Hey, a little good news for your Sunday brunch. I was checking my Twitter feed last night, and noticed a pair of Tweets in support of Bo Muller-Moore, the “Eat More Kale” guy who’s trying to get funding for a documentary about his fight against Chick-Fil-A, which claims everlasting copyright for any use of the phrase “Eat More.”

The Tweets were from none other than Neil Gaiman, the award-winning best-selling all-around brilliant writer. He’s urging his Twitter followers to donate to Bo’s Kickstarter campaign.

Mr. Gaiman has 1,693,657 followers.

That should help a bit.

As of right now, Bo’s Kickstarter campaign has raised nearly $26,000. The goal is $75,000, and there are 14 days left. I suspect he’s about to get a substantial boost.  

A couple days ago, I set the Over/Under on Bernie Sanders’ re-election at 68%. A pretty high standard; the only time he’s gotten more is when he trounced Karen Kerin for Congress a few years back. My thinking was that his newly-declared opponent, John MacGovern, would be a pushover.

On further reflection, I have a feeling this could turn out to be an expensive, nasty race. I still don’t think MacGovern has a snowball’s chance of winning; he’s far too right-wing for this state, and he’s unknown outside of Windsor County. (His name recognition there consists of getting his butt handed to him in two bids for State Senate.) But I now believe he might do more damage than I initially thought.

See, his professional schtick for the last ten years has been the Hanover Institute, an outlet for right-wing Dartmouth alumni to criticize (and file suit against) the current administration. A non-profit outlet, donations to which are tax-deductible. Mr. MacGovern has raised an astounding pile of money for this endeavor (as much as $800,000 a year), and presumably made himself a lot of wealthy friends.

With his expertise in bogus nonprofits and his contacts among the One Percent, I could see him setting up a 501(c)4 — a bogus nonprofit “voter education” committee whose real purpose is thinly-veiled electioneering. We’ve already got two big 501(c)4’s operating in Vermont: Bruce Lisman’s Campaign for Bru– er, Vermont — and Vermonters for Health Care Freedom. These 501(c)4’s offer tax-deductible status to their donors, and they operate virtually in the dark; the requirements for reporting donors and expenditures are astoundingly lax.  

This is an obvious way for MacGovern to leverage his contacts into political muscle. And while he can’t possibly defeat Bernie, he could make it a really dirty, messy, unpleasant campaign. So, on second thought, I’d bet on under 68%,  

Yes, people, it is Daylight Saving’s Time Eve, the time when most of us change our clocks.  What does it mean?  It means, among other things, that we are required to meet at 2am for a mandatory swap meet in which we trade clocks with our neighbors.

The “clock swap” (or, as they call it in the Northeast Kingdom, “That thar clocker swapper thingamajig”) is a long-standing tradition in Vermont, one which is particularly popular in an election year.  

The ceremony (which is simpler today than it was a century ago, given that most clocks back then were large enough that they were often used to hide contraband from the feds, and sometimes could double as life rafts in emergency situations) involves neighbors coming together, trading clocks and then usually ends in a brawl when one person accuses another of being a socialist.

The above, of course, is only part of the story.  The original purpose of Daylight Savings time was that it was originally devised as a method for one time zone to catch up with another.  It began with California, worried it was an hour behind Arizona, enacting Daylight Savings time to catch up.  Of course, the entire West coast had to follow suit, causing Mountain time to do the same, worried that “Those Coastal folks are nippin’ at our heels!”  Then, of course, Central Time and then Eastern Time came around as well.  The measures passed easily in most areas after the “Our Hours Are Ours!” campaign, which not only rallied citizens and legislators alike, it also left several town criers with PTSD, which in those days was called “clock shock.”

It took some states longer than others– Indiana still hasn’t caught up with the rest of the Midwest and Arizona, Georgia and Alabama remain at least two decades behind the rest of the country, at least on some levels.  But, overall, the Domino effect played out simply and effectively.  

