I’m sure most of you don’t know her name, but in Windham County, Melinda Bussino was a force to be reckoned with.  Her work for the homeless and those in poverty was extraordinary.

I am fairly speechless about this, and the Brattleboro Reformer (through their Facebook Feed) says it well enough that I feel little need to embellish:

It’s with overwhelming sadness that we have learned Melinda Bussino died this morning at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital after sustaining a heart attack earlier this week. Melinda was a friend to all, especially those in need, a woman of infinite patience, intelligence and compassion. Her absence will leave a void in Brattleboro and the surrounding area that can never be filled. The passion she had for her mission to feed the hungry is something we should all hope to aspire to.

This leaves a devastating hole in the community.  It will likely take half a dozen advocates to fill the space left by one woman with an overwhelming belief in the justice of her cause.

Headline: Hell Freezes Over. Yes, Rush Limbaugh has issued an apology. In the smallest possible way. After three days of publicly savaging Sandra Fluke on his national radio show, Rush apologized on Saturday. On his website.

Which sets the stage for a Monday full of self-pity and counterattack. “I apologized! What more do they want? They’re trying to force me off the air!”

The apology was, of course, laughably minimal. “Poor word choices.” Yeah, three days of calling her a slut, prostitute, nymphomaniac, saying she should post sex tapes online, etc., etc., etc. Thousands and thousands of “poor word choices.”

On Friday, I suggested listening to Rush’s show, taking note of local advertisers, and contacting them. The worst part of this is the “listening to Rush’s show” part, but there’s an easy way to minimize the pain. The show has a strict clock. Local content and commercials: :18-20, :30-34, :45-46. :54-56, and :58-06 (mostly news, but also local spots). Simplest thing is to listen during those eight minutes, or perhaps from :54-06 if you can stand two minutes of Rush.

This information is from an excellent diary on Daily Kos entitled “How to take action against Limbaugh at the local level.” It’s an excellent summary, highly recommended.

VT stations that carry Rush: WVMT (620 AM) in Burlington, WSNO (1450 AM) in Barre, and WSYB (1380 AM) in Rutland.

This morning, when I checked our mailbox, there was a hand-printed manilla envelope with no return address. Three “Forever” stamps had been applied, but the carrier also attached an envelope demanding thirty-five cents for insufficient postage.  It was addressed to my husband, so I handed it off to him and he opened it with a shrug.

Inside were two extreme right propaganda pamphlets “Rethinking Revelation Chapter 13,” an “end times” rant, by one Bob Fraley; and “Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution” by David Horowitz.  That charming little number is another attempt to tie the president to Saul Alinsky, whom, we are expected to believe was the personification of evil and the high-priest of godless communism.

This is a little hard for a native Chicagoan to swallow, when Mr. Alinsky’s message of social responsibility was part and parcel of what I was taught in sociology class at my Catholic girls’ high school there.   Barely twenty years ago, being tied to Saul Alinsky’s name would have done nothing but enhance a presidential candidates’s appeal.

Now, with all of this print material sent willy-nilly into the void, I’m a-thinking this represents some serious investment (not withstanding the cheesy postage due).  I looked for a postmark and there was none present, leading me to conclude that it must have originated locally.  

Much to our amusement, my husband, who is Canadian and has therefore never even registered to vote in the U.S., has long been targeted by Republican mailings.  We’re not sure why. Something he bought or inquired about years ago probably tagged him as a potential recruit.  He gets petitions to sign, requests for donations and even letters thanking him for all of his support.  This latest mailing no doubt belongs to that Twilight Zone of misdirected marketing.

But the message is clear: even crazy fringe groups  will have a huge war chest of Super PAC funding indirectly available to somehow enable a particularly ugly and virulent campaign this year.

The more desperate and disorganized the Republicans become, the less they have to lose by resorting to outright lies and association with the most toxic outliers.  

They’re on the ropes and it’s no holds barred.

