Review of the EPA's Economic Analysis of Final Water Quality Standards for Lakes and Flowing Waters in Florida (2012)

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he Environmental Protection Agency's estimate of the costs associated with implementing numeric nutrient criteria in Florida's waterways was significantly lower than many stakeholders expected. This discrepancy was due, in part, to the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency's analysis considered only the incremental cost of reducing nutrients in waters it considered "newly impaired" as a result of the new criteria—not the total cost of improving water quality in Florida. The incremental approach is appropriate for this type of assessment, but the Environmental Protection Agency's cost analysis would have been more accurate if it better described the differences between the new numeric criteria rule and the narrative rule it would replace, and how the differences affect the costs of implementing nutrient reductions over time, instead of at a fixed time point. Such an analysis would have more accurately described which pollutant sources, for example municipal wastewater treatment plants or agricultural operations, would bear the costs over time under the different rules and would have better illuminated the uncertainties in making such cost estimates.Key Findings

• The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) cost estimate was lower than those calculated by other stakeholder groups due to several factors. First, EPA considers only the incremental cost of improving the quality of waters that are newly identified as impaired based on the numeric nutrient criteria rule, and does not consider waters that Florida has already determined to be impaired based on existing methodologies. Second, EPA and other stakeholders made different assumptions about the extent to which certain pollutant sources should be included in their cost analyses. Third, there are differing assumptions made about the level of technology that will be needed to meet the numeric nutrient criteria.
• EPA was correct to estimate incremental costs of the change from the narrative to numeric approach, but some members of the media, the public, and decision makers misinterpreted EPA's incremental cost estimate as the total cost needed to improve Florida water quality. The total costs to meet Florida's water quality goals are highly uncertain but will substantially exceed the incremental costs of any rule change and will take decades to achieve.
• In all sectors, Florida's current level of implementation of best management practices to reduce nutrient pollution was assumed by EPA to continue under the numeric nutrient criteria rule and to be satisfactory. However, the committee found that the use of current best management practices is unlikely to be sufficient to meet beneficial designated uses in Florida waters.
• Under the numeric nutrient criteria rule, monitoring data on nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations are used to identify newly impaired water bodies. However, for about 77 to 86 percent of the lakes and flowing waters in Florida, there are not enough monitoring data to make an assessment. EPA assumed that all unassessed waters would be in compliance with the numeric nutrient criteria rule, which led EPA to underestimate the number of newly impaired waters.
• For each sector of pollutant sources, EPA estimated the incremental cost of complying with the numeric nutrient criteria rule. The report concluded that EPA underestimated the incremental cost for the stormwater, agricultural, septic system, and government sectors. There is significant uncertainty in the EPA cost estimate for the municipal and industrial wastewater sectors, making it difficult to know whether the EPA under- or over-estimated the incremental cost in these sectors.
• EPA's cost analysis would have been more accurate if it better described the differences between the new criteria rule and the narrative rule it would replace, and how the differences affect the costs of implementing nutrient reductions over time, instead of at a fixed time point. Timing was not considered in the EPA report, but in reality, the speed with which actual water quality benefits are observed is constrained by the time required to conduct necessary studies and implement load controls, and by available budgets and staff.
• Comparing the rules over time also can provide an opportunity to present a realistic picture of how water quality improvement actions might unfold under alternative rules, by illustrating the time lags between listing and achievement of water quality standards. Most importantly, reporting on timing would provide useful information for predicting annual budgetary requirements.
• If done correctly, EPA's analysis would have revealed that point sources of water pollution are going to face increased costs sooner under the numeric nutrient criteria than under the narrative process. How costs to nonpoint sources and water quality benefits would materialize under the different rules is uncertain.
• Many assumptions are made in predicting administrative and load control costs over time, leading to uncertainty in cost analyses. This uncertainty—which can stem from such issues as a lack of knowledge about the cost of a relatively new technology, or about how implementation of the numeric nutrient criteria will be translated to effluent limits for point sources—was inadequately represented in the EPA analysis.
• Conducting an alternative cost analysis, with increased attention to careful assessment of rule differences, stakeholder engagement, and uncertainty analysis, might not have been possible with the budget and time EPA spent on it cost analysis. Any critique of the existing EPA cost analysis should recognize that some deficiencies may be traced to time and budget limitations.

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Improving farmers' access to agricultural insurance in India

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Agriculture is an uncertain business in India, partly due to its high dependence on the weather, leaving 120 million farmer households vulnerable to serious hardship. By providing claim payments to farmers in the event of crop failure, agricultural insurance can directly improve the welfare of risk averse farmers, particularly the 80 percent of ‘small and marginal’ Indian farmer households operating less than two hectares. Perhaps even more importantly, affordable agricultural insurance can in effect act as collateral against loans, increasing the creditworthiness of farmers and allowing them the opportunity to invest in appropriate inputs to increase agricultural productivity (Hazell 1992). By strengthening markets for agricultural credit while providing reliable protection that is attractive to the most risk averse, crop insurance may be a more attractive channel for government support to rural livelihoods and risk mitigation than ex-post disaster transfers, which offer no ex-ante guarantee to farmers and may therefore have limited impact on ex-ante decisions, or loan waiver or input subsidy programs, which may adversely distort behavior.

However, the provision of agricultural insurance is challenging, particularly in developing countries. Multiple Peril Crop Insurance programs, where each policyholder is indemnified against their own crop loss, were fraught with moral hazard, fraud and adverse selection, leading to high costs (Hazell 1992, Skees et al. 1999). By comparison, recent experience with voluntary weather indexed insurance has been somewhat underwhelming, with low voluntary demand (Cole et al. 2009, Binswanger-Mkhize 2011).

The Government of India, having historically focused on crop insurance as a planned mechanism to mitigate the risks of natural perils on farm production, is responsible for the world’s largest crop insurance program with 25 million farmers insured. The National Agriculture Insurance Scheme (NAIS) is the main crop insurance program in the country, and in states and union territories that choose to participate, insurance for food crops, oilseeds and selected commercial crops is compulsory for all farmers that borrow from financial institutions and is voluntary for non-borrowing farmers without loans. The NAIS operates on an area yield indexed basis, whereby claim payments to farmers depend on the average yield of the insured crop measured across the insurance unit, typically an administrative block, in which they live. Area yield indexed crop insurance offers a middle ground between indemnity-based multiple peril crop insurance and weather based index-based weather insurance, with the potential for a greater r silience to moral hazard, fraud and adverse selection than the former and lower basis risk, the risk of a mismatch between incurred losses and indexed claim payments, than the latter (Carter et al. 2007).

