The fight over a property tax cap is heating up.

Over the weekend, a pro-cap group launched taxcapnow.org, which Gov. David Paterson praised on Monday. Paterson wants to cap tax growth at 4 percent annually or 120 percent of the consumer price index, whichever is lower. Also in favor, according to the new Web site, is the Business Council of New York State, smaller business organizations and taxpayer activist groups. Individuals continued to add their names to the list throughout the day.

The Working Families Party, in response, put up a site, taxcutnow.org, where residents can calculate what they would save with a so-called circuit-breaker plan. A circuit-breaker would limit a household's property taxes based on income -- for example, to no more than 6 percent of earnings.

The WFP says that a circuit-breaker would give homeowners an actual cut in property taxes, as opposed to Paterson's plan, which only limits tax growth. However, the WFP's argument is disingenuous.

As the uninsured population expands, some policymakers are seeking to rollback health care coverage for immigrants, both documented and undocumented--revealing how new Americans are triaged at the bottom of the country’s health care crisis.

Low-income non-citizens (including both undocumented and green-card holder immigrants, refugees and other categories of the foreign-born) are more likely than their citizen counterparts to lack insurance and be without a consistent health care provider, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, an independent public health research organization.

But as immigrant households play an increasingly vital role in their communities, some states have provided documented immigrants with health care as a social investment. Health coverage for immigrants in New York spans the gamut from basic emergency care for the undocumented, to more comprehensive coverage for legal residents and special coverage for immigrant children and pregnant women through the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Elsewhere, however, some state officials have sought to rein in health care spending by rolling back benefits for immigrants.

The year of the long knives continues in Brookhaven. At Tuesday's town board meeting, the new Republican majority is expected to fire the planning commissioner, David Woods.

Woods was one of the appointees who came to town government after Brian X. Foley, a Democrat, was elected supervisor and took office at the start of 2006. Now he is about to go the way of the other top Foley-appointed commissioners.

Is he getting canned because the Republicans have a top-of-the-line replacement waiting in the wings? Not so much. In fact, they haven't even started the search process yet. That seems like an odd way to conduct business in a department as crucial as planning.

What's worse, all the continuing partisan back-and-forth is beginning to make Brookhaven a town where a highly qualified professional would have little interest in moving. So the search for a replacement for Woods is likely to be difficult. Meanwhile, the department will be limping along without a permanent commissioner.

The Brookhaven Republicans like to talk these days about "streamlining" government. Whatever else it may mean, the definition of streamlining seems to include replacing someone with no one, and for no apparent reason other than that they can.

When it comes to demonstrating prudence on energy policy, the federal government has a knack for odd timing.

The Times reported today on the Bureau of Land Management's recent decision to halt new solar energy development projects while it assesses the risks and benefits of solar development. The agency, which manages more than 250 million acres nationwide--including prime real estate for thirsty solar panels--has decided to step back and "evaluate a number of alternative management strategies to determine which presents the best management approach... to adopt in terms of mitigating potential impacts and facilitating solar energy development while carrying out their respective missions."

Apparently, they'll be back after this break. Meanwhile, about 130 proposals for new projects are winding their way through the bureaucratic review process.

Understandably, alternative energy proponents are a bit stumped. Gas prices are rocketing skyward, climate change is casting the threat of catastrophe around the globe, and worldwide energy consumption is soaring. So, what better time for the White House to slow down the advancement of a burgeoning alternative energy source in the name of good management?

In a historic but ambiguous ruling that may take years of litigation to sort out, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that an individual has a constitutional right to own a firearm. While the right to possess a gun may be limited, the Court said, the District of Columbia's government overstepped constitutional boundaries in criminalizing gun possession. D.C.'s law prohibited owning a gun under most circumstances and required that legal gun owners store their weapons at home "unloaded and dissembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device."

In its opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, the court sought to clarify the scope of the constitutional right to bear arms, describing the Second Amendment as a "product of an interest-balancing by the people," which, while it may require further analysis in the future, "surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home."

But enough with the warm fuzzies. An array of reflections on guns and the law have surfaced around the web.

New York State’s 3rd through 8th graders showed improvement this year on standardized math and English exams. Who could complain about that?

But the scores were released just three days before the end of school. Which means it’s highly unlikely that the children will get to review the results with their teachers in the classes where they prepared for the tests. They’ll never know what they got right and wrong, and why.

Sounds like a crazy idea, doesn't it? We don't do that with a standardized test.

The folksinger Tom Chapin even wrote a little song about these tests:

"

We take the exam, get a score, and never see or hear from it again. But from an educational point of view, it’s a no-brainer: What good does a test do for the taker unless he or she can learn something from it, other than how to take an exam?

