Monthly Archives: December 2011

Here’s to 2012 (cuz 2011 royally sucked)

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I’m not jumping up and down to celebrate New Year’s Eve this time around. In fact, I’ll be lucky if I make it to watch the ball drop on teevee at midnight.

It’s not that I’m not happy about the coming of 2012. Quite the contrary. Partly it’s just that I’m old and boring now. I’m trying to grow some facial hair to make myself less boring, but that’s not going so well. Mainly I just look like I need to wash my face.

But the main reason I’m not in happy-happy-noisemaker mode is that I’m tired. 2011 absolutely kicked my ass.

And it’s not just me. Really, get Julie, kestrel or Maggie talking about their years. Seems like most people I know had a tough year. Weird how so often good and bad years seem to be so shared.

But health, injuries, up-and-down employment, couple of casualties – all that stuff was there, but it kinda sucked beyond the personal, too. There was Irene and Fukushima. There’s another winter that’s way too warm and wet, suggesting climate change is on the fastest possible track anybody could’ve imagined. The Iraq War is sorta-kinda-mostly over, and that’s a great thing – but in other policy spheres, the Tea Party has managed to grind government to an absolute standstill.

But 2012 is an election year, and election years are different. The sense of flux that surrounds elections seems to trickle down into the rest of society. Cynicism ticks up, sure – but also the sense that anything is possible (and I suppose those two things are the flip sides of each other). Things happen on election years.

So with all the oomph I can muster, I sez “bring it on, 2012!”

I mean, seriously – it can’t be any worse, right?

Well, there is that end-of-the-world thing.

A Nuclear New Year to All!

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It seems to have been the “perfect storm” of natural disaster and gross negligence.  

For sheer long-term impact, perhaps the most under-appreciated event of 2011 is the nuclear accident at Fukushima.

That this convergence of worst-case scenarios continues to be compounded by decisions made to protect industry and political interests is a shame and a crime.  Witness: the Japanese government’s Nuclear Accident Interim Report which found that

Plans laid out by the Nuclear Disaster Special Measures Law did not function properly because the scale of the disaster was unimaginable.

Following a 2007 offshore earthquake at Niigata that damaged a nuclear facility, Japanese nuclear regulators began an investigation to determine the potential for a catastophic nuclear emergency precipitated by natural disaster. They were forced to terminate the effort for political reasons.

…local governments opposed this probe, saying that if a claim was made that the earthquake caused the nuclear accident, the public would be overly apprehensive. The agency then concluded, “There is virtually no possibility that a natural disaster could cause a nuclear disaster,” and the probe was terminated.

Fast forward to 2011, post-Fukushima, where damage control still seems to be the order of the day.

On December 16, the Japanese government declared that the situation at the crippled nuclear plant has been resolved, a statement that was endorsed with enthusiasm by U.S. nuclear interests.  

However, as we noted just days ago, the disaster at Fukushima may have been largely forgotten by the mainstream media, but it is hardly over.  

Arnie Gundersen explains in the latest Fairewinds Assoc. video why the “stability” of the plants is of an extremely tenuous nature, with makeshift fixes holding the line only so long as no further seismic upsets occur to topple them like a house of cards.

We are also told that, besides water-born contamination escaping from the crippled reactors, a conscious decision has been made to dump incinerated nuclear waste into Tokyo Bay.  

Furthermore, human exposures appear to have been (and continue to be) badly mismanaged.

TEPCO Believes Mission Accomplished & Regulators Allow Radioactive Dumping in Tokyo Bay from Fairewinds Energy Education on Vimeo.

2012: Where do we go from here?

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( – promoted by Sue Prent)

I want to take this opportunity to wish all Vermonters a very happy holiday season and a wonderful new year.

The year 2011 has been a tough one for Vermont and our country.  The recession caused by the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of Wall Street continues.  While Vermont is doing better economically than much of the country, too many of our friends and neighbors are unemployed or underemployed or are earning less than they need to adequately support their families.