That was the point of Bill Maher’s one-million dollar donation to the Obama Super PAC, as he explained in his Friday night broadcast.  This general election will be different from all those that came before.

Unimaginable sums of money are poised to flow into the Republican campaign at a moment’s notice; and a perfectly timed mass-release of misinformation targeting voters individually on their prejudices and fears (like the poison packet in my mailbox) has the very real potential to impact  voter turn-out and overwhelm common sense.

As Maher pointed out, it’s happened before even when campaign contributions were limited.  Who among us seriously thought there’d be either a President Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, nine months out from their election?

The conventional wisdom has been that, “It’s the economy, stupid!”  So, if things continue to improve on that front, we should be safe from the lunatic fringe. Right?

Wrong.  

They are lunatics, and, as has been demonstrated by key Republicans on numerous occasions over the past few months, they will say ANYTHING to fire-up their base, no matter how wild or irresponsible.

If only that base turns out in substantial numbers on election day to “purge the infidel,” while the rest of us sort of trickle in, still grumpy with Obama disappointment and confident that common sense will prevail without our help, we could be in for the rudest of surprises.

2008 saw the highest voter turn-out ever in the US. That number dropped significantly in 2008 as new voters who became  engaged in the process in 2010 failed to be inspired by Mr. Obama’s first term performance. We’re reaping the product of that disengagement in what amounts to Tea Party control of the House.

But this watershed election is about something much bigger and more consequential than who will be our head of state for the next four years.   It is about  restoring a balance of power in the Supreme Court, so that the Citizens United decision can be reversed and wholesale degradation of the democratic process can be brought to an end.  This is our only chance to get it right for the forseeable future.  

For that reason it is tremendously important to remember that no matter how much money the Super PACs throw at this election, dollars don’t vote; people do.  That’s why, disappointed as we may be with President Obama’s lack of progressive initiative, we must do everything humanly possible to see him relelected.  

The alternative is simply unthinkable.

This is the text of an op-ed piece Montpelier Mayor Mary Hooper published in support of the proposed local options taxes for Montpelier. It is reposted with her permission.

The Chamber of Commerce and Business Association have done an excellent job of presenting a case against local options taxes.  They worry about how this will affect our business community.  The chamber suggests that because we can collect money more efficiently from property taxes, that is how we should pay for services.

Montpelier’s residential community deeply values our downtown and commercial partners.  We have worried about our locally owned retailers and small entrepreneurial businesses.  We support them by shopping locally and by investing property tax dollars in the downtown.

We make these investments because they make us a stronger, more vital community.  We need to keep investing in our community, but we have stretched our property tax payers too far.

We have not heard about the burden our residents are facing.  

Many in our community live on small fixed incomes; many are state employees who have seen 3% and 5% reductions in their pay over the past three years.  All face the same rising costs of health insurance and energy.

We have not heard of the slow shift of paying for services to the residential sector.  Twenty-five years ago, residents paid for about half of the cost of services.  Today they pay for two thirds of these services.

We have not heard about who consumes Montpelier services.  Montpelier has more employees per capita than any community except Williston.  This distinction is part of what makes our community so vital-20,000 people coming into town each day.  And it is what makes our taxes so high-as we pay for the services they use.

Nor have we heard a clear explanation of who pays local options taxes.  Rooms, meals and alcohol taxes are easy to understand-the people who rent a room, buy a meal or a drink will pay the additional 1%.

Sales taxes are more complex.  There are lots of exemptions.  Most food and clothing, farm equipment, residential heating fuel, vehicles, items bought for re-sale and many other items are exempt from the sales tax.  

Specific data on sources of sales tax is not collected by the state.  But one of our large businesses pays $175,000 annually in sales tax.  Extrapolating from this it is safe to assume that the major employers pay at least half of the sales tax.  This is the same commercial sector which draws people into the town and which has seen it’s share of property taxes rise at a slower rate than residential property tax payers.

