Stiffing our ally...More guns, less oversight...Audubon likes wind

Good Morning. Got a good one from London. Gotta love how we support our allies.

LONDON -- Mayor Ken Livingstone, upset that the US Embassy is not paying a quarter of a million dollars in traffic congestion charges, has called Ambassador Robert Tuttle a ''chiseling little crook."

Last July, the embassy stopped paying London's $14 daily congestion fee, imposed on every car that travels into the city's center on weekdays.

''When British troops are putting their lives on the line for American foreign policy it would be quite nice if they paid the congestion charge," Livingstone, known for his inflammatory remarks, said Monday.

Rick Roberts, a spokesman for the US Embassy here, said he did ''not want to dignify those remarks by responding to name calling."

State Department lawyers believe that the congestion charge constitutes a commuting tax and that diplomats are exempt from taxes according to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, Roberts said.

The $14 charge, which began in February 2003, was designed to lessen traffic congestion. Those who don't immediately pay the $14 fee incur stiff penalties. If the fee is not paid in a month, the charge turns into a $260 ticket.

''When the ambassador calls on the [British] foreign secretary he is charged. It interferes with conducting business," Roberts said. He said Tuttle, who worked in the Reagan administration and has run one of the largest automobile dealer organizations in the United States, was sworn in as ambassador in mid-July, after the decision to stop paying was made.

That did not stop Livingstone from lashing out at him.

''It would actually be quite nice if the American ambassador in Britain could pay the charge that everybody else is paying and not actually try and skive out of it like some chiseling little crook," Livingstone said.

OK, maybe that story wasn't so serious. But this one is a little bit more. In the climate of spend, spend, spend under the Bush 'administration', it looks like less and less oversight of weapon manufacture is occuring. So Bush and his cronies get richer, and no one is sure if anything that is being produced is effective, or even safe, for our troops to use in battle.

WASHINGTON -- A special Pentagon office created by Congress to review the performance of new weapons has not publicly released an assessment in four years, raising concerns that the Department of Defense's commitment to oversight is dwindling at a time when weapons spending is on the rise, according to current and former Pentagon officials.

The office of Operational Test and Evaluation still prepares annual reports, but none has been made public since 2002. Between 1998 and 2002, however, the office issued dozens of reports on weapons under development for the various military branches, according to a review of the record.

The public assessments raised questions about some weapons' effectiveness, and took issue with military contractors for delays or cost overruns. Political pressure often forced changes in the weapons' designs or production processes, according to defense officials.

But under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the influence of the office has waned, according to a former director, congressional planners, and private defense specialists.

''I used to put my annual reports on the Web," said Philip Coyle, who ran the office during the Clinton administration, from 1994 to 2001. ''That stopped with the current Bush administration."

The office, which reports to Rumsfeld, has not had a permanent director for more than year. Meanwhile, a Government Accountability Office report found that military contractors were seeking ways to relax the testing regimen for new weapons. And a Pentagon study commissioned by Rumsfeld's top deputy recommended in January that some weapons testing be curtailed to speed up the process of getting new weapons into the field.

The Pentagon declined to say why the declassified test reports, which were once widely circulated on the Internet, now go in hard-copy form only to a few select congressional committee chairmen, a small group of Pentagon insiders, and, in a few cases, to chosen outlets of the defense industry press.

Acting Director David Duma declined to be interviewed, but his office's spokeswoman responded by e-mail to some questions.

The spokeswoman said the office's yearly assessment of weapons programs has been comprehensive, covering all 200 weapons systems under its purview. In addition to the annual reports, the office has produced three assessments on the missile defense program since 2001, but those reports are classified.

Meanwhile, the office says, it has produced 48 other reports since 2001 to help acquisition officials decide whether to approve various weapon systems for ''full-rate production."

But former defense officials and congressional staffers say the lack of circulation of the reports is more indicative of the Pentagon's attitude toward testing under Rumsfeld.

The reports were once a powerful tool to allow outsiders to scrutinize Pentagon spending and, they said, the current veil of secrecy seems intended to prevent any second-guessing of Rumsfeld's decision-making. Continued...

And lastly today, in some local news...the Audubon Society has given its blessing to the Cape Wind project. They've determined that no birds will be put at risk by the many windmills the project entails...removing yet another piece of ammunition from the oil-sucking NIMBYs.

The Massachusetts Audubon Society gave its preliminary blessing yesterday to a large-scale wind power project off Cape Cod, saying its studies show that turbine blades are not likely to cause significant harm to birds, as the group had once feared.

Support from the environmental group, one of the most respected in the state, is important because the threat to birds has emerged as a controversial aspect of the five-year-old proposal to turn stiff sea breezes into a source of electricity.

The group had previously raised questions about potential bird deaths, but Jack Clarke, advocacy director of Mass Audubon, said extensive studies it conducted in the last four years showed that endangered roseate terns and piping plovers, the group's main concerns, and other sensitive species generally avoid the 24-square-mile footprint of the proposed wind farm in Nantucket Sound.

''Our preliminary conclusion is that the project would not pose a threat to avian species," he said.

The most significant hurdle for the project, which would be the nation's first offshore wind farm, is an ongoing federal environmental review, and Mass Audubon's preliminary stance is likely to be helpful. But the group said its final decision will hinge on additional research of several bird species.

WEB LINK: The Massachusetts Audubon Society statement

Mass Audubon officials said they want the government and Cape Wind Associates, the project's developer, to study the flight paths of birds for one more spring and summer season and at night, to be absolutely sure the whirring blades of the wind farm's 130 turbines would not kill too many sea ducks, migratory birds, terns, and plovers. They also said that one more winter study of sea ducks might be necessary.

''We want to get this right," Clarke said. ''This is a big step for the US." Continued...

Looks like there's a bonus click this morning....sounds like a teen prank to me.