Further, in Vermont we have had to deal with the devastation of Hurricane Irene, which caused so much hardship for individuals and businesses.  We should all be grateful for the efforts of state and local officials, first responders, the many hundreds of volunteers, and members of the National Guard who all did such an extraordinary job in the cleanup and recovery effort.

It is no secret that the people of our country are angry and frustrated with Washington and their government.  They correctly perceive that we face enormous problems: a collapsing middle class, increased poverty and a growing gap between the very rich and everyone else; sky-high unemployment; 50 million Americans without health insurance; a deteriorating infrastructure;  the continued loss of our manufacturing capabilities; the ongoing mortgage and student loan crises, and the planetary challenge of global warming.  And on top of all of that, we have a $15 trillion dollar national debt.

The American people want action.  They want their government to start representing the 99 percent, not just the top 1 percent.  With that goal in mind, let me say a few words about some of the issues that I will be working on when Congress reconvenes in January.

With more than 24 million Americans unemployed or underemployed, 15 percent of our workforce, we must be aggressive about creating the millions of new jobs we desperately need.  It is simply not acceptable that high school or college graduates are not able to find work as they try to begin their careers.  It is horrific that millions of older workers, who were looking forward to secure retirements, find themselves unemployed and facing the possibility that they may never again have a job.

One of the fastest ways to create jobs is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure – roads, bridges, railroads, airports, water systems, wastewater plants and aging schools.  While we spend 2 percent of our GDP on infrastructure, China spends 9 percent and Europe spends 5 percent.  We also need to make sure that Vermont and all of rural America gets the quality broadband and cell phone service that we deserve in order to be able to compete in the 21st century.  When we rebuild and improve our infrastructure we not only create a significant number of jobs, we make our country more efficient and productive.  I will continue to fight for a substantial federal investment in infrastructure.

Another important way to create jobs – while we protect our environment, address global warming and prevent new wars – is to transform our energy system away from foreign oil and fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy.  In Vermont, we already lead the country in energy efficiency, but much, much more can be done.  We can create many new jobs weatherizing homes and buildings while, at the same time, we cut greenhouse gas emissions and save consumers money on their fuel bills.  This is a win, win, win proposition.  We must also be more aggressive in moving toward such job creating sustainable energy technologies as wind, solar, geothermal and biomass.  

When we talk about the economy and jobs, we cannot forget about the need for real Wall Street reform.  After all, it was the outrageous behavior of Wall Street which caused this recession in the first place. Incredibly, after we bailed out the behemoth banks that were “too big to fail,” three out of the four are now even bigger than before the financial crisis. Within the next several months I will be introducing legislation which would bring fundamental change to the Federal Reserve as well as the way that largest financial institutions in this country are run.    

While we focus on job creation and the economy, we cannot forget about some of the most vulnerable people in our country – the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor. As chairman of the Defending Social Security Caucus, I intend to do all that I can to protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the needs of our veterans.

Last but not least, this country faces a major deficit as a result of two wars that were not paid for, tax breaks for the rich, and reduced revenue because of the recession. The deficit crisis must be resolved but in a way that is fair to the middle class.  As part of any deficit-reduction package, the wealthiest people in this country, many of whom are doing phenomenally well, must be asked to pay their fair share of taxes.  We must also do away with the hundreds of billions in corporate loopholes that currently exist, which enable many large and profitable corporations to pay little or nothing in federal taxes.

We The Real People

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The Fascinating History of How Corporations Became “People”:

The most notorious case of activism by the Roberts court was its ruling inCitizens United v Federal Election Commission, which overturned key provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, rules that kept corporations — and their lobbyists and front groups (as well as labor unions) — from spending unlimited amounts of cash on campaign advertising within 60 days of a general election for federal office (or 30 days before a primary).

…

To arrive at their ruling, the court’s conservative majority stretched the Orwellian legal concept known as “corporate personhood” to the limit, and gave faceless multinationals expansive rights to influence our elections under the auspices of the First Amendment.

…

Early on, the plaintiffs themselves had decided not to base their case on the First Amendment. It was the conservative justices themselves who ordered the case re-argued fully a month after a ruling had been expected, asking the lawyers to present the free speech argument they’d earlier abandoned.

