Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Europe's Renewable Romance Fades


From The Wall Street Journal



High energy bills and threats of blackouts ended the honeymoon. America, take note.



    By 
  • DAVID GARMAN
    AND SAMUEL THERNSTROM
Europe has bet big on wind and solar energy, and many environmental advocates would like America to follow. Wind and solar have a role in the U.S. energy economy, but we would be wise to see the cautionary tale in the European experience and adjust our plans accordingly.
Wind and solar generate 3.5% of America's electricity today, but Denmark gets 30% of its electricity from wind and hopes to produce 50% by 2020. Germany, Europe's largest national economy, produces roughly 12% of its electricity from wind and solar today, and it wants renewable energy to account for 35% of electricity generation by 2020.
Clean energy powered by renewable resources is understandably attractive. But the honeymoon with renewables is ending for some Europeans as the practical challenges of the relationship become clear.
The first challenge is cost. Germany has reportedly invested more than $250 billion in renewable energy deployment, and its households pay the highest power costs in Europe—except for the Danish. On average, Germans and Danes pay roughly 300% more for residential electricity than Americans do.
Another challenge of Europe's growing dependence on renewable energy is far more serious: the potential loss of reliable electrical supply. It's one thing to ask consumers to pay more for cleaner energy; it's another to force them to endure blackouts.
Getty Images
Wind turbines near Buetzow, Germany.
Since large amounts of electricity cannot be easily or inexpensively stored, it must be generated and delivered ("dispatched") to meet the constantly changing demand for power. As millions of consumers turn electric lights and appliances on and off, power generators and grid operators must match supply to demand to ensure that current is moving across wires at the proper frequency to avoid power failures, brownouts and other problems.
Normally, this is fairly straightforward. Grid operators generally rely on coal and nuclear plants to meet baseload demand while modifying gas and hydroelectric power output to meet shifting demand. But electricity from wind and solar is variable and intermittent. Nature determines when and how much power will be generated from available capacity, so it is not necessarily "dispatchable" when needed.
When intermittent renewables are small players in the grid, they can be easily absorbed. But as they reach European levels of penetration, the strain begins to show. There are increasing reports of management challenges resulting from wind and solar across the European grid, including frequency fluctuations, voltage support issues, and inadvertent power flows. Anxious operators are concerned about potential blackouts.
In an April 17, 2012, letter to EU Commissioner for Energy Gunter Oettinger, for example, Daniel Dobbeni, the European Network of Transmission System Operators president, said grid operators are "deeply concerned about the difference in speed between the connection of very large capacities of renewable energy resources and the realization in due time of the grid investments needed to support the massive increase of power flows these new resources bring." He also expressed great concern "about the potential destabilizing effect of outdated connection conditions for distributed generation that are not being retrofitted anywhere fast enough."
There are solutions for these problems—upgrades to electricity transmission and distribution and expansions of "dispatchable" generation capabilities, coupled with "demand-response" and other efficiency measures. But the additional cost will be significant. The International Energy Agency has warned that Germany will need to invest between €47.5 billion ($62.9 billion) and €72.5 billion ($96 billion) in transmission and distribution over the next 10 years.
For now, the American picture is different. Unlike Europe, the U.S. has excess generating capacity and generally adequate transmission and distribution systems, so variability in the small amount of electricity produced by wind and solar in most markets is not a significant problem. But renewables are growing quickly. As older nuclear plants are decommissioned and new Environmental Protection Agency regulations shut down coal-fired plants, states such as California that are increasing renewable requirements will start to look more like Europe, with its cost structure and grid-management challenges.
There is also an important lesson in the European experience with energy subsidies: Focus incentives so they reward the right behavior. Lavish subsidies for wind and solar have changed Europe's generation mix, but the costs have been high because the subsidy structure prioritized mass deployment rather than efficiency, reliability and innovation. Even in the U.S., the wind-production tax credit has occasionally produced "negative pricing"—that is, turbine operators pay grid operators to take their power even though it isn't needed, just so the wind generators can collect tax credits.
If Congress insists on subsidizing renewable energy (and to be fair, Washington subsidizes all forms of energy), it should reform subsidies to incentivize innovations that would improve the efficiency and reliability of wind and solar, as well as the development of improved energy-storage technologies.
It is not surprising that many Americans share the European passion for wind and solar. But, as with any relationship, once the initial infatuation fades and difficult issues start to emerge, thoughtful action is needed before the relationship sours. Careful reform of our policies, informed by lessons learned from Europe, could avoid an ugly divorce down the road and help renewables find their place in America's energy economy.

Mr. Garman, an assistant secretary and under secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy (2001-07), is on the board of directors of the Energy Innovation Reform Project. Mr. Thernstrom is executive director of EIRP.





















