Word: projects
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...rare as good news about the economy or Jon and Kate Gosselin. Shoddy workmanship, cost overruns, rampant dishonesty - anyone who has been through a kitchen renovation can tell you how truly wretched life can be. And that was if you could find a skilled craftsman to handle a project. In flusher times, it was darn near impossible to hire anyone but a fly-by-nighter to fix a faucet, let alone build a master suite, for under six figures...
More and more contractors are offering deep discounts, especially when three or four competitors show up to bid on a project, no matter how small. "It's pretty tough right now," says Paul Witcovich, an independent contractor in Lafayette, Colo. "I know that I'm charging less than I did in 1978, which is about $30 per hour or less...
Those opposed to the mine argue that tailings and other discharges from the Pebble project will contaminate nearby waters and harm the sensitive salmon that swim upstream to spawn. The mining industry argues that Pebble can be developed without serious risk to the environment. "We're conducting one of the largest environmental-study programs in Alaska's history," notes John Shively, CEO of the Pebble Partnership, which is overseeing the project. Moreover, the Pebble Mine offers the potential for new jobs - which are vitally needed in a region where steady employment can be hard to find, especially for Alaskan natives...
...future of the Pebble Mine is still up in the air. A ballot initiative designed in part to stop the mine failed at the polls last summer, but the project is only in its exploratory stages. Either way, Alaskans are beginning to realize that unchecked resource exploitation can't last forever. "There has to be an alternative view that we can help the community with an environmental economy," says Terry Hoefferle, executive director of Nunamta Aulukestai, an anti-Pebble group. Even the Last Frontier has its ecological limits...
...Booker bio is irresistible - and familiar: he arrived in Newark fresh out of Stanford, Oxford and Yale Law, passing up riches to save a poor city. He moved into a decrepit Newark public-housing project, which has since been torn down, and was elected to the Newark city council at age 29. In 2006, at 37, he became mayor. To his supporters, who include A+ listers like Oprah Winfrey, Bon Jovi and Brad Pitt, plus an élite cadre of Wall Street and Silicon Valley scions, Booker's self-sacrificial tale is heroic. To his critics, Booker is still...