In his dissent, Justice Stevens noted that it was a highly unusual move, and that the court had further ruled on a Constitutional issue that it didn’t need to consider in order to decide the case before it — the diametric opposite of the principle of “judicial restraint.” He charged that the conservative majority had “changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.”

…

 

Corporate personhood's origin in English law was reasonable enough; it was only by considering companies “persons” that they could be taken to court and sued. You can’t sue an inanimate object.

During the 19th century, however, the robber barons, aided by a few corrupt jurists deep in their pockets, took the concept to a whole new level in the United States. According to legal textbooks, the idea that corporations enjoy the same constitutional rights as you or I was codified in the 1886 decision Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. But historian Thom Hartmann dug into the original case documents and found that this crucially important legal doctrine actually originated with what may be the most significant act of corruption in history.

It occurred during a seemingly routine tax case: Santa Clara sued the Southern Pacific Railroad to pay property taxes on the land it held in the county, and the railroad claimed that because states had different rates, allowing them to tax its holdings would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th  Amendment. The railroads had made the claim in previous cases, but the courts had never bought the argument.

In a 2005 interview with BuzzFlash's Mark Karlin, Hartmann described his surprise when he went to a Vermont courthouse to read an original copy of the verdict and found that the judges had made no mention of corporate personhood. “In fact,” he told Karlin, “the decision says, at its end, that because they could find a California state law that covered the case ‘it is not necessary to consider any other questions’ such as the constitutionality of the railroad’s claim to personhood.”

Hartmann then explained how it was that corporations actually became “people”:

In the headnote to the case—a commentary written by the clerk, which is not legally binding, it’s just a commentary to help out law students and whatnot, summarizing the case—the Court’s clerk wrote: “The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The discovery “that we’d been operating for over 100 years on an incorrect headnote” led Hartmann to look into the past of the clerk who’d written it, J. C. Bancroft Davis. He discovered that Davis had been a corrupt official who had himself previously served as the president of a railroad. Digging deeper, Hartmann then discovered that Davis had been working “in collusion with another corrupt Supreme Court Justice, Stephen Field.” The railroad companies, according to Hartmann, had promised Field that they’d sponsor his run for the White House if he assisted them in their effort to gain constitutional rights.

So here we are entering the 2012 election cycle officially next week with the Iowa caucuses, and rich corporations can spend as much as they want to influence our democracy.  Citizens United is a decision of epic, horrible consequences that ranks up there with some of the worst in our history.

One way to overturn what the Supreme Court says is to change the Constitution itself.  It's not easy, as you might recall from civics class: Congress must either propose amendments with 2/3 of each chamber passing or call a national convention when 2/3 of state legislatures ask for one, then 3/4 of the state legislatures or state conventions must ratify what comes out of that process.

There a a few movements afoot to rev up this constitutional processes, including a call for convention.  Something a little more focused is spearheaded by our own Senator Bernie Sanders, who writes:

I am a proud sponsor of a number of bills that would respond to Citizens United and begin to get a handle on the problem. But more needs to be done, something more fundamental and indisputable, something that cannot be turned on its head by a Supreme Court decision. That is why I proposed the constitutional amendment in the Senate as a companion measure to an amendment proposed in the House of Representatives by Congressman Ted Deutch.

We have got to send a constitutional amendment to the states that says simply and straightforwardly what everyone – except five members of the United States Supreme Court – understands: Corporations are not people with equal constitutional rights. Corporations are subject to regulation by the people. Corporations may not make campaign contributions — the law of the land for the last century. And Congress and states have the power to regulate campaign finances.

You can see more about his proposal and sign a petition in support at his official website.  But in Vermont we can do more than do the online petition thing.  We've got a long, vibrant history of the People making our voices heard through direct democracy at Town Meeting, so you might also consider helping get an item on ballots and meeting agendas across this state this March.

Vermonters Say: Corporations Are Not People!