Not long ago in this space, we noted the good news that Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre), then the deputy majority leader of the Senate, had put his name on a major bill designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Suddenly, Skelos is now the majority leader. But in the swirl of activity on Tuesday, as he gained that title and the Senate finished its work for now, the bill to fight global warming did not escape from committee for a vote on the Senate floor.

Don't get us wrong. We don't blame Skelos. If he was a tad distracted, that's perfectly understandable. Actually, we blame a senator who coincidentally had been considered a rival of Skelos for majority leader, Sen. George Maziarz (R-North Tonowanda). Those who followed the bill closely identified Maziarz as the person who nixed it.

But the bill makes good sense.

After weeks of mounting public outrage, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board has finally voted to shed its travel perks. The Board has come under fire (including some from this editorial page) for providing former and current members with unlimited E-ZPass access and free subway and bus rides.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo struck a populist nerve by accusing the (well-heeled) MTA Board of violating a state ban on compensation for its members. Cuomo seems to be on a roll: last year, he successfully campaigned to cut off health care provided to board members of state authorities, which he also viewed as an illegal reward.

The actual fiscal impact of nixing this perk is unclear. The Times reported last month that current and former MTA Board members collectively own 95 E-ZPass tags, and that E-ZPass bridge and tunnel tolls typically cost a regular commuter about $166 a month.

Forcing the Board to travel like the rest of us do is ultimately more of a political move than a decisive crackdown on corruption. But it does send the message that the state’s public trustees are expected to serve humbly, without milking undue privileges from the systems they help govern. And if their sticky fingers start to stray, someone is watching.

Sometimes two news stories just cry out to be considered in combination. For instance:

Story one: The number of millionaires is on the rise. Last year, for the first time, there were more than 10 million of them worldwide, according to Merrill Lynch & Co.

Story two: Lawyers for two Indonesian women who were enslaved, tortured and outrageously exploited for years by a Muttontown couple (two of those millionaires) asked a judge to order $1.1 million in back pay for the women. Lawyers for the couple, Mahender Sabhnani and Varsha Sabhnani, said the women should get only $214,333. They deserve no overtime pay for their 19-hour days of slave labor, the lawyers said. And believe it or not, they said the cost of room and board -- mats in the basement and leftovers from the garbage -- should be subtracted from what's owed.

Justice would be a transfer of wealth big enough to cancel the Sabhnani's membership in the millionaire's club, and to add in their place their victims, Enung and Samirah, who use single names, as is common in Indonesia.

Ed Ott, the executive director of the New York City Labor Council, offered a refreshing view of labor's role during a speech at City University and a subsequent interview with the New York Times' Steven Greenhouse. Ott says that he's happy that unions have helped certain groups achieve middle-class status -- municipal workers, construction workers, telephone workers and teachers. But he believes that labor is abandoning low-wage groups that need unions' help, such as restaurant workers, supermarket cashiers and taxi drivers.

It's hard to imagine two public figures with more sharply differing views on the role of faith in the formation of public policy than Dr. James Dobson and the Rev. Jim Wallis. True to form, they are now taking sharply different views of a speech that Barack Obama gave on that subject in 2006.

Dr. James Dobson, a psychologist, is the founder of Focus on the Family, an influential conservative organization that focuses heavily on such issues as gay marriage. He has written a whole shelf of books, such as Five Essentials for Lifelong Intimacy and Bringing Up Boys.

The Rev. Jim Wallis is a liberal evangelical who serves as president and executive director of Sojourners Magazine. He's also the author of a pair of best-selling books: God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It and now The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America.

In The Great Awakening, Wallis argues that the speech Obama gave in 2006 was an insightful examination of the faith-politics issue. Now, on the CitizenLink radio show, Dobson and an associate look at the same speech and smell the whiff of sulfur. They accuse Obama of “deliberately distorting the Bible,” of “dragging biblical understanding through the gutter,” of “willfully trying to confuse people,” and of having a “fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution.” It is just possible that Dobson did not appreciate that the Obama speech put his name in the same sentence as the Rev. Al Sharpton's.

But you don't have to take their word for it. You can read the speech itself and decide what you think.

Special taxing districts apparently feel so under-siege that they have hired a pair of lobbyists, and set up a Web site, to protect their interests.

The newly formed Special District Association of New York State is being led by Arthur "Jerry" Kremer, president. Kremer is a former member of the Assembly, who chaired its Ways and Means Committee and now works as a registered lobbyist. Rich Bivone, president of the Nassau Council of Chambers of Commerce, is serving as the vice president of the new association.