We do know that less than half of the sales taxes paid in Montpelier will come from the people who shop locally.  We do know that as the charter changes are proposed the local options taxes will reduce property taxes on the average residential property in Montpelier by about $150, in addition to investing an additional $100,000 in the business sector.  And that if Montpelier passes local options taxes the average residential property tax payer would have to spend more than $15,000 to offset this tax savings.

We should not allow this conversation about local options taxes to devolve into a business versus resident debate.    I hope we will carefully consider how we support the needs all of this community.  How do we fairly share the responsibility of providing services to all in our community?  

Last week, in an interview on WDEV Radio, state Republican Party chair Jack Lindley said that his party’s ticket for statewide offices was pretty much set. But, he added, we shouldn’t expect any announcements until the time was right.

He did say that Sen. Randy Brock was all but certain to be the Republican challenger to Governor Shumlin: “the ship has sailed,” he said, on others getting into the race.

So, in the absence of a big announcement, let’s examine some tea leaves and entrails.

We know we’ve got Brock for Governor and Phil “Blue Collar” Scott for a second term as Lieutenant Governor. It seems unlikely that the GOP would jettison its other statewide officeholder, Tom Salmon. In that WDEV interview, Lindley made some very positive comments about Salmon’s anti-embezzlement crusade (which mostly consists of cut-and-pastework plus some breathless news releases, but never mind).  

That leaves us with three offices occupied by Democrats: Attorney General, Secretary of State, and Treasurer.

After the jump: rumors, inferences, speculation, general snarkitude, and… The Penguin!!!

Attorney General. Let’s start with rumors of a primary challenge for longtime incumbent Democrat Bill Sorrell. Some names have been bruited about in the media, including Chittenden County State’s Attorney TJ Donovan and Speaker Shap Smith. That could be just Statehouse water-cooler talk, but for the most telling development of the week: Governor Shumlin’s conspicuous non-endorsement of Sorrell:

When asked at his weekly press conference whether he would endorse Sorrell, Shumlin paused for a few seconds, then said, “The attorney general is doing a great job for Vermont. I’m not going to get involved in electoral politics until past the filing date in any of the offices statewide in Vermont to see whether or not anyone … There are other people seeking those offices, so we’ll have plenty of time for politics after Labor Day so we’ll discuss it then.”

To Sorrell, that pause must have seemed interminable. In the words of Don Corleone: “I said that I would see you because I had heard that you were a serious man, to be treated with respect. But I must say no to you…” 

Next thing you know, horse’s head under the sheets.

On the Republican side, there’s been speculation about Sen. Vince Illuzzi as the AG candidate. Makes sense in a way; he’s a high-profile lawmaker with a bipartisan reputation. He currently sits as a Democrat/Republican. But for those just joining us, he carries some incredibly heavy baggage pertaining to the job of Attorney General. (This baggage was detailed in a 2007 GMD diary; highlights below.)

On at least three occasions in his career as an attorney, he has gotten into trouble for professional misdeeds. The most serious cost him the ability to practice law for four years. In part, it involved a dispute with a judge named David Suntag who, as it happened, was married to the state bar’s counsel investigating Illuzzi for earlier misdeeds. This is from a 2001 Boston Globe story, which is preserved online in a hard-to-read plaintext format, but is well worth the effort:

In the summer of 1993, [state bar counsel Wendy] Collins’s investigation concluded that Illuzzi had violated the Code of Professional Responsibility and moved to suspend his law license. Illuzzi fought all the way to the state Supreme Court, but the justices ruled against him, determining that “his conduct was aimed at interfering with a pending legal proceeding.” On September 1, 1993, his six-month suspension went into effect.

…There’s more. During his suspension, Illuzzi apparently continued to represent clients. The first letter of apology he promised to write to Suntag somehow never got sent, and the next one, which Illuzzi insisted had been mailed, never got to the judge, who had not changed either office or home addresses for five years. The third letter made it.

