“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

— Oscar Wilde

The signs that a blogger is making a difference are often subtle and indirect. An issue or idea you brought up is mentioned in other media. A politician stops using a line of argument after you’ve debunked it. A member of the legacy press takes a gratuitous swipe in your direction.

Sometimes it’s less subtle. I have been, at different times, congratulated and sneered at by Vermont’s First Citizen. I’ve gotten some off-the-record praise from leading politicians.

But the blogger’s most unique currency of notice — the sign that you’re being read and having an impact — is when people get mad at you. Badges of honor, I call ’em. And I’ve received two new ones this week.

First, Senator Joe Benning’s inept defense of his repeated use of the word “rape,” as posted on VTDigger. I didn’t notice it at first because we were all focused on his persistent rapeyness. But there it was, in his response to the press release from Vermont Democratic Party head Julia Barnes’ taking issue with the use of “rape” in a political debate:

Her press release mirrored an earlier blog essay, written by an anonymous blogger who seeks relevance through savagery with acerbic wit.

That earlier blog essay was mine. And I’d like to thank the Senator for honoring me with his vitriol. Indeed, if I hadn’t just gotten some business cards printed up (including my picture and real name, Joe), I’d get some now, if only to include the motto “Savagery with Acerbic Wit.”

That’s the kind of thing, like Seven Days co-owner Paula Routly’s characterization of GMD as an “angry mob of partisan bloggers,” that makes a blogger proud.  

And speaking of Seven Days, my second Badge of Honor comes from Paul Heintz, the self-anointed Emily Post of State House journalism. My diary about the VTGOP’s hiring of Brent Burns as its new political director didn’t meet Heintz’ standards of decorum:

Runner-up loser: Green Mountain Daily’s John Walters for his unwarranted, but typical, 3:22 a.m. trashing of Burns. Welcome to Vermont!

Sorry, Paul. I hadn’t realized that “Welcome Wagon” is one of the duties of the State House press corps. Next time, I promise I’ll chip in on the fruit basket, ‘k?

I do a variety of things in my GMD work. There’s some serious analysis and commentary; there’s some actual journalism; and there’s a fair bit of afflicting the comfortable. When a little acerbic wit is called for, even a touch of savagery, I provide it.

That’s what blogs like GMD do.

And, if you’ll pardon the acerbity, it’s what Seven Days used to do.

So thank you, Sen. Benning and Mr. Heintz. I am honored, and I shall wear these badges with pride.  

 Maybe because Vermont Yankee and the stricken Fukushima power plants are of the same age and design, I figured the owner might have the same habit as Entergy of releasing bad or embarrassing news on Fridays. But after considering Tepco’s two-year-long inability to control the flow of just about everything from that facility, I hope controlling the news cycle is a low priority.

At Fukushima #3 on Friday there were reports that rats, yes rats, for a second time since March no less, had caused a power outage at the “stricken” Fukushima nuclear power complex. “Stricken” has become most of the media’s unofficial first name for Fukushima, “disabled” is the middle name.

Tepco has since installed mousetraps at the site and promised to plug holes through which rats and other rodents might enter buildings and gnaw on important equipment. It has also promised to speed up work to install backup power cables to the fuel pools.  

But Friday afternoon, four workers using wire meshing to seal a space around electric cables caused a ground fault, or the accidental flow of current to the ground. No one was injured, but the ground fault shut off electricity to the cooling system at the No. 3 reactor fuel pool.

By Saturday however, other news leaked out that not only had the rat-catching efforts caused a three-hour shutdown of the cooling system in number 3 reactor but that contaminated water was leaking outside the plant from a lined storage pool. Early in the week when radiation levels outside the plant spiked, workers detected new water leaking from one of seven underground pools at the plants

[…] up to 120 metric tons of contaminated water may have leaked into nearby soil surrounding the plant but that the leak is unlikely to have reached the sea, half a mile (800 meters) from the cooling pool.

Officials offered no explanation on why it is “unlikely” the radioactive water has not traveled the 800 meters (2,624 ft.) to reach the sea.

So two years into this emergency, plagued – or rather stricken – by rodents and massive leaks, Tepco declares:

"We need to revise our water management plans."

