Another beautiful piece of crap legislation by our scam artists politicians, and from the tally, from both end of the political spectrum. They have brought to the level of art the legislative process by coming up with bills that make them look good without achieving anything (and in this case probably worse)

Over the past 30 years they have been unable to come up with a sensible energy policy, rein in consumption and promote conservation. Since the 80s, our consumption increased 21% when at the same time UK consumption stayed put and French consumption actually declined 17%.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/01/news/internation al/usgas_price/?postversion=2008050109

We still give gas guzzler SUVs and trucks tax incentives while incentives on hybrids have been phased out.

Over the years, OPEC increased production a number of times to try to bring down the price of oil, only to be countered by speculators who kept prices rising.

At the same time, refining margins jumped as much as 70c per gallon, but attacking OPEC (who by the way, is only guilty to manage resources that they know are limited, which we should have been doing in the past 30 years) ) is a lot easier a scapegoat politically than speculators and big oil that fund their campaigns

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18808477/

Now, add to the mix a disastrous foreign policy that destabilized the Middle East and antagonized wacko political leaders in South American oil producing countries, and I don't even talk about the rest of the world, a no less disastrous economic policy that has for consequence to drastically devalue the dollar and as a result increase the cost of imports (which by the way includes oil).

Drilling offshore and ANWAR will not solve any short term issues, will bring a limited additional supply to market in maybe 4/5 years with an even more limited effect on prices down the road... maybe, not if the oil companies can avoid it.

And all our politicians can do is a piece of bs legislation that makes them feel good, they hope make them look good, shield their contributors and the real culprits all the while not achieving anything.

If that's all we can expect from our elected officials, maybe it's time to vote them out, both republicans and democrats and elect people who really care about this country and its citizens and care to do what's right and not what looks good.

This past weekend, the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino, CA held its annual air show.  Even though there were not as many aircrafts as last year and some of the ones advertised were a no show, it’s always a treat to see such a concentration of flying WWII era airplanes, especially to see them fly.

This year the museum added Korean war era jet fighters and the Air Force had a demo team with F16.

For those who live in Southern California, I don’t have to tell you how hot it was, for the others, it was 106, what you call torrid.  It was so hot that many spectators had to leave early, we were one of them, fighting dehydration, before we decided to do the safe thing and go home, but not before shooting a couple hundred pictures (thank god for digital…lol)  enjoy

http://www.planesoffame.org/airshows/2008/airshowinfo.php

Would you pay $5 to stand in line at the DMV? Or $10 to $20 to get on your plane first? Companies are nickel-and-diming consumers to death. But you can fight back.

In the age of Web commerce, shoppers can find the lowest price with a click. The grim reality for businesses is that the lowest price tag usually wins.

How can a business raise prices and still compete? Isolate a cost, tack it on to the bill and call it a fee. The price tag is intact, and "fee" and "surcharge" sound almost inevitable, even downright governmental.

"Increasing the price creates challenges for companies," said Tim Calkins, a clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. "But creating fees is a little out of sight and out of mind."

At hotels, cable companies, banks, airlines, stores -- nearly everywhere -- the fees are mounting.

"I call it the death of the price tag," said Bob Sullivan, who writes MSNBC's Red Tape Chronicles blog and is the author of "Gotcha Capitalism: How Hidden Fees Rip You off Every Day and What You Can Do About It." In his survey of 2,000-plus consumers, charges added to everyday bills averaged $950 per year.

Here's a sampling of our "favorites" (you can share yours here):

The careful-what-you-ask-for fee. If your Air Canada flight is delayed due to weather or heavy traffic, agents will be happy to help you find a hotel, restaurant or flight -- as long as you've paid a $25-to-$35 "On My Way" fee. Once this was something airline agents did, you know, just to help out. But in this age of fees in flight, the travel experience has been deconstructed.

For example, check out this list of fees from Delta Air Lines, which will now charge a $3-per-bag "administrative fee" for curbside check-in and a $25 "handling charge" for awards tickets that use another airline.

What do the airlines say? Basically, you asked for it. You wanted cheap flights, and you still demand cheap flights. But with already slim profit margins and rising fuel prices, fees are the only way airlines can remain competitive.

The some-are-more-equal-than-others fee. Even one-class-for-all Southwest Airlines has entered the mix. Pay a "business select" fee of $10 or $20 and you get first boarding, an extra reward point and a free cocktail. The value? Southwest hauled in $7 million in the program's first eight weeks alone, spokesman Chris Mainz said.

"Instead of charging for things we're already giving them, we're trying to get creative," Mainz said. "We can't just raise fares in response to the cost of fuel rising."

See "10 'sneaky' airline fees" for more.

The it's-not-easy-being-green fee. In March, U-Haul started charging $1 to $5 to offset its waste-disposal costs, calling it an "environmental fee." The trailer- and truck-rental company said that mechanics and oil-change shops charge similar fees, and that for years it had been absorbing these costs.

Poster "gcallaghan" at The Huffington Post wrote, "It's like an implicit threat to toss the stuff in the nearest wetlands if we don't pay."

The Sierra Club agrees the term "environmental fee" can be misleading, implying the company is taking extra steps to help the Earth by purchasing carbon assets, for example, or setting aside land. "But properly disposing of waste is something everyone should do," said David Willett, a spokesman for the nonprofit group.

The overworked-landlord fee. So you and the roommates swung the nonrefundable credit-check fee, pet fee and cleaning fee for your new apartment. Now make sure not to send in more than one rent check to avoid a "processing fee." Slocum Apartments in Pullman, Wash., explains that its $20 multicheck fee is to simplify the owner's bookkeeping tasks.

The put-it-back-where-you-got-it fee. Along with the banquet of fees that hotels have added in recent years is one of $5 to $10 to restock the minibar. Yes, that's after the $10 charge for the peanuts. (And some minibars now come with electronic sensors that automatically bill your hotel room if you even pick up a Snickers.)

PricewaterhouseCoopers reported that hotel fees brought the industry $1.6 billion in 2006, triple the amount in 2002.

Consumer complaints were up over 60% in 2007, and overall performance declined to its lowest level ever, according to an airline-quality survey.

The $30-or-we'll-lecture-you-for-eight-hours fee. Get hitched in Texas and you'll pay an extra $30 for your marriage license if you don't complete an eight-hour prenuptial counseling course. It's one of several states with the requirement. One argument is that couples are better off economically than singles.

The one-ringy-dingy fee. Oklahomans with AT&T land lines started coughing up a 2% "line inspection fee" in February. The company's rationale had a familiar ring: The city makes us maintain the rights of way, and we've been paying the cost ourselves for decades.

If that doesn't fly, there's always Telephone Company Explanation No. 2: Everyone else is doing it! At least that's what a spokesman told the Oklahoman newspaper.

