May 8, 2007

On September 15, 2004, the clock was ticking on Lelon DeWitt's life and his subprime loan.

When the transmission repairman underwent open-heart surgery, he told his mortgage broker he didn't want a housing loan that was in the works.

"I didn't know if I was going to be dead or alive," DeWitt later recounted.

But the mortgage broker, Troy Musick of Wholesale Mortgage Co., was so eager to clinch the deal, he followed the couple into the hospital, said DeWitt's wife, Ruth DeWitt.

As a surgeon cracked Mr. DeWitt's chest open for a quadruple heart bypass, the broker approached her in the waiting room of Elkhart General Hospital in Elkhart, Indiana.

"It's now or never," she remembers him saying.

Afraid of losing out on the chance to buy a home, she left the hospital and signed the loan documents. Lelon DeWitt survived the surgery, but not the $143,400 loan from Irvine, California-based Argent Mortgage.

In the go-for-broke home loan industry of the past few years, the DeWitts quickly became another statistic. They lost their home in the midst of a crisis that has driven U.S. homeowners into foreclosure at a record rate.

Musick could not be reached for comment. Argent said it no longer does business with Musick, an independent mortgage broker.

In the latter stages of the housing boom, armies of independent mortgage brokers like Musick, and a new breed of subprime lenders like Argent, helped bring a whole new class of borrowers to the housing market, a boom that led to bust for thousands, including the DeWitts.

Lenders offered high-cost, risky mortgages -- called subprimes -- that put people with poor credit in their dream homes. Subprime lenders profited from returns far superior than from traditional fixed-rate, 30-year mortgages. Big blue-chip lenders also joined the fray, dropping their standards as they went.

SUBPRIME SATURATION

For nearly a decade, investors were rushing to real estate, creating enough capital to build a new class of homeowners -- loaded up with an incendiary mix of debt from car loans, credit cards and mortgages. Federal tax deductions and housing programs also fueled the boom.

Wall Street investment banks funded new subprime mortgage lenders, many based in California, by packaging their loans into mortgage-backed securities. That expanded the size and reach of the subprime lending, dovetailing with a long-held government policy of putting more Americans into their own homes.

The home-ownership rate surged to 69.3 percent in 2004, up 5 percentage points in 10 years. It was a stunning expansion, considering the rate rose only 2.2 percentage between 1965 and 1995, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But the subprime market began to sour in 2006 as home values leveled off. Lenders whose profit margins contracted in an increasingly crowded market were forced to repurchase a growing number of bad loans. When they couldn't, Wall Street pulled their funds, forcing many subprime lenders to shut down, sell assets or file for bankruptcy.

Some of the biggest names in the industry have closed operations. Leading the pack is New Century Financial Corp.(Other OTC:NEWC - news). The Irvine, California-based lender landed in bankruptcy in April after originating $52 billion in subprime loans in 2006.

Even more unsettling is that the subprime problems are arising at a time when employment is strong and interest rates are hovering near historic lows, leading to fears that if the economy worsens, the situation would become even more bleak.

Delinquencies, which made up 13 percent of all subprime loans at the end of 2006, and foreclosures could mount, says the Mortgage Bankers Association, an industry group.

That's already playing out in Detroit, the hub of the struggling U.S. auto industry. It has the highest foreclosure rate among the top 100 U.S. large cities, according to RealtyTrac. One in every 21 houses in the city was in foreclosure in 2006.

Detroit's foreclosure rate was 4.5 times the national average in 2006. The metro areas of Atlanta and Indianapolis ranked second and third, respectively.

NEW NO-RULES PARADIGM

Even established lenders of high-quality mortgages lost their compass and chased bad business as competition increased, said Angelo Mozilo, chairman and chief executive of the largest U.S. mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial Corp. (NYSE:CFC - news).

Mozilo said he saw the industry's long-established standards come unglued in the face of new competition.

"I've been doing this for 54 years," Mozilo recently said during a speech in Beverly Hills, California. For many years, he said, "standards never changed: verification of employment, verification of deposit, credit report."

But then new players came in with aggressive lending policies. Names like Ameriquest, New Century, NovaStar Financial and Ownit Mortgage Solutions set a new, lowered standard, changing the rules of the game, Mozilo said.