Of course, there has always been controversy about Daylight Savings Time.  While Democrats believe it is an outdated sign of old rivalries and conflicts which are no longer needed, Republicans have repeatedly attempted to enact legislation which will set the clocks back to 1952.

I hope this simple post has helped enlighten those of you who feel it unnecessary to honor Daylight Saving’s Time and that you enjoy this year’s swap meet, at least, you know, until the fisticuffs begin.

I wanted to add a link to this Japanese news report which explains rather succinctly why Meredith Angwin’s assertion of a low cancer risk is based on faulty assumptions.  And here’s another!

……………………………………………………………………………………

Sunday will mark the first anniversary of the  earthquake and tsunami that devastated northern Japan. It is also the first anniversary of what is arguably the worst industrial accident in history, at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.

Even though the natural news cycle has pretty much abandoned the Fukushima story, it’s ongoing impacts are far from over, and there continues to be a steady pulse of revelations concerning contamination vectors, bad decision-making, cover-ups, downplays and plain old distortions.  

Nuclear nerds have Enformable, which features a wiki-like stream of internal correspondence surrounding the disaster at Fukushima as well as news of “events” occurring at other nuclear plants in the U.S. and abroad.

For the rest of us who need to make sense of it all, there have been the outstanding videos of Vermont’s own Fairewinds Associates, which offer expert analysis and nuclear “education” in easily assimilated units.

Greenpeace has just released a new publication, “Lessons from Fukushima,” which includes a chapter by Fairewinds’ Arnie Gundersen: “Regulatory Capture and the Fukushima Daiichi Disaster,” which focuses on the regulatory failure piece that contributed to the disaster, including conflicts of interest in the regulatory culture and reliance on faulty safety assessment models.   It appears that regulators and plant operators alike fell victim to their very own spin efforts in the attempt to gain public support for nuclear energy.  Gundersen notes that the very same vulnerability undermines the effectiveness of the U.S. regulatory culture within the NRC.

In a recent televised interview, Gundersen notes that, on March 16, just five days after the Fukushima nuclear accident began, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission relicensed Vermont Yankee. Among the NRC memos concerning Fukushima that have to come to light was a remark made on March 12, 2011, stating that the Mark 1 containment (the design shared by the Fukushima reactors and Vermont Yankee) is the

“worst containment in the world.”

When someone inquired in a follow-up memo if this meant that the NRC would withhold relicensing of VY pending further study of the accident at Fukushima, the response was that relicensing would go ahead as planned but the public announcement would be delayed until the stir over Fukushima had died down.

Meanwhile, the PR engine of the nuclear industry must be working overtime to keep a lid on things

Chemist Meredith Angwin of the Ethan Allen Institute and “Yes Vermont Yankee” put her oar in the water with an op-ed in Friday’s Messenger, anticipating the likelihood that, on this anniversary, some may be tempted to compare Vermont Yankee to Fukushima Daiichi.  This, she insists, is utter nonsense, citing the number of reactors at Fukushima and the epic nature of the events preceding their failure as evidence that there is no relationship,  while conveniently overlooking the shared design flaws that were central to some of the critical failures that occurred at Fukushima.   As Gundersen observes in the video interview, the design flaws and vulnerabilities of Mark 1 reactors have been known to the industry and the NRC for the past thirty years.

But she doesn’t leave it there.  Applying a second coat of shineola, she insists, somewhat counter-intuitively, that as a result of the Fukushima accident

“…few (if any) excess cancer deaths can be expected among civilians.”

She wraps it all up with a speech about how many more people have been killed by coal use, apparently completely dismissing any other alternative.  

“Coal…nuclear…coal…nuclear.”  The devil or the deep blue sea?  

We’re supposed to strike our foreheads and cry,

“Of course, how could we be so blind?  Much better to allow private number-crunchers to operate badly designed reactors for decades beyond their “sell-by” date, risking the occasional nuclear disaster and racking-up centuries of lethal waste.”

Can I have the check please?