His combined transgressions cost Illuzzi 4 years of enforced hiatus from the practice of law, and the bar counsel (no longer Wendy Collins) moved to have him disbarred. But on March 19, 1998, more than a month after his latest suspension expired, a hearing panel unanimously recommended that Illuzzi be reinstated as a member of the bar.

So. Are the Republicans ready to give this guy their stamp of approval for Attorney General? It would seem unlikely, but there are hints at a high-profile gig of some kind in Illuzzi’s immediate future.

First: we hear he’s doing some serious attention-whoring. This has always been a big part of Vince’s M.O., but he seems to have upped the ante of late. Second, and more telling, was the Wednesday news conference where Republican mucky-mucks gathered to endorse Mitt Romney for President. Quite a few top elephants were in the room; but the pre-event news release specifically touted three: former NH Governor John Sununu, the gubernatorial nominee-in-waiting Randy Brock, and our man Vince Illuzzi.

To single him out for special notice would seem to signify a bigger role for him in the state GOP’s 2012 plans. And while he could be running for Treasurer (nah) or Secretary of State (meh), there’d certainly be an interesting psychodynamic in having a formerly-disgraced lawyer mounting an Oswald Cobblepot-style “revenge campaign” for AG. Hopefully without exploding penguins.

Treasurer. Incumbent Democrat Beth Pearce was appointed to the office in 2011 by Governor Shumlin to replace Jeb Spaulding, who left the post (immediately after winning re-election) to become the Governor’s Secretary of Administration. She’d been deputy treasurer for seven years. She is running for re-election; it will be her first ever political campaign.

Rumor has it that her Republican challenger will be Wendy Wilton, currently Treasurer of the City of Rutland. Wilton has been a high-profile critic of Governor Shumlin’s health care reform plans, brandishing her own “careful, professional analysis” indicating that the new system “will result in a $300+ million annual shortfall.”  Don’t know how her “careful, professional analysis” jibes with the Republican attack line that we don’t know anything about the Governor’s plan and he needs to tell us NOW. (Exactly how did she analyze a secret plan?) But never mind.

Wilton has been a frequent guest on The Ethan Allen Institute’s “True North Radio,” delivering her critique of the Shumlin plan. She also seems to be spending a lot of time in Montpelier by Rutland city official standards — enhancing her visibility, cadging support, or perhaps just meeting with her favorite Senator.

Secretary of State. Democrat Jim Condos would be up for re-election; presumably he’s planning to run. We don’t have any rumors or whisperings on the Republican side. If you got ’em, load ’em up in the Comments below.

My guess — and that’s absolutely all it is — is that the Republicans will put up some Tea Party type to placate that wing of the party and to play attack-dog on the voter-fraud issue. Considering how hard it is to beat an incumbent in one of these relatively obscure statewide contests, this has to be a low priority for the Vermont GOP.

Summary. If these rumors are true, the Republicans appear to be bracing for a hard-right campaign (by Vermont standards) focused almost entirely on health care, with no particular effort at appealing to the center aside from Phil Scott’s blue-collar bonhomie. Brock, with close advisor (and possibly campaign-manager-in-waiting) Darcie Johnston, late of Vermonters for Health Care Freedom, is certainly poised for a frontal attack on the health care issue. Wilton would add a veneer of fiscal expertise to the proceedings.

In his WDEV interview, Lindley acknowledged that Gov. Shumlin had a lot going for him — managing the Irene crisis, steering the state through what Jim Douglas promised would be a budgetary Armageddon*, and co-opting a fave Republican issue by blocking proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy. But Lindley slammed Shumlin and the Dems for being “arrogant.” He used that word a lot. That’s a measure of Republican frustration with their tiny legislative minorities; but it also ties directly back to their criticism of Shumlin’s health care plans — by refusing to finalize the details until after the next election, the Dems are, in effect, confidence tricksters, asking the voters to buy their snake oil. That’s arrogance for ya.  

*You remember — that fiscal disaster that would befall Vermont in a year or two because the Legislature overrode his veto of the 2010 budget? Yeah, remember that? Didn’t happen.