However, the NAIS is not without its challenges, most notably the open-ended and highly variable fiscal exposure for state and central government, significant delays in the settlement of the farmers’ claims, and dependence on an inefficient crop yield estimation process. The insurance premium rates paid by the farmers are capped and claims in excess of the capped premium volume are borne equally by the state and the central governments after harvest; for every 1 rupee of farmer premium paid between 2000 and 2008 the total claim payment to farmers was 3.5 rupees. The ex-post funding arrangement leads to an open ended fiscal exposure for governments and volatile annual contributions that are difficult to predict in advance of harvest. Indemnity payments tend to get extremely delayed (up to 9-12 months) in part because of administrative and budgetary processes for post-disaster funding of the excess losses. Finally, the crop yield estimation process conducted by the states, used for insurance claims, is subject to reporting delays, inconsistency and moral hazard. In addition, the current NAIS suffers from poor risk classification, which has led to a somewhat arbitrary allocation of government subsidies, and poor marketing.

It was in this context that the Government of India formed a joint task-force with the Ministries of Agriculture and Finance and the public insurance company, the Agricultural Insurance Company of India (AICI) to enhance the crop insurance program and improve insurance coverage. The repor (Joint Group 2004) suggested action on the following items: review current underwriting methodology; develop an actuarially sound design and pricing methodology based on international best practice to act as the foundation for a move to an ex-ante funded, market-based crop insurance program; develop product design and pricing methodology for new weather index insurance products; and suggest cost-effective catastrophe risk financing solutions for the public crop insurance company.

This joint work eventually led to the design and implementation of a modified NAIS (mNAIS), with planned pilot period lasting for three seasons starting winter 2010-11 (Table 1). This is potentially a major initiative given the significant scale of NAIS. If well implemented, an improved program would result in increased benefits for millions of current farmer clients and lead to greater coverage of the insurance program. However, significant challenges remain

World Bank. Author:Mahul, Olivier;Verma, Niraj;Clarke, Daniel J.Document Date: 2012/03/01. Document Type: Policy Research Working Paper. Report Number: WPS5987

Improving farmers' access to agricultural insurance in India  

Kenya's mobile revolution and the promise of mobile savings

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Kenya has undergone a remarkable information and communications technology (ICT) revolution. At the close of the 1990s, less than 3 percent of Kenyan households owned a telephone, and fewer than 1 in 1,000 Kenyan adults had mobile phone service. By the end of 2011, 93 percent of Kenyan households owned a mobile phone.

A unique facet of the ICT phenomenon in Kenya has been the widespread proliferation of mobile money. Starting with the M-PESA system launched by Safaricom in 2007 and later joined by other systems, mobile money has become a fixture in the lives of Kenyans, extending a basic form of financial access to a wide population.

Mobile money platforms have evolved since inception and have entered a new phase with the advent of bank-integrated mobile savings products. The first such product, M-KESHO, was launched in March 2010 as a partnership between Safaricom and Equity Bank.

In this paper we examine the mobile savings phenomenon, using data collected in a survey during October and November of 2010. The concept of ―savings on mobile platforms is not well defined, and we begin by putting forward a classification of the existing innovations. We differentiate between ―basic mobile savings‖ and ―bank-integrated mobile savings. Basic mobile savings refers to the simple storage of credit using a mobile system such as M-PESA. Bank-integrated mobile savings refers to systems which include a fuller set of banking services such as interest payments on deposits or overdraft facilities. This is the first study that examines patterns of use of bank-integrated mobile savings in Kenya.

The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents findings on the overall prevalence of mobile phone and mobile money usage in Kenya based on the Afrobarometer survey conducted at the end of 2011. Section 3 reviews the existing literature on the broader mobile money phenomenon. Section 4 describes how mobile money works in Kenya and shows the growth of mobile money usage over time. Section 5 describes the data on mobile savings analyzed in this paper. Section 6 describes the concept and measurement of mobile savings. Section 7 presents
the core analysis. Section 8 discusses the future of mobile savings and concludes.

World Bank. Author:Demombynes, Gabriel; Thegeya,Aaron.Document Date: 2012/03/01. Document Type: Policy Research Working Paper. Report Number: WPS5988

Kenya's mobile revolution and the promise of mobile savings  x

"Reinvogorated Islam"

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An essay by Amil Imani. Excerpt:

Before long, the fanatical Muslims running Iran aim to add a more deadly modern version of the sword: the Islamic bomb. With the bomb in one hand and the other hand on the oil spigot, the religion of peace and brotherhood will have the power to bring the non-Muslim world to its knees.

Read it all HERE. This essay is most disturbing in light of what is presently happening in Egypt.

Is Barack Obama Working With The Muslim Brotherhood To Install Islamist Governments in the Muslim World?

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From the Investigative Project on Terrorism:

Islamist Lobbies' Washington War on Arab and Muslim Liberals

by Essam Abdallah

The Cutting Edge News

February 16, 2012

A note from Investigative Project on Terrorism Executive Director Steven Emerson:

Please take the time to read this very important story written by a courageous Egyptian liberal intellectual about the Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood lobbies in Washington and the Obama Administration's secret collaboration with these pro-terrorist, anti-Western, anti-women, anti-American and anti-Semitic organizations. This is one of the most important articles I have read in years.

It was just revealed two days ago that FBI Director Mueller secretly met on February 8 at FBI headquarters with a coalition of groups including various Islamist and militant Arabic groups who in the past have defended Hamas and Hizballah and have also issued blatantly anti-Semitic statements. At this meeting, the FBI revealed that it had removed more than 1000 presentations and curricula on Islam from FBI offices around the country that was deemed "offensive." The FBI did not reveal what criteria was used to determine why material was considered "offensive" but knowledgeable law enforcement sources have told the IPT that it was these radical groups who made that determination. Moreover, numerous FBI agents have confirmed that from now on, FBI headquarters has banned all FBI offices from inviting any counter-terrorist specialists who are considered "anti-Islam" by Muslim Brotherhood front groups.