"Traditional lenders such as ourselves looked around and said, 'Well, maybe there's a (new) paradigm here. Maybe we've just been wrong. Maybe you can originate these loans safely without verifications, without documentation,"' Mozilo said.

In 2006, Countrywide originated $461 billion worth of loans. Nearly $41 billion of that activity was in the subprime market, where Countrywide ranked third behind No. 1 HSBC and No. 2 New Century. Countrywide also competed against Accredited Home Lenders Inc., formed in 1990 above a San Diego auto-repair garage.

Bill Dallas, chief executive of Ownit, the nation's 20th-largest subprime lender in 2006, said he saw the handwriting on the wall in April 2005 after he overheard a rival account executive tell a customer how to get a better rate by committing occupancy or income fraud.

"I just went, 'We are hosed as an industry,"' Dallas said. "I told our guys, 'We're the problem."

The structure of the industry was part of the problem, he said: "Our account reps are talking to the mortgage broker, the mortgage broker is talking to the borrower, and they're teaching them all the wrong things."

Ownit tightened its lending standards, Dallas said, but eventually filed for bankruptcy in December after Merrill Lynch & Co. (NYSE:MER - news), a large investor, froze funding.

Dallas and others more than doubled their original investment in the firm, but hundreds lost their jobs. About that time, Merrill sealed the acquisition of its own subprime originator, First Franklin Financial Corp., which Dallas had founded and previously sold.

'COFFEE IS FOR CLOSERS'

Interviews with borrowers, mortgage executives, loan officers, appraisers and brokers describe a subprime industry engaged in the systematic abuse of prudent lending standards. There also was plenty of outright fraud by lenders and borrowers, they say.

Borrowers lied about their income, sometimes encouraged by unscrupulous subprime sellers. Property appraisals were faked to justify inflated loan values. Loans were closed at fast-food restaurants or across kitchen tables at midnight. Brokers sometimes skipped the signings altogether, sending a notary to clients' homes.

"They basically put you in the closet, turned out the lights, and said, 'Sign here,"' said Bill Purdy, a California lawyer who represents homeowners with predatory lending claims.

Lenders often teased borrowers with low initial payments that later soared, leading to onerous penalties or higher rates. And better yet, Wall Street investment banks stamped their approval on no-money-down mortgages and loans widely known as "liar loans," which allow borrowers to state their income without verification.

It was a dangerous mix, said Chris Lefebvre, a Rhode Island lawyer who represents families with mortgage problems.

"You had consumers that really weren't creditworthy and lenders who were irresponsible," he said.

Some subprime mortgages had features that were bound to produce disasters. "Stated income" loans didn't require borrowers to produce pay stubs or tax returns. Option adjustable rate mortgages (or option ARMs) typically let borrowers choose a monthly payment, but instead of paying down mortgages they often paid interest-only. That put borrowers deeper into debt after each payment.

Purdy, the California lawyer, calls these "neutron bomb loans" because they clear out the buyer but leave the house standing.

Sometimes subprime lenders drew their inspiration from Hollywood to motivate employees to sell more loans. Branch managers showed movies that celebrated bullying and high-pressure sales tactics.

Account executive Mark Bomchill said he was given his role model soon after arriving at Ameriquest Mortgage. He was Jim Young, the sleazy salesman played by Ben Affleck in "Boiler Room," a movie about a stock brokerage that scams investors by getting them to invest in fake companies.

Bomchill watched the movie as part of training at the Plymouth, Minnesota, branch, where he said he also watched colleagues falsify income statements and push customers into high-priced loans. They would treat borrowers, he said, as if they had no place else to go to buy into the American Dream.

"I was taught and encouraged to close loans without regard to the customers' financial ability to make payments on the loans," Bomchill said in a federal lawsuit against Ameriquest, a leading subprime lender.

Ameriquest said if what Bomchill described happened, it would be against policy. The company closed its network of 229 branches last year.

Others in the industry were told to model themselves after Alec Baldwin's hard-as-nails character in the movie "Glengarry Glen Ross." The 1992 film, based on David Mamet's play, depicts desperate real estate salesmen trying to unload undesirable properties while the home office threatens their jobs.