[Update: Jerry Kremer says he and Rich Bivone are not being paid for their work currently, but they hope to be eventually.]

Here is what their Web site has to say:

Dear Special District Official:

These are challenging times for special districts throughout New York State. Prosecutors, high elected state officials and overly energetic politicians, are jockeying for promotion by singling out the operations of special districts in an attempt to paint them as greedy, mismanaged and out of control.

John McCain wants a better battery to make electric power for cars more viable as an alternative to internal combustion. His idea for juicing people to join the hunt? Cash.

He's proposed giving $300 million to the first person who comes up with a battery with the size, capacity, cost and power to revolutionize electric or hybrid autos.

Great idea. That kind of high-stakes contest would unleash the creativity of scientists and tinkerers everywhere. McCain should add one additional requirement: When disposed of at the end of its long useful life, the better battery shouldn't foul the environment. And you probably don't need to offer $300 million -- $100 million would probably do. But that's just picking nits.

Let the games begin.

The test scores announced triumphantly by state officials this week are almost oddly good: In the past year, the percentage of 3rd to 8th graders achieving or exceeding their grade level on standardized tests rose from 73 to 81 percent in math, 63 to 69 percent in reading. Aside from students suddenly becoming roughly 6 to 8 percent smarter, what could account for the boost?

Some answers might be found in a report examining achievement since 2002 under the No Child Left Behind law, published yesterday by the Center on Educational Policy, a centrist think tank focused on national education issues. Though comprehensive data was not available for many states, including New York, the Center found some positive trends: in both reading and math proficiency on the elementary and middle school levels, most of the states evaluated saw at least some gains since 2002. The median average annual gain for middle school students reaching proficiency was less dramatic than New York’s most recent stats--1.9 percent for reading and 2.1 percent for math.

But the report approached the numbers with caution, by comparing the score trends to a broader national measure for school achievement, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Overall, state test improvements painted a rosier picture than the progress assessment did.

There are some things you just don't say in a political campaign -- even if they're true.
You don't call your opponent's kid ugly, for instance. Or comment publicly on the physical charms of an opponent's spouse.

John McCain strategist Charlie Black didn't say anything quite so gauche as either of those obvious faux pas. But he did allow, in a Fortune Magazine article, that a terrorist attack on the United States would be good for the McCain campaign.

"The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an 'unfortunate event,' says Black. 'But his (McCain's) knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who's ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.' As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. 'Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,' says Black."

Ouch!

In an effort to clean up this mess, McCain said he strenuously disagrees with the comments that Black now says he regrets having made. If this flap has legs, Black may have to talk a walk.

We're bombarded daily with the drama of Wall Street, from the sweat-streaked trading floor to the latest squiggle in the ARM line graph. We can track every flutter of every stock, watch currency being shuffled around the globe, and instantly get real-time analysis of every up and down tick of some index or another.

All this information assailing our television screens and laptop monitors should make us better informed about the economy than ever before, right? So how come so many of us still scratch our heads when confronted with $4-a-gallon gas, pore over tax forms in flummoxed frustration, and can't distinguish between a prime loan and a negative amortization mortgage?

In fact, say some media critics, mainstream news coverage of the economy covers about as much as a fig leaf in the jungle of issues related to our jobs and economic futures.

A study just released by the Center for American Progress, a liberal Beltway think tank, has dissected corporate news coverage of issues like the minimum wage and free trade, to find the voices of ordinary people largely ignored. CAP says that while mainstream outlets routinely cut out workers, labor groups and others at the margins of the economy, they fixate on elite sources--CEOs, big-name market analysts, agency heads and elected officials. Meanwhile, the gap between the media and their audience grows.

Here's how the report slices and dices the print and television coverage of major economic issues:

"Overall, representatives of business were quoted or cited nearly two-and-a-half times as frequently as were workers or their union representatives.

"In coverage of both the minimum wage and trade, the views of businesses were sourced more than one-and-a-half times as frequently as those of workers.

"In coverage about employment, businesses were quoted or cited over six times as frequently as were workers.

"On only one issue that [CAP] examined, credit card debt, was coverage more balanced, presenting the perspectives of ordinary citizens in the same proportion as those of business."

A biofuels boom, an exploding global food crisis. Those two simultaneous, not-so-coincidental phenomena are bursting the euphoric bubble of a major "green" energy sector.

Andy Kimbrell’s commentary on Friday about the food-versus-fuel dilemma raises troubling questions about the consequences of government-backed biofuel development. In recent months, ethanol’s green gloss has dulled in light of new research suggesting that farming our fuel does more harm than good.