The we-don't-need-your-stinkin'-taxes fee. Residents of Ironton, Ohio, will pay two more years of an $8 "public safety fee" to help pay for police officers' salaries and equipment, items typically covered by taxes through the city's general fund.

Bob Cleary, the only City Council member to oppose the charge, argued that "the people of Ironton are being 'feed' to death," The Ironton Tribune reported. He was overruled; the other six members liked the $529,000 it saved Ironton in . . . taxes.

The world-is-shifting fee. The University of California, Santa Cruz, recently raised its "seismic safety fee" from $25 to $40 a term. Yes, that's seismic, as in earthquake. The money goes to improving the integrity of campus buildings to protect students in a quake. These students may live on shaky ground, but the long list of fees they pay has become part of the financial bedrock of universities everywhere.

Continued: The 'convenience' fee

The convenient-for-whom fee. Companies love it when you order a ticket or register online yourself. It saves labor costs. So how do they thank you? By charging you a convenience fee, of course.

Ticketmaster, the behemoth provider of event tickets, generates its revenue from fees. The company says convenience fees, which vary, are in exchange for the convenience of 24/7 ticket buying without having to drive to a box office.

Convenience fees don't cover order processing or ticket delivery. Those costs are paid through . . . other fees.

The inconvenience fee. Of course, you can choose to drive to a location to make a transaction, as in the old days. But beware of the growing number of face-to-face fees.

Virginia legislators passed a $5 fee for drivers who renew their licenses at the Department of Motor Vehicles instead of online or through the mail, saying the fee replaced a proposed $5 increase for all licenses. Legislative aide Anne Korman says it costs the state $7 to renew a license in person, $2 by mail and $1 online.

A bonus, its sponsor says: cutting down wait times that can stretch for hours.

The you-snooze-you-lose fee. Wachovia doesn't charge its new banking customers a fee for speaking to human tellers. But it used to, and if you didn't know enough to switch accounts, you could still find a surprise in the mail. One customer noticed an $8 teller "transaction fee" and, after writing the company, learned he'd been billed $2 for each of four teller services in one month. His account allowed for two a month, but once customers go over they're charged for each.

Wachovia says original policies remain in effect until customers request a change and that they don't have the resources to contact millions of people.

For more on bank fees, see "Bank fees are more outrageous than ever" and this undercover Government Accountability Office investigation (.pdf file) into bank-fee disclosures.

What to do? Smile and fight right

Last year a Chicago consultant faked his death in an attempt to escape his cell-phone cancellation fee. (He got caught and paid the $175.) Later, a 75-year-old woman with heart trouble used a hammer to take out her frustration with Comcast. (She paid $2,500 in damages for the office equipment.)

Sadly, these strategies leave the fee machine unmoved.

Michael Shames, the executive director of the California nonprofit Utility Consumers' Action Network (UCAN), where he's dubbed the "World's Greatest Consumer," does know what works. He's gotten his own fees removed and launched lawsuits to change company practices. Even Dr. Phil calls on him for advice. (See Shames' Web site for resources.)

The problem, Shames says, is that no government agency really oversees these fees. As long as a company tells you about it, it can try to add any fee and call it what it likes.

"Often these things are large enough to rankle you but small enough not to justify spending an afternoon dealing with it," Shames said.

Consumer complaints were up over 60% in 2007, and overall performance declined to its lowest level ever, according to an airline-quality survey.

In the end, people see red but lose cash. Instead, do this:

Give a clerk the power to remove the fee. Be calm and respectful. "You smile, you say, 'I don't feel happy about this fee. I'd feel much better about this transaction if you took it off,'" Shames said. "Treat them as your confidant. Tell them something about yourself. . . . More often than not, they have the discretion to do this."

Don't ask for a manager, get indignant or turn into an act worthy of "The Jerry Springer Show." "You can put on a show, but you're not going to win anything," Shames said. "Don't put on a show; make something happen." Instead, ask for the address for headquarters and open a discussion about the problem. The clerk just might tell you what others have said. "It's a good way to get information from the clerk," Shames said, "and now you're armed."

Use professionals. E-mail the state consumer-affairs division, or do an online search for the company and "excessive fees" to find a consumer-advocacy group working on the issue. They know how to leverage power against the company, Shames said. "At a maximum, you could force the company to not only give you your money but maybe hundreds of thousands of people their money."

Consider filing a complaint online with the Federal Trade Commission, or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (382-4357). In a competitive marketplace, companies can charge what they like, but by law they must be upfront, including about their fees. "Even if they stated it in tiny print, that wouldn't be full disclosure. It has to be clear and conspicuous when they talk about fees," said Frank Dorman, an FTC spokesman.

Let it go. Spend 30 minutes and move on. Any more time and the true cost of that fee skyrockets.

Answering the phone at home can strike fear in the heart of decent citizens. With telemarketers peddling their wares and "charities" begging for donations, it's a miracle wanted calls make it through. Be prepared. Use the following script!

Steps

• Check caller ID if available. If it is a name you don't recognize be aware that it might be a telemarketer.
• Beware the "Hello <insert your name here>?". Always respond with "Who is this calling?". Other scripted greetings can also be disarmed with this simple statement.
• Say "I am sorry, but we do not accept telephone solicitations at this number."
• Listen carefully. A telemarketer will often say something like "This is <salesperson> from <sales pitching co>. Could I speak with <your name>?".
• Make sure to get the name of the company that is calling you. Some telemarketers will simply give their name when asked who is calling. If the caller acts evasive, ask "What organization are you calling from?".
• Request immediately that you be placed on that company's "Do not call list". Reputable telemarketing companies will honor your request and not call you again. Ask for the unique confirmation number that you were placed on the "Do Not Call List." - Some companies do not have a unique confirmation number. In that case, ask to be sent a copy of their Do Not Call procedures. Typically, a manager has to request that from corporate -- your number is often automatically removed from the list and purged from any existing calling lists, rather than having to wait 30 days.
• Often, companies subcontract their outbound work to another company. If you just ask for X Company (the company the telemarketer is calling on behalf of) to stop calling you, that will stop just one company from calling. Ask the telemarketer what company employs them. Ask to be removed from that calling list as well.
• Jot down the name of the company and, if you have caller ID, the number displayed on your phone. Make a list. This will remind you that you have already asked the company to stop calling you if they call again.
• Hang up.

If you live in the US, consider signing up for the "National Do Not Call List." Register at http://www.donotcall.gov.

Tips

If you receive a call after being listed on the Do Not Call list, you can complain to the Better Business Bureau. Again, keep in mind the turn-around time. Telemarketing companies only have to buy the list once a quarter, so it may take 90 days for you to be removed from calling lists.