More Doctors Steer Clear of Medicare

From The Wall Street Journal

Some Doctors Opt Out of Program, Frustrated With Payment Rates and Mounting Rules




[image]Ben Sklar for The Wall Street Journal
Juliette Madrigal-Dersch, shown treating a patient in Marble Falls, Texas, is president of a group that advocates private-pay medicine.
Fewer American doctors are treating patients enrolled in the Medicare health program for seniors, reflecting frustration with its payment rates and pushback against mounting rules, according to health experts.
Fewer American doctors are treating patients enrolled in the Medicare health program for seniors, reflecting frustration with its payment rates and pushback against mounting rules, according to health experts. Stefanie Ilgenfritz reports. Photo: Ben Sklar for The Wall Street Journal.
The number of doctors who opted out of Medicare last year, while a small proportion of the nation's health professionals, nearly tripled from three years earlier, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the government agency that administers the program. Other doctors are limiting the number of Medicare patients they treat even if they don't formally opt out of the system.
Even fewer doctors say they are accepting new Medicaid patients, and the number who don't participate in private insurance contracts, while smaller, is growing—just as millions of Americans are poised to gain access to such coverage under the new health law next year. All told, health experts say the number of doctors going "off-grid" isn't enough to undermine the Affordable Care Act, but they say some Americans may have difficulty finding doctors who will take their new benefits or face long waits for appointments with those who do.

Doctor Goes Off Grid

Ben Sklar for The Wall Street Journal
Dr. Juliette Madrigal-Dersch's patients pay her directly.
CMS said 9,539 physicians who had accepted Medicare opted out of the program in 2012, up from 3,700 in 2009. That compares with 685,000 doctors who were enrolled as participating physicians in Medicare last year, according to CMS, which has never released annual opt-out figures before.
Meanwhile, the proportion of family doctors who accepted new Medicare patients last year, 81%, was down from 83% in 2010, according to a survey by the American Academy of Family Physicians of 800 members. The same study found that 4% of family physicians are now in cash-only or concierge practices, where patients pay a monthly or yearly fee for special access to doctors, up from 3% in 2010.
A study in the journal Health Affairs this month found that 33% of primary-care physicians didn't accept new Medicaid patients in 2010-2011.
The pullback in Medicare acceptance is being felt in certain quarters. Joe Baker, president of the Medicare Rights Center, said his patient-advocacy group has had an increase in calls from seniors who can't find doctors willing to treat them—mainly from affluent urban and suburban areas where many patients can pay out of pocket if their doctor doesn't accept Medicare. "In most places, doctors can't pick and choose because Medicare is the biggest game in town, or the only game in town," he said.
Some experts attribute the rise in defections to Medicare payment rates that haven't kept pace with inflation and the threat of more cuts to come. Under a budgetary formula enacted by Congress in 1997, physicians could see Medicare reimbursements slashed by 25% in 2014 unless Congress intervenes to delay the cuts, which it has done several times.
[image]
"Medicare has really been pushing its luck with physicians," said economist Paul Ginsburg, president of the nonpartisan Center for Studying Health System Change. "By allowing the SGR and its temporary fixes to persist, Medicare is risking a backlash by senior citizens who say, 'Hey, this program isn't giving me the access to doctors I need.' ."
Some doctors say Medicare's reimbursement rates—as low as $58 for a 15-minute office visit—force them to see 30 or more patients a day to make ends meet. "Family physicians have been fed up for a long time and it's getting worse," said Jeffrey Cain, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. By disengaging with Medicare and other third-party payers, he says doctors can practice based on what patients need, not what insurers will pay.
Other doctors are dropping out of Medicare to avoid deeper government involvement in medicine, much of which is occurring in Medicare. For example, Medicare is now paying incentives to doctors who switch to electronic medical records and who send data on quality measures to the federal government. Doctors who are part of the Medicare program who don't do so will face penalties starting in 2015.
While the leaders of some large doctor groups have endorsed such initiatives, Dr. Ginsburg says, "there are a lot of physicians, particularly older physicians, who say, 'I don't want to do this. Let me run out the rest of my career practicing like I've always done.' "

Some doctors are particularly concerned about patient privacy. Earlier this year, gynecologist Mary Jane Minkin, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine, opted out of Medicare and the Yale Medical Group when she saw that the electronic records system displayed patients' gynecological records to other providers they consulted. "There's no reason the dermatologist has to know about my patients' libido issues," Dr. Minkin said.
All but 10 of the 70 Medicare patients in her practice have continued to see her, Dr. Minkin said, even though they must pay out of pocket to do so.
Doctors have three options for dealing with Medicare. Those who participate bill Medicare directly and must agree to accept its reimbursement rates for all covered services. So-called nonparticipating doctors still file Medicare reimbursement claims but can charge as much as 10% over Medicare's rates for some services, and they must bill patients for the difference. Those who opt out can charge patients whatever they want, but they must forgo filing Medicare claims for two years, and their Medicare-eligible patients must pay out of pocket to see them.
That prospect rankles many elderly people—in part because they must continue paying their Medicare premiums or risk losing their Social Security benefits. Republican-sponsored legislation in the House and Senate would let seniors use their Medicare benefits to pay doctors privately, but opponents believe that would undermine the entire system, and the bills aren't given much chance of passage.
Doctors who don't take Medicare say they don't necessarily raise rates significantly. Some say not having to submit claims and file mandated reports allows them to keep their overhead low. They can also adjust their fees to fit patients' needs.
"We give discounts to teachers and preachers, and anybody who comes in wearing spurs gets $5 off," said Juliette Madrigal-Dersch, a pediatrician and internist in Marble Falls, Texas. She says she also treats patients who develop cancer free of charge. "I couldn't do that if I took Medicare. It's considered an illegal enticement." Dr. Madrigal-Dersch is president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a conservative group that advocates private-pay medicine. "It's gone from being a fringy, rebellious thing to a business model," she added.