The February 8 FBI meeting was the culmination of a series of unpublicized directives issued in the last three months by top FBI officials to all its field offices to immediately recall and withdraw any presentation or curricula on Islam throughout the entire FBI. In fact, according to informed sources and undisclosed documents, the FBI directive was instigated by radical Muslim groups in the US who had repeatedly met with top officials of the Obama Administration to complain, among other things, that the mere usage of the term of "radical Islam" in FBI curricula was "offensive" and 'racist." And thus, directives went out by Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Mueller to censor all such material. Included in the material destroyed or removed by the FBI and the DOJ were powerpoints and articles that defined jihad as "holy war" or presentations that portrayed the Muslim Brotherhood as an organization bent on taking over the world—a major tenet that the Muslim Brotherhood has publicly stated for decades.

During the next several months, the IPT will be releasing a series of major investigative reports revealing the secret infiltration by and collaboration with radical Islamic organizations by the Obama administration that has spread to the National Security Council, the Dept of Justice, the FBI, the Dept of Homeland Security, the CIA and the State Department as well as local law enforcement.

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The most dramatic oppression of the region's civil societies and the Arab Spring is not by means of weapons, or in the Middle East. It is not led by Gaddafi, Mubarak, Bin Ali, Saleh, or Assad. It is led by the powerful Islamist lobbies in Washington DC. People may find my words curious if not provocative. But my arguments are sharp and well understood by many Arab and middle eastern liberals and freedom fighters. Indeed, we in the region, who are struggling for real democracy, not for the one time election type of democracy have been asking ourselves since January 2011 as the winds of Arab spring started blowing, why isn't the West in general and the United States Administration in particular clearly and forcefully supporting our civil societies and particularly the secular democrats of the region? Why were the bureaucracies in Washington and in Brussels partnering with Islamists in the region and not with their natural allies the democracy promoting political forces?

Months into the Arab Spring, we realized that the Western powers, and the Obama Administration have put their support behind the new authoritarians, those who are claiming they will be brought to power via the votes of the people. Well, it is not quite so.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Nahda of Tunisia, the Justice Party of Morocco and the Islamist militias in Libya's Transitional National Council have been systematically supported by Washington at the expense of real liberal and secular forces. We saw day by day how the White House guided carefully the statements and the actions of the US and the State Department followed through to give all the chances to the Islamists and almost no chances to the secular and revolutionary youth. We will come back to detail these diplomatic and financial maneuvers which are giving victory to the fundamentalists while the seculars and progressives are going to be smashed by the forthcoming regimes.

In the US, there are interests that determine foreign policy. And there are lobbies that put pressure to get their objectives met in foreign policy. One of the most powerful lobbies in America under the Obama Administration is the Muslim Brotherhood greater lobby, which has been in action for many years. This lobby has secured many operatives inside the Administration and has been successful in directing US policy towards the Arab world. Among leading advisors sympathetic to the Ikhwan is Daliah Mogahed (Mujahid) and her associate, Georgetown Professor John Esposito. Just as shocking, there is also a pro-Iranian lobby that has been influencing US policy towards Iran and Hezbollah in the region.

One of the most important activities of the Islamist lobby in the US is the waging of political and media wars on the liberal Arabs and Middle Eastern figures and groups in America. This battlefield is among the most important in influencing Washington's policies in the Arab world. If you strike at the liberal and democratic Middle Eastern groups in Washington who are trying to gain support for civil societies in the region, you actually win a major battle. You will be able to influence the resources of the US Government to support the Islamists in the Middle East and not the weak democrats. This huge war waged by the Islamist lobbies in America started at the end of the Cold war and continued all the way till the Arab spring. The two main forces of this lobby are the Muslim Brotherhood fronts and the Iranian fronts. According to research available in the US, the Ikhwan fronts such as CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations), led by Hamas supporter Nihad Awad, as well as the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Islamic Society of North America, and others waged their political war to block the representatives of Arab liberals and Muslim moderates from making their case to the American public. The Iranian lobby, exemplified by the National Iranian American Committee (NIAC), led by Trita Parsi, has been hitting at Iranian exiles.

Since the 1990s CAIR and its allies have attacked Copts, Southern Sudanese, Lebanese, Syrian reformers, Assyrians and Chaldeans, and Muslim dissidents in the United States. The Ikhwan of America demonized any publication, book, article, or interview in the national media or local press raising the issue of secular freedoms in the Middle East. The Islamists wanted to eliminate the liberal cause in the Arab world and replace it with the cause of the Islamists. What is also shocking is that CAIR and its allies stood by the oppressive regimes and visited them, claiming they speak on behalf of the peoples. CAIR and the Brotherhood fronts in America destroyed systematically every project that would have defended the seculars and liberals originating from the Middle East. The notorious and well-funded Islamists of the US allowed no book, documentary, or show on the liberals in Arab civil societies to see the light.

Thanks to this powerful lobbying campaign, the American public was not given a chance to learn about the deep feelings on the youth in the region. Americans were led to believe that all Muslims, all Arabs and all Middle Easterners were a strange species of humans who cannot appreciate freedom. Instead, the American Islamists, helped by apologists on the petrodollars payrolls, convinced the mainstream media that the Arab world has authoritarians and Islamists only.

Dr Shawki Karas, president of the American Coptic Association, told me in the late 1990s how he was harassed by Islamist activists for speaking up against the Mubarak regime and the Muslim Brotherhood in America. He was threatened with losing his job at the college where he taught. Reverend Keith Roderick, who has assembled a coalition of more than 50 group rights from the Muslim world, was severely attacked by the Islamists and was threatened to be removed from his church position. Muslim American leaders who are conservative and secular, such as Dr Zuhdi Jasser, were crucified by CAIR and the Brotherhood for daring to challenge the Party line of the Isl.amists in America and claiming that the Jihadists are the problem in the region. Muslim liberal dissidents such as Somali Ayan Hirsi Ali, Saudi Ali al Yammi, Syrian Farid Ghadri, Iranian Manda Ervin, and many others were trashed by the Islamist lobbies to block them from defending the causes of secular liberty in the US. Egyptian liberals as well as seculars and democracy activists from Iraq, Sudan, Syria, and other countries have been attacked by CAIR and allies. The pro-Iranian lobby targeted most Iranian-American groups and tried to discredit them, particularly with the rise of the Green Revolution in Iran. By smearing the Muslim liberal exiles, the Islamists were trying to destroy their causes in the mother countries. In the 1990s and the years that followed 9/11 the region's dictators supported the efforts by Islamist lobbies to crush the liberal exiles. The Mubarak, Bashir, Gaddafi, Assad, and Khomeinist regimes fully supported the so-called Islamophobia campaign waged by CAIR and its Iranian counterpart NIAC against dissidents for calling for secular democracy in the region. The dissidents were accused of being pro-Western by both the Islamists and the dictators.