If you have zero interest in their product, say so up front, so you don't waste anyone's time.

Be quick and direct about asking them to take you off the list. Some places will hang up immediately if they detect that you are about to ask.

Saying "No thank you, I would not like to buy anything" and just hanging will occasionally work, but a polite "Take me off your list", or "please stop calling, or I'll report you" works a lot better.

Don't hang up the phone without saying anything. This is sometimes misinterpreted as a child or unaware family member, and cues the telemarketer to call you repeatedly until you answer. Your best bet is to just follow above steps!

If you can record your own answering machine message, then have it say something like "If you're a business or organization conducting research or surveys or selling anything please put us on your Do Not Call list" something to that effect and most companies will take you off. However, be aware that many companies disconnect the moment your answering machine clicks on, making this tactic worthless.

Warnings

Try not to make a personal enemy. Remember that telemarketers are people too, who are often paid on commission.

Avoid answering "yes" to any questions, even seemingly innocuous ones. Some unscrupulous telemarketing companies will cut and paste you saying "yes" to make it sound like you are agreeing to purchase their product or service.

Even if you are on the National Do Not Call list, charities, non-profits, and companies that you've done business with in the past can still call you. You'll need to tell these companies directly not to call you anymore. Also companies that do research and surveys that do not solicit or sell anything are allowed to call you as well.

The Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior

In 1886, the government published the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior. It established the attitudes of Indian Affairs Agents in the early days of federal boarding schools. The report was a compilation of agent reports; the agents largely saw Indians as savages who should be compelled using whatever means necessary to send their children to schools.

EXCERPTS: "If it be admitted that education affords the true solution to the Indian problem, then it must be admitted that the boarding school is the very key to the situation.

"However excellent the day school may be, whatever the qualifications of the teacher, or however superior the facilities for instruction of the few short hours spent in the day school is, to a great extent, offset by the habits, scenes and surroundings at home — if a mere place to eat and live in can be called a home. Only by complete isolation of the Indian child from his savage antecedents can he be satisfactorily educated, and the extra expense attendant thereon is more than compensated by the thoroughness of the work. "

— John B. Riley, Indian School Superintendent

"It was deemed necessary to establish during the year a stricter system of discupline than heretofore prevailed. A cadet battalion organization of five companies broke up the tribal associations."

— Arthur Grabowski, Superintendent, Haskell Institute.

"The parents of these Indian children are ignorant, and know nothing of the value of education, and there are no elevating circumstances in the home circle to arouse the ambition of the children. Parental authority is hardly known or exercised among the Indians in this agency. The agent should be endowed with some kind of authority to enforce attendance. The agent here has found that a threat to depose a captain if he does not make the children attend school has had a good effect."

— John S. Ward, United States Indian Agent, Mission Agency, California.

"Compulsion through the police is often necessary, and should this be required during the coming year, it will be heroically resorted to, regardless of results. The treaty with the Indians gives the children to the Government, for school purposes, nine months in the year, but the punishment therein provided in case they fail to comply is hardly humane or just. If taking ration tickets only metered out merited punishment to the heads of families, who are alone guilty, it would be a wise provision, but the children have togo hungry and suffer the disobedience of the parents. It is better, in my opinion, to compel attendance through the police than taking up ration tickets for non-attendance."

— John P Williamson, Dakota Agency

The Problem of Indian Administration

In the 1920s, the federal government commissioned a groundbreaking investigation into the outcome of government policies toward American Indians, including boarding schools. The report that followed in 1928, The Problem of Indian Administration (also called the Meriam Report after Lewis Meriam, who supervised the study), found that children at federal boarding schools were malnourished, overworked, harshly punished and poorly educated.

EXCERPTS:

"The survey staff finds itself obliged to say frankly and unequivocally that the provisions for the care of the Indian children in boarding schools are grossly inadequate.

"The diet is deficient in quantity, quality, and variety.

"At a few, very few, schools, the farm and the dairy are sufficiently productive to be a highly important factor in raising the standard of the diet, but even at the best schools these sources do not fully meet the requirements for the health and development of the children. At the worst schools, the situation is serious in the extreme.

"The boarding schools are crowded materially beyond their capacities.

"The toilet facilities have in many cases not been increased proportionately to the increase in pupils, and they are fairly frequently not properly maintained or conveniently located. The supply of soap and towels has been inadequate.

"In nearly every boarding school one will find children of 10, 11, and 12 spending four hours a day in more or less heavy industrial work—dairy, kitchen work, laundry, shop. The work is bad for children of this age, especially children not physically well-nourished; most of it is in no sense educational since the operations are large-scale and bear little relation to either home or industrial life outside; and it is admittedly unsatisfactory even from the point of view of getting the work done. At present the half-day plan is felt to be necessary, not because it can be defended on health or educational grounds, for it cannot, but because the small amount of money allowed for food and clothes makes it necessary to use child labor.

"The term "child labor" is used advisedly. The labor of children as carried on in Indian boarding schools would, it is believed, constitute a violation of child labor laws in most states.

"The discipline in the boarding schools is restrictive rather than developmental. Routine institutionalism is almost the invariable characteristic of the Indian boarding school.

"Nearly every boarding school visited furnished disquieting illustrations of failure to understand the underlying principles of human behavior. Punishments of the most harmful sort are bestowed in sheer ignorance, often in a sincere attempt to be of help. Routinization is the one method used for everything; though all that we know indicates its weakness as a method in education. If there were any real knowledge of how human beings are developed through their behavior, we should not have in the Indian boarding schools the mass movements from dormitory to dining room, from dining room to classroom, from classroom back again, all completely controlled by external authority; we should hardly have children from the smallest to the largest of both sexes lined up in military formation; and we would certainly find a better way of handling boys and girls than to lock the door to the fire-escape of the girls' dormitory.

"The result is that Indian schools for the most part have as the only system of physical training applicable to all pupils a scheme of military drilling that is largely obsolete even in Army training camps. Whatever the advantages of military drill for boys of high school age (and this is a controverted matter even among military experts), few advocates of military training would find any value for girls and little children in the formal type of drill insisted upon in most Indian boarding schools.

"Almost without exception Indian boarding schools are "institutional" to an extreme degree. This is especially true of those non-reservation boarding schools that have upwards of a thousand students, where the numbers and general stiffness of the organization create problems that would be bad in any school but are especially serious in Indian schools."

Indian Education: A National Tragedy — A National Challenge

More than 40 years after the Meriam Report criticized government boarding schools, a report known as the Kennedy Report declared Indian education a national tragedy.