In light of the United States Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that equates money with speech and gives corporations rights constitutionally intended for natural persons, shall the city/town/gore of___________________________________ (municipality name) vote on ___________________(town meeting date) to urge the Vermont Congressional Delegation and the U.S. Congress to propose a U.S. Constitutional amendment for the States’ consideration which provides that money is not speech, and that corporations are not persons under the U.S. Constitution, that the General Assembly of the State of Vermont pass a similar resolution, and that the town send its resolution to Vermont State and Federal representatives within thirty days of passage of this measure?

To get an article placed on the warning for Town Meeting:

The petition must contain signatures of 5% of the voters requesting placement of articles on the warning for the Annual Meeting and must be received by the Selectboard or the School Board at least 40 days prior to Town Meeting. 17 V.S.A.§2642(a).

  • Although the law requires that petitions be received 40 days before the meeting, most Selectboards and School Boards like to post their full warning as soon as possible (40 days before the meeting), so it would be most courteous and a best practice to deliver your petition to the Town Clerk before the last Selectboard or School Board meeting that will occur before the 40th day before the town meeting. Call your Town Clerk and they can advise you of the best time to file.

So we have until no later than January 26th, 2012, to gather the appropriate signatures.  In our little town of Fletcher, we need about 45 registered voters to sign.  In other locales that number will obviously be higher.  If you would like to sign in your town or otherwise get involved, please check out the growing contact list.  And please spread the word to all the real persons you know, whether it be via Facebook or, you know, real life.

The more we build a groundswell at the local and state level, the more chance we have to restore “one person, one vote” and take our democracy back from big spending corporations whose mantra is “one dollar, one vote.”

ntodd

Oh, John McClaughry, you little scamp, you!

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So I just noticed bmike’s recent diary entitled “WTF?” Turned out he was exercised about something stupid John McClaughry said in an opinion piece. Nothing new there.

(For those of you just joining us, McClaughry is the founder of the Ethan Allen Institute, and a devout conservative/libertarian/free marketer. Gotta be lonely to be one o’ them in Vermont, hanging out with the likes of Paul Beaudry and paying good money to put Rob Roper on the radio.)

Out of sheer, I don’t know, idle curiosity, I did a Google Image search for ol’ John. And one of the top hits featured a picture of him wearing an obviously false mustache and a set of fatigues. (See photo here.)

Hmm. I clicked on the link. It was to a 2002 conference held in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico, of the International Society for Individual Liberty. The subject was “Advancing Liberty in Latin America.”

‘Cause, you know, nothing wrong in Latin America that a dose of Ayn Rand couldn’t cure.

And there, in the midst of this “humanitarian” effort to lift Latinos out of their socialist morass and into a new dawn of prosperity, was ol’ John giving what must have been a side-splitting impersonation of “El Jefe General Saturino Borhorquez,” a stereotypical tinpot dictator who had found the gospel of Randianism and renounced his statist ways. From the conference report:

John McClaughry… delivered a hilarious skit as a reformed banana-republic dictator. Strutting to the fore in a military uniform, hat and boots, with a wide red sash and jangling medals, he must have been a sight for the locals. He renamed his country “Nueva Prosperidad” and rhymed off the libertarian reforms that would bring prosperity.

It then adds, “All good satirical fun.” Unfortunately, the accompanying offer to “buy the tape” is no longer online. I would have been sorely tempted. Because you know what usually happens when devout conservatives try to indulge in “satirical fun” involving ludicrous costumes and ethnic stereotypes.

So John, are you available for weddings and bar mitzvahs?

(Addendum: Bringing forward a very perceptive comment by BP. Wish I’d thought of it myself:

Notice even McClaughry’s imaginary “Neueva Prosperidad” reforms advancing liberty don’t come at the ballot box but from a dictator.

Exactly right, BP. Libertarians have gotta know, somewhere deep inside, that they’ll never win through democratic means. El Jefe is their deepest fantasy (and ultimate self-contradiction) personified: the overthrow of statism through the absolute power of the state.)

WTF?