The Islamist lobbies also severely attacked members of the US Congress such as Democrats Tom Lantos, who has since passed away, Eliot Engel, Howard Berman, Gary Ackerman, and Joe Lieberman as well as Republicans Frank Wolfe, Chris Smith, Trent Franks, John McCain, Rick Santorum, and Sam Brownback for their efforts in passing legislative acts in support for democracy and liberty in the Middle East. CAIR and NIAC heavily savaged President Bush's speeches on Freedom Forward in the Middle East, deploying all the resources they had to block US support to liberal democrats in the region. Islamist lobbies in Washington are directly responsible for killing any initiative in the US Government to support Darfur, southern Sudan, Lebanon, the Kurds, liberal women in the Muslim world, and true democrats in the Arab world and Muslim Africa.

In the think tank world, CAIR and its allies aggressively attacked scholars who raised the issue of persecution against seculars or minorities in the Arab world and Iran. Among those attacked were Nina Shea and Paul Marshal from the Hudson Institute and the founder of an anti-slavery group, Dr Charles Jacobs, who was exposing the Sudan regime for its atrocities. Last but not least is the Islamists' relentless campaign to stirke at top scholars who advise Government and appear in the media to push for democratic liberation in the region. The vast and vicious attacks leveled against Professor Walid Phares—initially by CAIR's Nihad Awad and then widened by pro-Hezbollah and Muslim Brotherhood operatives online—has revealed to Arab and Middle Eastern liberal and seculars how ferocious is the battle for the Middle East in the US. Phares's books, particularly the latest one, The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East (2010), hit the Islamist agenda hard by predicting the civil society revolts in the Middle East and then predicting how the Islamists would try to control them. Phares was attacked by an army of Jihadist militia online like no author since Samuel Huntington in the 1990s. As a freedom activist from the Middle East, Mustafa Geha, wrote, Phares is a hero to Muslim liberals. Along with dissidents, lawmakers, experts, and human rights activists, Phares is a force driving for a strategic change in US foreign policy towards supporting secular democracies in the region. This explains why the Islamists of America are fighting the battle for the forthcoming regimes with all the means they have.

Dr. Essam Abdallah is an Egyptian liberal intellectual who teaches at Ain Shams University and writes for the leading Arab liberal publication Elaph.

The Obama Retreat

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An excellent essay by Lee Smith at Iran Aware. Here is the final paragraph. Wraps it all up.

That responsibility to prevent an Iranian nuclear breakout may have now fallen to Netanyahu is not an indication that Israel’s sphere of influence has expanded but rather that under the Obama administration America’s has contracted. It’s a startlingly narrow focus for an American president after more than 60 years of American hegemony in the Persian Gulf. If, as we believe, control of the region remains a vital U.S. interest, the United States must be prepared to defend it. The Obama Doctrine seems to suggest it is not and we won’t. 

Please go read the whole thing here.

Investigate Radical Christianity? Yeah, Why Not

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From Robert Spencer at PJM:

During last week’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing on “The Radicalization of Muslim-Americans,” Congressman Al Green (D-TX) took issue with the hearing’s focus on Islam and Muslims, asking the witnesses testifying before the Committee: “If you agree that radicalization exists within all religions to some extent, would you kindly extend a hand into the air.” Noting triumphantly that “all the hands are raised,” Green then asked: “Why not have a hearing on the radicalization of Christians?”

The immediate answer is obvious. On the one hand we have recent jihad plotters in the U.S., including Naser Abdo, the would-be second Fort Hood jihad mass murderer; Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas; Muhammad Hussain, the would-be jihad bomber in Baltimore; Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be jihad bomber in Portland; Nidal Hasan, the successful Fort Hood jihad mass-murderer; Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square jihad mass-murderer; Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station jihad murderer; Naveed Haq, the jihad mass murderer at the Jewish Community Center in Seattle; Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh, who hatched a jihad plot to blow up a Manhattan synagogue; and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber.

All of them and many others invoked the Qur’an and Sunnah to explain and justify their deeds.

And on the other hand, we have recent “radical Christian” acts of violence committed by people who invoked the Bible and Church teaching to explain and justify their deeds, including — no one at all. Not one. Even the much-vaunted abortion clinic bombers number only a handful, versus nearly 19,000 jihad attacks around the world since 9/11, and have been repudiated by all Christian sects and leaders — as opposed to the many Islamic authorities that teach jihad warfare against unbelievers and exhort their faithful to commit acts of violent jihad.

Rosie O’Donnell enunciated the idea memorably a few years ago: “radical Christianity is just as dangerous as radical Islam.” Since then, this has become a commonplace of mainstream media political discourse — remarkably enough, since it has absolutely no evidence to back it up.

Emblematic of how hard it is to find a “radical Christian” — that is, someone driven to violence by the teachings of Christianity, as opposed to genuinely radical Christians like Mother Teresa and the Amish — is that when Green spoke about “the radicalization of Christianity,” he was actually referring to Islamic jihadists, not to Christians at all.

This became clear when he said: “I do not, not — N-O-T — oppose hearings on radicalization. I do oppose hearings that don’t focus on the entirety of radicalization. And if you agree that we have Christians, as has been mentioned by more than one member, Christians who become radicalized, they become part of Islam and they become radicalized as is being said, why not have a hearing on the radicalization of Christians?”

Green’s statement is fundamentally incoherent. “Christians who become radicalized” and “become part of Islam” are not Christians at all, but converts to Islam. Thus a hearing on the radicalization of Muslims, and possibly of converts to Islam, would be needed, not a hearing on the radicalization of Christians. Green himself made this clear, after a fashion, as he continued, digging himself an ever-deeper hole: “I do think that it is a problem of perception. People who see the hearings and never hear about the hearing on the radicalization of Christianity have to ask themselves, ‘Why is this missing?’ Why don’t we go to the next step and ask, how is that a blue-eyed, blonde-haired, white female in the United States of America can become radicalized to the point of wanting to do harm to this country? We don’t have that type of hearing. That’s the problem.”