EXCERPTS:

"The BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] education budget was found to be greatly inadequate: Since most Indian children begin school with the environmental handicaps of rural poverty, cultural isolation, low level of parent education, and in many cases a non-English native language, equality of educational inputs requires greatly superior inschool resources of teachers, curriculum, facilities, and equipment to balance the inadequate preschool preparation of most Indian children. Such superior education has not been and cannot be supplied by the BIA on its current budget of some $1,000 per student year, which must also pay for the boarding expense of nealy half its students. It has been pointed out that the Job Corps spent from $7,000 to $9,000 per student year for its resident high-school level education program.

"When asked to name the most important things the schools should do for their students, only about one-tenth of the teachers mentioned academic achievement as an important goal. Apparently, many of the teachers still see their role as that of "civilizing the native." BIA administrators believe that Indians can choose only between total "Indianness" —whatever that is — and complete assimilation into the dominant society. Thus, the goal of BIA education appears to direct students toward migration into a city while at the same time it fails to "prepare students academically, socially, physchologically, or vocationally for urban life. As a result, many return to the reservation disillusioned, to spend the rest of their lives in economic and intellectual stagnation."

"School environment was sterile, impersonal and rigid, with a major emphasis on discipline and punishment, which is deeply resented by the students.

"Dormitory discipline is often unnecessarily strict and confining.

"Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that even as custodial institutions, the Bureau's off-reservation boarding schools are not satisfactory. Several reports point to examples of overcrowding in dormitories or classrooms, of lack of privacy for the students, of inadequate areas for study and recreation, of unappealing meals, of rules which irritate older students by their rigid enforcement and inappropriateness to the student's age, and of punitive discipline."

These days, most American Indian children go to public schools. But remnants still exist of the boarding-school system the federal government set up for Indian children in the late 1800s.

Some people, such as U.S. officials at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, question whether the government should continue to be in the boarding-school business. Many students at these schools say they are a necessary escape from the poverty and addiction that plague many reservations.

Sherman Indian High School

At Sherman Indian High School in Riverside, Calif., dorm supervisors wake up students before the sun rises. Students have to clean their aging dorm buildings before class, and supervisor Teresa Iyotte says if they don't get up in time to clean the bathrooms, they'll suffer the consequences.

"They get demerits if they're not up by 6," Iyotte says. Students get more demerits if they are not up by 6:15 a.m. and even more if they are not up by 6:30.

A lot is expected of students at Sherman, one of seven federally funded off-reservation boarding schools for elementary or secondary education. Some of the most at-risk American Indian youth leave home to attend the schools, coming from more than 85 tribes from big cities and reservations across the country.

Sheila Patterson came to Sherman from the San Carlos Apache Reservation in southeast Arizona. She says she is proud of her traditional ways, and she shows off the moccasins she wears with her ceremonial dress. Patterson misses the reservation but says she needed to leave. Back there, she says, a lot of people drink and also commit suicide.

"That's why I had to get away and come here," she says.

Most students come to Sherman because they see it as a way to do better. Some students, however, are ordered to attend by judges who see it as an alternative to jail.

The national graduation rate for American Indians is about 50 percent. Charlotte Longenecker, a counselor at Sherman, says the low rate is not surprising.

"When you work with a population that has the highest suicide rate, the highest alcoholism and drug usage rate — I've never met so many people in my life who had lost family members, and so many in such rapid succession — that's going to happen," Longenecker says.

Teaching the Past

Administrators at Sherman say they maintain a tightly controlled environment. There is zero tolerance for drugs and alcohol. Students can leave campus only if they have earned a group activity, such as a trip to Wal-Mart.

Steve Yankton, a student from the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwest South Dakota, says life at the boarding school can be tough.

"We're always confined in a fence," Yankton said. "We really can't live high-school life like regular teenagers would. We can't just go shop at the mall whenever we want for how long we want. We can't go eat at a restaurant with our friends whenever we feel like we want. Staff always has to be around us."

Every day at Sherman is rigorously structured. But students who stick it out say Sherman offers them opportunities, too, like the chance to learn about other tribes.

In Tara Charley-Baugus' classroom, students learn the language of the Dine — also known as Navajo — by taking tests and reciting vocabulary. They also sing traditional songs.

Baugus tells her students that the songs are a way to teach more than just language skills.

"You learn something about your culture and history because of the sheep, from way back in the 1500s, when the Spaniards brought them in," she instructs students. "And you can teach these to your brothers and sisters. That's how you pass on the language."

Until the 1960s, the government schools tried to expel Indian culture among students. They were severely punished if they practiced Indian ways.

That isn't the case anymore. Teachers such as Baugus and Lorene Sisquoc are working to revive American Indian customs. At Sherman, Sisquoc teaches such traditional skills as basket weaving. But she says she is conflicted about why she is teaching these skills at a boarding school.

"Why isn't it taught in our families, all our families?" she asks.

The reason, she says, is the boarding schools themselves, because generations of students who didn't learn the old ways didn't pass them along to children of their own.

"Kids were taken from their homes, and those traditional things weren't always taught," Sisquoc said.

Schools in Trouble

These days, off-reservation boarding schools have more applications than they can handle, according to Don Sims, Sherman's recently retired principal. But a recent federal budget change is cutting each school's funding by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sims says this could put Sherman in dire straits.

"We won't have enough money to start the school, to have enough staff to have the services needed for the kids," Sims said. "It's an impossible situation."

Officials at the Bureau of Indian Affairs say they know these schools are in trouble. But they disagree over whether the federal government should even be running Indian schools in the 21st century.

"You can talk to 20 people in our organization, and 10 people will say we shouldn't have off-reservation boarding schools, and 10 other people will say there's a need for these kinds of schools because of the at-risk students," said Angelita Felix of the BIA education office.

In the past few decades, tribes have begun taking over boarding schools. They now control about half of them. Most are on the country's largest reservation, the Navajo Nation. The Navajos discourage students from attending boarding schools off the reservation.

Eddie Biakeddy, deputy director of the tribe's Department of Education, says educating kids on the reservation has become almost a matter of survival.

"A lot of other Indian tribes in the United States have lost use of their language and therefore their culture," Biakeddy said. "And there is a goal of the Navajo Nation to establish its own educational system, where the Navajo Nation would have control over all the schools and there should be no need for any on-reservation students to go to an off-reservation boarding school."

But many smaller tribes don't have the money or political organization to run their own schools, let alone facilities for at-risk youth.

At Sherman, many students and recent alumni say the off-reservation boarding school system has helped them.

"Sherman pretty much did save me, I guess, in a way," said Seana Edwards, a Prairie Band Potawatomi. She nearly failed freshman year at her public high school in New Hampshire and says she would have ended up working a dead-end job. But she transferred to Sherman, graduated and now attends the University of California, Berkeley.