When the Mayo Clinic's small family practice office in Glendale, Ariz., stopped taking Medicare in 2009, only about 500 of its 3,500 Medicare patients stayed on. Since then, an additional 250 elderly patients have joined the practice, paying between $200 to $575 a visit. Physicians say dropping out isn't easy, and some medical specialties are more dependent on Medicare than others.
Smiley Thakur, a kidney specialist in Seattle, stopped taking Medicare, Medicaid and commercial insurance in 2008 and had to resume two years later, mainly because he stopped getting referrals from other doctors. "Patients weren't interested in how good I was—they only wanted someone who took their insurance," Dr. Thakur said. "It's hard to compete with free."
Write to Melinda Beck at HealthJournal@wsj.com

New Science Standards Put Global Warming at Core of Curriculum

From National Review Online




One doesn’t need to be a global-warming skeptic to be appalled by a new set of national K–12 science standards. Those standards, developed by educrats and science administrators, and likely to be adopted initially by up to two dozen states, put the study of global warming and other ways that humans are destroying life as we know it at the very core of science education. This is a political choice, not a scientific one. But the standards are equally troubling in their embrace of thenostrums of progressive pedagogy.

Students educated under the Next Generation Science Standards will begin their lifelong attention to climate change as soon as they enter school. Kindergartners will be expected to “use tools and materials to design and build a structure that will reduce the warming effect of sunlight on an area” (perhaps this is what used to be known as “building a fort”) and “develop understanding of patterns and variations in local weather and the purpose of weather forecasting to prepare for, and respond to, severe weather.” Things get even scarier by the third grade, when students should be asking such questions as: “How can the impact of weather-related hazards be reduced?” The standards don’t mention protesting the Keystone pipeline as a possible “real-world” answer to the question of how to reduce “weather-related hazards,” but rest assured that the graduates of America’s left-wing education schools will not hesitate to include such hands-on learning experiences in their global-warming-politics — oops, make that “science” — classes. By high school, students are squarely in the world of environmental policy-making, expected to “evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics, as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts.”

Hard as it may be for the groups such the Alliance for Climate Education, a purveyor of climate-change school programs and — surprise! — an enthusiastic backer of the new standards, there really are other important areas of knowledge and concern. As long as we’re picking and choosing among scientific problems, why not start kindergartners thinking about cell mutation or neural pathways so they can fight cancer and Alzheimer’s disease when they grow up?

But even without their preening obsession with climate, biodiversity, and sustainability, the standards are a recipe for further American knowledge decline. The New York Times reports that the standards’ authors anticipate the possible elimination of traditional classes such as biology and chemistry from high school in favor of a more “holistic” approach. This contempt for traditional disciplines has already polluted college education, but it could do far more damage in high school. The disciplines represent real bodies of knowledge that must be mastered before one can begin to be legitimately interdisciplinary.

The standards drearily mimic progressive education’s enthusiasm for “critical-thinking skills.” Fourth-graders sound like veritable geysers of high-level abstract reasoning, expected to “demonstrate grade-appropriate proficiency in asking questions, developing and using models, planning and carrying out investigations, analyzing and interpreting data, constructing explanations and designing solutions, engaging in argument from evidence, and obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information.” I’d be happy if they knew all the planets, continents, major oceans and rivers, and a few galaxies. Such fancy-ancy cognitive talk gives teachers an excuse to gloss over the hard work of knocking concrete facts into their students’ heads – and ignores the truth that mastering such facts can be a source of pleasure and pride.  

Chinese students are not flooding into American Ph.D. programs because they have spent their high-school years pondering “a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems,” as the standards propose. They are filling the slots that Americans are unqualified for because they have spent years memorizing the Krebs cycle, the process of meiosis and mitosis, the periodic table, and the laws of thermodynamics and motion. The new science standards guarantee that we will look back on the years when Americans made up a piddling 50 percent of graduate-level science students as the high-water mark of American scientific literacy.