Green was apparently referring to Colleen LaRose, aka “Jihad Jane,” a convert to Islam from Pennsylvania who plotted to murder a Swedish cartoonist, Lars Vilks, for drawing a cartoon of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. If LaRose had remained a Christian, of course, she never would have been moved to kill by a cartoon of Muhammad; her crime has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with Islam. And so here again, the moral equivalence that Rosie O’Donnell stated baldly and that Green was apparently reaching for founders on the facts. 

Yet Green soldiered on, concluding: “I do know what it feels like to look like a Muslim in the minds of some people and to be demeaned in a public venue. I look forward to the day that we’ll have that hearing that deals with the radicalization of Christians in America.”

So do I, in fact. Investigate radical Christianity! If such a hearing were held with any degree of honesty, it couldn’t help but shed light on the fact that Islam has a unique capacity to incite its adherents to violence today, in a way that neither Christianity nor any other religion shares. And that realization, contrary as it is to official government and media assumptions, could go a long way toward focusing law enforcement upon the real problem the nation faces today, instead of upon politically correct fictions. Much as that prospect may infuriate Congressman Al Green.

Poll Finds Huge Majority of Americans Think Obama Abused His Power With Use of Executive Privilege In Fast And Furious Case, 56%–29%…

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Via The Hill: 

A clear majority of likely voters believes President Obama has exercised his executive power inappropriately — particularly in blocking the release of documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious, according to a new poll for The Hill. 

But in a sign that the electorate’s frustration extends to Capitol Hill, voters by a significant margin also feel Congress has behaved in an obstructionist manner toward the president. Amid the discontent over the behavior of both Obama and members of Congress, the poll found a strong preference among voters for a return to one-party rule in Washington. 

Obama last week invoked executive privilege to stop certain Justice Department documents relating to the botched “gun-walking” operation from being disclosed to the House Oversight and Government Reform committee. 

The Hill Poll found that likely voters disapproved by an almost 2-to-1 margin of Obama’s assertion of presidential power in the case. Overall, 56 percent of voters disapproved of his action, while only 29 percent approved.

Keep reading.

Federal Cobra Subsidy Extended 6 more Months

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Federal subsidy program for COBRA extended

Thursday, January 7, 2010 — Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin announced Tuesday that the federal subsidy program for COBRA coverage for involuntarily terminated workers has been extended.

The extension allows the subsidy to remain in effect for an additional six months, for a total of 15 months worth of subsidy payments. The subsidy pays for 65 percent of the premium for both COBRA and mini-COBRA (see below for mini-COBRA definition) recipients who are involuntarily terminated from their jobs between Sept. 1, 2008 to Feb. 28, 2010. Workers are responsible for paying the remaining 35 percent.

Read the rest of the story at The Snap Online.

Maryland Unemployment Line Busy Signal

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WBAL reports that thousands of jobless people in Maryland are spending hours on hold, with busy signals or having the system hang up on them.

The Baltimore news station's I-team's Barry Simms reports that Maryland doesn't have unemployment offices where people can go to for help---They must use the internet or call the number---For many it becomes a near full time job just to try and file their UI claim.

DLLR claims that 120,000 Marylanders were collecting unemployment and the plan to improve service levels are to hire an additional 25 people and to upgrade its computer systems.

Do I pay income taxes on my unemployment income?

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According to the IRS you better be ready to claim your unemployment income on your 1040 tax forms---What the government gives, the government takes away.

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Topic 418 - Unemployment Compensation

Unemployment compensation is includible in gross income. You must report unemployment compensation on line 19 of Form 1040, line 13 of Form 1040A, or line 3 of Form 1040EZ. However, for 2009, the first $2,400 of unemployment compensation is excluded from income and should be excluded from the amount reported on your tax return.

Unemployment compensation generally includes any amounts received under the unemployment compensation laws of the United States or of a state. It includes state unemployment insurance benefits and benefits paid to you by a state or the District of Columbia from the Federal Unemployment Trust Fund. It also includes railroad unemployment compensation benefits, disability benefits paid as a substitute for unemployment compensation, trade readjustment allowances under the Trade Act of 1974, and unemployment assistance under the Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1974. Unemployment compensation does not include worker's compensation.

If you received unemployment compensation during the year, you should receive Form 1099-G (PDF) showing the amount you were paid. Any unemployment compensation received during the year must be included in your income, unless you contributed to the fund. See Below. In addition, for 2009, the first $2,400 of unemployment compensation is excluded from gross income.

If you received unemployment compensation, you may be required to make quarterly estimated tax payments. However, you can choose to have federal income tax withheld. For more information, refer to Form W-4V (PDF), Voluntary Withholding Request.

Supplemental unemployment benefits received from a company financed fund are not considered unemployment compensation for this purpose. These benefits are taxable as wages, and are subject to income tax withholding. They may be subject to social security and Medicare taxes as well. Supplemental unemployment benefits are reported to you on Form W-2 (PDF). For more information about supplemental unemployment benefits, see Publication 15-A (PDF) , section 5, page 12.

Unemployment benefits from a private fund (or, in some cases, public fund) to which you voluntarily contribute are taxable only if the amounts you receive are more than your total payments into the fund. This taxable amount is not unemployment compensation; it is reported as other income on Form 1040 (PDF).

For more information, see Unemployment Benefits in Publication 525, on page 27.

Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi's US Economist on the Unemployment Picture

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On February 5th, Bloomberg interviewed Ellen Zentner, Senior US economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. to discuss the January unemployment rate and the outlook for the US Labor Market.

Ellen's views include:

• "the labor market is definitely improving, we got a bigger downward revision to payroll data, leading up to today... No we lost 8.4 million jobs vs over 7 million... And this contraction in jobs correlates more to the decline in consumer spending."
• In january's report the comments are suspicious because jobs aren't being created, yet the unemployment rate drops. Looking at labor force participation, you see that household employment has increased. But you also need to know how many people dropped out of the labor market all together.
• We have record numbers of discouraged workers and many of them are permanently lost---but thousands will come back into the labor market.
• The data is showing some job gains in some areas---but it isn't happening in all sectors of the economy. January saw the first increase in manufacturing jobs in over 3 years.
• Forward looking indicators show that part-time and contract jobs should improve in the next few months---This isn't as good as landing higher paying full time jobs.
• The labor market will wadddle along for a little bit, because you have create jobs for the previously displaced and the teenagers that are becoming working aged adults---this isn't going to happen for some time.
  