She goes back to Sherman often to convince students that they, too, can go to college. And she says she appreciates how far the school has come since the time when students wore uniforms and marched in lines.

"You feel part of that history and you get sad, but at the same time, you realize that it's so much better today and you get the opportunity to change it. You get the opportunity to make it better. Not just for you but for other people, for younger generations."

Edwards' own younger brother and sister are in elementary school in New Hampshire. But if they do need Sherman's tight structure, morning wake-ups and nightly check-ins someday, she wonders if Sherman Indian High School will still be there for them.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17645287

'Kill the Indian...Save the Man'
 
According to Col. Richard Pratt's speech in 1892:
 
"A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."
 
Read Pratt's Whole Speech

From Need to 'National Tragedy'
 
Early in the history of American Indian boarding schools, the U.S. government argued that Indians were savages who should be compelled to send their children to schools by whatever means necessary. Later the government recommended increased Indian control over education at the schools.
 
A report in the late 1880s defended the early days of the schools. In the 1920s, a report concluded that children at federal boarding schools were malnourished, overworked, harshly punished and poorly educated. And in 1969, a report declared Indian education to be a national tragedy.

For the government, it was a possible solution to the so-called Indian problem. For the tens of thousands of Indians who went to boarding schools, it's largely remembered as a time of abuse and desecration of culture.

The government still operates a handful of off-reservation boarding schools, but funding is in decline. Now many American Indians are fighting to keep the schools open.

'Kill the Indian ... Save the Man'

The late performer and Indian activist Floyd Red Crow Westerman was haunted by his memories of boarding school. As a child, he left his reservation in South Dakota for the Wahpeton Indian Boarding School in North Dakota. Sixty years later, he still remembers watching his mother through the window as he left.

At first, he thought he was on the bus because his mother didn't want him anymore. But then he noticed she was crying.

"It was hurting her, too. It was hurting me to see that," Westerman says. "I'll never forget. All the mothers were crying."

Westerman spent the rest of his childhood in boarding schools far from his family and his Dakota tribe.

He went on to become an actor, an activist with the American Indian Movement and a songwriter.

He sang about his experiences growing up: "You put me in your boarding school, made me learn your white man rule, be a fool."

The federal government began sending American Indians to off-reservation boarding schools in the 1870s, when the United States was still at war with Indians.

An Army officer, Richard Pratt, founded the first of these schools. He based it on an education program he had developed in an Indian prison. He described his philosophy in a speech he gave in 1892.

"A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one," Pratt said. "In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."

Transforming People, Inside and Out

Fifty years later, Pratt's philosophy was still common.

In 1945, Bill Wright, a Butwin Indian, was sent to the Stewart Indian School in Nevada. He was just 6 years old. Wright remembers matrons bathing him in kerosene and shaving his head. Students at federal boarding schools were forbidden to express their culture — everything from wearing long hair to speaking even a single Indian word. Wright said he lost not only his language, but also his American Indian name.

"I remember coming home and my grandma asked me to talk Indian to her and I said, 'Grandma, I don't understand you,' " Wright says. "She said, 'Then who are you?' "

Wright says he told her his name was Billy. " 'Your name's not Billy. Your name's Tutum,' " she told him. "And I went, 'That's not what they told me.' "

According to Tsianina Lomawaima, head of the American Indian Studies program at the University of Arizona, the intent was to completely transform people, inside and out.

"Language, religion, family structure, economics, the way you make a living, the way you express emotion, everything," says Lomawaima.

Lomawaima says from the start, the government's objective was to "erase and replace" Indian culture, part of a larger strategy to conquer Indians.

"They very specifically targeted Native nations that were the most recently hostile," Lomawaima says. "There was a very conscious effort to recruit the children of leaders, and this was also explicit, essentially to hold those children hostage. The idea was it would be much easier to keep those communities pacified with their children held in a school somewhere far away."

Discipline and Punishment

The government operated as many as 100 boarding schools for American Indians, both on and off reservations. Children were sometimes taken forcibly, by armed police. Lomawaima says that's not the only reason families let their children go.

"For many communities, for a variety of reasons, federal school was the only option," she says. "Public schools were closed to Indians because of racism."

At boarding schools, the curriculum focused mostly on trades, such as carpentry for boys and housekeeping for girls.

"It wasn't really about education," says Lucy Toledo, a Navajo who went to Sherman Institute in the 1950s. Toledo says students didn't learn basic concepts in math or English, such as parts of speech or grammar.

She also remembers some unsettling free-time activities.

"Saturday night we had a movie," says Toledo. "Do you know what the movie was about? Cowboys and Indians. Cowboys and Indians. Here we're getting all our people killed, and that's the kind of stuff they showed us."

And for decades, there were reports that students in the boarding schools were abused. Children were beaten, malnourished and forced to do heavy labor. In the 1960s, a congressional report found that many teachers still saw their role as civilizing American Indian students, not educating them. The report said the schools still had a "major emphasis on discipline and punishment."

Wright remembers an adviser hitting a student.

"Busted his head open and blood got all over," Wright recalls. "I had to take him to the hospital, and they told me to tell them he ran into the wall and I better not tell them what really happened."

Wright says he still has nightmares from the severe discipline. He worries that he and other former students have inadvertently re-created that harsh environment within their own families.

"You grow up with discipline, but when you grow up and you have families, then what happens? If you're my daughter and you leave your dress out, I'll knock you through that wall. Why? Because I'm taught discipline," Wright said.

Sherman Indian High School

Not all American Indians had negative experiences at boarding schools. Some have fond memories of meeting spouses and making lifelong friends. But scathing government reports led to the closure of most of the boarding schools.

One school that remains is Sherman Indian High School in Riverside, Calif. — the same boarding school Toledo attended.

Hershel Martinez, a Navajo student, gathers with a group of friends in a school hallway to form a drum circle. The school encourages cultural activities like this. That's one reason Martinez feels more comfortable here than at his former public school in Los Angeles.

"Everyone was wondering what nationality, what race am I," Martinez said when asked about being at a public school. "I'd tell them and they're like, 'Wow, you're Indian. You're like the only guy I know who's Native.' But here, at Sherman, they know how I feel about being Native. And they understand where we're all coming from."

But this year, the federal government made a budgeting change that reduces funding to the off-reservation boarding schools. And their future is in doubt.

American Indian School a Far Cry from the Past by Charla Bear

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16516865

Your neighbor got one. So did your brother-in-law. Your loud-mouth co-worker received his last week and spent it at the track. You, however, haven't gotten your tax rebate yet. What gives?

The IRS, which began sending out rebates on April 28, will continue distributing them through mid-July. The rebates, part of the economic stimulus package enacted this year, range from $300 to $600 per person, or $1,200 for married couples.

