As mentioned, I’m bringing back the Water blog here. I’m also bringing back the Green Party blog. These both are what the software for this blog calls a category, and they function as blogs on their own - although I can post to one or all of them at the same time, if needed.

Water continues to be a major issue, and will only get more important, as the combined pressures of privatization and global warming make what should be a freely available resource into something wars will be fought over.

The Green Party blog will be reporting, among other things, on the recounts that Nader and Cobb have started.

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From the always amazing Shifted Librarian 

In winding my way through email from the past few weeks, I find that several people sent URLs to help Linda in her quest to find blogs devoted to the topic of water and the environment. Amazingly, out of the eight emails I received, there was only one duplicate URL. Major score to the blogosphere, and muchos gracias to everyone that responded!

For the Google cache record, here are the links folks sent in:
http://www.wilsdomain.com/blogs/environmental-blogs.html
http://earth-info-net.blogspot.com/
http://www.badlani.com/blog/weblog.php
http://www.oceanjournal.org/
http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/waterlib.html
http://radio.weblogs.com/0101170/categories/coloradowater/
http://northwestwatch.org/
http://cascadiascorecard.typepad.com/blog/
http://www.eco-portal.com/blog/
http://www.waterconserve.info (particularly http://www.waterconserve.info/blog/)
http://www.polizeros.com/categories/thePoliticsOfWater/
http://www.rtumble.com/
http://www.keepersofthewaters.org/

Since they mentioned PoliZeros, I’ve decided to reinstate the long moribund Water blog, and will be posting to it regularly. Water is a hugely important, oft-neglected issue. You can also check out the PoliZeros Water Links.

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The massively hyped workers comp reform strongarmed by Gov. Schwarzenneger in California was supposed to reduce rates. Instead, many businesses find their rates have increased.

Why? Insurance carriers, in a sleazy move, are reclassifying workers into higher risk categories, that’s why.

From a preschool operator:

“It went from $22,000 to $32,000,” Behravesh says. “I’ve never had an increase like that.”

Khokha discovered that her employees had been reclassified by her insurance company even though they performed the same jobs this year as they did in previous years. They went from early childhood educators to day-care workers, a switch that put them in a higher premium category.

From Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi

“Often it makes no sense whatsoever, and we are constantly dealing with this issue,” he added, citing an example of an insurance company that classified secretaries as heavy equipment operators.

In a bizarre happenstance, the Insurance Commissioner has no authority to order insurance companies to stop these greedy pig classification changes. We knew you”d be shocked to hear this.

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U.S. says it can use torture-induced evidence

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From the respected Windows Secrets newsletter.

Experienced Windows admins, who often set the tone for other users, seem to be adopting Firefox at a much higher rate. More than 25% of the visitors to my specialized Web sites — WindowsSecrets.com, BriansBuzz.com, BrianLivingston.com, and the like — are now using some version of Firefox or Mozilla, according to my server logs. That’s up from only 10.9% as recently as January 2004.

You can subscribe to the twice monthly Windows Secrets for free. There is also a paid version, which has extra information and is worth every penny.

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