What's the employment situation?

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According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION – SEPTEMBER 2010
Nonfarm payroll employment edged down (-95,000) in September, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Government employment declined (-159,000), reflecting both a drop in the number of temporary jobs for Census 2010 and job losses in local government.

Household Survey Data
The number of unemployed persons, at 14.8 million, was essentially unchanged in September, and the unemployment rate held at 9.6 percent. (See table A-1.)
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for adult men (9.8 percent), adult women (8.0 percent), teenagers (26.0 percent), whites (8.7 percent), blacks (16.1 percent), and Hispanics (12.4 percent) showed little or no change in September. The jobless rate for Asians was 6.4 percent, not seasonally
adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over), at 6.1 million, was little changed over the month but was down by 640,000 since a series high of 6.8 million in May. In September, 1.7 percent of unemployed persons had been jobless for 27 weeks or more. (See table A-12.) In September, both the civilian labor force participation rate, at 64.7 percent, and the employmentpopulation
ratio, at 58.5 percent, were unchanged. (See table A-1.) The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary
part-time workers) rose by 612,000 over the month to 9.5 million.

Over the past 2 months, the number of such workers has increased by 943,000. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. (See table A-8.) About 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in September, up from 2.2 million a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months.

They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)

Among the marginally attached, there were 1.2 million discouraged workers in September, an increase of 503,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.3
million persons marginally attached to the labor force had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.

Latin America and the Caribbean: Five Million Will Benefit From Early Childhood Initiative: An Investment For Life

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Press Release No:2012/294/LAC.Washington: February 28, 2012 – Five million mothers, and children ages 0 to 6, are benefiting from World Bank (WB) programs developed throughout the Latin American region, under the Early Childhood Initiative: An investment for Life, the multilateral bank announced today.

After two years of operation, the initiative has approved US$400 million worth of projects, doubling the initial projected funding, and surpassing the original total commitment of US$300 million for the period 2010-2013. It has also expanded the number of targeted children who were able to benefit in the first year of operation.  

The initiative seeks to implement comprehensive, well articulated and efficient Early Child Development (ECD) policies and programs in order to ensure all children a full opportunity to succeed later in life. Currently the initiative supports ECD programs in most countries in Latin America, either through lending programs, grants or technical assistance.

“Doubling down” on early childhood development shows countries in LAC recognize that investing early is investing smartly.  ECD is not only good for children, it also provides a high payoff for societies and the economy. Those first five years of life decide the future of a child and its ability to interact in society as an adult,”  said Hasan Tuluy, the newly appointed World Bank Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean. “

The Early Childhood Initiative: An Investment for Life was launched two years ago at World Bank headquarters by WB President Robert B. Zoellick and Shakira Mebarak’s ALAS Foundation.
The initiative is designed to help reduce inequality among children.  It supports efforts that help ensure children get the attention, nutrition and stimulation they need, from ante-natal care through to entering school.

Roadmap to success 
The Bank is working with governments to ensure that ECD programs are well coordinated across the relevant entities so each puts in place an integrated package of services (health, nutrition, education, etc).

According to Keith Hansen, Human Development Director in LAC “each project has a unique formula for how best to invest in children.   Projects form partnerships with various levels of government and civil society, across all social sectors, and are aligned with national circumstances.”

Country highlights: 
Argentina: The World Bank has been supporting Plan Nacer, Argentina's results-based approach to reducing infant and maternal mortality.  A package of basic interventions is provided to provincial pregnant women and children under six.  Today, there are more than 1.7 million beneficiaries of the program.

Brazil: Services in 28 Brazilian municipalities across 10 states have been mapped in a user-friendly web format www.bemtevibrasil.com, and two interstate exchange workshops organized.

Belize: Belize’s District of Toledo has the highest rates of poverty and nutritional deficiencies among all districts in the country, affecting mostly the indigenous Mayan population.   To address this challenge, the World Bank through a Japanese Social Development Fund (JSDF) Grant is helping the Government use an ECD approach to address the continuum of childhood development at the community level.

Bolivia: The Bank and Japanese government-funded program supports a series of interventions in the poorest and most vulnerable urban districts, particularly linking employment for young mothers and quality childcare.  The program also helps the Government of Bolivia to improve the quality of existing childcare services, strengthen the capacity of government officials to monitor and evaluate projects.  Project implementation is scheduled for 2012.

El Salvador: The Salvadoran program aims to protect and enhance the human capital of very young children residing in violence–prone urban areas, particularly protecting urban children from the food crisis.  An estimated 35,000 poor and vulnerable mothers and young children will benefit from continuous support from the grant for a period of three years.

Honduras: The Nutrition and Social Protection Project in Honduras is a community-based initiative that helps to combat malnutrition in the country's poorest communities.  The program employs NGOs to train community volunteers who in turn work with local mothers to teach them about proper hygiene, advantages of exclusive breastfeeding, and the importance of growth monitoring. The volunteers also weigh and measure children 0-2 years old to ensure they are growing properly.

Peru: In Peru, the Bank is supporting the Juntos program, to support the demand, supply, and governance of nutrition services provided by the Government.  The program reaches about 60,000 families living in Peru's poorest districts.

Contacts:
In Washington: Marcela Sánchez-Bender, + 1 (202) 473-5863, msanchezbender@worldbank.org
In Mexico:  Fernanda Zavaleta, 52-55-5480-4252, fzavaleta@worldbank.org

World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick's Q&A Session at The Economist World Oceans Summit