Monday, July 22, 2013

25 Facts About The Fall Of Detroit That Will Leave You Shaking Your Head

From Zerohedge




Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
It is so sad to watch one of America's greatest cities die a horrible death.  Once upon a time, the city of Detroit was a teeming metropolis of 1.8 million people and it had the highest per capita income in the United States.  Now it is a rotting, decaying hellhole of about 700,000 people that the rest of the world makes jokes about.  On Thursday, we learned that the decision had been made for the city of Detroit to formally file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.  It was going to be the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States by far, but on Friday it was stopped at least temporarily by an Ingham County judge. 
She ruled that Detroit's bankruptcy filing violates the Michigan Constitution because it would result in reduced pension payments for retired workers.  She also stated that Detroit's bankruptcy filing was "also not honoring the (United States) president, who took (Detroit’s auto companies) out of bankruptcy", and she ordered that a copy of her judgment be sent to Barack Obama.  How "honoring the president" has anything to do with the bankruptcy of Detroit is a bit of a mystery, but what that judge has done is ensured that there will be months of legal wrangling ahead over Detroit's money woes. 
It will be very interesting to see how all of this plays out.  But one thing is for sure - the city of Detroit is flat broke.  One of the greatest cities in the history of the world is just a shell of its former self.  The following are 25 facts about the fall of Detroit that will leave you shaking your head...
1) At this point, the city of Detroit owes money to more than 100,000 creditors.
2) Detroit is facing $20 billion in debt and unfunded liabilities.  That breaks down to more than $25,000 per resident.
3) Back in 1960, the city of Detroit actually had the highest per-capita income in the entire nation.
4) In 1950, there were about 296,000 manufacturing jobs in Detroit.  Today, there are less than 27,000.
5) Between December 2000 and December 2010, 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in the state of Michigan were lost.
6) There are lots of houses available for sale in Detroit right now for $500 or less.
7) At this point, there are approximately 78,000 abandoned homes in the city.
8) About one-third of Detroit's 140 square miles is either vacant or derelict.
9) An astounding 47 percent of the residents of the city of Detroit are functionally illiterate.
10) Less than half of the residents of Detroit over the age of 16 are working at this point.
11) If you can believe it, 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.
12) Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States, but over the past 60 years the population of Detroit has fallen by 63 percent.
13) The city of Detroit is now very heavily dependent on the tax revenue it pulls in from the casinos in the city.  Right now, Detroit is bringing in about 11 million dollars a month in tax revenue from the casinos.
14) There are 70 "Superfund" hazardous waste sites in Detroit.
15) 40 percent of the street lights do not work.
16) Only about a third of the ambulances are running.
17) Some ambulances in the city of Detroit have been used for so long that they have more than 250,000 miles on them.
18) Two-thirds of the parks in the city of Detroit have been permanently closed down since 2008.
19) The size of the police force in Detroit has been cut by about 40 percent over the past decade.
20) When you call the police in Detroit, it takes them an average of 58 minutes to respond.
21) Due to budget cutbacks, most police stations in Detroit are now closed to the public for 16 hours a day.
22) The violent crime rate in Detroit is five times higher than the national average.
23) The murder rate in Detroit is 11 times higher than it is in New York City.
24) Today, police solve less than 10 percent of the crimes that are committed in Detroit.
25) Crime has gotten so bad in Detroit that even the police are telling people to "enter Detroit at your own risk".
It is easy to point fingers and mock Detroit, but the truth is that the rest of America is going down the exact same path that Detroit has gone down.
Detroit just got there first.
All over this country, there are hundreds of state and local governments that are also on the verge of financial ruin...
"Everyone will say, 'Oh well, it's Detroit. I thought it was already in bankruptcy,' " said Michigan State University economist Eric Scorsone. "But Detroit is not unique. It's the same in Chicago and New York and San Diego and San Jose. It's a lot of major cities in this country. They may not be as extreme as Detroit, but a lot of them face the same problems."
A while back, Meredith Whitney was highly criticized for predicting that there would be a huge wave of municipal defaults in this country.  When it didn't happen, the critics let her have it mercilessly.
But Meredith Whitney was not wrong.
She was just early.
Detroit is only just the beginning.  When the next major financial crisis strikes, we are going to see a wave of municipal bankruptcies unlike anything we have ever seen before.
And of course the biggest debt problem of all in this country is the U.S. government.  We are going to pay a great price for piling up nearly 17 trillion dollars of debt and over 200 trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities.
All over the nation, our economic infrastructure is being gutted, debt levels are exploding and poverty is spreading.  We are consuming far more wealth than we are producing, and our share of global GDP has been declining dramatically.
We have been living way above our means for so long that we think it is "normal", but an extremely painful "adjustment" is coming and most Americans are not going to know how to handle it.
So don't laugh at Detroit.  The economic pain that Detroit is experiencing will be coming to your area of the country soon enough.