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I just don’t know what to do with this:

Another feature of the reborn 2008 Shumlin bill is the all-out taxpayer-financed “climate change educational campaign,” also known as the “Green Madrassah,” through which the next generation of Vermonters will be thoroughly indoctrinated in Al Gore and Bill McKibben’s apocalyptic climate theology. This is designed to reduce resistance to the increasingly desperate tax and regulatory schemes that will likely be needed to push Vermont to the goal of 90 percent of energy from renewables by 2050.

http://www.benningtonbanner.co…

Resolutions, Anyone?

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Once again,  I’d like to introduce an open thread of New Years resolutions that politicos might make for 2012.

I’ll begin with Peter Shumlin, who certainly should resolve not to appoint anymore Republicans to key positions in his administration.

The Governor might also resolve to abstain from exclusive luxury get-aways until he can find it in his heart to support a modest raise in taxes for his privileged economic class…

New Years advice to Tom Salmon, in the immortal words of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: “Love the one you’re with.”  No one has demonstrated a shorter attention span for the position he was elected to than our state auditor.  Mr. Salmon should resolve to concentrate on his current job,  and forgoing higher ambitions, to sustain an interest in the mundanities of being auditor.

Randy Brock should resolve to get out more.  His voting record in Montpelier demonstrates that he is abysmally out-of-step with statewide attitudes and unlikely to make much of an impression in the 2012 governor’s race.  

While many on the left have some issues with Governor Shumlin, they will most decidedly NOT be voting for Randy Brock.  He is attempting to represent himself as a “centrist,” but that position has been more than locked-up by Shumlin, who, except for some high-profile positions on things like VY and same-sex marriage, has demonstrated an affinity for positions that are considered centerist-to-right-of-center in largely progressive Vermont.

Franklin County Sheriff, Robert Norris would be well-advised to resolve himself to a career change.  Having lost the contract for policing St. Albans City this year, Sheriff Norris has been vocally outraged, compounding the tempest by suing the City.  Now it seems the Town of Swanton will no longer be using his services, and will instead engage the Swanton Village police department.  Is this a trend? The Sheriff is approaching a county shut-out, having earlier lost contracts with Enosburgh Town, Enosburgh Village, Sheldon, Richford, Fairfax and Georgia.

Peter Welch should resolve to get more background before signing on to regressive stuff like extreme austerity measures and hamstringing ACORN.

Senator Leahy, should resolve daily to exit the Capitol building through a doorway inaccessible to industry lobbyists.

Bernie should resolve to carry a pocket comb.

I’ve got one for President Obama, too.  Facing an almost miraculous vacuum on the right, it looks as though Mr. Obama might get his fondest wish for a second term.  With that in mind, he should resolve that, the minute the polls close in November, he will seize his opportunity as a lame duck to make a final unbridled push for progressive reforms that are dear to the hearts of the folks who elected him in 2008.  I know this is nothing more than a pipe dream, but I had to get it in here.

Douglas’ Admin Disappeared Emails

local/regional,

Here is a little fur-ball of an issue that got carried along between two administrations. Important emails between former Governor Douglas’ Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) officials involved in a legal dispute with the Vermont State Employees Association were deleted and are missing. The VSEA originally sought ANR email records concerning a fired employee and a proposed computer employee monitoring system then the Douglas administration attempted to impose a $1,200 fee to access the email. The VSEA went to court against the Douglas administration and won the right to see the email free of charge.

A small scale Vermont version of the historic eighteen and one half minute gap? Fast forward to the Shumlin administration and the discovery now, that the relevant emails at some point were deleted.

When Abigail Winters, the union’s counsel, went to see the records, Shumlin officials at ANR told her the items couldn’t be found. Winters sent a letter to Jeb Spaulding, the secretary of the Agency of Administration, and Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell on Monday, alleging that the email correspondence was “willfully and permanently” deleted. Sorrell, she wrote, failed to place a litigation hold on the documents.

The Shumlin administration has given a high priority to transparency. Secretary of State Jim Condos recently completed what he called a “transparency tour”  to help the state’s public officials. Regarding transparency (digital and otherwise) Condos suggests the problem might lie with starving beast budget priorities:

“It’s an ongoing process that frankly needs resources,” he said. “With all due respect to the current administration and the past administration, a lot of those resources have been taken away because budgets have been cut and slashed and personnel reduced.