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Transcript
The Economist World Oceans Summit World Bank Group President Robert B. ZoellickA Q&A session with The Economist Editor in Chief, John Micklethwait
February 24, 2012Singapore
MICKLETHWAIT: Thank you Bob. A somewhat churlish question, you might say, particularly from a man who's just said that he'll raise 1.5 billion for the oceans. What some people are bound to ask is, why do we need a new partnership for the oceans? You've got the UN, you've got a variety of different groups already involved. Why this extra level?ZOELLICK: I think the good news is - I commented in my remarks early on - is that there have been tremendous contributions from a wide variety of players, but the facts don't lie. The statistics are we're not doing enough, we're not accomplishing enough and the oceans continue to get sick and die.So as we started this dialogue with partners - and I'll first acknowledge many of them had much more experience than I would've had in this area - but I've seen this in other fields of biodiversity. We started to find that there was a commonality  -  a recognition that in some case the knowledge and experience, for example, of setting up governance or rights-based fishing hadn't expanded to other areas. In some cases - and I've worked with governments all my life on this - people aren't aware that what they're developing in a coastal zone is one development project could have huge effects on the oceans. They may not know about the nitrogen that's going to supposedly help their agriculture fertilizer system but ends up polluting the oceans.So part of the role here is to be catalytic in trying to get a greater focus on financial resources, knowledge resources, and as is often the case when you bring in developing countries in this - and here particularly you've got a lot of small island states - and see that the net gain from some particular investments could be much larger, then what we've seen in areas as diverse as tigers to other areas of economic development, you have to measure it.You have to be - goodwill is not enough. So again, in the time that I've tried to add some focus to this, I've had a chance to meet - I know many of the people in the room - and there's some fascinating ideas out there. We just have to get them out and we have to drive them forward.MICKLETHWAIT: Do you think the data's sufficient? You just mentioned the numbers. We've had a number of people here make the comment that we know more about the far side of the moon than we do about the oceans. Is that a problem from your point of view?ZOELLICK: Well you've got people here who are more expert. From what I've been able to see, there is a lack of information but I remember talking - I think this was a conversation with Peter Seligmann of Conservation International – what is being developed quite quickly, and we've seen this in other areas, in terms of mapping oceans, mapping particular areas, but then seeing their interconnection could be hugely beneficial. This again is something I've seen in other areas of development. If we can work together to develop a knowledge platform and make it easier for all participants; private companies, island governments, large states; to be able to tap into that, again, I think we can maximize the individual investments.MICHKELWAIT: One thing which has run right the way through this conference is I suppose the idea of whether you can make more money out of the seas, with quite a lot of people worried about the devastation, the economic spoliation, I suppose, of the seas. Yet you very plainly are coming at it from the point of view that this is a route to economic growth. Can you just say a little bit more about that?ZOELLICK: Well, there's some analogies actually - energy efficiency. The first step is to stop doing dumb things. So you've got subsidies that are used for fisheries that are net negatives to the system, so when I was referring to the negative $5 billion loss, the fisheries [that we want] are trying to move to $20 billion to $30 billion a year gain. That's probably because money is misused.So then I was reading an account coming from some of the Prince of Wales charities where some fisheries, people have been able to see, once they crash, once they start to rebuild them, and as they start to develop either a rights-based system or others that are sometimes based on local populations, you can start to see the economic gain. So when you and I first studied economics or many people did, there was an issue called the global commons, and it's the issue about how things can be misused. Well this is the classic case of the global commons, and since it covers 71 percent of the Earth's surface, it's a pretty big one.MICKLETHWAIT: Would you think there's a particular thing to do with people from deep inland actually using the oceans but not actually knowing that they're causing problems there? It's very obvious, fisheries, they're involved. It's very obvious hotels, right on the outside on the coast. But people from deep inland who are actually causing problems within the oceans but they never actually carry the full cost of it.ZOELLICK: Well this is another one of those British-American tensions since you're from an island maritime nation and I'm from Illinois, which you'd probably consider to be a landlocked, Midwestern…MICKLETHWAIT: Very, very landlocked, yeah.ZOELLICK: But we do have the Great Lakes. But I think as you probably know, given your study of military history, a lot of the greatest admirals come from the Midwest.MICKLETHWAIT: There's a very, very [ill] joke…ZOELLICK: I think the reality is that there's a - part of this of course is that people are unaware of this. People are unaware of the dangers that I talked about. When you think about 85 percent of the fish stocks are either being severely depleted or close to that stage, this is a huge effect. The good news is, in a world where you see the interconnections with films and internet, I think people are much more alert to this. So part of the challenge with this - and this is again where I hope we can coalesce - people are barraged with information.There's challenges, as you and I were just talking about, of all types. But I think here if you bring together a series of communities, whether it be the governments, the scientific, the conservation communities, the development community, and focus on some core points and core things to achieve, I think you have a better chance of bringing others along. What I found in this area, but also other areas of development, that's been quite encouraging is I'm increasingly finding private companies that find that the governments themselves seem to be stuck.The private companies want to push the agenda but sometimes they're less familiar with how to build the governance structures. And so if we can get those interconnected, I think we can make progress. There's an idea I just alluded to in my remarks, and probably it'll come out in the course of the discussion, which I know that Kiribati has been a key leader in - but when you start to take the island chains and then you take their 200 mile economic zones, and then you can imagine creating a network of these, you could start to have a rather significant effect in creating a form of governance because it could start to affect how fisheries industries interact with those islands.But as was noted in one of the cases, I think is the case of Kiribati, while they start to have the governance system, they don't really have much of a coast guard. So you have the US Coast Guard sending some ships out as part of a training exercise. Those are problems with rather modest investment you can take a concept of governance, an economic issue connected to the law enforcers, some minimal resources, and then you start to leverage it over different players.At the same time, it'll be very important that the communities working on this work with those that are concerned about the freedom of the seas. So I think there's a potential here to be able to leverage a series of individual islands much more effectively than we're doing today.MICKLETHWAIT: Let me throw it open to the audience questions. There's a lady there.ZOELLICK: Could you give your name or who you…MICKLETHWAIT: Yes, that would be good.ALEXANDRA VAN: Hello, I'm Alexandra [Van]. I work with the World Future Council. That's a global forum that's working to protect the rights of future generations. We will be celebrating this year the world's best ocean and coastal policies with the future policy of water partnership at the global [unclear] facility, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the CBT. So Mr Zoellick, thank you very much for your presentation and congratulations for the new partnership. I want to build up on what you have said that there needs to be much more that needs to be done, we need to agree on common recommendations and having an action plan.So I would like to get back to your comments on marine protected areas because we had this morning very good discussions about the potential economic benefits also of marine protected areas. Now, in