Taxpayers who arranged for direct deposit for their tax refunds — or who owed money but provided bank account information on their 2007 tax returns — began receiving their checks on April 28. The last batch of those rebate checks is scheduled to be transmitted this week. Paper checks will be mailed May 16 through July 11, based on taxpayers' Social Security numbers (see box).

Still, some taxpayers who thought they would receive their rebates by now haven't gotten their checks. Others have received their checks, but the amount was smaller than they expected. Here are some answers to your rebate questions:

Q: The payment date for my Social Security number has passed, and I haven't received my rebate. Why not?

A: The payment schedule applies to taxpayers whose tax returns were processed before April 15. If you filed your tax return just before the filing deadline, the IRS might not have processed it by April 15, which could delay your rebate, IRS spokesman Anthony Burke says.

The IRS is offering a "Where's My Stimulus Payment?" tool on its website, www.irs.gov, for taxpayers whose rebates should have arrived by now.

Q: I arranged for direct deposit of my refund but also received a refund-anticipation loan from my tax preparer. How will that affect my rebate?

A: All taxpayers who received a refund-anticipation loan — or who requested one but were turned down — will receive their rebates by mail, says Amy McAnarney of H&R Block. Similarly, if your tax-preparation or electronic-filing fees were withheld from your refund, you'll receive a paper check, even if you arranged for direct deposit of your tax refund.

If, however, you arranged to have your refund deposited to a prepaid debit card and didn't request a refund-anticipation loan or other bank product, your rebate will be direct-deposited to the prepaid card, McAnarney says.

Q: I didn't use direct deposit for my tax refund but would like to have my rebate direct deposited. Can I provide that information to the IRS?

A: No. If you didn't provide direct-deposit information on your tax return, you'll receive a paper check. Likewise, you can't change the account information for your rebate. If the account you provided on your tax return is no longer active, you'll receive a paper check.

Q: I arranged for my tax refund to be deposited into an individual retirement account. What will happen to my rebate?

A: Your rebate will also be deposited into your IRA. But don't panic. Taxpayers whose rebates were direct-deposited into an IRA, 529 college savings plan or other tax-favored account can withdraw that money without triggering taxes or penalties. The IRS is allowing these withdrawals because otherwise, some taxpayers could inadvertently exceed annual contribution limits to such accounts, Burke says.

You must make such a withdrawal by April 15, 2009, or Oct. 15, 2009, if you file for an extension.

If you used the split-refund option, which lets you deposit your refund in up to three different accounts, you won't have to worry about retrieving your rebate. Taxpayers who used the split-refund option will receive rebates by mail.

Q: I received my rebate, but it's for less than I thought I would get. Why?

A: There are several factors that could shrink your rebate:

•Your rebate can't exceed your 2007 net tax liability. If your net tax liability was less than $600 — or $1,200 if you're married and filed jointly — your rebate will be reduced.

Taxpayers who used Form 1040 can calculate their net tax liability by adding Line 52 and Line 57. If you used 1040A, add Lines 35 and 32. On 1040EZ, your net tax liability is the amount shown on Line 10.

•You owe back taxes, child support or have defaulted on your federal student loans. The IRS will apply your rebate to those debts.

•Your children don't qualify. Parents are eligible for an additional $300 for each dependent child. But the payment is available only for dependent children who were age 16 or under on Dec. 31, 2007.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer can't hear you, so let's turn up the volume

By Eric Knorr,  April 29, 2008

Last week we almost broke out the champagne. At an event in Belgium on Thursday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that the company might reconsider its decision to stop selling Windows XP on June 30. An Associated Press report quoted him as saying: "If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter."

This news broke after we spent three months of campaigning for a stay of execution for XP, and we were elated. Microsoft was finally listening to the outcry over the unnecessarily disruptive effects of customers being pushed to upgrade to Vista. Victory was at hand.

Our joy lasted only a couple of hours. According to a subsequent report from Reuters, the second half of Ballmer's quote was: " ... but right now, we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments." A Microsoft spokesperson later confirmed that (aside from already existing exceptions), the June 30 end-of-sale date was not going anywhere.

Ballmer tells users: "I can't hear you." So let's turn up the volume

Apparently, the 180,000-plus signatures collected for our Save XP campaign are not enough "customer feedback" to matter. The company says it's aware of InfoWorld's Save XP campaign, but we have been rebuffed in our attempts to deliver the petition -- so much for listening to customers.

Microsoft is content to ignore 180,000. But can it ignore 1 million? How about 10 million? With just two months to go before XP goes off the market, it's time to turn up the volume and get everyone you know to sign the petition.

And just to show we're not a bunch of drudges -- and to prove there are actual living and breathing human beings involved in the Save XP campaign -- how about uploading your own Save XP video plea to the InfoWorld section of FaceBook? You can also upload them directly to the InfoWorld site using our BrightCove player form. We'll show off the funniest, most creative appeals to save XP on our "Save XP" video home page.

Experience dictates that it's going to take everything we've got to get the message to Microsoft. Last week, a general manager for the Windows group looked me straight in the eye and said that Vista was the most successful Microsoft operating system ever released. What about the outcry over performance and compatibility problems, the likes of which is unprecedented in the history of IT? His stare grew harder. He was a true believer. To him, whatever negative reactions had occurred were overblown.

Dell shows another way, but how long will it be viable?

Meanwhile, Dell has already announced plans to offer Windows XP beyond June 30. Dell is ingeniously exploiting a licensing option in Vista Business and Vista Ultimate that lets computer vendors sell XP under the Vista license -- what Microsoft calls a "downgrade" license. Dell will basically do the "downgrade" for you.

Who knows how many other vendors may take that route -- or how long Microsoft will allow the "downgrade" option to be used in such a fashion. Are such licensing acrobatics really necessary? Maybe not. If millions of people sign up to Save XP, can Microsoft really afford to ignore us? Let's find out. http://weblog.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/archives/2008/04/steve_ballmer_c.html

COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM ABBOTT

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a computer.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: No, the name's Lou.

ABBOTT: Your computer?

COSTELLO: I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.

ABBOTT : Mac?

COSTELLO: I told you, my name's Lou.

ABBOTT: What about Windows?

COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?

ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?

COSTELLO: I don't know. What will I see when I look at the windows?

ABBOTT: Wallpaper.

COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.

ABBOTT: Software for Windows?

COSTELLO: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What do you have?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?

ABBOTT: I just did.

COSTELLO: You just did what?

ABBOTT: Recommend something.

COSTELLO: You recommended something?

ABBOTT: Yes.

COSTELLO: For my office?

ABBOTT: Yes

COSTELLO: OK, what did you recommend for my off ice?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yes, for my office!

ABBOTT: I recommend Office with Window's.