"Put that down," Baldwin yells at Jack Lemmon's character as he pours a cup of coffee during a sales meeting. "Coffee's for closers only You close or you hit the bricks."

Thomas Marano, global head of mortgages and asset-backed securities at Bear Stearns Cos. Inc., said he never heard about any subprime lenders using "Glengarry Glen Ross" for training.

"If I knew a company was doing that, I would cut them off," said Marano, whose company was the No. 1 U.S. underwriter of mortgage-backed securities in 2006.

DIALING FOR DOLLARS

The branch offices of subprime lenders operated much like telemarketing outfits, with a big difference. Some paid salaries of hundreds of thousands of dollars for big producers. Computers spat out leads, such as from Internet sites where prospective borrowers checked interest rates. Loan officers with headsets raced rival lenders with the same leads to offer a quick refinance or new home loan.

"You have to call your leads three times a day, minimum," said Amy Kay Vandeventer, who worked at Home Funds Direct, a unit of Accredited Home Lenders Inc.

Loan officers at Accredited Home Lending, Ameriquest and New Century Financial, for example, said it wasn't unusual for them to dial more than 100 numbers in a day. Once they hooked a perspective borrower, they reeled in the prospect using scripts to overcome objections.

"They're the ones who call you during dinner when you have a spoonful of applesauce in your mouth," said Paul Lukas, a Minneapolis attorney who represents workers who have sued mortgage lenders for overtime pay.

Supervisors checked how much time the salespeople were on the phone. Those who fell behind were encouraged to stay late, work on Saturdays -- or pack their bags.

Bonuses were tied to sales, and the best sales people could move from company to company as they pleased - raising pressure on lenders to underwrite loan applications generated by their stars, even if credit standards were being stretched.

PIPELINE TO WALL STREET

With strong employment and interest rates near historic lows, subprime lenders filled a mortgage pipeline that extended all the way to Wall Street. Once there, leading investment banks pooled thousands of loans together and packaged them into securities that they sold to pension funds, hedge funds and overseas investors.

For some of those on the other end of this pressure, serious financial trouble wasn't far away.

Kelly and David Graham of Westminster, Massachusetts, refinanced their home in 2003 with an adjustable rate mortgage from Ameriquest to consolidate their debts.

A few months later, the couple received a call from Dream House Mortgage with an offer to refinance the Ameriquest loan at a lower rate. The Grahams, in a federal lawsuit, say they refinanced again, but didn't know their Dream House loan was funded and underwritten by Argent, Ameriquest's sister company.

The Grahams say the relationship among lenders was concealed so the companies could collect on more than $10,000 in prepayment penalties triggered by the couple's second refinance, court records show. The combination of prepayment penalties and medical bills from the illness of their newborn daughter caused the couple to fall behind on their mortgage payments in late 2005. They went to court to stop foreclosure on their home.

The lenders deny any wrongdoing in court papers. Dream House has been dropped as a defendant in the case.

Bear Stearns' Marano said he doesn't think lenders purposely originated loans they thought would fail.

He said investors were comfortable with subprime lenders stretching their lending standards, partly because rapidly rising housing prices were building equity. Even a loan with no money down from the borrower looked like a good bet.

A former chief executive at a failed subprime lender, who asked to remain anonymous as his company unwinds, said as long as Wall Street was willing to buy the risky loans and package them into securities, the market was going to create them.

"You act very differently when you know somebody is willing to buy the loans," the executive said.

REFORM DENIED

Ameriquest, one of the aggressive companies that led the subprime boom, resisted attempts at reform, said Wayne A. Lee, former chief executive of the company's closely held parent company, ACC Capital Holdings Inc.

Standing in his way, Lee said, was company founder Roland Arnall, who became a billionaire building Ameriquest.

Lee said he wanted mortgage underwriters to be free from the influence of branch managers on commission.

"Branch managers had both the authority as supervisors and the motive as employees paid on commission to influence and override the supposedly objective operational decisions of the (loan underwriters)," Lee said.

He aired his conflict-of-interest claims in a legal dispute with Ameriquest over his $50 million consulting deal.

Ameriquest lawyers said Lee made baseless claims to extract money from the company.

"Mr. Lee's complaint is a ridiculous work of fiction." said Bernard LeSage, an attorney for the company.

