Texas state comptroller said recently that the wind industry in the state had created only 500 to 800 jobs in the state, a fraction of the jobs she says will be lost under the climate bill pending in Congress. "I don't know where the new jobs are going to come from," Ms. Combs says. "They're not going to come from wind." Landing a green job in Texas, she adds, could be akin to finding a "unicorn—a sort of mythical beast."

That comment stirred Greg Wortham, mayor of Sweetwater, Texas. He reports that in 2008 a researcher talked to 20 wind firms in his county (Nolan, in the Texas Panhandle) and  found 1,000 wind energy jobs. For those that don't know the deep Republicanism of the Panhandle, Wortham writes, "And we are not an isolated "greenie" subculture. We are a proud Texas energy community, where 20 percent of the work force is in wind energy, 20 percent is in oil and gas, and 10 percent is in nuclear energy. We are also scheduled for the world's first commercial-scale carbon sequestration coal-fired power plant." 

Then he lists the Texas towns with wind energy firms: Abilene, Pampa, Dumas, Odessa, Sterling City, Roscoe, Snyder, Gainesville, Big Spring, San Angelo, Amarillo, Albany, Robert Lee, Round Rock, Stanton, Vega, Perryton, Corpus Christi, Houston, Freeport, Beaumont, El Paso, Nacogdoches, Dallas, Fort Worth, Coleman, Brownwood, Dickens, Floydada, Blackwell, Trent, Merkel, Nolan. "If there were only 20 jobs in each of those towns, that would exceed the 500 unicorns claimed by the comptroller," Wortham wrote. "Given that Sweetwater has well more than 1,000 wind energy jobs and several others in the list have hundreds of permanent wind energy jobs each, it is with great confidence I can claim that the unicorn is alive and well and growing in Texas."

If you never want to eat another hamburger, read the New York Times' story about how a young woman (above), a children's dance instructor, will never walk again because she ate, yes, some ground beef in a bun. The very long story by Michael Moss is about meat inspection and how hamburger is made. Stephanie Smith ate a hamber in the early fall of 2007. The meat was tainted with E. coli and within a week she had suffered from seizures and convulsions so violent that doctors placed her in a coma for nine weeks. When she came to, she was paralyzed. The meat was processed by Cargill.

"Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder," Moss wrote. "Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen." The meat Stephanie ate came from Nebraska, Texas, Uruguay and South Dakota.

Remember, Moss is writing about ground beef that comes prepackaged -- not that might be ground at your local meat market. Anyway, our (un)favorite part of the story was the description of "binder," largely fat and meat scraps companies put together and then treat with ammonia to kill bacteria. It's then mixed with other ground beef to make the final product fattier and cheaper. If your hamburger smells like a kitchen floor, that's why.

R-CALF USA, a national association of independent cattle producers, has come out against the cap and trade legislation now pending in Congress — in part because the cattle group says the bill will work a special hardship on rural areas. R-CALF says the act is "very complex and includes a host of provisions designed to drive up energy costs and thereby reduce energy consumption. Reduced energy consumption is not favorable to growing an economy." 

First, R-CALF said the bill will raise the costs for cattle producers as it raises the price of energy. Second, the cattle raisers say the bill will "penalize smaller, lesser-capitalized utilities that cannot readily adapt to renewable technologies vis-à-vis larger, better capitalized utilities. These provisions will result in higher costs to rural electrical users." Third, R-CALF claims the bill is "economic suicide" if other, faster growing economies (such as Brazil and China) don't set similar limits on greenhouse gas production.

R-CALF also says the bill contains provisions that will affect mostly western cattle raisers. For instance, the bill would create a national "Wildlife Habitat and Corridors Information Program." Cattle raisers have long feared federal mandates that could disrupt their pastures — in particular "corridors" that would be set aside for wildlife migration.

There is still no hard evidence about how or why a Census Bureau worker was bound with duct tape, killed and then tied to a tree with "FED" written on his chest. The assumption among some is that Bill Sparkman died because he was a federal employee at a time when people hate government. Especially rural people. Dee Davis, publisher of the Daily Yonder, has been quoted as saying rural Kentuckians are independent, but not anarchists. "It's not like people round here have Rush Limbaugh neck tattoos. There has been a quick assumption people here hate their government," Davis said. "If you look at the rates of military service, the number of people who have served and died in the Middle East, it shows that is not true." Another story is that Sparkman happened on a drug making operation (booze, meth or pot).

In the McCreary County Record, Peter S Ferrara responded to a story in a European newspaper about the "land of meth and Moonshine": 

My guess is that Sparkman's killer, like so many others, will get away with it. I was told long ago by a former Sheriff : "If you want to get away with a crime--kill somebody. If you want to get caught--rob a store." I'd be surprised if this victim was murdered for being a federal employee. More likely, he stumbled upon a drug or moonshine operation.

What does it say about us that a newspaper in Scotland is running this sad tale under the "Meth and Moonshine" heading, referring to this neck of the deep woods? To me, it's just one more black eye on a region that already suffers from a lot of negative stereotypes. I have lived in the Daniel Boone National Forest for a pretty long time. The people here may be a proud and isolated bunch, but they are decent and honest and we deserve better. Too many think of this area as a locale for "Deliverance" and home turf of "The Beverly Hillbillies."

It ain't so, world. We're just like everybody else--trying to get through this terrible economic crisis and struggling to make ends meet. Strange as it may sound to some, I think the time has come to stop putting moonshiners in jail. That also goes for non-violent drug users. If for no other reason than it is driving us broke, we need to legalize pot and moonshine so we don't keep filling our jails and prisons with wacky-weed users and white lightning guzzlers. We've already got 2,250,000 folks behind bars--1% of our population!

If moonshine and pot were placed under a federal licensing program and the tax money collected applied to drug education and treatment, we'd all be a lot better off. I wonder when or if we'll ever see a politician with the guts to stand up and say "Enough!" to this part of the phony, ineffective, and costly "War On Drugs."