Atomic strength mops and mousetraps must be in it for the long haul, since according to Japanese government estimates it will take 40 years to fully clean-up the site.

Now we just need someone to build a better mousetrap.

From RT.com

Shell Pipeline, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, shut down their West Columbia, Texas, pipeline last Friday after electronic calculations conducted by the US National Response Center showed that upwards of 700 barrels had been lost, amounting to almost 30,000 gallons of crude oil.

I’ve been looking for more info. My favorite tidbit, so far comes from this Reuters article:

Shell Pipeline, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, said inspectors have found “no evidence” of a crude oil leak from a pipeline west of Houston that was shut on Friday after alarms indicated a possible breach, a spokeswoman said on Monday.

Question:

Does the oil industry hire blind inspectors with no sinuses?

The Kalamazoo rupture, which has left more than 30 miles of a major river polluted, wiped out 150 homes, and destroyed countless wildlife, was another instance of inspectors finding no leak. If one is blind and has no sense of smell, I can see missing the masses of thick black goo and its acrid stench. Anyone else, however, should notice, yes?

When I ask myself, which waterways and communities should we poison with a VT pipeline leak, I keep answering:

“Are you stupid? None of them.”

(Apparently, I have a very cynical and sarcastic inner voice.)

So, um, why does ANYONE consider pipelines to be a “good” idea in our state? I mean, besides those who profit directly from said oil – they’re obvious? Oh, and politicians whose political life’s blood comes from IV infusions of lobbyist cashola?

VTDigger.com’s Nat Rudarakanchana has a terrific and thorough article about the State of Vermont shutting down one of its many EB-5 projects. Until it was shut down, Dream Life Retirement Resorts, LLC, had planned to build almost two hundred assisted-living apartment units with the aid of foreign investment from EB-5 funding. Three years ago American Dream was granted permission by Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development to seek foreign investor funding through the EB-5 program. But just last month, the state-regulated project was canceled 

[…] because of “material misrepresentations.” Three of the four individuals who represent the company cited themselves as attorneys for the project; none of the men identified [is] licensed to practice law in Florida, where the law firm cited in the agreement [is headquartered].

Some of the many highlights of Canadian Dream Life founder Richard Parenteau’s travails include the revelation that he was convicted of perjury in a dispute in Canada over a will, but is still a “background investor” in the Vermont sanctioned EB-5.

Parenteau, who declined comment for the story, is a very active entrepreneur but perhaps less talented at creatively naming those projects:

Over the last 20 years, Parenteau has created and dissolved more than two dozen companies in Florida and Vermont, […] Five of the entities bear the DreamLife name, including an insurance company, a real estate firm and a finance company, all three of which are now inactive.

The VtDigger.com piece has comments and general reassurances by past and present state officials about the sound regulation of other ongoing EB-5-funded projects. Vermont is an active player in regulating and promoting the EB-5 job-creating investment for visa-funded business complexes. But fear not, these state officials say, they are pros – they know the industry they regulate. And some have even joined in for the fun and profit.

Former Douglas Administration EB-5 official James Candido, who offers his thoughts on Dream Life in the digger article, invested in a luxury Montana Spa that obtains funds through EB-5. And of course, our current governor’s former deputy chief of staff/secretary of civil and military affairs Alex MacLean “completed” her state job and was hired to work for Vermont’s own EB-5 Bigfoot Bill Stenger.

Not that there is anything wrong with all that. It is just business as usual.

Then again, it's probably a good thing that state regulators called a halt before Dream Life's project became a regulatory nightmare.

I am becoming inclined to write all my stuff about and for animals.  And talk to them.  Speak their language, and maybe save my rancid human ass, or, at least, my soul.  People suck!

WHAT THE BEASTS KNOW ABOUT THE DINOSAURS

The birds and the beasts and the fishes

in the sea shake their heads, flap their

wings and fins, and just give up.  Hoping

against hope to just survive another season

in which predators, driven to strip all riches

and life from the ground and the waters,

dump the scat of money made from oil spills

and radiation and war ever closer to home.

The animals move away from crime, but

it follows them into new neighborhoods

and soon they must all move on again,

and fewer and fewer of them each time.