Lee negotiated the consulting deal when he quit his post in 2005. He did not return telephone calls seeking comment. Ameriquest said the lawsuit was settled.

In January 2006, Ameriquest agreed to pay $325 million to settle predatory lending investigations by state attorney generals throughout the United States.

The company admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to several reforms. Borrowers, for example, would receive a simple, one-page form clearly describing all loan terms at least three days before closing.

The bad press didn't hurt Arnall's profile. Since 2002, he and his wife, Dawn, have raised at least $12.25 million for President George W. Bush, the Washington Post has reported. In February 2006, a month after Ameriquest agreed to settle one of the largest predatory lending cases in U.S. history, Arnall was sworn in as U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands.

While the Arnall represents the U.S. government the Netherlands, the DeWitts live in a trailer home in Elkhart, Indiana. They couldn't afford the Argent loan they say Ruth was pushed into while Lelon was in heart surgery.

The DeWitts sold the house to get out from under the loan with Argent, triggering several thousand dollars in prepayment penalties. Faced with a stack of medical bills, they filed for bankruptcy.

After his open-heart surgery, Lelon DeWitt was no longer able to repair transmissions. He remains bitter about how he says his wife was treated during the loan-closing process.

"It was very wrong. They took advantage of my wife. She wasn't in her right mind," he said. "(That loan) ruined everything."

A gargantuan explosion ripped apart a star perhaps 150 times more massive than our sun in a relatively nearby galaxy in the most powerful and brightest supernova ever observed, astronomers said on Monday.

And there is one such star in our own Milky Way galaxy that appears to be on the brink of dying in just such a supernova.

The exploding star's dramatic death may have come in a rare type of supernova reserved for "freakishly massive" stars that astronomers had speculated about but never previously witnessed.

The supernova, designated as SN 2006gy, occurred 240 million light years away in a galaxy called NGC 1260, and was studied using observations from NASA's orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory as well as earthbound optical telescopes.

The explosion occurred long ago but was detected last year after its light traveled many, many trillions of miles (km) before it could be observed from Earth.

"That sounds far away but it's actually quite nearby on the vast scale of the universe," astronomer Nathan Smith of the University of California at Berkeley, who led the research, told a news conference.

The supernova was discovered in September 2006, and stands as far and away the most powerful and brightest ever observed, Smith said.

"In fact, even after the better part of a year, well after 200 days, it has faded somewhat but it's still about as bright as a normal supernova at its peak," Smith said.

A supernova marks a star's death in a spectacular explosion. Scientists say these events play a crucial role in creating heavy elements through nuclear fusion and synthesis and then expelling them into space, seeding the cosmos with metals.

The scientists ruled out a possible alternative explanation that what they were witnessing was the explosion of a white dwarf star with a mass only a bit more than the sun.

OBLITERATED CORE

Astrophysicist Mario Livio said the supernova may have resulted from a type of explosion mechanism that had existed only in theoretical calculations. He said the first generation of stars in the universe may have died in such a manner.

In a normal supernova, the core of a star collapses when it exhausts its fuel, and forms either a neutron star or a black hole, with scant heavy elements blown into space.

But this supernova appears to be the result of the core not collapsing but being obliterated in an explosion blasting all its material into space, the scientists said.

Dave Pooley of the University of California at Berkeley said this star appears similar to Eta Carinae, a star perhaps 100 to 120 times the mass of the sun located 7,500 light years away within the Milky Way. There has not been a supernova in our galaxy in more than 400 years, Pooley said.

A light year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year.

If Eta Carinae were to burst into a supernova, Pooley said, "It would be so bright that you would see it during the day, and you could even read a book by its light at night."

Livio said Eta Carinae had an incredible eruption during the 19th century that left it in an hourglass shape. He said it could explode at any time.

"This could happen tomorrow, it could happen 1,000 years from now," Livio said. "Is there a risk to life on Earth as a result of this explosion? Well, not very likely."

Livio said Earth could be affected if there were a gamma ray burst that potentially could harm the atmosphere and life, but the chances of this aiming directly at Earth are slim.