Saturday, July 20, 2013

We Have to Step In and Save Detroit

The New York Times



Steven Rattner
Steven Rattneron economic policy, finance and business.
For months, the question in many minds has been not whether Detroit would file for bankruptcy, but when.
But while Detroit’s decision this week to enter bankruptcy might make it easier to improve the city’s fiscal position, it will prove far tougher to design and implement an effective restructuring for Detroit than it was to put General Motors and Chrysler through Chapter 11.
That’s partly because municipal defaults are handled under a different section of the law — Chapter 9 instead of Chapter 11. The latter, which governs companies, includes a provision that allowed General Motors, the city’s largest company, to take a quick, 39-day rinse in bankruptcy.
Cities must go the slow route, almost certainly at least a year in Detroit’s case. Such lengthy bankruptcies are costly, not just in fees but more so in distraction for city officials and uncertainty for local businesspeople.
More important, Detroit is in far worse shape than the auto companies were in 2009. Its steadily declining population has meant falling tax revenues and, because it is difficult to cut expenses as quickly as revenues slip, six consecutive years of deficits.
And unlike the auto companies, which could close unneeded plants and shed workers without diminishing their ability to produce quality cars, Detroit has been cutting for years and is already delivering substandard services.
Ted McGrath
Average police response times have reached 58 minutes, compared with a national average of 11 minutes. Its per capita violent crime rate is nearly triple that of Cleveland and St. Louis, and it has fewer than half as many functioning streetlights per square mile as those cities. And on and on.
But while Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has capably overseen Detroit’s march to Chapter 9, neither the state nor the federal government has evinced any inclination to provide meaningful financial assistance.
That’s a mistake. No one likes bailouts or the prospect of rewarding Detroit’s historic fiscal mismanagement. But apart from voting in elections, the 700,000 remaining residents of the Motor City are no more responsible for Detroit’s problems than were the victims of Hurricane Sandy for theirs, and eventually Congress decided to help them.
America is just as much about aiding those less fortunate as it is about personal responsibility. Government does this in so many ways; why shouldn’t it help Detroit rebuild itself?
Many call for scaling back the city to fit realistic population projections. While logical, the potential for downsizing Detroit is limited because the city’s population didn’t flee from just one neighborhood; the departures were scattered, requiring Detroit to deliver services across a geographic area the size of Philadelphia, with less than half the population. Further cuts will surely come, but in some key areas, like public safety and blight removal, Detroit needs to spend more, not less.
That necessitates large-scale reductions in its liabilities, which total as much as $18 billion. By comparison, the country’s second largest municipal bankruptcy — that of Jefferson County, Ala., which is slightly smaller than Detroit in population — involves $4 billion of liabilities.
Detroit faces greater challenges than the automakers because the structure of its obligations is quite different from those of General Motors and Chrysler.
Detroit owes approximately $5.3 billion on debt that has first call on all water and sewer revenues, which means the holders of that debt have to the right to take as much of the water and sewer fees (after operating expenses) as are needed to service the debt.
The bulk of its obligations are to the grossly underfunded pension plans and for retiree health care costs — nearly half of the city’s total liabilities. The city has suggested that it cut these by 90 percent. Although retirees don’t have a lot of legal rights in the bankruptcy process, it is difficult to imagine — on either a human or a political level — an exit from bankruptcy that would include reductions of this magnitude.
The first duty to help lies with the state: Gov. Rick Snyder has made clear that Detroit’s success is key to Michigan’s success.
For starters, if the state assumes responsibility for the $1.25 billion in reinvestment spending that Detroit’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, has included in his proposed budget, the city could use those freed-up funds to trim the potential pension reductions of retirees. And the Obama administration should comb through its urban programs to try to allocate more funds to a city that is truly in distress. (If I thought it could pass Congress, I’d happily support a special appropriation, but the politics of any spending are toxic in Washington these days.)
Given the depth of Detroit’s hole, no one should doubt that one of the important principles of the auto rescue — shared sacrifice by creditors, workers and other stakeholders — should be maintained.
When President Obama rescued the auto companies, his decision was politically unpopular. By the time of last fall’s presidential election, a majority of Americans had swung in favor of the move. History could repeat itself.

Monday, July 15, 2013

FBI records: agents found no evidence that Zimmerman was racist

From McClatchy



After interviewing nearly three dozen people in the George Zimmerman murder case, the FBI found no evidence that racial bias was a motivating factor in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, records released Thursday show.
Even the lead detective in the case, Sanford Det. Chris Serino, told agents that he thought Zimmerman profiled Trayvon because of his attire and the circumstances — but not his race.
Serino saw Zimmerman as “having little hero complex, but not as a racist.”
The Duval County State Attorney released another collection of evidence in the Zimmerman murder case Thursday, including reports from FBI agents who investigated whether any racial bias was involved in Trayvon’s Feb. 26 killing.
The evidence includes bank surveillance videos from the day of the killing, crime scene photos and memos from prosecutors.
Among the documents is a note from the prosecutor who said one of the witnesses said her son, a minor, had felt pressured by investigators to say the injured man he saw was wearing a red top. The boy’s testimony had been considered key, because it backed up Zimmerman’s allegation that he — wearing red — was being pummeled.
Federal agents interviewed Zimmerman’s neighbors and co-workers, but none said Zimmerman had expressed racial animus at any time prior to the Feb. 26 shooting of Martin, a black teen, in a confrontation at a Sanford housing complex. As Sanford police investigated the circumstances of Martin’s death, the FBI opened a parallel probe to determine if Martin’s civil rights had been violated.
Several co-workers said they had never seen Zimmerman display any prejudice or racial bias.
Two co-workers told agents they spoke with Zimmerman the day after the shooting, and both said they noticed injuries to Zimmerman’s nose and the back of his head. One person said Zimmerman was “absolutely devastated.”
Zimmerman told both colleagues that he followed Martin — whom Zimmerman described as a “suspicious person” — so he could tell police where the teen went, but was then “jumped” by Martin. Zimmerman told both that Martin reached for Zimmerman’s gun before Zimmerman shot Martin.
In all, the FBI interviewed 35 people about Zimmerman, from current and former co-workers to neighbors and an ex-girlfriend.
Among the revelations found in nearly 300 pages of records:
• Zimmerman arrived at one of his police interviews with a friend who works as an air marshal. That friend told police Zimmerman was physically abused by his mother and had been estranged from his family.
• The day Zimmerman turned himself in to be charged with second-degree murder, authorities confiscated a handgun from his car.
• A gun dealer called police to say that some time in mid-March, Zimmerman called to say he was afraid for his life and “needed more guns.”
• An ex-girlfriend said Zimmerman had outbursts and sometimes threatened suicide. She suspected it was a result of Accutane, the acne medicine he took. She said he was the “last person in the world” she thought would be involved in such an incident.
• The ex girlfriend said she and Zimmerman had a violent argument when she caught him on a singles dating web site, even though they were engaged to be married.
• Trayvon’s cousin said he would swear “on a stack of bibles” that the person shouting in a 911 tape that recorded screams during the struggle was Trayvon.
Zimmerman, 28, claims Trayvon attacked him, breaking his nose and slamming his head on the concrete at the Retreat at Twin Lakes townhouse complex. Specially appointed prosecutors who investigated the case charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder, which carries a potential life sentence.
The state attorney’s office says Zimmerman wrongly assumed Trayvon was a criminal, and says he did not suffer injuries serious enough to require deadly force to defend himself.
The U.S. Department of Justice and FBI stepped in about a month after the killing, as protesters nationwide criticized the investigation. The original probe was conducted by police in Sanford, the central Florida community where Zimmerman lives and Trayvon was visiting while suspended from school.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/07/12/155918/more-evidence-released-in-trayvon.html#.UeSQD2Tg2Dq#storylink=cpy



