EXTRA...

States’ film production incentives cause jitters; Rodgers at energy summit

States’ film production incentives cause jitters

Already on the hook for billions to bail out Wall Street, taxpayers are also finding themselves stuck with a growing tab for state programs intended to increase local film production.

“There’s no evidence yet that this is a particularly efficient or effective way to create jobs.”
         - Noah Berger, executive director of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center.

Elsewhere, however, critics have sharply challenged the notion that state subsidies for the film business can ever buy more than momentary glitter.

“There’s no evidence yet that this is a particularly efficient or effective way to create jobs,” said Noah Berger, executive director of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center.

The nonprofit center reviews budget and tax policies in Massachusetts, which is spending about $60 million a year on producer credits. A recent study by Mr. Berger’s center pointed out that the state’s film credit, at 25 percent, is five times higher than that offered to those who build in designated economic opportunity areas, and more than eight times the state’s standard investment tax credit... New York Times.
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Speakers: Massachusetts must be first in renewable energy
2008 Massachusetts Energy Summit decries staus quo

Philip Giudice, commissioner of the state Department of Energy Resources, told an audience at Thursday's 2008 Massachusetts Energy Summit that the state wants all new buildings to use zero net energy by 2030.  Giudice said the ambitious effort would be begun by state facilities and would be the culmination of several pieces of environmental legislation the state recently passed...

Massachusetts' 351 towns can't be expected to tackle all the state's energy conservation efforts individually, Giudice said. He said the Green Communities Division within the Division of Energy Resources would "help get as much renewable power as possible into each community." The division is currently searching for a director for the Green Communities Division and Giudice said a candidate should be hired soon...

"All of us have been far too comfortable with the status quo," Giudice said. "We all need to move up to another level of commitment and action to make this happen."

The summit also included an address by Mark Rodgers, director of communications for Cape Wind and wrapped up with a panel of three speakers: Ravi Datta, head of Worcester Polytechnic Institute's Fuel Cell Center; Cathy Crumbley of the University of Massachusetts Lowell Center for Sustainable Production and Karina Funk, a partner at Winslow Management Co., a Boston-based "green" investment firm... Worcester Business Journal.
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Culver Black Horse Troop invited to inaugurational parade again

  The Black Horse Troop from Culver Military Academy at the 2005 inaugurational parade.

Alumni include cc2day's Walter Brooks and NY Yankees' George Steinbrenner

As improbable as it may seem, our editor graduated from ulver in 1949 and almost immediately became a Beat Poet in reaction to his experience there.

Twelve times the Black Horse Troop, which boasts the Academies' best horsemen, has journeyed to Washington, D.C., to participate in the Presidential Inaugural Parade, a tradition that began in 1913 with the first inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson.

The Troop saluted Wilson again in 1917 and then returned to the nation's capital every four years from Dwight D. Eisenhower's second term in 1957 to George Bush's oath of office in 1989. The Black Horse Troop returned to the inaugural parade in 1997, and is invited to march in the parade this coming January.

CapeCodToday.com publisher Walter Brooks is a Culver alumni along with fellow classmate George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees.

While Steinbrenner was a member of the Black Horse Troop, our editor was a lowly grunt in Company C Infantry. He also managed to attend Culver for four years and graduate a private.

It was his luck that the school was not co-ed for another decade after he left. He has remarked about Culver thusly: "I hated all schooling - from kindergarten forward - and only the discipline at Culver manged to pound anything through my dense skull."

There may be a more disparate coupling, but it doesn't occur offhand.

The Black Horse Troop has appeared in more Presidential Inaugural Parades than any other private or public high school contingent.