No reason to add any additional info, but cautiously optomistic here!

Entergy to PSB: Don’t shut us down

by Alan Panebaker | March 9, 2012

Skeptical Entergy attorneys asked the Vermont Public Service Board Friday for assurance that they could continue operating Vermont Yankee after March 21 when its license expires.

An equally skeptical board peppered the company with questions.

More:

http://vtdigger.org/2012/03/09…

Late add: I’ve corrected a mistake in this post. MacGovern was not a Congressman from Massachusetts; he was a State Representative. Big difference.

(For those unfamiliar with sports gambling terminology, an "Over/Under" bet is placed on a particular statistical outcome in a game. Not on the winner or loser, but on some aspect of the game. The classic football "Over/Under" is on the total number of points scored, but it could be on the number of touchdown passes by a quarterback, the number of home runs in a baseball game, etc. In this case, you'd be betting on whether Bernie will get more or less than 68% of the vote. Handicapping info below.)  

Well, well, the Republican Party has a new champion who will take on the Ungentle Giant of Vermont politics, Sen. Bernie Sanders. The plucky guy is John MacGovern, a Dartmouth alum and former four-term State Representative in Massachusetts.* Seven Days' Andy Bromage has written an overview of his resume, which I recommend reading. But I'll fill in a few items here.  

*We should stipulate here that MacGovern doesn't have a stranglehold on the nomination. VT GOP Executive Director Mike Bertrand told Bromage that there's at least one other person considering a Senate bid. Methinks Bertrand is hoping for a somewhat bigger fish; it never helps a party ticket to carry dead weight.  

After the jump: Stirring the Dartmouth pot, and heading a decidedly opaque nonprofit.

MacGovern now lives in Windsor, VT. He's run for State Senate twice and lost twice. His occupation: he runs the Hanover Institute, a nonprofit organization that is…

dedicated to educating Dartmouth College alumni about important events at Dartmouth.   We will focus primarily on those events that tend not to be covered in the official Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Alumni Office publications.

The Institute advocates a stronger voice for alumni in Dartmouth's governance. This has been a casus belli among conservative alums for quite a few years now; they believe that Dartmouth has gone soft and squishy in a number of ways. The Institute has filed two lawsuits against Dartmouth, in an effort to boost alumni representation on the Board of Trustees. A 2009 article in Dartmouth Alumni Magazine describes him as…

An activist who for years has railed against a College administration he views as undemocratic and secretive, MacGovern funds lawsuits against the College through an organization that is all but opaque, as he enigmatically declines to reveal just how much of his enormous war chest was donated from non-alumni sources.

That's putting it mildly. The Hanover Institute was founded in 2002, and its fundraising has mushroomed since then. In 2007, it raised over $800,000 and spent almost that much.   MacGovern is its sole employee and operator. The Institute's 2007 tax form shows a salary of $63,500 and other compensation of $31,750. The bulk of the Institute's spending, almost $702,000, was for "Publication of Newsletter. Inform Dartmouth Alumni of important elections at Dartmouth College."  

I've never run a publication, but that strikes me as a hell of a lot of money for a newsletter. Wonder how much MacGovern gets paid for editing, writing, and publishing it.  

As for his platform as a candidate for Senate, MacGovern appears to be focused entirely on the deficit — with one exception. He's also upset over the birth control mandate in President Obama's health care plan, which he calls "a full frontal assault on our religious liberty."  

To which I can only say, Mr. MacGovern, you have never experienced a full frontal assault on religious liberty.  

Okay, back to my prop bet. Bernie Sanders has a recent history of walloping no-hoper Republicans. In his initial bid for Senate six years ago, he won 65% of the vote against Rich Tarrant. In his last four elections for Congress, going backwards, he took 67.5% (against Greg Parke), 64.2% (against Bill Meub), 69.2% (Karen Kerin), and 63.4% (Mark Candon).  

