. The ownership rate, meaning households that own their own residence, was 66.9 percent, the lowest since 1999.

Lenders are accelerating foreclosures as borrowers fall behind in mortgage payments after the worst housing crash since the Great Depression. A record 269,962 U.S. homes were seized in the second quarter, according to RealtyTrac Inc. Foreclosures probably will top 1 million this year, the Irvine, California- based data company said in a July 15 report…

Click here to read the full article.

“DC Council members and members of Congress should be commended for providing relief to cancer, HIV/AIDS and other patients who need medical marijuana,” said Bill Piper, director of national affairs of the Drug Policy Alliance. “Now we need to make sure that everyone who needs the medicine gets it and that federal law enforcement doesn’t undermine the process.”

In 1998, DC residents voted overwhelmingly to legalize marijuana for medical use – 69 percent to 31 percent, still the largest margin in any jurisdiction to legalize medical marijuana. Unfortunately, the Republican-controlled Congress at the time passed a spending rider prohibiting the DC from implementing the law.  Last year the Democratic-controlled Congress repealed that provision, setting the stage for DC to finally implement medical marijuana. The medical marijuana law the DC Council passed was different from the law DC voters approved in 1998 and many advocates say it will leave many patients without the medicine they need.

“Providing marijuana to sick patients in DC is a major step forward, but this law has some faults that will have to be fixed over time,” said Piper. “By not allowing patients to grow their own medicine, the DC law leaves patients at the mercy of medical marijuana dispensaries and the U.S. Justice Department – who could shut down those dispensaries.”