Voter 101: What You Need to Know on Election Day
http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/story?id=6166407

Taxpayers pay millions of dollars every month to educate tens of thousands of high school students who rarely or never show up for class, part of a growing trend of high absenteeism at privately operated schools These special charter schools are supposed to rescue students who were failing in traditional public high schools, but a Scripps Howard News Service investigation found that many students are not attending class and few are graduating. Some of these institutions have become ghost schools with thousands of students who are enrolled but never attend. For-profit companies operate schools in 30 states and the District of Columbia. Most of these schools are paid based on the number of students enrolled--not those who actually attend--so the schools get paid even if the desks are empty. The dropout-recovery school movement began in 1998 in Ohio, and in recent years has been averaging about $30 million a year in state payments for absent students. Taxpayers have paid more than $100 million in the last five years through this system.
http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=GHOST-SCHOOLS-10-31-08

New Guidelines Encourage Responsible Recycling of Electronics
"Electronics recyclers have a new guide on how to run safe and environmentally protective recycling operations. EPA, as part of a group of recycling stakeholders, developed the Responsible Recycling (R2) Practices for Use in Accredited Certification Programs for Electronics Recyclers to promote better environmental, worker safety, and public health practices for electronics recyclers...The R2 guide lists 13 principles to help electronics recyclers ensure their material is handled safely and legally in the U.S. and foreign countries. It calls on recyclers to establish a management system for environmental and worker safety; develop a policy that promotes reuse and material recovery over landfill or incineration; and use practices that reduce exposures or emissions during recycling operations. The principles also call for recyclers to use diligence to assure appropriate management of materials throughout the recycling chain, including materials that are exported to foreign countries."
Related postings on e-waste and recylcing

EPA Proposes to Reduce Air Toxics from Petroleum Refineries by 2,250 tons per year
News release: "EPA is seeking comment on additional options for reducing emissions of air toxic pollutants from petroleum refineries based on information received since a 2007 proposal. Included in this proposal are options for controlling air toxics emissions from storage tanks located at petroleum refineries and revisions to the maximum achievable control technology work practice standards for cooling towers. In addition to reducing 2,250 tons of air toxics each year, EPA proposes to slash 14,600 tons of volatile organic compounds with a $3.8 million savings nationwide."
Amendments to Air Toxics Standards for Petroleum Refineries - Supplemental Proposal – Fact Sheet
Petroleum Refineries: Amendments to Air Toxics Standards 10-30-08,Supplemental Proposal

LC and Google Collaborate on Digitizing Congressional Hearings
"The Law Library of Congress contains approximately 75,000 volumes of printed Congressional Hearings. Committees hold hearings for a variety of purposes. Testimony is received from members of congress, officials of the executive branch, policy experts, interest groups and sometimes the general public on legislative proposals, the functioning of government programs, subjects of controversy, and matters under investigation. As part of the Law Library’s transition to the digital future, a collaborative pilot project was undertaken with Google, Inc. to digitize the entire collection and make it freely available to Congress and the world. Three collections have been selectively compiled to provide users with a test experience: Census: U.S. / Freedom of Information/Privacy / Immigration." [Scout Report]

November 4 is Election Day. It's the 56th presidential election of the United States, and is the first time in more than 50 years that neither the sitting president nor the sitting vice president is a candidate on his party's ticket in the new presidential election. It's also the very first time in history that the two main candidates for president are both sitting senators. The last sitting senator to be elected U.S. president was JFK in 1960. Both Barack Obama (books by this author) and John McCain (books by this author) are best-selling authors. John McCain was on book tour for his memoir Faith of My Fathers (1999) at the same time that he was on the campaign trail in the 2000 election, and McCain wrote his second memoir, Worth the Fighting For in 2002. Barack Obama wrote his first memoir, Dreams of My Father, in 1995, after he became president of the Harvard Law Review but before he began his political career. His second book was The Audacity of Hope (2006). The Writer’s Almanac