Excerpt: 'Stop Global Warming: The Solution is You'

by Laurie David 

 

 

 

The Making of an Activist

Finding your passion and devoting your life to it is a gift. Of course, it's a process, it takes time, and it doesn't necessarily show itself from day one. My path is the perfect example of this. I had so many jobs along the way, jobs that at the time seemed completely unconnected to any great master plan, but now, looking back, make total sense.

When I graduated college, I only had a vague notion of what I wanted to do, but I knew it had to be something in the entertainment field. My career began in a strange place for someone to accomplish that: Cincinnati, Ohio, as a copywriter for a car dealership. (And how crazy that, years later, I would start my advocacy on global warming by attacking the low-mileage of SUVs and promoting the hybrid car.) Strange also because I knew next to nothing about cars and I didn't even have a driver's license at the time. That was my first lesson- never let knowing next to nothing stop you! And something else I've learned along the way is just because someone says no doesn't mean they are right. I'll give you a perfect example of this: the marketing report NBC did to test Seinfeld for the first time. The conclusion of the "polling" was that the characters were completely unlikable and the show had no real appeal. We've proudly framed and hung that report in our guest bathroom.

So there I am in Cincinnati, writing pithy lines about the Dodge Dart. Unbeknownst to me, the master plan begins to unfold. I stayed just long enough to actually produce a television spot. All of a sudden, I am in showbiz at a Dodge Dart dealership! Well, that one script gave me enough experience to get me a little closer to a better job with a magazine. That was my second lesson: every job doesn't have to be perfect-it just needs to move you a few inches forward. It will all make sense years later.

As an associate editor at Tee-Shirt Weekly (okay, it wasn't exactly Rolling Stone, but it was a magazine), most of my reporting was about cotton versus polyester, but there was also an opportunity to write articles about how rock-band merchandise was being ripped off by bootleggers. Pretty soon, I found myself interviewing music-industry veterans about rock-and-roll shirts and hats-finally, I was on the fringes of the entertainment industry! The little bit of music background helped me land my next job as a reporter for Record World magazine. The very next year, word was out that Late Night with David Letterman was looking for a researcher/ music person — and jackpot!

Hanging around comedians was not bad for a day job, and when I left the show four years later, it was like I'd graduated from Comedy U. I started my own management company, representing comedians and developing sitcoms for television. My first client was comedian Chris Elliott, affectionately known then as "The Guy under the Stairs." I began producing my clients' stand-up specials. In fact, eventually, I married a comedian myself.

My concerns about global warming began soon after we had our first child. I was a new mom, feeling very overwhelmed with the realization that I was now irreversibly responsible for this tiny creature. There was no turning back. I remember crying every day at five in the afternoon, the witching hour, my stress level at a breaking point. My husband and I would look at each other as if to say, "What have we done?"

I hated those first few months of motherhood. The baby had colic, Larry was on a soundstage seven days a week, my career was on hold-all of my friends worked-I had no one to talk to. I was isolated and scared. I spent a lot of time walking around the neighborhood, pushing a stroller. I started noticing an enormous amount of SUVs on the street. Everyone was driving them. I frequented a local bookstore and picked up a book called High and Mighty by Keith Bradsher of The New York Times. It was about the proliferation of SUVs and how they were really harming America. It explained that our fuel-economy standards were plunging because of a loophole in the law that classified SUVs as trucks, thereby allowing them to have lower mileage standards than regular cars-fewer miles per gallon and double the carbon-dioxide emissions. So, every time you drove somewhere, to the store, the school, the freeway, you were now all of a sudden doubling your personal CO2 pollution. I panicked, because everyone I knew was driving them. I had had other lightbulb moments in my life-like the first time I tasted good wine and then couldn't drink the cheap stuff any more; or the moment that I learned that bald men make better lovers, and never dated a man with hair again. But this was different. This awareness landed with a thud on my shoulders. And with awareness comes responsibility.

Wangari Maathai is a woman who, with limited resources and living in Africa, spent thirty years inspiring the planting of 30 million trees across Kenya and spreading the message that protecting the environment protects democracy. For this, she became the first environmentalist ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She explained her lightbulb moment this way: "Passion begins with a burden and a split-second moment when you understand something like never before. That burden is on those who know. Those who don't know are at peace. Those of us who do know get disturbed and are forced to take action."