To critics of the industry, the issue is fundamentally about displacement: fuel crops replace food crops and pristine land, while political and economic capital gravitate toward market hype at the expense of human needs.

For voters who think Barack Obama isn't tough enough for the business he has chosen, consider his decision to pass on public campaign financing. He opted to leave $84.1 million in public money on the table, meaning he's also free from the $84.1 million spending limit taking the money would impose. And he opted not to go with public financing even though he'd as much as pledged to accept that money/restrictions if his general election opponent did too.

Republican John McCain will. Obama won't.

That either makes Obama a "typical polictician," which is an epithet. Or it makes him a tough-minded political realist who knows that he can raise two to three times as much as the $84.1 million he'd otherwise have to live with and isn't about to give up that advantage, no matter what.

We had hoped he would stick with his pledge, since we think public campaign financing is, on balance, a good thing. But given the financial realities, he's looking more and more like a realist.

Even if you haven't flown recently, it's hard to miss the news that it's getting more expensive to take to the skies.

Struggling airlines are trying out more new business practices to trim costs, and cutting jobs and adding fees to combat high fuel prices.

The so-called low-cost carriers are hardly immune. So for travelers, the trick is to watch out for the fees. A couple months ago, I searched for the best fare for a July flight for my family and made reservations with Spirit Airlines (which is now flying out of MacArthur). I knew we'd have to pay extra to check our bags, but it was an unpleasant surprise to learn that we will also have to pay fees to reserve seats and even to bring along our children -- toddlers who won't have their own seats but will be sitting in our laps.

In all, the fees added 30 percent more to the cost of the trip. And, of course, that's before we get to the $3 sodas and juices on board. I guess the lesson for fliers is, if there's any conceivable way to assess a fee, most airlines will do it.

Budget accordingly.

Somehow, in the annual crush of last-minute wheel-spinning and deal-cutting, the New York State Legislature has managed to do something with far-reaching consequences for our future. It has passed legislation that will send a strong signal to the free market that it's time to invest in alternative energy, such as wind and solar, in the Empire State.

The concept is called net metering. Sounds pretty dry, but it's a big deal. What it means is this: Right now, if you own a home and you put some photovoltaic cells on your roof, enough to generate more electricity than you need at the moment, you can get a credit on your bill. Instead of drawing electricity from the grid, you are in essence making your electric meter run backwards.

The trouble is that this ability has been restricted to residences and farms. Large commercial customers haven't been able to get in on this. Now, with the new net-metering legislation, all classes of customers will be able to participate. And that will send a signal to manufacturers of photovoltaic equipment and wind power equipment, for example, that it's time to do more business in New York. It will also send a signal to large companies with a lot of flat roof space that they ought to invest in photovoltaic technology, because it can help them hold down their energy costs, which are a major drain on any firm's budget.

Two of our local lawmakers, Sen. Owen Johnson (R-West Babylon) and Assemb. Steve Englebright (D-Setauket) deserve our gratitude for their role in this great leap forward.

The three men in a room in Albany have agreed on legislation to give homeowners more assistance when a lender is about to foreclose. The Albany Times-Union says that the deal includes $25 million for legal services for low-income people, a 90-day pre-foreclosure proceeding and a required settlement conference between the borrower and the lender. We supported some of these measures in an editorial just today.

At the same time, New York's Chief Justice Judith Kaye announced that the courts will create a special division to handle foreclosure cases. The details of her plan are an exact match with what Gov. David Paterson had proposed in his program bill on foreclosures.

Cooperation and progress in Albany. Wow.

We'll admit it from the start: This post is as much about the image as it is about the news. No one should be surprised that environmental groups are happy that the Broadwater proposal for a floating liquefied natural gas terminal in Long Island Sound is now dead in the water. No one should even be surprised that they're having a victory party on July 11 in Wading River, not all that far from the site where the terminal would have floated in the middle of the Sound.

What's a bit surprising is the image that went out with the invitation. It's a bit reminiscent of the sinking of the Titanic or the Battle of Midway. Very epic stuff. We thought you'd like to see it, whatever your views on Broadwater.

Image by Julie Clark: Positive Image, for L.I. Pine Barrens Society, courtesy of Citizens Campaign for the Environment

If corporate personhood is a pillar of US law, then mega-contractor KBR shouldn’t be left alone with your kids. Having sopped up well-larded government contracts to provide food, construction help and other services at home and abroad, news is leaking out about the Houston-based firm's ill-gotten gains.

The Times recently reported on Charles M. Smith, who says the Army fired him from his oversight position for trying to cut off payments to KBR after an audit revealed over $1 billion left unaccounted for.