Nagoya, governments have agreed actually to have the target of 10 percent of marine protected areas, so I would just like to follow up with you if under this partnership you will be supporting the 10 percent goal that was [already] agreed by 193 countries. Thank you very much.ZOELLICK: Well, the goal that came up from the various groups here was 5 percent. They're more than doubling. Now, would I be delighted with 10 percent? Sure. But I was at Nagoya and I've been attending some of those conferences since Rio in '92, and I guess one of the distinctions I'll draw is the difference between what I've seen between when people put words on paper and even sort of put the gavel to say a nice  concluding  statement - and then what they actually achieve.What we've tried to do, whether it be climate change or biodiversity or in this area with oceans, is try to organize the different parties together - conservation, scientific, international organizations and others - and set realistic goals. My own sense from what I know, that I'm happy to defer to others, that doubling the 5 percent will be a significant effort to achieve.So if you can go to five to 10 percent - as we all noted, the land is 12 percent - I'm all for it. But let's take realistic milestones and try to get them done, and once we get that one done then you can go to the next one.MICKLETHWAIT: Another question. Two hands back there.PARTICIPANT: Thank you. My name's [unclear]. I am former Minister of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Republic of Indonesia. Right now I'm working as Professor for [unclear]. I think you agree that despite the global effort of restoring ocean deterioration. But the fact is that the state of our ocean tends to be unsustainable, be it in terms of fishing, water pollution and habitat degradation. My conclusion is that why despite global efforts, ocean still unsustainable because up until now, we're only tackling the symptoms of the problems.We've never caught the real causes of the problems, and I think that the cause of the problem in our world is that the human demand on the carrying capacity exceeds the carrying capacity of the ocean in providing resources and [unclear] and we know the human demand is determined by two things: number one is the number of population, and number two is consumption rate of the people on our resources and [unclear] of humanity in terms of pollution.So I'm just wondering if I could suggest that to tackle the global problems, I think number one, we have to increase the carrying capacity of oceans on Earth, and number two is to align our human demand [unclear] carrying capacity. My question to you then…MICKLETHWAIT: I think you've gone on a very long time. Can you just give your question very rapidly?PARTICIPANT: Yeah, my question is, how to reduce or control human demand?MICKLETHWAIT: Thank you, that's a very good question. Essentially it's [Malthuse] of the seas.ZOELLICK: Well, this is an interesting issue that arises at the interstices of a lot of conservation and environmental issues and economic growth issues. The economist's answer would be price because that's what allocates scarce goods. I think what we've all identified here is we have a problem because of the commons and so the normal market economic mechanisms don't work because you really don't have in many areas the property rights or the ownership and so you've had people who will get short-term gains and not invest in the long term.So part of what we've been discussing is how through governance reforms, lessons about how you can create rights-based systems, but also sort of a recognition that various communities have to have their sensitivities taken into account, so in some areas, it's a question of who's going to get the fishing rights, whether it'll be local population. Then in any market-based system, you also have to have enforcement, and part of the big problem in this area is whatever rights and aspects haven't been enforced. So there's huge steps that can be taken in these areas.The reason I'm taking this approach is that what I've seen in other areas of development and environment, if you pose the two against each other, if you put growth against environment, I think you're going to spend a lot of time debating and there's going to be a lot of poor people who want to grow and develop and want their sources of protein. So maybe it's just my bias but I found whether it be carbon and climate change or others that you can find a lot of win-win, mutual solutions and you're likely to build a broader coalition and build more support.I think it's time that that be tried in the oceans area because we're starting to see the coalescence of different communities; science, island-based nations, coastal nations, people recognizing this. But the question is how do we interconnect these? And I think the start is set some basic goals and then share the information about what works and then try to finance it.MICKLETHWAIT: There's another question just beyond the white hand - white-shirted…JERRY KNICK: Mr Zoellick, my name's Jerry [Knick] and I actually owe you a debt of gratitude because three years ago, [unclear] programs, you provided some funding for us to develop a concept for developing sustainable fisheries as an industry-led activity [in Indonesia]. Three years later we've gone through the process of developing all the parts and pieces and we're about to start [unclear] and building the infrastructure that's part of the plan. Interestingly enough, the most difficult part of this process has been financing it. My experience has been that the financing institutions of the world [unclear] in this space [unclear] fisheries [unclear] they'll perceive the risk of being too high to get involved. So my question to you is how accessible is financing going to be for fisheries in transition part [unclear] overall [plan as] proposed?ZOELLICK: Two points. The first one is, I think what we have to recognize, that some of these areas we're talking about public goods. So the question is - and this is why we're starting out with this $300 million catalytic fund and we're looking to governments, some private sector participants and others, there'll be some investments that wouldn't be made on a basic market term.Second, however, as I've suggested, you could switch what are in some cases a lot of misapplied subsidy policies or also policies that might create incentives or disincentives with fees and licensing or taxes or other arrangements to try to create the right economic structure. What I've been encouraged by is you're finding more and more private sector players that look at the facts that we've seen and realize this can't go on and so they're interested in trying to invest in a rebuilding effort.The World Bank has a private sector arm, IFC, that is also going to be part of this, so as we work with partners to be able to try to get the governance in the market and the protected areas right to try to see how we might be able to catalyze further private sector investment in addition to the public sector side. On the public sector side again, we as an institution, as I mentioned already, have about $1.6 billion in this area. That is not money that we decide by ourselves. We have to do that with governments.So part of this goes back to getting the word out to the governments about how these are in their interest and then they can use the various financing mechanisms that we have, whether it be coastal zone or fisheries or marine protected areas, which we're involved with all of it. But then let me make the second point, 'cause it's something I want to emphasize about the World Bank's involvement - something I've tried to emphasize over the past four and a half years of my tenure. We're trying to work as a network player here.With a lot of the questions and the reason why this conference I think is particularly valuable, as others that have led to it, is we see ourselves in a catalytic role but certainly not one that knows all the answers. I know I've been with John at a couple of different functions where I've just been stunned by some of the insights that you have, not surprisingly, of people in marine biology, others that have devoted themselves.So what I do want to communicate with people, I'm glad our modest investment with you has started to pay off, but where we see ourselves as trying to be a support in a process is to use the networks that we have across different communities but frankly draw on the ideas of people in this room and others that are committed to it.MICKLETHWAIT: I'm very sorry. Unfortunately we have to come to an end there because Bob has to catch a plane. But I would like to thank him…ZOELLICK: Actually, to see the Finance Minister.MICKLETHWAIT: To see the Finance Minister to try and raise money for this great purpose. I would like to thank him very, very much for coming in and for making the time. It's been a heroic scheduling appointment to come here. It's a delight as usual to have you, and I will take you off and we will hand over to [Dominic Ziegler] up here. Thank you.Original
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