So I'm setting the bar rather high. If you take the "over," you're betting that Bernie will come close to, or exceed, his highest vote total ever. But frankly, it's hard to see Mr. MacGovern as any better a candidate than those other guys. And unless Mike Bertrand pulls a mighty big rabbit out of his hat, it's hard to see Bernie getting much of a run this year. I suspect the VTGOP's real priorities are elsewhere.  

(Disclaimer: Betting-related information is for entertainment purposes only. We do not condone gambling, nor will we be a party to any such thing.)  

It is well known that Vermont’s dairy farms are struggling. So an article titled “Even Dairy Farming Has a 1 Percent” caught my eye. Planet Money’s Adam Davidson’s short piece in the New York Times outlines familiar but nonetheless disturbing trends.

Davidson visited a dairy farm in New Jersey where a father-son team is barely staying ahead of the curve. The hard-working pair running this top-producing farm are on the job daily from 4:30 am to 7 pm and trade off Sundays – yet each earns less than minimum wage. All pretty familiar stuff to some Vermonters. Our state has seen some positive trends in value-added cheese processing and continues to focus on local fixes including expanding branding, aggressive marketing, and increasing Dairy Management Teams to reduce production costs.Major structural problems persist and dairy closures continue.

A modern dairy farm can produce large quantities of milk, but the task of balancing demand with supply is what haunts the industry. With accelerated consolidation and commoditization of the industry, a few big players are benefiting by trading dairy and feed products like fast-paced derivative traders.  Planet Money:

… dairy farming has its own 1 percent: that tiny sliver of massive farms, with thousands of cows, that make the biggest profits and are better equipped to pay agriculture-futures experts to help them manage risk.They continue to invest and grow.  

The markets offer a stunning range of complex agricultural financial products. Dairy farmers (or, for that matter, anybody) can buy and sell milk and animal-feed futures, which allow them to lock in favorable prices, hedge against bad news in the future and so forth. There’s also a new product that combines feed and milk futures into one financial package, allowing farmers to guarantee a minimum margin no matter what happens to commodity markets down the road.

This leaves many small operations on the margins and speeds consolidation. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that for the first time ever three percent of the dairies in the US now produce slightly more than half of the milk supply. Just over 50 percent of the milk supply came from farms with 1,000 cows or more. This shift happened quickly, since 2006 when 38.1 percent was produced by farms of this size. The biggest profits are clustered at the top one percent who control a large part of the industry.

And over the fence … ‘Problems loom’

“Problems loom for US dairy farms as output rises” says Agrimoney.com, an online industry publication. Dairy output is rising beyond sales capacity, as experts are pleading for industry self-control.

Producers needed to question whether extra output of some 600m pounds a month "can be readily sold at prices anywhere close to what is needed to generate milk prices high enough to cover costs of production" said Milk Producers’ Council John Kaczor.

Yet the Canadian dairy industry – using a completely different (and very un-American) model – seems relatively stable by comparison. In Canada a system of production quotas dating back more than 40 years protects farmers from conglomerates. The Canadian Dairy Commission and provincial marketing boards regulate prices paid to farmers and control the amount each can produce. It is a complicated system in which a farmer must purchase production quotas that determine the amount of milk that can be produced for sale. Typical Canadian dairy farms have about 70 cows (the average VT dairy farm has 130 cows); quotas (essentially one cow) can cost upwards of $20,000(Canadian). While this cost makes entering the daily business in Canada difficult and expensive, existing farms reportedly enjoy a stable business environment. A University of Illinois study of Canadian farmers’ perceptions of government dairy regulation found that farmers trusted the government system to protect their interests despite systemic inefficiencies.  

"Farmers may change their management practices because quotas are now the single largest capital investment, which restricts herd size,"said University of Illinois agricultural economist Lia Nogueira. "They don't have an incentive to export their milk because the price that they would get in the world market is much lower than the domestic market. It shows that government intervention and controlling an industry can change the way farmers do things. Once you establish a system and people are so invested in that system, it's going to be very hard to make any substantial changes even if it's clear that the program is inefficient."