But the whistleblower’s ouster folds into a bigger pattern of KBR (an offshoot of Vice President Dick Cheney’s Halliburton empire) milking federal coffers with abandon.

The death of any newspaper is sad for those who depend on it for a living, and for the communities it serves. Suffolk Life is an idiosyncratic paper with a much larger circulation than most weeklies ever achieve. Its publisher, David Willmott, was more influential than most weekly publishers ever get to be. And now, Suffolk Life is shutting down, partly because of Willmott's health, and partly because of the economic realities all papers are facing.

Willmott always ended his sharply worded editorials, "Willmotts and Why Nots" with the enigmatic tagline: "And why not?" But there was nothing enigmatic about the editorials themselves. He might surprise you with the position he ultimately staked out, but once he decided, he said it vividly and with absolute clarity.

He also took elections very seriously. His long written questionnaires and his rigorous interviews were formidable hurdles that candidates had to face, if they wanted his endorsement.

Now that voice, sometimes cranky and imperious, but always strong, won't be heard in these parts anymore. That's a shame.

And speaking of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and driving less, it's great news that MacArthur Airport has designated a cell-phone lot, where folks meeting air passengers can park their cars gratis, and wait for a call from their arrivees. The lot is an environmentally friendly and efficient courtesy that plenty other airports around the country are offering, too, preventing the endless circling, waiting for a plane to land and friends or family members to emerge.

If only it were so simple at the other area airports. LaGuardia doesn't have a cell phone lot yet. JFK claims to have one -- I even saw the sign for it at a recent pick-up expedition. But has anyone ever actually found it? I hear it's somewhere near the Belt, but I wasted just as much gas looking for it as I ultimately did driving around in circles, after I finally gave up.

If there's anything to like about the woe of $4 a gallon gas it's this: Americans drove 30 billion fewer miles from November 2007 through April 2008.

That's the biggest six-month decline since the last oil crisis in the 1970s. And it was accompanied by a severe drop in the sale of gas-hog SUVs and an uptick in mass transit ridership.

Okay, that's only a one percent decline in total miles driven. But April was the sixth month in a row that miles driven dropped. A billion miles here and a billion there and pretty soon you're talking real savings -- for our pocketbooks and the planet.

Is it just a blip?

The gas lines of the 1970s also caused motorists to drive less. But as soon as that artificially induced crisis passed, we went right back to unrestrained motoring -- and the auto industry went to pushing out higher and higher horsepower engines and then SUVs.

Motorists should keep doing what they're doing, even if gas sticker shock subsides. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

The decision by Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) to co-sponsor a key climate change bill is very big news.

The Assembly has already passed a bill sponsored by Assemb. Robert Sweeney (D-Lindenhurst) that would require sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050: 80 percent below 1990 levels. Sen. Thomas Morahan (R-New City) is sponsoring a bill that's almost as ambitious: 80 percent below 2000 levels. It's in the Rules Committee, awaiting a decision on whether it gets to the Senate floor.

As deputy majority leader and head of the Long Island Senate delegation, Skelos has immense influence. His name on the bill improves its chances immensely. Of course, when you're talking about Albany you must always remember the immortal words of Joaquin Andujar, the lovably loopy St. Louis Cardinals pitcher, who famously said: "My favorite word in English is 'youneverknow.'" In Albany, indeed, youneverknow. But Skelos deserves a pat on the back for giving this bill a better chance. We hope he'll keep pushing to get the bill to the floor.

As Newsday reported (and we blogged about) yesterday, teachers are outraged about SMS-inspired language finding its way into the classroom. But what are they really talking about?

Language is powerful political currency. Historically, language has acted as a lever in the subjugation of targeted groups; those in power can wield it as a gatekeeper to control others' influence and access to resources.

I'm not going to read too much out of what could well be an overzealous trendspotting report, apparently based on anecdotal evidence. (The Pew Internet and American Life Project tamps down fears that Internet jabber is corrupting students’ writing.) But spin factor aside, the debate reveals some interesting crosscurrents in technology, youth culture and education.

If kids fail to capitalize words properly or they jam sloppy abbreviations into homework, does the blame lie in the gadgetry that promotes this lingua franca, or is it something deeper?

Up until now, the Town of Babylon has been focusing heavily on making sure that new homes get built to use as little energy as possible -- through adapting a green building code, for example, and taking steps to build a demonstration "zero energy" home in Wyandanch.

Now Supervisor Steve Bellone wants the town to get into the business of helping residents of existing homes to make their dwellings more energy-efficient. This $2 million initiative can't get started until the town amends its code to allow the program to use the solid waste management fund for this purpose. Once that's done, Babylon will make low-interest, 12-year loans for energy-