I often wonder what she was thinking when she planted those first few seeds in her backyard. Digging that first hole, was she wearing gloves or did she use her bare hands? Did she imagine that, ten years later, she would inspire a national movement? Did she know she was an activist?

Activism comes in all shapes, sizes, and at all ages. Looking back, I trace my very first action not on behalf of a cause but on behalf of a band. At the tender age of twelve, I was a huge Beatles fan, and when the film Let It Be was released, I was afraid that people might not go see it, as their popularity at that time was waning. So, I wanted to help. I remember cutting the movie ads out of the local newspaper, taking thumbtacks off of my bulletin board, and heading to the street, where I proceeded to tack the ad upon every telephone pole within a mile radius of my house. Surely, that would help get people into the theater!

The Civil Rights Movement of Our Time

After connecting the dots when I became a mom, I made it my job to educate myself about the environment and global warming. I read everything on the subject I could get my hands on: books and articles by reporter Mark Hertsgaard (Earth Odyssey); environmentalist Bill McKibben (The End of Nature); Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ross Gelbspan (Boiling Point); Todd Wilkinson (Science under Siege); and Al Gore (Earth in the Balance). I joined the board of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the most effective environmental group in the country. And through them, I met Robert F. Kennedy Jr., NRDC's senior attorney. Hearing him describe environmental problems as the civil rights issue of our time resonated so deeply with me that it was at that very moment that I decided to devote everything I had to the cause — to become a serious full-timer. Suddenly, developing sitcoms for television no longer felt so important. Seinfeld was a huge hit, and I certainly wasn't going to develop anything better than that. So, I began to hold regular salons in my house with policy makers, scientists, and experts on a wide range of environmental issues. I learned how to ask my friends for money to support the NRDC's work, and I quickly understood that if you educate yourself and care about these things, you can convince others to care. I produced fund-raising events and raised millions of dollars. Ultimately, if you want to effect change, you have to get politically active too. So, I began supporting politicians who had good voting records on the environment, and before I handed a check over, I grilled them on the issues. And then the 2004 presidential election came.

I woke up the morning after the election, November 3, and cried for three straight days. I couldn't stop. Not because my candidate lost, which he had, but because of what it meant for the solutions to global warming. We had just reelected a president who surrounds himself with advisors and staff culled from the oil and auto industries, two giants fighting change at all costs. In fact, the president's first act in office in 2001 was to renege on his promise to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. Two months later, he shocked the world by removing the United States from the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement that was the result of thousands of hours of work, endless meetings, difficult negotiations-basically blood, sweat, and tears-on the part of 160 countries, including the United States.

On day four of my crying jag, I finally pulled myself together and called three people: John Adams, NRDC's founder; Frances Bienecke, the group's president; and Bobby Kennedy — my three guides and mentors. I pitched to them an idea of how I thought we could — had to — build a huge grassroots movement demanding solutions to global warming. A giant march on Washington to stop global warming, but on the Internet instead of on the streets. A virtual march that would continue every day until we were millions strong, combining all of our voices into one loud, clear cry for action. Frances said, "Fantastic." John said, "Great, we are in." Bobby said, "I don't get it. What do you mean virtual?" And, believe me, that was the hardest thing I did that year, explaining to a guy who has never touched a computer what the heck virtual meant. Eventually, he was in too, along with dozens of other organizations and environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, Care2, The Conservation Fund, National Wildlife Federation, National Council of Churches, the Indy Racing League, Tides Network, Roots, myspace.com, and dozens more.

The next step was to find a prominent Republican to help launch the Virtual March, because, as we all know, this issue is not political, it is moral. If global warming became associated with just one political party, we would never get to where we need to go. The obvious first stop was John McCain, who has been a long-time outspoken leader on global warming. And I have to say that it was my stature as an NRDC trustee that got me into his Senate office. (Okay, maybe he was a Curb Your Enthusiasm fan, too, and Seinfeld, well, that certainly didn't hurt — I am the first to use the proverbial "wife of" when needed. Another life lesson: use what you've got.) But still, he knew I had the support of the most powerful and respected environmental group in the world, and that goes a long way when you are knocking on doors in Washington. In his office, on the spot, he said to me, "Let's get marching."