Scott and Illuzzi would be on their own respective islands, lending some bipartisan cred to the increasingly right-wing post-Jim Douglas Republican Party. The Scott Island looks secure, while Illuzzi might be getting the Gaye Symington Memorial Booby Prize — a high-profile nomination followed by a pat on the back and a kick out the door. The Republicans can’t seriously imagine that a guy whose law license was suspended for four years — and who came very close to permanent disbarment — can really hope to win the Attorney Generalship against either a familiar incumbent or a Democratic replacement who’d have the full backing of the Shumlin machine. Can they?

Then again, maybe Illuzzi’s running for State. Heh.

Stay tooned!

( – promoted by JulieWaters)

(Excellent work, ntodd. Page break inserted so the front page is a bit more user-friendly –jvwalt) 

Bruce Shields at the Ethan Allen Institute is upset that people are mobilizing to reduce the influence corporate money has on our democracy.  Of course he wraps himself in the warm blanket of free speech, assuming his conclusion as his premise that corporations have such rights.

He does not begin well:

The [Saving American Democracy (SAD) amendment] effort hopes to overturn a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court case titled Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which the left claims first introduced the idea that corporations are people.

Strawmen shouldn't play with fire.  

“The left” has never made such claims.  We know that there has always been some sense of collective quasi-personhood under the law since corporations have existed, and we know that Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) gave us the fiction that corporations enjoy the same 14th Amendment protections that real humans do.  

We also know that Federal campaign finance law was gutted by Citizens United, and we're now reaping the whirlwind before the general election season has even started.  So people have mobilized to clarify some aspects of the Constitution through the amendment process.

In attacking the right of groups and associations of citizens to speak out in the election process, the left is mounting a frontal attack on the principle of free of speech and association.

Actually the right to free association will still exist–we're not proposing to get rid of corporations, or unions for that matter (in contrast to the fine Republican state governments attacking workers' rights).  And those individuals who make up those associations will still have their rights to speech.

As an aside, I'll observe literalists who like to point out there are no words like “privacy” in our Constitution, might also notice there is no specific right to “free association” in the 1st Amendment.  Yet such a right has been assumed for a long time, as documented in NAACP v Alabama:

Effective advocacy of both public and private points of view, particularly controversial ones, is undeniably enhanced by group association, as this Court has more than once recognized by remarking upon the close nexus between the freedoms of speech and assembly. De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 364 ; Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 530 . It is beyond debate that freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the “liberty” assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embraces freedom of speech. See Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 666 ; Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 324 ; Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 303 ; Staub v. City of Baxley, 355 U.S. 313, 321 . Of course, it is immaterial whether the beliefs sought to be advanced by association pertain to political, economic, religious or cultural matters, and state action which may have the effect of curtailing the freedom to associate is subject to the closest scrutiny.

Of course, when this was decided in 1958, states were actively engaged in denying individuals rights across the board, so group association and advocacy was an important part of overcoming institutional racism and oppression.  In the case of corporations, nobody is suggesting they don't have the right to do business–as Alabama was trying to do with the NAACP–merely that they have such enhanced ability to advocate for their own interests through massive fortunes so we need to restore some balance through Constitutional means.

Bruce continues:

Corporations have been recognized as persons ever since English courts of law first protected incorporation from royal prerogative in the 16th century. Incorporation protects the property and the rights of individual persons precisely because it affirms the social utility of a group of people organized to function as one person before the law. 

This principle was brilliantly enunciated by Daniel Webster in his famous brief and affirmed by the Supreme Court almost 200 years ago in the pivotal constitutional case, Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward. Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in the Dartmouth College case contains a detailed history and affirmation of corporate personhood and declares that corporate persons enjoy every right guaranteed in the Constitution. 