What is true in Canada is also true in the US: once you establish a system and people are invested in it, it’s going to be very hard to change. Canadian farmers perceive the system benefits and protects them, but who benefits here in the US, and specifically, here in Vermont?  Our farms are vanishing, while some of our farmers barely earn minimum wage. Three percent of dairies produce half the milk. So we know the dairy one percent – massive farms and futures traders – making the biggest profits will resist change to a system that now benefits them and devastates small farms.

Finally, as near as I can determine a gallon of milk in Canada costs $2.41(US) and $3.30(US) in the States. Who benefits more?

(Noonish, 3/9/12: Just added a note at the end of this diary, with information contrary to my paranoid fantasy about Shumlin and Illuzzi. All after the jump.)

Sometime in the past 24 hours, the Vince Illuzzi-for-Attorney General thing has gone from a rumor to an openly-floated Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade trial balloon. The Republican/Democratic (but mostly Republican) state senator from the NEK is basically telling anyone who will listen that he’s pondering a run for AG. Brattleboro Reformer:

Illuzzi said he would likely run as a Republican even as supporters urge him to run as an Independent to appeal to more voters in Democratic-leaning Vermont.

“You know, after 32 years, I think I have established a record as an Independent and would hope that people would look at my record and my ability to work with Democrats and Progressives, and not just the letter after my name,” he said.

Funny he should mention his 32 years of experience, since it opens the door to consideration of the big fat elephant in the room: his decisively checkered ethical past. Our Illuzzi Whitewash Media Count is now up to four: in four separate media entities, an Illuzzi candidacy has been bruited without mentioning that on at least three occasions, he’s been charged with violations of legal ethics. His law license was suspended for four years, and he came within a whisker of losing it permanently. (Best single source for this is a 2001 Boston Globe article written by one Jon Margolis, now of Vermont Digger.)

And somehow we’re not mentioning this because…?

I have an idea. Parable, and a paranoid fantasy, after the jump.  

Within the city limits of Montpelier, there’s an auto repair shop called IB’s Garage. Been there since the 1970s. Its owner is Paul Ibey. It’s the kind of place where people bring in older cars to keep them running and passing inspection.

And in front of his garage is a large, and very illegal, collection of junked vehicles.

Now, IB’s isn’t off on some side street or rural dead-end; it’s on Barre Street, a major east-west corridor. The junked cars are right alongside the roadway, in clear public view. Behind IB’s is the Winooski River. (Runoff, anyone?) Directly across the street is Sabin’s Pasture, an open undeveloped parcel of land beloved by many in the community.

There have been efforts to develop housing on the land — housing that would add significant property value to the city and create more living space a short distance from downtown, striking a small blow against suburban sprawl. Those efforts have met with stout resistance from people who want to “Save Sabin’s Pasture!” Somehow, these people don’t care that there’s a junkyard directly across the street from this sylvan paradise.

Paul Ibey insists it’s not a junkyard; he plans to get all those cars running again. But some of them have been there a long, long time. A plain reading of applicable law would clearly indicate that IB’s is in violation of multiple city and state laws and ordinances.

And there it sits. Not far from the river. And right across from a treasured community open space.

I’ve lived in Vermont for about six years. It’s a really nice place in a lot of ways, but there are a few things about it that I find rather annoying. One of them is Vermonters’ tendency to accept things that are familiar even if they’re obnoxious, and reject things that are unfamiliar even if they’re potentially beneficial.

And regarding his candidacy for AG, Vince Illuzzi is the IB’s Garage of state politics. A blight on the landscape that’s accepted simply because it’s familiar.

Thus endeth the parable. Now for my paranoid thought.

Last week, when he turned down a chance to endorse Bill Sorrell, Governor Shumlin made it pretty clear that he’d like to see someone else as Attorney General. There’s speculation of a Democratic primary challenge from someone like Speaker Shap Smith or Chittenden County State’s Attorney TJ Donovan. But what if Vince Illuzzi winds up running as an independent? The Republicans would almost certainly stay out of the race; they’ve been very Illuzzi-friendly of late.