Large numbers of people can change the world. Look at what we have accomplished before. In 1963, the March on Washington changed the debate on civil rights when people poured into the streets to demand action. In 1970, millions turned out for the first Earth Day, which led directly to the establishment of the Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act, not to mention the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency. (We have to give Nixon credit for that. It is truly ironic that the early days of the environmental movement were actually spurred on by the Republican Party, Teddy Roosevelt being an obvious example.Unfortunately, the Republican Party has truly been absent on these issues in recent years. We need all Republicans back in this movement, now.) Large numbers of people did that. And we can do it again. We have to do it again. And now we have even better tools; now we have the Internet. New tactics for a new day.

The Stop Global Warming Virtual March has three basic goals: to get Americans to admit that the globe is warming; to acknowledge that we are causing it; and to demand from our government and business community meaningful solutions. So that's one important yet easy thing you can all do today, and it only requires an e-mail address. Join the Virtual March and think of ways to get others to join, too. Spreading the word is building the movement. Who knows better than you what it takes to engage your personal sphere of friends, associates, teachers, and family? If everyone signs on and sends it to five friends, we can become so big and so strong that Congress and the Administration will no longer be able to ignore this problem. Go to www.stopglobalwarming.org and add your voice to the two NFL teams, religious leaders, politicians, Jon Bon Jovi, James Taylor, Incubus, surfer Laird Hamilton, Senator Hillary Clinton, skateboarder Tony Hawk, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Leonardo DiCaprio, Senator Barack Obama, Kiehl's, MTV, myspace.com, the National Council of Churches, The Weather Channel, and almost half a million Americans who are already virtually marching. One voice can turn into a million, and a million voices will be heard!

Once the Virtual March was launched, I started to focus my efforts on other projects to get the issue into popular culture. First were two television projects: Earth to America!, featuring today's top comedians, including Will Ferrell, Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, Jack Black, Larry David, Martin Short, Robin Williams, and Ray Romano, using comedy as a way to get the word out about global warming; and a one-hour documentary film I produced for HBO called Too Hot NOT To Handle, which focused on the effects of global warming in the United States. (It premiered on April 22, 2006).

And the third part of the plan was a feature film. The story behind An Inconvenient Truth is a Hollywood tale in and of itself. I was asked to moderate a town-hall meeting on global warming in New York City on Thursday, May 27, 2004, to coincide with the opening of the Hollywood blockbuster The Day after Tomorrow. Al Gore was one of several panelists and he showed a ten-minute version of his now-famous hour-long slide show. I had never seen it before, and I was floored. As soon as the evening's program concluded, I asked him to let me present his full briefing to leaders and friends in New York and Los Angeles. I would do all the organizing if he would commit to the dates. Gore's presentation was the most powerful and clear explanation of global warming I had ever seen. And it became my mission to get everyone I knew to see it too. I firmly believed that if George Bush himself saw it, he would be moved to start solving the problem immediately. In Los Angeles, I rented a hotel ballroom, printed invitations, and hit the phones. In New York, the Society for Ethical Culture donated their venue, Ken Sunshine Consultants donated their public-relations help, and prominent New Yorkers cohosted the evening. Bobby Kennedy convinced Roger Ailes, president of Fox News, to attend. We met with Roger the following week, and in the room he committed to a one-hour primetime news special on global warming. This was a huge accomplishment, for obvious reasons. Fox News would be a new messenger, and although everyone urged us not to work with Fox, telling us the network would never do a "fair and balanced" show, Fox surprised everyone with The Heat Is On. (Unfortunately, six months later, in an apparent caving to advertisers — perhaps car companies? ExxonMobil? — Fox News ran a second piece, ostensibly to give "opposing views" a chance to rebut. This was a sad step backward and a major disservice to its viewers.) On both coasts the packed houses, although some were initially cynical, all gave Gore a standing ovation.

At this point, Gore was logging thousands of air miles crisscrossing the world, literally our modern-day Paul Revere. But a filmed version could reach millions — and quickly. And that is what we did.

Helping to bring Al Gore's keynote on global warming to a "theater near you" has been the highlight of my career.

  from Stop Global Warming

North America's oldest conifer tree and some ancient scorpion parts are among the fossil treasures found in a newly discovered cave in Illinois.

