Obama's Climate Change Adaptation Task Force; U.S. Deeply Concerned About Ivory Coast; Domestic Jobs, Energy & Deficit Reduction Act; Charlie Sheen Fails to Impress; Schumer Wants President to Have Even More Power; U.S. Congress Considering Condemnation for Koran Burning; Unions Losing Members; Changes to Medicare, Medicaid and SS

From the Whitehouse.gov website: On October 14, 2010, the Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, co-chaired by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), released its interagency report outlining recommendations to President Obama for how Federal Agency policies and programs can better prepare the United States to respond to the impacts of climate change.  The report recommends that the Federal Government implement actions to expand and strengthen the Nation’s capacity to better understand, prepare for, and respond to climate change.  These recommended actions include:

• Make adaptation a standard part of Agency planning to ensure that resources are invested wisely and services and operations remain effective in a changing climate.
• Ensure scientific information about the impacts of climate change is easily accessible so public and private sector decision-makers can build adaptive capacity into their plans and activities.
• Align Federal efforts to respond to climate impacts that cut across jurisdictions and missions, such as those that threaten water resources, public health, oceans and coasts, and communities. 
• Develop a U.S. strategy to support international adaptation that leverages resources across the Federal Government to help developing countries reduce their vulnerability to climate change through programs that are consistent with the core principles and objectives of the President’s new Global Development Policy.  [Get ready for more and more wealth distribution, for we Americans are just too greedy.]
• Build strong partnerships to support local, state, and tribal decision makers in improving management of places and infrastructure most likely to be affected by climate change.  [The ugly hand of the government in our pockets will come to you.]  http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/initiatives/adaptation
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• The AP reports: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the U.S. is "deeply concerned" about the situation in the Ivory Coast and reports of human rights abuses and a massacre of more than 1,000 people.
  In a statement Sunday, Clinton called on Laurent Gbagbo (luh-RAHN' BAHG'-boh), the entrenched incumbent who lost a November vote, to step down immediately. She also says forces loyal to the internationally recognized President Alassane Ouattara (AL'-ah-sahn wah-TAHR'-ah) must respect the rules of war and stop attacks on civilians. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_US_IVORY_COAST?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-04-03-07-00-55
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  The Washington Examiner Reports: The day could be coming when you won't be entirely without recourse [over questionable environmental lawsuits], thanks to Sen. David Vitter, R-La., and Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah. They have introduced the Domestic Jobs, Domestic Energy, and Deficit Reduction Act of 2011 (3-D). The sponsors claim their bill "would create more than 2 million jobs, $10 trillion in economic activity, and $2 trillion in federal tax receipts (conservative 30-year estimates)." Among 3-D's major features are provisions to prod the federal bureaucracy to speed up Outer Continental Shelf lease sales for oil and natural gas exploration and development off the U.S. coasts, as well as federal permitting for energy purposes on public lands. The measure also would fix time limits on environmental and judicial reviews of leases and permits.
  Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/2011/04/dont-let-big-green-mug-taxpayers-government-approval#ixzz1ISvakmz4
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  AP - Charlie Sheen was heckled, booed and eventually abandoned by the crowd at his inaugural stage show, with many of the audience members chanting "refund" and heading for the exits even before the show abruptly ended.  The former "Two and a Half Men" star learned firsthand at Detroit's 5,100-seat Fox Theatre that show business still requires a show.  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110403/ap_en_ot/us_sheen_on_tour
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  Redstate reports: Senator Schumer has introduced S.679 and, along with 15 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle, would like to reduce the number of Presidential appointments that require consent of the Senate while also establishing a “Working Group on Streamlining Paperwork for Executive Nominations” within the executive branch. Addington properly dismisses this idea as detrimental to the Constitutional safeguard against the accumulation of power in one branch   According to Heritage.org: The bill reduces the number of presidential appointments that require the consent of the Senate. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2011/04/Speed-Up-Nominations-and-Confirmations-but-Do-Not-Enact-S-679
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  Redstate reports: “U.S. lawmakers said Sunday they would consider a request by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to formally condemn a Florida pastor’s decision to burn the Koran, after the act triggered deadly riots in Afghanistan.”
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   Labor Union Report writes, quoting the Wall St. Journal: Union chiefs like Mr. Parrett know what that means for their political clout. After taking office in 2005, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels used an executive order to end collective bargaining for public workers—a power granted by former Governor Evan Bayh.The number of state public employees has since fallen to 28,700 from 35,000.  [Have you wondered why the Wisconsin unions are so stridently advocating for union rights?] But more important, the vast majority of those employees stopped paying union dues. Today, 1,490 state employees pay union dues in Indiana, down from 16,408 in 2005. Similar declines have played out in Washington State and Utah, when those states gave members the freedom to choose.   http://www.laborunionreport.com/portal/2011/04/death-taxes-and-union-dues/
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  The Wall St. Journal writes: By suggesting sweeping changes to Medicare, as well as Medicaid and Social Security, Republican leaders are gambling that Americans are worried enough about the growing national debt to accept overhauling social programs that now cover medical costs or provide monthly incomes for a substantial swath of the public. [This should quiet those unions who say that it is they who must carry the full burden of deficit reduction - but it won't.]  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576240751124518520.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories 
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