Would Shumlin endorse an independent Illuzzi for AG over a Democratic incumbent?* Call me crazy, but I think it’s possible. The Governor is fond of the occasional “kicking the hippies” move — taking a center-right stance to prove his moderate bona fides. Endorsing one Republican — especially if he runs without the “Republican” label — would be a classic Shumlin move.

And ignoring Illuzzi’s troubled ethical past would be a classic Vermont move.

*Addendum: I’ve been told by a solid source that there’s no way Shumlin would endorse Illuzzi. I have no reason to doubt that; I posted the idea as a paranoid fantasy, and if that’s all it was, I’m glad. I don’t mind being wrong. Hope I don’t make a habit of it.

The real aim of Shumlin’s conspicuous non-endorsement of Sorrell, I’m told, is to give potential Democratic challengers some subtle encouragement to challenge Sorrell. And one other name to add to the list of potential challengers: Windsor County State’s Attorney Bobby Sand.

Some confirmation of our recent spate of Republican-ticket rumor-mongering comes from “Blurt,” the staff blog at Seven Days. Reporter Paul Heintz quotes State Sen. Vince Illuzzi as saying the odds are 75% that he’ll run for Attorney General as a Republican, against Democrat Bill Sorrell. (Assuming Sorrell is the nominee; see the same gathering of rumors.

Heintz offers a couple Illuzzi quotes on why Sorrell might be vulnerable and why he’d be a better choice. Nowhere in the (admittedly brief) item does Heintz recount Illuzzi’s decidedly checkered history with legal ethics.

Brief reminder: Three times during his career as a lawyer, Illuzzi has been charged with ethical violations. For four years in the 1990s, his law license was suspended. (Details here.) That would seem to be an important bit of information concerning a prospective holder of Vermont’s highest legal position.

It’s the second time this week that Illuzzi’s possible candidacy has been mentioned in the media. The first was on WDEV’s Mark Johnson Show, in a conversation between Mark and Vermont Pundit Laureate Eric Davis. They tossed around an Illuzzi bid without mentioning his past run-ins with his own profession.

I realize he isn’t the nominee yet, and hasn’t even formally entered the race. But I’d think that his past ought to be the very first thing that’s brought up. And it ought to be brought up and explored thoroughly before Illuzzi gets anywhere near the nomination.  

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

At Town Meeting this week, Vermonters in nearly 60 towns spoke with a clear voice when they rejected the Supreme Court’s bizarre notion that a corporation is a person. Their vote comes as the spigot of money — opened wide by Citizens United — is flooding the presidential election landscape. Unchecked spending by Super PACs is giving Americans a disturbing preview of coming attractions if this horrible decision is not overturned.

The voices of Vermonters on Town Meeting Day gave a boost to the national movement to overturn Citizens United with an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As we work towards that goal, I am taking two concrete steps to limit the influence of Super PACs before the November elections.

First, I am calling on President Obama to use his constitutional authority to fill the five openings on the six-member Federal Election Commission (FEC) during the next recess of the United States Senate. Partisan gridlock at the FEC and in the Senate has rendered the FEC feckless at a moment when their guidance and enforcement is needed most. The very agency that is supposed to be the elections cop on the beat is paralyzed as Super PACS run amok in an election landscape muddied by Citizens United.

Second, I am calling on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate whether nonprofit 501(c)(4) organizations affiliated with Super PACs are in violation of federal law. Groups qualifying for nonprofit tax-exempt status are prohibited by law from engaging in substantial political activity. Simply put, the IRS should take appropriate action against any organization masquerading as a nonprofit at the expense of the taxpayer.

Vermont has a proud history of leading the nation on issues of profound national importance. By speaking up this week on Citizens United, our small state is again assuming a leadership role on another issue of historic significance. And our voice is again being heard.