Waiting for the day the Almighty Spirit sends

its great stone crashing down from the sky,

ridding for once and all time the entire earth

of a species that never found its own purpose.

Oh yes, the birds and the beasts and the fishes

in the sea will say, yes now we can start all over.

And if this time one tiny out of place untoward

nameless thing oozes up out of the waters,

we will kill it quickly, and give our little babies

its deadness to feast upon, hoping they know

better than to eat the parts that will kill them.

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, VT  

Mr. Pomerleau has a full page ad in the ‘Weekend Messenger’ that says he is withdrawing the appeal and that his motives have been misunderstood.  He insists he was only looking out for the best interests of the City

You can still make lemonade out of those lemons by looking afresh at how your own property can be improved, “in a responsible manner,” to compliment the downtown restoration so as to benefit the entire community of St. Albans…and I am sure that the City can still find ways in which to assist you with that good deed.

__________________________________________________________________________

Nothing does greater disservice to the legitimate cause of responsible land use and citizen access to that process, than when one business targets another through permit appeals, solely to settle a score or disable competition.

That is the kind of abuse that gives anti-regulatory lawmakers ammunition with which to attack an otherwise valuable citizen interface.

In St. Albans, development giant Pomerleau Real Estate is doing just that in its attempt to punish a small local retailer for having given notice that it will vacate Pomerleau’s ill-conceived strip-mall this summer in order to participate in the City’s long anticipated downtown redevelopment plans.

Now we are learning just how shallow are Pomerleau’s claims that the new ACE Hardware store project will “harm” this ugly little strip mall in the center of the City.

When permit appeals are filed, it is required that the appellant produce a list of “questions” which hone-in on the reason for the appeal.  This list typically cites specific passages of local statutes which the appellant believes are being violated by the permitted project; or, so it is intended to do.

Taken as narrowly as possible, it is an easy job for the appellant to provide this list, as the questions may simply restate the purpose of the individual statute and ask if that requirement has been met by the project, without representing any reason to doubt that it has.  

In order to respond to these questions however, the applicant must be prepared to represent how his/her project is in compliance with each individual statute, placing a burden of evidence and disclosure on the applicant that far outweighs that of the appellant, even at this early stage in the appeal.

So the list of questions, provided by the attorney for Pomerleau’s  St. Albans Shopping Center, is barely ten sentences long while Gordon Winters’ Motion to Dismiss, which addresses each of the ten statutory references cited in the appellant’s “questions,” runs to thirteen pages.

Nowhere has the Pomerleau company suggested how its interests will be harmed in any way by Mr. Winters new ACE Hardware emporium, which will locate on the property next door and represent a significant facelift to that blighted corner.

It is somewhat ironic that Pomerleau will most likely harm its own reputation with this appeal, by drawing attention to the singularly inappropriate land use the St. Albans Shopping Center represents for our historic downtown.  That Shopping Center would never pass muster and receive a permit under the rigorous criteria that Pomerleau seeks to invoke against the ACE Hardware project.

Mr. Winters project has been shaped in such intimate collaboration with the City that both entities have bent over backwards to ensure that environmental and aesthetic concerns have been rigourously observed in the site plan and architecture.

This is the way the benign intentions of regulatory law can be made the cats-paw of unscrupulous powerbrokers who have plenty of money to “lawyer-up” and bleed the other guy dry, even when no issue exists whatsoever.

This case should cause everyone in the state who is concerned about responsible land use and environmental regulation to sit up and take notice; because, if Mr. Pomerleau succeeds in exploiting the law in order to impose costly and debilitating delays on the City of St. Albans in its effort to do the responsible thing to revitalize the downtown, there will ultimately be a price to pay for us all.

It is shameful that a powerful man like Ernie Pomerleau, scion of the Pomerleau Real Estate empire in Vermont, who numbers among his friends Governor Shumlin and Senator Leahy; who prides himself in a reputation for philanthropy and wraps himself in the green of his native Vermont, would stoop so low as to take a swipe at a local independent retailer and the best efforts of the people of St. Albans.  

Is this the same man who gave the following quote to the Free Press just two years ago?

“I learned to use the empirical side and the theoretical side of my brain. Vision without action is just a dream. Action without vision is just running in place. Vision with action will change the world.

