In this piece, she lauds the careers of two retiring Illinois Republicans who have (surprise!)had a falling out with GOP leadership and the GOP in particular. She also gets into ethanol and agribusiness again.Gets stranger by the minute. There is something fishy about her husband's work, MBTE, ethanol, Jeff Seabright's connection to Chevron and how it all ties into her reporting...
December 31, 2000, Sunday, BC cycle
SECTION: State and Regional
LENGTH: 919 words
HEADLINE: Porter, Ewing leave mark on Congress they're departing
BYLINE: By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
"...Porter, part of a dwindling band of GOP moderates, has a repuation as a deficit hawk who spent 21 years in Congress fighting his party on gun control, abortion, environmental regulations and other issues.
Porter, a North Shore native and son of an Evanston judge, was a Justice Department attorney in the early 1960s before returning to Illinois and private law practice. He served in the Illinois House from 1972 to 1979. After narrowly losing a 1978 challenge to former Democratic Rep. Abner Mikva, Porter won a 1980 special election when Mikva was appointed to the federal bench.
Ten terms later, Porter departs as head of the Appropriations subcommittee overseeing spending on education, social, health and labor programs.
He used his post to fight for funding for biomedical research, public broadcasting and global family planning. He often fought for additional federal gun control and robust environmental protections.
And he helped found the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, frequently denouncing Turkey and Iran for persecution of Armenians and Kurds, and China for numerous human rights abuses. His wife, Kathryn, collaborated with him on those issues.
Porter said stand-out moments include doubling funding for the National Institutes of Health, a barely unsuccessful effort to stop a new U.S. chemical weapons program, and a dramatic increase in money for Radio Free Asia..."
..."In 1991, former GOP Rep. Edward Madigan left his seat to become Agriculture Secretary and Ewing won a special election to replace him. In 1995, when Republicans assumed control of the House, Ewing became chairman of the Agriculture subcommittee with jurisdiction over commodity futures, crop insurance and specialty crops like tobacco, sugar and peanuts.
He has been a staunch supporter of those industries during his nine years in Congress. He has also been a chief backer of the ethanol industry.
He believes his signature achievement is a plan passed this congressional session to deregulate the over-the-counter derivatives market.
Ewing's campaigns benefited from those with business before his committee, such as the American Association of Crop Insurers, numerous sugar interests, the Archer Daniels Midland Co., the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
Ewing also made regulatory reform a major focus with three bills signed into law.
A close confidant of House Speaker Dennis Hastert from their days rooming together in Springfield, Ewing gained new clout when Hastert took the House's top job.
But they feuded after Ewing announced his retirement..."
A search of LexisNexis by author name and ethanol returns 141 documents for Loven. Okay, well enough for now. Not sure where this leads, but I did discover some interesting things about this obviously partisan reporter and her reliance on her Dem activist husband for sources...
-T
June 21, 2001; Thursday
SECTION: Washington - general news
LENGTH: 697 words
HEADLINE: Official Questions Gasoline Mandate
BYLINE: JENNIFER LOVEN
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
"...Eleven states have banned MTBE and at least a dozen more are considering it. Keeping the oxygenate requirement then would likely be a massive boost for the farm state-based ethanol industry..."
"...But only 101 of the nation's 176,000 gas stations sell the 85 percent ethanol blend known as E85, meaning only 1 percent of the fuel used by the 1.2 million dual-use vehicles is renewable. Likewise, since the trade-off allows more SUVs to hit the market, the net effect has been a 772 million-gallon increase in conventional gas consumption, the report found.
Nonetheless, the study recommends continuing the program, which is set to expire in 2004, but only if it can be changed to increase the use of ethanol in the vehicles..."
-T