Indeed, Webster made an excellent case and referred to the Bill of Rights.  Yet in that decision, Chief Justice Marshall wrote:

A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence. These are such as are supposed best calculated to effect the object for which it was created. Among the most important are immortality, and, if the expression may be allowed, individuality; properties, by which a perpetual succession of many persons are considered as the same, and may act as a single individual. They enable a corporation to manage its own affairs, and to hold property, without the perplexing intricacies, the hazardous and endless necessity, of perpetual conveyances for the purpose of transmitting it from hand to hand. It is chiefly for the purpose of clothing bodies of men, in succession, with these qualities and capacities, that corporations were invented, and are in use. By these means, a perpetual succession of individuals are capable of acting for the promotion of the particular object, like one immortal being. But this being does not share in the civil government of the country, unless that be the purpose for which it was created. Its immortality no more confers on it political power, or a political character, than immortality would confer such power or character on a natural person…The objects for which a corporation is created are universally such as the government wishes to promote.

Justice Story made similar remarks in his concurrence, even citing Stewart Kyd, who wrote an early definitive treatise on the subject.  So there is clearly acknowledgement that corporations are artificial persons and only have rights insofar as they are extended explicitly by government–contrast to natural rights of natural persons which are not granted by government, but supposed to be protected by and from government.

What's more, I'm having difficulty finding in the opinions any assertion that corporate persons enjoy every right guaranteed in the Constitution.  The only basis of the ruling I can see is that Dartmouth had a contract and states cannot impair contracts per Article I, Section 10.  It seems Mr Shields is blowing smoke out of his ass on that one.

But what if corporations had the right to free speech?  All rights can still have natural, reasonable limits.  Just because you run a business doesn't mean you can engage in unfair or deceptive practices like false advertising, for example (any more than I can libel or slander Bruce Shields).  As is, it's certainly defensible to say that states and/or the Federal government have the authority to limit corporate campaign spending, contributions, what have you, since they could crowd out the voices of individual voters (the current Supreme Court's political biases notwithstanding).

Regardless, the whole point of a Constitutional amendment is to create the fundamental legal framework within which Congress can work.  So even if the Supreme Court said corporate persons have the exact same rights as actual people, if we add explicit language saying that's not the case, citing Court decisions is moot.

The Saving American Democracy petition ought to be renamed the Trash the First Amendment petition and rejected.

The 14th Amendment provides for equal protection under the law and has been used as the basis of incorporating the 1st Amendment against the states, meaning that freedom of speech, religion, assembly, etc, are sacrosanct at all levels of government.  The 1st Amendment wasn't altered, but was expanded.

Similarly, a potential 28th Amendment won't trash individual rights guaranteed in the 1st Amendment.  Rather, it would clarify that corporations, being artificial and limited, don't universally enjoy the same rights that we the people do.

We have altered the Constitution a number of times to improve it, or respond to changing and unanticipated conditions.  The 12th Amendment fixed our presidential election method due to the rise of political parties.  The 13th finally rid us of slavery that forced so many unholy compromises from the beginning.  The 16th resolved the conflict between different court decisions on the income tax.  To complain about amending the Constitution to adapt to a contemporary environment is to complain about the Constitution itself, which created this mechanism in the first place.

Our goal is to ensure the 1st Amendment will be preserved, and the rights contained therein will be reserved to natural persons, including individual members of corporations.  We're just not going to stand any longer for Bruce Shields' convenient fiction of corporate personhood dominating our political processes.

ntodd

(This is big news.  In the interest of getting this up on the front page without overwhelming it, I have taken the liberty of creating a “fold” so our readers can get the full story when they click on “There’s more.” – promoted by Sue Prent)

In answer to Entergy’s request  for a delay in its proceedings the PSB had this to say: No.

