The Journal on A4 says coal miners are having trouble keeping up with demand because of “a lengthy permitting process, lack of capital investment and a shortage of skilled miners.”

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank reports on climate-change martyr James Hansen’s tour of the capital yesterday. He says forget about cutting oil use, stop coal now! Asked if he’s gotten to talk to the president, Hansen gave our Quote of the Day:

Hansen laughed at the thought. “Unfortunately, no, I’ve not had a chance to talk to the president,” he said. “I know that Michael Crichton did.”

The Journal’s page-one “ahed” notes that some in San Diego are making runs across the border to Tijuana to get subsidized Mexican gas. It says that “Mexicans aren’t happy about the gringo invasion and the long lines at filling stations near the border.” Ironic.

Baby with the bathwater?

The Journal reports on C1 that the Securities and Exchange Commission will propose rules that diminish the importance of credit-ratings firms like Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, whose dismal performance in rating mortgage-backed securities and the like helped set off the credit bust.

The renewed effort is part of a wide-ranging regulatory push in the U.S. and Europe amid the credit crunch that has devastated many banks and investors.

The SEC will allow money-market funds to buy short-term debt regardless of what it’s rated by the credit-ratings folks. That’s one of a dozen changes, including one to “diminish the importance of credit ratings in determining the amount of capital that investment banks are required to hold.”

The question is: Is it better to have no ratings requirements at all or regulate them (largely by ending their huge conflicts of interest) to try to ensure their ratings are actually, you know, accurate? We’d say it’s the latter.

Google News gets beat

The Times on C1 looks at the overrated threat to newspapers posed by Google News, jumping off news earlier this week that the site ranked behind other news sites, including nytimes.com, in traffic.

The paper writes that Google News hasn’t changed much since it was launched, but contradicts that down low in the story when it rattles off several new features. It says the service can be slow, as when it was an hour behind everybody else on Tim Russert’s death with its computer-generated news-placement algorithm. That algorithm is pretty much why it’s so feared and loathed in the news business.

The Times quotes “people close to the company” saying Google doesn’t put ads on the site so as not to tick off news companies. It notes Europe has ruled the company has violated copyright laws by publishing links to news without permission and that Tribune owner Sam Zell has said it steals his company’s content.

Green Houses for gray heads

The Journal on A1 reports on a move to end the nursing-home business in favor of smaller facilities. It says the $10 billion Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is “throwing its considerable weight” behind the cause, dropping $15 million.

The so-called Green Houses have up to twelve residents compared to up to two hundred in regular nursing homes, and are meant to be more homey.

Green Houses face a host of hurdles. Many Green House builders say they’ve encountered a thicket of elder-care regulations. It takes enormous capital to build new homes from scratch. Plus, experts say the concept faces stiff resistance from many parts of the existing nursing-home system. Traditional nursing homes, many of which care for 100 to 200 patients, are predicated on economies of scale—the larger the home, the cheaper it is to care for each individual resident.

The WSJ says a five-year-old survey understandably found that just 1 percent of disabled Americans over fifty wanted to move into a nursing home.

Power outage

USA Today reports that more Americans are getting their utilities shut off for not paying. The paper says shutoffs are up more than 15 percent over last year “in several states”, and some utilities report their rates have doubled.

An NEADA survey this month shows 8% of four-member households earning $33,500 to $55,500 have had their power turned off for non-payment. “It’s hitting people in the suburbs with two cars and two kids,” Wolfe says.

The disconnects are rising as warm-weather power bills increase, some state moratoriums on winter shutoffs expire, and rates are climbing in many states.

Flacking for Home Depot

The Times for some reason thinks it should flack for Home Depot on its Business Day cover with a story about how the retailing giant is going to start recycling the newfangled compact fluorescent bulbs. This press release surely could have run inside.

Andrew Ross Sorkin makes up for that with a great column on Tom Wolfe’s thoughts on the latter-day “Bonfire” on Wall Street.

• 1
• 2