COSTELLO: I already have an office with windows! OK, let's just say I'm sitting at my computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?

ABBOTT: Word.

COSTELLO: What word?

ABBOTT: Word in Office.

COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.

ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: Which word in office for windows?

ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue 'W'.

COSTELLO: I'm going to click your blue 'w' if you don't start with some straight answers. What about financial bookkeeping? You have anything I can track my money with?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: That's right What do you have?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?

ABBOTT: It comes bundled with your computer.

COSTELLO: What's bundled with my computer?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: Money comes with my computer?

ABBOTT: Yes. No extra charge.

COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?

ABBOTT: One copy.

COSTELLO: Isn't it illegal to copy money?

ABBOTT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.

COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?

ABBOTT: Why not? THEY OWN IT!

(A few days later)

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: How do I turn my computer off?

ABBOTT: Click on 'START'

Relatively low taxes have kept pump prices far below most other developed nations, which some say is precisely why the current runup is so painful.

Despite daily headlines bemoaning record gas prices, the U.S. is actually one of the cheaper places to fill up in the world.

Out of 155 countries surveyed, U.S. gas prices were the 45th cheapest, according to a recent study from AIRINC, a research firm that tracks cost of living data.

The difference is staggering. As of late March, U.S. gas prices averaged $3.45 a gallon. That compares to over $8 a gallon across much of Europe.

The U.S. has always fought to keep gas prices low, and the current debate among presidential candidates on how to keep them that way has been fierce.

But those cheap gas prices - which Americans have gotten used to - mean they feel price spikes like the ones we're experiencing now more acutely than citizens from other nations which have had historically more expensive fuel.

Cheap gas prices have also lulled Americans into a cycle of buying bigger cars and bigger houses further away from their work - leaving them more exposed to rising prices, some experts say.

Price comparisons are not all created equal. Comparing gas prices across nations is always difficult. For starters, the AIRINC numbers don't take into account different salaries in different countries, or the different exchange rates. The dollar has lost considerable ground to the euro recently. Because oil is priced in dollars, rising oil prices aren't as hard on people paying with currencies which are stronger than the dollar, as they can essentially buy more oil with their money as the dollar falls in value.

And then there's the varying distances people drive, the public transportation options available, and the different services people get in exchange for high gas prices. For example, Europe's stronger social safety net, including cheaper health care and higher education, is paid for partly through gas taxes.

Gas price: It's all about government policy. Gasoline costs roughly the same to make no matter where in the world it's produced, according to John Felmy, chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute. The difference in retail costs, he said, is that some governments subsidize gas while others tax it heavily.

In many oil producing nations gas is absurdly cheap. In Venezuela it's 12 cents a gallon. In Saudi Arabia it's 45.

The governments there forego the money from selling that oil on the open market - instead using the money to make their people happy and encourage their nations' development.

Subsidies, many analysts say, are encouraging rampant demand in these countries, pushing up the price of oil worldwide.

In the U.S., the federal tax on gas is about 18 cents a gallon, pretty low by international standards.

But those relatively low gas taxes make it hard now for Americans to deal with gas prices that have risen from around $1 to over $3 a gallon in the last seven years.

"Everybody pays more, but the U.S. pays more in absolute terms," said Lee Shipper, a visiting scholar at the University of California Berkeley's Transportation Center. If you're already paying $4 in taxes, said Schipper, then an extra $2 a gallon isn't that big of a deal.

Revenues from Europe's high gas taxes are used to fund a variety of things. One thing they have built is better public transportation, said Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist at ARC Financial, a Calgary-based private equity firm.

They gave people an alternative to driving, something we don't have in North America," said Tertzakian.

Low fuel taxes and prices sprung out of a national love for mobility going back generations, said Robert Lang, director of the urban planning think tank Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech.

In fact, the U.S. could not have had the western expansion it did without the cheap mobility railroads and horse carriages afforded long before it became an auto-obsessed culture, said Lang.

"You couldn't have Manifest Destiny unless you could move," he said.

The automobile, and its promise of personal mobility, only deepened the nation's love affair with travel.

"Nobody sang 'She'll have fun fun fun until her daddy takes the tokens away,'" said Lang. 'It's totally romanticized."

Gas consumption Europe vs. U.S. There is some evidence Europe's high gas taxes have capped its oil consumption.

Oil use in the United Kingdom has basically stayed flat from 1980 to now, while in France it's dropped 17%, according to figures from the Energy Information Administration.

In the U.S., meanwhile, oil use is up 21% over the same period, although the country has added more people and seen its economy grow slightly faster.

Americans have taken advantage of cheap gas prices to do other things - like buy bigger cars and bigger houses further away from city centers, said Schipper.

On a per capita basis, Americans use three times more oil than Europeans, he said. That means Americans are more exposed to rising gas prices than their counterparts across the Atlantic. "Five-thousand square feet in the suburbs, that's much rarer in Europe," said Schipper, referring to big homes. "We dug our hole."

After Chinese companies patenting products that they themselves copied, criminals are trying to copyright viruses, spyware and malware...  that's almost funny

Even criminal hackers want to protect their intellectual property, and they've come up with a method akin to copyrighting—with an appropriate dash of Internet thuggery thrown in.

Professional virus writers are now selling a suite of software on the Internet with an unusual attachment: a detailed licensing agreement that promises penalties for redistributing the malicious code without permission.

"I just kind of chuckled—it's kind of humorous," said Zulfikar Ramzan, senior principal security researcher with Symantec Corp.

Symantec researchers noticed a Russian-language example floating around the Internet and wrote about it on the company's official blog this week. They said it's the only example they've seen.

The software is used to infect computers and control them remotely. The zombie machines can be used to pump out spam, launch more attacks or steal personal information from their owners.

Networks of zombie machines—known as "bot nets"—can be extremely lucrative, sometimes bringing millions of dollars in profit for their authors and their distributors. To maximize that profit, the software analyzed by Symantec's researchers contained the following rules:

—The customer can't resell the product, examine its underlying coding, use it to control other bot nets or submit it to antivirus companies and agrees to pay the seller a fee for product updates.

—The threat: Violate the terms, and we'll report you ourselves to the antivirus companies by giving them information about how to dismantle your bot network or prevent it from growing bigger.

While not legally binding, the terms amount to a novel way to protect ill-gotten profits—except that by ratting out their customers, malware authors risk drawing attention to their own enterprises and giving antivirus makers clues on combatting them.

"We know they can't actually enforce it, and they probably wouldn't try," Ramzan said. "What's funny is they put more effort into their EULA (end-user license agreement) than traditional software companies might."

The ultimate rub? Apparently the threat was not only hollow but unheeded. Symantec said the program that's accompanied by the novel rules is being traded freely online—and so far its authors haven't called Symantec to make good on their threat.