From Reuters

George Zimmerman: Prelude to a shooting



Neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman leaves the Seminole County Jail after posting bail in Sanford, Florida, April 22, 2012. REUTERS-David Manning
1 of 8. Neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman leaves the Seminole County Jail after posting bail in Sanford, Florida, April 22, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/David Manning
SANFORD, Florida | Wed Apr 25, 2012 5:20pm EDT
(Reuters) - A pit bull named Big Boi began menacing George and Shellie Zimmerman in the fall of 2009.
The first time the dog ran free and cornered Shellie in their gated community in Sanford, Florida, George called the owner to complain. The second time, Big Boi frightened his mother-in-law's dog. Zimmerman called Seminole County Animal Services and bought pepper spray. The third time he saw the dog on the loose, he called again. An officer came to the house, county records show.
"Don't use pepper spray," he told the Zimmermans, according to a friend. "It'll take two or three seconds to take effect, but a quarter second for the dog to jump you," he said.
"Get a gun."
That November, the Zimmermans completed firearms training at a local lodge and received concealed-weapons gun permits. In early December, another source close to them told Reuters, the couple bought a pair of guns. George picked a Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm handgun, a popular, lightweight weapon.
By June 2011, Zimmerman's attention had shifted from a loose pit bull to a wave of robberies that rattled the community, called the Retreat at Twin Lakes. The homeowners association asked him to launch a neighborhood watch, and Zimmerman would begin to carry the Kel-Tec on his regular, dog-walking patrol - a violation of neighborhood watch guidelines but not a crime.
Few of his closest neighbors knew he carried a gun - until two months ago.
On February 26, George Zimmerman shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in what Zimmerman says was self-defense. The furor that ensued has consumed the country and prompted a re-examination of guns, race and self-defense laws enacted in nearly half the United States.
During the time Zimmerman was in hiding, his detractors defined him as a vigilante who had decided Martin was suspicious merely because he was black. After Zimmerman was finally arrested on a charge of second-degree murder more than six weeks after the shooting, prosecutors portrayed him as a violent and angry man who disregarded authority by pursuing the 17-year-old.
But a more nuanced portrait of Zimmerman has emerged from a Reuters investigation into Zimmerman's past and a series of incidents in the community in the months preceding the Martin shooting.
Based on extensive interviews with relatives, friends, neighbors, schoolmates and co-workers of Zimmerman in two states, law enforcement officials, and reviews of court documents and police reports, the story sheds new light on the man at the center of one of the most controversial homicide cases in America.
The 28-year-old insurance-fraud investigator comes from a deeply Catholic background and was taught in his early years to do right by those less fortunate. He was raised in a racially integrated household and himself has black roots through an Afro-Peruvian great-grandfather - the father of the maternal grandmother who helped raise him.
A criminal justice student who aspired to become a judge, Zimmerman also concerned himself with the safety of his neighbors after a series of break-ins committed by young African-American men.
Though civil rights demonstrators have argued Zimmerman should not have prejudged Martin, one black neighbor of the Zimmermans said recent history should be taken into account.
"Let's talk about the elephant in the room. I'm black, OK?" the woman said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. "There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood," she said. "That's why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin."
"MIXED" HOUSEHOLD
George Michael Zimmerman was born in 1983 to Robert and Gladys Zimmerman, the third of four children. Robert Zimmerman Sr. was a U.S. Army veteran who served in Vietnam in 1970, and was stationed at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, in 1975 with Gladys Mesa's brother George. Zimmerman Sr. also served two tours in Korea, and spent the final 10 years of his 22-year military career in the Pentagon, working for the Department of Defense, a family member said.
In his final years in Virginia before retiring to Florida, Robert Zimmerman served as a magistrate in Fairfax County's 19th Judicial District.
Robert and Gladys met in January 1975, when George Mesa brought along his army buddy to his sister's birthday party. She was visiting from Peru, on vacation from her job there as a physical education teacher. Robert was a Baptist, Gladys was Catholic. They soon married, in a Catholic ceremony in Alexandria, and moved to nearby Manassas.
Gladys came to lead a small but growing Catholic Hispanic enclave within the All Saints Catholic Church parish in the late 1970s, where she was involved in the church's outreach programs. Gladys would bring young George along with her on "home visits" to poor families, said a family friend, Teresa Post.
"It was part of their upbringing to know that there are people in need, people more in need than themselves," said Post, a Peruvian immigrant who lived with the Zimmermans for a time.