However Shumlin’s  Secretary of Administration Jeb Spaulding sounded a wee bit bristly about the attention the deleted email issue has generated and wished the VSEA had come to him before going to the press.

He was nonplussed by the attention the issue had generated among members of the media, and said it was a distraction from his work-[on LIHEAP]

In contrast Attorney General Sorrel seems more laid back about the issue. He has now started an inquiry but originally never imposed a litigation hold on relevant material-yet says if deleting the emails was intentional it shouldn’t have happened: “If they were deleted and not retrieved, then that was a total mistake and shouldn’t have happened. But we don’t know and we won’t know for days.”

Finally, at least to many untutored in these mysterious rules and rituals it might seem there is actually a law that may apply here. But what the heck, guess it’s not as if it is as important as a SSB (Sugar Sweetened Beverage) or something like that.

Disposition of public records – A custodian of public records shall not destroy, give away, sell, discard, or damage any record or records in his or her charge, unless specifically authorized by law or under a record schedule approved by the state archivist pursuant to 3 V.S.A. { 117(a)(5).

 

No progress made toward cold shutdown at Fukushima

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I have been searching in vain for meaningful updates on efforts to bring the Fukushima Daiichi reactors under control.  

At last there is an article in the Mainichi Daily News which seems to confirm what we have long suspected: that no progress is being made there whatsoever.

A freelance journalist,  Tomohiko Suzuki, has succeeded in working undercover, for over a month, at the power station from which little factual information has been allowed to escape up to now.

Mr. Suzuki reports that

“Absolutely no progress is being made” toward the final resolution of the crisis.

And that

companies including plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) (are) playing fast and loose with their workers’ radiation doses.

Furthermore,  no-entry zones that have been established around the crippled plants are inadequate, and have been designed more for convenience than to effectively ensure safety.

“(Nuclear) technology experts I’ve spoken to say that there are people living in areas where no one should be. It’s almost as though they’re living inside a nuclear plant,” says Suzuki.

Suzuki also reports that conflicts in technology between two reactor makers (Toshiba and Hitachi) that were enlisted to assist in finding a resolution at Fukushima, are crippling  rather than helping recovery efforts.

“much of the work is simply “for show,” fraught with corporate jealousies and secretiveness and “completely different” from the “all-Japan” cooperative effort being presented by the government.”

Before he was discovered and fired, Suzuki’s observations, including on-site photos he captured secretly with the aid of a pinhole camera, recorded a grim reality.  

According to Suzuki, public representations about progress at the crippled plant have largely been false; and shoddy and rushed workmanship, substandard materials and a culture of irresponsibility in the recovery efforts make more problems in the near future very likely.  

Furthermore, worker safety is routinely and grossly ignored.

‘”Working at Fukushima is equivalent to being given an order to die,” Suzuki quoted one nuclear-related company source as saying…”The Japanese media have turned away from this issue,”

To which we might add that, from our perspective, worldwide media is doing little to challenge the illusion that the disastrous events at Fukushima are over and done with.

Meanwhile, I am told by a knowledgable source, that a flotilla twice the size of Texas, comprised of radiation contaminated debris, is making it’s way with unexpected speed toward the western shores of the Hawaiian Islands.

Merry Christmas, Mr. President.

The Gift that Goes on Giving

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“Gift” is the German word for poison.  That bit of trivia sprang to mind when I came across a piece in the, “oh by the way” section of today’s Free Press (corner pocket, 3c) informing us that, just in time for Christmas, “a small amount” of tritium has been found in the Connecticut river.

The nuclear plant says it learned Tuesday that a small amount of tritium was found in a sample taken near the plant on Nov. 3. The amount was significantly below the federal drinking water limit, and samples taken Nov. 7 and 10 showed no signs of tritium.

Absent from this statement is whether or not those benign samples taken November 7 and 10 were the only other samples taken since that date.

As the mandated closing approaches in March, there is a sense of desperation to VY’s PR efforts.  Like an aging spinster she wraps her boney frame in economic illusion and insists you’ll miss her when she’s gone.

Don’t look now dear, but your slip is showing.