Once in a blue moon, we see unusual acts of sportsmanship on the field, most of the times it does not come from the pros, but from amateurs for whom sportsmanship still means something, and even that is disappearing.

I have not seen much of that in the pro arena, except maybe in a few sports where something bigger still rules. 

I have seen it in sailing where a competitor in a single handed race came to the rescue of another competitor, thus eliminating himself from the race, or during a race around the world, the crew in the lead turned around to rescue their closest competitor.  We call that the “spirit of the sea”, the unwritten rule that makes sailors go out to sea in the worst conditions to save perfect strangers, or in these cases, forgo a victory to save a fellow competitor.

This one happened in college softball, something all the pros and would be pros might want to think about

With two runners on base and a strike against her, Sara Tucholsky of Western Oregon University uncorked her best swing and did something she had never done, in high school or college. Her first home run cleared the center-field fence.

But it appeared to be the shortest of dreams come true when she missed first base, started back to tag it and collapsed with a knee injury.

She crawled back to first but could do no more. The first-base coach said she would be called out if her teammates tried to help her. Or, the umpire said, a pinch runner could be called in, and the homer would count as a single.

Then, members of the Central Washington University softball team stunned spectators by carrying Tucholsky around the bases Saturday so the three-run homer would count - an act that contributed to their own elimination from the playoffs.

Central Washington first baseman Mallory Holtman, the career home run leader in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, asked the umpire if she and her teammates could help Tucholsky.

The umpire said there was no rule against it. So Holtman and shortstop Liz Wallace put their arms under Tucholsky's legs, and she put her arms over their shoulders. The three headed around the base paths, stopping to let Tucholsky touch each base with her good leg.

Just imagine paying for gas you don't get. Some alert consumers have noticed it over the years: A pump that seems to hesitate a second when the lever is squeezed. Anywhere from 2 to 6 cents tick off before the rush of gasoline starts. That's what happens with a common, hard to diagnose and mostly ignored problem with the "check valve," which is supposed to make sure gas flows at the same time the price meter starts.

But even if your gas pump works, it can still be off as much as $5 for every fill up. Tests by local regulators allow a pump to charge as much as 6 cents more than the gas delivered in a five-gallon test.

Don't blame the gas guys. Even consumer advocates say retailers may be losing as often as consumers and no one appears able to rig the meters. But the small "check valve" at the end of the multibillion dollar industry just wears out, and often goes unnoticed for months.

Regulators' records show short staffing, particularly for financially struggling counties that try to inspect pumps every six months, but too often don't even meet the one-year requirement in states like New York.

Federal standards require all gas pumps to start pumping gas as soon as the price meter starts, said Ken Butcher of the National Institute of Standards of Technology, part of the U.S. Commerce Department.

Bob Wolfram knew something was wrong when the pump he used in Davenport, Iowa, showed he put two more gallons of gas into his tank than the tank holds.

"I was low, but it wasn't negative," said Wolfram, a 54-year-old engineer.

He reported it to a consumer Web site then took it to the government regulators, who acted promptly. But even then, the test showed the pump was only off a quart.

"I just kind of said, `What will they do next?'" Wolfram said.

Correcting the problem depends on alert, well-informed consumers like Wolfram. It also depends on honest retailers who choose to pass along reports to regulators who must confirm the problem before an authorized repair company is called to fix it.

"There's one Mobil owner, he tells clerks that if there's a discrepancy within $5 to reimburse the customer," said C. Todd Godlewski, director of the Schenectady County Bureau of Weights and Measures in upstate New York, the agency that inspects pumps.

"Yes, it can be that much," he said.

A bad valve can also work against retailers, freezing the price gauge for an instant after gas starts. No one's sure who gets gored more, or how deeply.

"Even one penny on the amount of petroleum pumped annually or weekly at a station would be several thousand gallons of fuel, and add that up," Godlewski said. "If you have a meter that is costing a customer, it adds up quite a bit."

The problem compounds the aggravation of record high gas prices. On Tuesday, the national average hit a record $3.51 per gallon, according to a survey of stations by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. That's nearly 66 cents higher than last year, and rising.

"We'll hear complaints about this quite regularly, usually several each week," said Jason Toews, co-founder of the independent nationwide Web site GasBuddy.com that tracks prices and complaints.

"It's mostly about the principle of it," he said. He said the problem usually only costs a consumer pennies per fill-up, but that's more than enough these days.

Toews discounts the conspiracy theories that blame the problem on retailers or the oil industry. Most retailers, he said, wouldn't know how to alter the pumps to their benefit.

A New York Comptroller's Office audit in 2000 found "many municipalities" statewide failed to inspect their pumps once a year as required (the best practice is two inspections every year) and that meters were corrected during testing, which could mask overcharging. Four years later, a follow-up audit found only partial resolution, partly because of too little staffing.

Bob Renkes of the Petroleum Equipment Institute based in Tulsa, Okla., has heard about complaints, "mostly when gas prices are high." He said meters "get looser over time," which could make them malfunction and start to count pennies before fuel starts pumping.

"I think our industry would love to replace anything that wears down," Renkes said. But the check valves aren't a high priority when the industry is dealing with issues such as preventing identity theft when swipe cards are used, static electricity discharges and the 5 percent of retailers whose old mechanical equipment can't register a price of $4 a gallon.

State and local regulators doubt any but the most ambitious consumers would contact them in case of a problem, even though the phone numbers are on inspection stickers. More likely, consumers fume and wonder if they were cheated, or report it to the manager of the gas station or convenience store.

"That's what's tough about this," said Jessica Chittenden, spokeswoman for New York's weights and measures office that oversees local inspectors. "The two cents or whatever would go to the retailer."

Even when a report is made, and a local inspector is dispatched, the problem might not be fixed.

Chittenden said a faulty valve would likely work sporadically: "It's very difficult to find it unless you are there every day several times a day."

Godlewski, the upstate New York inspector, said he's found pumps off by as much as three times the 6-cent threshold. Because of it, his county this year is tracking pump problems and hopes to quantify it for the first time.

"You ask yourself," he said, "`If nobody said anything ... and it's run like that for six months, how many were taken?'"

http://www.gasbuddy.com 

Forty-seven million Americans have no health insurance. Millions more are underinsured, unable to pay their deductibles or get access to dental care. Here's the story of Remote Area Medical, a charity founded by Stan Brock that was originally designed to bring doctors and medicine into the jungles of the Amazon. But these days RAM finds itself doing much of its business in the U.S. Scott Pelley spent a weekend in Knoxville, Tennessee taking a look at RAM in action.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/28/60minutes/main3889496.shtml?source=RSSattr=60Minutes_3889496