Public service board denies decision delay on Yankee future

Mar 02, 2012 10:21 AM EST

By WCAX News

VERNON, Vt. – The Vermont Public Service Board has denied a request from the owners of Vermont Yankee to delay a decision on the future of the nuclear plant.

http://www.wcax.com/story/1706…

And:

Board Sets Own Pace On VY Future

Friday, 03/02/12 6:06am

The Vermont Public Service Board says it will set its own pace in deciding whether the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant gets a state permit to operate for another 20 years.

http://www.vpr.net/news_detail…

According to the Rutland Herald (paywalled):

PSB rejects Entergy’s request for delay

The Public Service Board has refused a request from Entergy Nuclear to delay its review of Yankee’s relicensing case.

Published: March 2, 2012

“The Public Service Board flatly refused a late-in-the-game request Thursday by Entergy that it step aside while the federal courts decide its role-if any-in the future of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.”

http://rutlandherald.com/secti…

Too funny. Since the trial which ended in a favorable verdict for Entergy, Entergy has continued a bare-knucked attempt to inject its own will into the proceedings which follow by issuing play-by-play demands on how the proceedings should continue as well as the outcome solely to meet their own objectives rather than allowing the process to simply play itself out & trusting the PSB to make a fair decision.

First, Entergy stated after trial that they would not challenge Murtha’s decision to send it back to the VT PSB after he also ruled that their suit does not maintain that the resting of jurisdiction of PSB to grant or deny the CPG for continued operation is pre-empted. Entergy did in fact demand, er, request  the PSB to rule quickly on the open docket declaring no additional information is necessary to decide Vermont Yankee’s fate, clearly expecting a CPG to be issued without delay.  

Then, when PSB notified all parties of its intention to open the proceedings by scheduling a status conference on 3/09/2012 in the statehouse (interestingly across the street from the usual location of the PSB), also posing a few questions it asks parties to provide answers to:

emphasis mine

“The board is expecting answers to a long string of questions when the parties convene that day. Last week, the board asked the parties some thought-provoking questions, some of which may be summarized like this:

– Does the board still has authority to grant Vermont Yankee a certificate of public good, following the recent federal court ruling.

– If so, should the board rely on existing testimony or start over?

– Does Vermont Yankee plan to keep operating? If so, what are the operators going to do with the spent fuel it produces? Permission to store the fuel onsite expires March 21

– Does the board still has authority to grant Vermont Yankee a certificate of public good, following the recent federal court ruling.

– If so, should the board rely on existing testimony or start over?

– Does Vermont Yankee plan to keep operating? If so, what are the operators going to do with the spent fuel it produces? Permission to store the fuel onsite expires March 21.”

http://blogs.burlingtonfreepre…

According to the Herald story, Entergy also asked the PSB to “force” the other parties to file their responses to the questions posed prior to Entergy’s.

An about face & more filings followed. Irony behind the facts & reality of unexpected consequences was seemingly not lost on Entergy Louisiana’s legal team who, in its recent filing asked Judge Murtha to block any attempt to act on grounds of the expired nuclear waste storage permit:

“The company that owns the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant said Monday night it would appeal a federal judge’s order allowing the plant to stay open past its originally scheduled shutdown date, and asked the original judge to revisit his order and prevent the state from barring the future storage of spent nuclear fuel at the Vernon reactor.  

The moves by Entergy Corp. came in a series of legal filings with the U.S. District Court in Brattleboro, where Judge J. Garvan Murtha last month issued an order widely viewed as strongly in the company’s favor, and at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, where the company gave notice it would appeal every aspect of Murtha’s order.

Entergy asked Murtha to issue an injunction against Vermont to bar it from trying to enforce state laws against the storage of high-level radioactive waste generated at the plant after March 21.”

http://blogs.burlingtonfreepre…

So now, it appears the request to “revisit” really means ‘decree by fiat’.

As with the leaking radioactive nuclear waste from the troubled plant, the smackdown  continues. Could that looming Mach 21 closure date from the 2002 MOU be the writing on the wall in what has become a real life David & Goliath saga? Stay tuned.  

Today was the third consecutive day of Rush Limbaugh’s vicious, misogynist attacks on Sandra Fluke, the college student who had the temerity to want to testify before a Congressional panel on the importance of birth-control coverage in health insurance.