Mr. Pomerleau, exactly which side of your brain is telling you to behave in this way now?

Entergy’s “reliability” continues to come into question in rather spectacular ways this year.

This time, poor old Arkansas once again was the site of an energy related disaster, when things went horribly wrong during a “planned upgrade” operation at Entergy’s Arkansas Nuclear One, killing one man and injuring seven more.

Thanks to GMD contributor ed for providing a link to the story as reported, with pictures, on local media.

From Enformable we get a closer view of the technical situation:

Around 07:50 on Easter Sunday morning, an accident at the Arkansas Nuclear Power Plant not only killed one worker and injured others it also left the Unit 1 reactor without offsite power.  Workers were using the Unit 1 turbine temporary lift device to move the Main Turbine Generator Stator, which weighs over 500 tons, out of the turbine building when it fell.  The lift crane failed, dropping the load, which resulted in a crash which was heard by local residents miles from the site, and tripped the Unit 2 reactor.

Entergy is naturally eager to put the incident behind them, but we who are audience to their frequent protestations of “reliability” in the legal sense, must note that such spectacular failures as occurred at the Superdome before millions of viewers, and now at AR Nuclear One certainly strain the credibility of that argument.

Both were costly accidents (this latest with loss of life), which lead one to suspect that Entergy’s recent financial troubles have impacted the ability of the company to maintain adequate staffing and equipment oversight; perhaps even eroding their commitment to best practices in the long term.

And I keep worrying whether anyone is minding the decommissioning “piggy bank” for VY.

Ever since the Senator Bill Doyle Town Meeting Survey made its annual appearance, and attracted the usual amount of media attention, I’ve been doing some thinking about this uniquely Vermont phenomenon. And I’ve come to some conclusions I’d like to run by the rest of you.

The Doyle survey can be filled out by anyone anywhere, and yet it’s always taken as some kind of bellwether of public opinion. Bill Doyle does his annual turn as the Sage of Vermont, and the political class chews over the meaning of the results with all the fervor of a pack of haruspices examining freshly-liberated goat entrails.

This is the same political class that has a rather poor record of predicting actual outcomes. And there’s good reason for that: the politicos and State House media live in a little golden bubble, they spend a lot of time talking to each other, and conventional wisdom is reinforced.

These are the people who lend credence to the Doyle Survey. The Freeploid’s Terri Hallenbeck writes that “often the results smell right,” and the Mitchell Family’s Man in the Bubble Peter Hirschfeld quotes a not-at-all self-serving Bill Doyle contending that “I think it does give us a sense of how people are thinking.”

Really? Well, now that we actually have a professionally-conducted polling operation in Vermont, the Castleton Polling Institute, we have a useful point of comparison.

The 2012 Doyle survey reported 48% approval for Governor Shumlin. This year it’s 42%. This has been interpreted as a rise in anti-Shumlin feelings, even though (a) the Doyle survey is completely unprofessional, and (b) even if it were, the six-point drop is barely outside the statistical margin of error for a professional survey. The results are precisely meaningless.  

Castleton, meanwhile, showed the Governor sailing comfortably along in the 60% range. He won the election with 58% of the vote. Castleton was right, Doyle was wrong.

So why does the chattering class go on and on about the Doyle Survey? Well, we Vermonters love our traditions, the little things that make Vermont different and supposedly better. And everybody in the news business likes Bill Doyle.

All right, if the Doyle Survey is not to be trusted, is it simply because of the poll’s random nature? Or does it misrepresent reality in identifiable ways?  

I do not believe that anyone is stuffing the ballot boxes. There’s nothing to gain from doing so, and it would take a lot of effort. No, I think the innate, ungoverned selection process produces a skewed sample. Here’s how.

Who fills out the vast majority of Doyle Surveys? People who attend Town Meeting.

Who attends Town Meeting? Well, to start with, not the residents of our largest communities. They may show up to vote in local elections, but they are much less likely to stop and fill out a Doyle than people who are sitting down for a meeting. I think I’m safe in saying that our smaller communities are over-represented in the Doyle Survey.