Post recalls evening prayers before dinner in the ethnically diverse Zimmerman household, which included siblings Robert Jr., Grace, and Dawn. "It wasn't only white or only Hispanic or only black - it was mixed," she said.
Zimmerman's maternal grandmother, Cristina, who had lived with the Zimmermans since 1978, worked as a babysitter for years during Zimmerman's childhood. For several years she cared for two African-American girls who ate their meals at the Zimmerman house and went back and forth to school each day with the Zimmerman children.
"They were part of the household for years, until they were old enough to be on their own," Post said.
Zimmerman served as an altar boy at All Saints from age 7 to 17, church members said.
"He wasn't the type where, you know, 'I'm being forced to do this,' and a dragging-his-feet Catholic," said Sandra Vega, who went to high school with George and his siblings. "He was an altar boy for years, and then worked in the rectory too. He has a really good heart."
George grew up bilingual, and by age 10 he was often called to the Haydon Elementary School principal's office to act as a translator between administrators and immigrant parents. At 14 he became obsessed with becoming a Marine, a relative said, joining the after-school ROTC program at Grace E. Metz Middle School and polishing his boots by night. At 15, he worked three part-time jobs - in a Mexican restaurant, for the rectory, and washing cars - on nights and weekends, to save up for a car.
After graduating from Osbourn High School in 2001, Zimmerman moved to Lake Mary, Florida, a town neighboring Sanford. His parents purchased a retirement home there in 2002, in part to bring Cristina, who suffers from arthritis, to a warmer climate.
YOUNG INSURANCE AGENT
On his own at 18, George got a job at an insurance agency and began to take classes at night to earn a license to sell insurance. He grew friendly with a real estate agent named Lee Ann Benjamin, who shared office space in the building, and later her husband, John Donnelly, a Sanford attorney.
"George impressed me right off the bat as just a real go-getter," Donnelly said. "He was working days and taking all these classes at night, passing all the insurance classes, not just for home insurance, but auto insurance and everything. He wanted to open his own office - and he did."
In 2004, Zimmerman partnered with an African-American friend and opened up an Allstate insurance satellite office, Donnelly said.
Then came 2005, and a series of troubles. Zimmerman's business failed, he was arrested, and he broke off an engagement with a woman who filed a restraining order against him.
That July, Zimmerman was charged with resisting arrest, violence, and battery of an officer after shoving an undercover alcohol-control agent who was arresting an under-age friend of Zimmerman's at a bar. He avoided conviction by agreeing to participate in a pre-trial diversion program that included anger-management classes.
In August, Zimmerman's fiancee at the time, Veronica Zuazo, filed a civil motion for a restraining order alleging domestic violence. Zimmerman reciprocated with his own order on the same grounds, and both orders were granted. The relationship ended.
In 2007 he married Shellie Dean, a licensed cosmetologist, and in 2009 the couple rented a townhouse in the Retreat at Twin Lakes. Zimmerman had bounced from job to job for a couple of years, working at a car dealership and a mortgage company. At times, according to testimony from Shellie at a bond hearing for Zimmerman last week, the couple filed for unemployment benefits.
Zimmerman enrolled in Seminole State College in 2009, and in December 2011 he was permitted to participate in a school graduation ceremony, despite being a course credit shy of his associate's degree in criminal justice. Zimmerman was completing that course credit when the shooting occurred.
On March 22, nearly a month after the shooting and with the controversy by then swirling nationwide, the school issued a press release saying it was taking the "unusual, but necessary" step of withdrawing Zimmerman's enrollment, citing "the safety of our students on campus as well as for Mr. Zimmerman."
A NEIGHBORHOOD IN FEAR
By the summer of 2011, Twin Lakes was experiencing a rash of burglaries and break-ins. Previously a family-friendly, first-time homeowner community, it was devastated by the recession that hit the Florida housing market, and transient renters began to occupy some of the 263 town houses in the complex. Vandalism and occasional drug activity were reported, and home values plunged. One resident who bought his home in 2006 for $250,000 said it was worth $80,000 today.
At least eight burglaries were reported within Twin Lakes in the 14 months prior to the Trayvon Martin shooting, according to the Sanford Police Department. Yet in a series of interviews, Twin Lakes residents said dozens of reports of attempted break-ins and would-be burglars casing homes had created an atmosphere of growing fear in the neighborhood.
In several of the incidents, witnesses identified the suspects to police as young black men. Twin Lakes is about 50 percent white, with an African-American and Hispanic population of about 20 percent each, roughly similar to the surrounding city of Sanford, according to U.S. Census data.
One morning in July 2011, a black teenager walked up to Zimmerman's front porch and stole a bicycle, neighbors told Reuters. A police report was taken, though the bicycle was not recovered.