I won’t include any details here, because I’d need to dip myself in Lysol afterward. Follow the link if you must know.

The good news is, he’s finally getting some blowback in the most harmful possible way — his advertisers. Three national advertisers have already pulled out, and there’s growing pressure on others, including ProFlowers, Oreck, Citrix, and eHarmony*. This is, as far as I know, the first time that Limbaugh has lost advertisers due to his excesses. Let’s hope the momentum keeps up.

*Late add: eHarmony says it doesn’t advertise on Rush, but is looking into whether “network buys” might include his show. Apparently there’s at least one list of Rush advertisers that is partially incorrect. (A “network buy” is where you purchase advertising time on a slate of programs, and your ads are assigned to different shows based on availability of time. So an advertiser might unknowingly be scheduled on Rush’s show.)

After the jump: Taking it local?

It’s fairly simple to join the pressure campaign nationally. But we could also do some good locally, by identifying local businesses that advertise on Limbaugh’s show. Which, unfortunately, means listening to Rush and taking down the names of local advertisers.

If anyone can stomach the task, please contact the advertisers and also list their names in the Comments below.

p.s. This is my own idea and does not reflect the opinions of the other GMD front pagers. I hope they don’t mind. If this gains enough traction, maybe we can assemble a list of Rushvertisers on this page somewhere.  

Limbaugh’s show is broadcast on WVMT (620 AM) in Burlington, WSNO (1450 AM) in Barre, and WSYB (1380 AM) in Rutland.

I will find the outcome of the option tax vote in Montpelier interesting.  If you recall, the last time this came to a vote it was opposed by the local small business owners AND the Montpelier Downtown Workers Union UE Local 221.  

Back then, the union had contacts in two local shops, and had individual members in bissinesses all over Montpelier. At one point the 221 had over 100 downtown workers signed up.  

In that past fight the union framed the tax as regressive, and as an effective 1% pay cut for the many downtown employees who regularly buy their lunches and other meals in town.  The union had anti-option tax posters up all around town.  They also had union meetings with local workers where the option tax was discussed, and all workers (who live in Montpelier) were encouraged to vote in the election and to vote NO.  And again, the union further advocated against this tax in their Montpelier Downtown Workers Journal publication, which was given out to hundreds of union and nonunion employees alike.   And finally, the union was not shy in sharing its anti-option tax views with the media.  In fact I was quoted in the Montpelier Bridge as a spokesman for the union where I encouraged a no vote.  This was the first time I was publicly quoted as a union member.  And the very next day I was fired, by Jeff Jacobs, from my job bartending in Charlie O’s (coincidence?). Jacob may have been against the option tax, but he was also against the union.

Rooms tax?  Sure. Meals and goods tax? I still say no.  These are regressive taxes that negatively impact hard working people in Montpelier.

Vermont’s highest-profile Republican official, Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, is temporizing just a bit on the state GOP’s clear choice for President, Mitt Romney.

Scott told the Vermont Press Bureau on Thursday that he will likely pull the lever for Romney on Super Tuesday, but an endorsement is an extra step he wasn’t willing to take.

…Endorsing Romney would mean he would have to get “100 percent behind the candidate,” said Scott, something his isn’t able to do.

His big objection seems to be Romney’s social status — which is kind of odd for the party that insists America is a classless society. Be that as it may,

“I come from a blue collar background and feel like I’m still blue collar, and I’m not sure Mitt Romney – and it’s not his fault – but I’m not sure he understands some of the struggles we all face,” said Scott. “He lives in a different world than I do.”

I know how you feel, Phil, I know how you feel. I do have to wonder how the rest of the state party establishment views his electoral diffidence.

And I realize Phil Scott is a man of principle, but did he perhaps take a gander at that new poll showing Romney getting trounced by Obama in Vermont? You don’t want to be too close to the guy in the shadow of a falling piano. Or, in T-Road terms, you don’t want to tail a car with a smoking engine.