Okay, what kinds of people are more likely to attend a Town Meeting? Those with an appreciation for Vermont’s political traditions, and those who want to keep a close eye on their local government. Many of these folks are conservative. Some are liberal, progressive or even radical, but they share that belief in the things that make Vermont unique. I suspect that the Town Meeting crowd is substantially skewed toward lifetime, or longtime, Vermonters.

(Confession: I’ve lived in Vermont for seven years, in a community with a real Town Meeting. I’ve never attended one. And, Frank Bryan hagiography notwithstanding, I don’t feel like I’ve really missed anything, to be honest.)

Take all those inferences together, and what do you have? A survey that overrepresents those who are somewhat more conservative, and very much more invested in Vermont tradition, than the general electorate.  (That’d be a very good dictionary definition of “Bill Doyle,” as it happens.) The survey results would tend to overamplify the uniqueness and quirkiness that Vermont is widely believed to possess.

Especially among the political media. I’ve found that many members of the media, even if they tend to be well-educated and personally outsiderish, have a deeply-held fondness for stereotypical Vermont.

Looking at the whole picture, Doyle Survey participants tend to be more Vermonty than the real-life Vermont. The results reflect this. The predispositions of the political class and media tend to accept, or even welcome, the survey results as more “proof” that Vermont is a special and different place.

It’s the Bill Doyle Feedback Loop.

And I believe it has a negative effect on our political discourse. Those who live in the hothouse of state politics think that Vermont is more conservative and eccentric than it really is, and that makes them more cautious than they should be. They tend to over-validate conventional wisdom on issues like taxes and gun control, as well as the lesser controversies that seem to tie politicians in knots, such as vaccination, smart meters, and wind energy.

I mean, as an essentially meaningless bit of springtime fun, the Doyle is an innocuous thing. But to the extent it’s taken seriously as a measure of public opinion, we’d be better off without it.  

If I’d had a gun on me, I swear

I would have shot that Sonofabitch

Back before I died–shot him dead.

Then you’d fucking remember me.

And, oh boy, I’d make it for money

That I’d be the black whacko with a gun,

And all the stories would be about

The Sonofabitch and his kids and his pets.

You’d make that dirty lowlife Sonofabitch

A fucking hero, and babble on about

How certain people, yeah, certain people

Shouldn’t have guns, and fucking crime.

How’s come cops and security guards

Get to mow down people and nobody

Says shit?  And our fucking Army

In Afghanistan?  Talk about children.

It makes me fucking sick how you

Whine about violence all the time

While you fucking create more of it.

And I’m not even the Reverend King.

Remember him?

Yeah, if he were alive today some psycho

Sonofabitch Security Guard would get him.

And then you’d what?  Hold a fucking vigil?

Goddamn all you white lazy assholes!

Gun control?  You can’t even control

Your own fucking opinion on anything

Without some Liberal or some Nazi

Making you be oh so fucking polite about it.

Is it polite what’s going on right now

In Afghanistan?  Is it okay that every time

A black or hispanic person is gunned down

Some Sonofabitch on Wall Street makes money?

I guess then all this fucking silence about me

Is you being polite cause you’re afraid

The sonsofbitches might shoot you too

If you don’t kiss their rich white assholes.

It makes me sick up here looking down

And seeing you let them murder us again.

Your fucking white cops and security guards

With all their fucking guns and that’s okay?

Shit.  You go on then and piss away what’s left

Of the freedoms my people fought for.

And you take away everybody’s guns and give them

A fucking candle for the sonsofbitches to aim at.

Illegal aliens and guns and fucking war.

With your politicians who mouth off about justice

And the economy so you’ll feel better

The next time they kill someone like me.

Someday some sonofabitch will be in your backyard

Pointing a gun at your little kid’s head,

And when you call 911 for the police,

The operator will tell you that they’re already there.

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.

(And I’m NOT going to stop until this atrocity from last December is addressed.)

Photos are surfacing showing the results of the tragedy at

Entergy’s nuclear reactor in Arkansas, where a worker was killed Sunday.

Eight other people were injured, when a 500 ton replacement stator dropped while being moved. It’s not yet clear whether this calamity was caused by failure of the crane or by an electrical failure.

http://www.couriernews.com/vie…