But it was the August incursion into the home of Olivia Bertalan that really troubled the neighborhood, particularly Zimmerman. Shellie was home most days, taking online courses towards certification as a registered nurse.
On August 3, Bertalan was at home with her infant son while her husband, Michael, was at work. She watched from a downstairs window, she said, as two black men repeatedly rang her doorbell and then entered through a sliding door at the back of the house. She ran upstairs, locked herself inside the boy's bedroom, and called a police dispatcher, whispering frantically.
"I said, 'What am I supposed to do? I hear them coming up the stairs!'" she told Reuters. Bertalan tried to coo her crying child into silence and armed herself with a pair of rusty scissors.
Police arrived just as the burglars - who had been trying to disconnect the couple's television - fled out a back door. Shellie Zimmerman saw a black male teen running through her backyard and reported it to police.
After police left Bertalan, George Zimmerman arrived at the front door in a shirt and tie, she said. He gave her his contact numbers on an index card and invited her to visit his wife if she ever felt unsafe. He returned later and gave her a stronger lock to bolster the sliding door that had been forced open.
"He was so mellow and calm, very helpful and very, very sweet," she said last week. "We didn't really know George at first, but after the break-in we talked to him on a daily basis. People were freaked out. It wasn't just George calling police ... we were calling police at least once a week."
In September, a group of neighbors including Zimmerman approached the homeowners association with their concerns, she said. Zimmerman was asked to head up a new neighborhood watch. He agreed.
"PLEASE CONTACT OUR CAPTAIN"
Police had advised Bertalan to get a dog. She and her husband decided to move out instead, and left two days before the shooting. Zimmerman took the advice.
"He'd already had a mutt that he walked around the neighborhood every night - man, he loved that dog - but after that home invasion he also got a Rottweiler," said Jorge Rodriguez, a friend and neighbor of the Zimmermans.
Around the same time, Zimmerman also gave Rodriguez and his wife, Audria, his contact information, so they could reach him day or night. Rodriguez showed the index card to Reuters. In neat cursive was a list of George and Shellie's home number and cell phones, as well as their emails.
Less than two weeks later, another Twin Lakes home was burglarized, police reports show. Two weeks after that, a home under construction was vandalized.
The Retreat at Twin Lakes e-newsletter for February 2012 noted: "The Sanford PD has announced an increased patrol within our neighborhood ... during peak crime hours.
"If you've been a victim of a crime in the community, after calling police, please contact our captain, George Zimmerman."
EMMANUEL BURGESS - SETTING THE STAGE
On February 2, 2012, Zimmerman placed a call to Sanford police after spotting a young black man he recognized peering into the windows of a neighbor's empty home, according to several friends and neighbors.
"I don't know what he's doing. I don't want to approach him, personally," Zimmerman said in the call, which was recorded. The dispatcher advised him that a patrol car was on the way. By the time police arrived, according to the dispatch report, the suspect had fled.
On February 6, the home of another Twin Lakes resident, Tatiana Demeacis, was burglarized. Two roofers working directly across the street said they saw two African-American men lingering in the yard at the time of the break-in. A new laptop and some gold jewelry were stolen. One of the roofers called police the next day after spotting one of the suspects among a group of male teenagers, three black and one white, on bicycles.
Police found Demeacis's laptop in the backpack of 18-year-old Emmanuel Burgess, police reports show, and charged him with dealing in stolen property. Burgess was the same man Zimmerman had spotted on February 2.
Burgess had committed a series of burglaries on the other side of town in 2008 and 2009, pleaded guilty to several, and spent all of 2010 incarcerated in a juvenile facility, his attorney said. He is now in jail on parole violations.
Three days after Burgess was arrested, Zimmerman's grandmother was hospitalized for an infection, and the following week his father was also admitted for a heart condition. Zimmerman spent a number of those nights on a hospital room couch.
Ten days after his father was hospitalized, Zimmerman noticed another young man in the neighborhood, acting in a way he found familiar, so he made another call to police.
"We've had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there's a real suspicious guy," Zimmerman said, as Trayvon Martin returned home from the store.
The last time Zimmerman had called police, to report Burgess, he followed protocol and waited for police to arrive. They were too late, and Burgess got away.
This time, Zimmerman was not so patient, and he disregarded police advice against pursuing Martin.
"These assholes," he muttered in an aside, "they always get away."
After the phone call ended, several minutes passed when the movements of Zimmerman and Martin remain a mystery.
Moments later, Martin lay dead with a bullet in his chest.

(Editing by David Adams, Daniel Trotta and Prudence Crowther)