The new discovery also unearthed fossils of plants that may be new to science and revealed evidence of prehistoric forest fires.

Scientists date the specimens to nearly 315 million years ago, according to initial findings presented last month at the regional meeting of the Geological Society of America in Lawrence, Kan.

"I've never seen anything like this before," said Roy Plotnick, a paleontologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago who discovered the cave with students on a field trip to a site two hours outside of Chicago. "The limestone that forms the cave is 450 million years old, but that's not the interesting part of the cave. The preservation inside the cave is what's fascinating."

What is of interest to Plotnick and his colleagues are the well-preserved bits of plants and insects that have been cushioned in the cave and protected from the elements.

Much of the biological treasure is preserved as charcoal, which researchers assume is a sign that the ancient trees were burned in fires.

"This is a glimpse into a new window to the past," said Royal Holloway University of London paleobotonist Andrew Scott, who is researching samples from the cave.

Additional details of the most fascinating discoveries in the cave include:

* Needles of a conifer tree, 2 million years older than any conifer previously described
* Nearly pristine plant spores of lycopods, the main coal-forming plants of the period
* Evidence of a general drying trend in the area.


The cave, which geologists estimate runs underground for miles, could provide scientists with years of research material.

Plotnick's cave is one of two recent sightings of ancient plants in Illinois. A coal mine near Danville, detailed in the May issue of the journal Geology, houses a 300-million-year-old fossilized forest. While the mine is filled with evidence of ancient wetlands, the cave also holds biological deposits from dryer environments that appear to be about 3 million years older than the plant fossils found in the mine.

"Their discovery, and ours, show how much there still is to find in supposedly well-known places like Illinois," Plotnick told LiveScience.

Has Richard Russell finally thrown in the towel on his long-standing bearishness?
You be the judge.
Richard Russell, of course, is editor of Dow Theory Letters, and the granddaddy of the investment newsletter world. He has been editing his newsletter continuously since 1958, nearly 50 years ago, longer than any other newsletter editor still publishing.
He's seen a lot of bull and bear markets, in other words. And his long-term record is superb. According to the Hulbert Financial Digest, his timing signals for the stock market's major trend rank at the top for risk-adjusted performance since 1980, when the HFD began monitoring the industry.
Nevertheless, Russell has failed to extend diplomatic recognition to the bull market that began in October 2002, arguing instead that a major bear market that began in late 1999 was still in progress. Fellow columnist Peter Brimelow even took to referring to Russell as a "grump."
Now read what Russell wrote last night on his website:
"We saw something that is extremely rare [on April 20 and April 25], in fact I can't remember ever having seen this before. What I'm referring to is that on those two dates all three Dow Jones Averages -- Industrials ($INDU :
Dow Jones Industrial Average
 
$INDU13,255.19, -57.78, -0.4% ) , Transports ($TRAN :
Dow Jones Transportation Average
 
$TRAN5,170.76, +5.75, +0.1% ) and Utilities ($UTIL :
dow-jones utilities index actual values
 
$UTIL527.10, -3.71, -0.7% ) -- closed at simultaneous historic highs. To me, a fellow steeped in Dow Theory for over half a century, this was like a clap of thunder... My take on the situation is that the stock market (and the Dow Theory) told us that an unprecedented world boom lies ahead."
Russell acknowledges that what he has written will surprise many who are accustomed to his long-standing caution about the stock market. He imagines that we will want to respond by saying "But Russell, you're usually so conservative, so restrained. How can you possibly talk this way? Now you're talking about a worldwide boom. Are you smoking something we don't know about?"
Russell's response:
"I stopped smoking over 40 year ago. No, I'm simply relating to you my interpretation of what the market is saying. I believe the markets talk in their own secret language. And when the market does something that has never been done before, that serves as a 'kick in the pants' for me. It's telling me, 'Russell, wake up. Something very unusual is going on. Get up out of your chair -- and pay attention'."

Jefferson Parish officials need information about frequently-flooded areas.
 

People who suffered damage from the storm flooding Friday are being asked to contact the parish.

Parish leaders want to create a list to track what areas flood frequently. They will use the information to apply for possible federal assistance.

Officials ask that if you know of an area of the parish that floods frequently, please call 504-736-6000.

May 8, 2007

New