(Hey, the administration is interested in inspections.  I’m sure the fact that this is an election year is entirely irrelevant. – promoted by JulieWaters)

Is that a real spine or just an election year posture ahead of the curve ?

Better late than never I guess after the last year of downtime,evacuations and leaks.

Could they really be about to stand up for Vermont and against Entergy ?

Douglas administration wants new inspection of Yankee cooling towers

MONTPELIER — The Douglas administration Friday asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to come back to Vermont and reinspect the cooling towers at Vermont Yankee, saying the continuing problems at the Vernon plant were “unacceptable.”

In a sharply-worded letter, David O’Brien, commissioner of the Department of Public Service, asked NRC administrators to do another inspection of the towers and get to the bottom of the continuing problem.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/a…

 This was Gov.Douglas  then …July 19,2008 —

The state Department of Public Service has declined to let members of a panel created by the Legislature to do a special audit of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant join an inspection of the plant set for Monday, officials confirmed Friday.

The Douglas administration has done a bit of a pivot on this after they blocked the Vermont Oversight Panel access to accompany NRC officials in their tour of the Yankee plant back in July.One wonders what might have been revealed in this July inspection if the Oversight Panel had not been denied access by Gov.Douglas .

Gov.Douglas policy post pivot……after the latest leak in the continuing troubled  cooling towers saga  ….Now

Wark said the state wanted the NRC to determine whether inspectors noted all problems in July.

“Did they miss it? What else did they miss?” he said.

Wark said the idea for a management audit came from Arnie Gundersen and the late Lawrence Hochreiter, two members of the Vermont Oversight Panel.

Gundersen, chairman of the panel, said he and Hochreiter pushed for the management audit before the most recent leaks at Yankee and finally got the support of the Department of Public Service.

“The oversight panel recognized the need for a management audit back in July, and we’ve been working with the department on that issue,” Gundersen said.

“Given the cooling tower problems, the transformer fire and related problems, and given the inspection of Indian Point (nuclear plant,) we thought a broader management review of Entergy and Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee would be appropriate,” he said.

(Because it’s so much fun to live this close to a ticking time bomb. – promoted by JulieWaters)

At some point they really better give up on this excuse that these leaks are not uncommon.The point and the problem is exactly that are common

 

September 17, 2008 Vermont Yankee is at 55 percent power this morning for repair of a packing leak in an expansion joint in a pipe that carries river water in the east cooling tower, Entergy officials said today.

It appears that the leak of about 60 gpm is related to the packing in an expansion joint and not related to structural issues as had been the cause of previous river water leaks in the cooling tower.

While packing leaks are not uncommon, plant management took the conservative action to reduce power and remove the cooling tower from service to allow an inspection of adjacent pipe joint packing, officials said.

The west tower remains in service and plant operators expect the repairs and power reduction to be of short duration.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

Remember that big charge of money up front,and guaranteed yearly payments the State was going to get if it leased the State lottery?

One of Jim’s big ideas might have wound up in a pretty big tangle of failure.

I guess it is good Gov.Douglas didn’t get to do more about leasing out the lottery.Opposing it was the wise move by the legislature.

What if Lehman Brothers had leased Vt. state lottery?

– When Gov. James Douglas proposed the idea of leasing the state lottery earlier this year, one of the major players in the discussion was Lehman Brothers, the massive investment bank which filed for bankruptcy protection Monday.

It is unclear what, if any, impact the company’s bankruptcy – the financial terms of which are still being worked on – would have had on Vermont’s lottery if the Legislature had agreed to the idea.

http://www.timesargus.com/apps…

There appears to be a time delay between what is on blogs and in the “big “media .The worries have hit the establishment (a dated term?) as they realize that McCain’s Palin is dangerously unprepared and foolishly doubt free about her Vice Presidential and possible Presidential skills.The “big “media  is reporting the lies with mixed results in the face of a determined continued onslaught of the falsehoods by McCain/Palin.She is back using the line ‘I just said no to the Bridge’ baloney now that she is back in the lower 48.Who could have predicted McCain determined to fly lies into White House ?Until McCain settled on Palin the hard right was floundering a bit.They had nowhere to go in this election .They were offered up to McCain as his shock troops to shore up his campaign crusade .What will they get in the bargain? Here are some lines from NYTimes Frank Rich today. Read the whole thing,this is blog language full of emotion .That emotion is fear of a  Palin/McCain victory .

It’s an urgent matter, because if we’ve learned anything from the G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. This unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the room of this election.

No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, McCain stands revealed as a guy who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for “victory,” whether in Iraq or in Michigan. A McCain victory on Election Day will usher in a Palin presidency, with McCain serving as a transitional front man, an even weaker Bush to her Cheney.

…….McCain’s conspicuous subservience to his younger running mate’s hard-right ideology and his dependence on her electioneering energy raise the question of who has the power in this relationship and who is in charge. A strong and independent woman or the older ward who would be bobbing in a golf cart without her? The more voters see that McCain will be the figurehead for a Palin presidency, the more they are likely to demand stepped-up vetting of the rigidly scripted heir apparent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09…

Truth in context,contextual reality.The Washington Post explores the nature of facts and wrestles oddly with nature of reality.With the McCain/Palin ticket it finds facts are less important than dominant themes to McCain but…attempting equilibrium here they find Obama may exaggerate. At least an exaggeration starts with the truth. Repeating an “untrue” fact is most often,in reality considered a lie.  

As Campaign Heats Up, Untruths Can Become Facts Before They’re Undone

As the presidential campaign moves into a final, heated stretch, untrue accusations and rumors have started to swirl at a pace so quick that they become regarded as fact before they can be disproved. A number of fabrications about Palin’s policies and personal life, for instance, have circulated on the Internet since she joined the Republican ticket.

..John Feehery, a Republican strategist, said the campaign is entering a stage in which skirmishes over the facts are less important than the dominant themes that are forming voters’ opinions of the candidates.

..”The more the New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there’s a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she’s new, she’s popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent,” Feehery said. “As long as those are out there, these little facts don’t really matter.”

Nevertheless, with McCain’s standing in the polls surging, aides say he is not about to back down from statements he believes are fundamentally true, such as the anecdote about the bridge.

Lying works for them,win at all cost worry about the facts later.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

No operation smooth ride for 6,000 people that need this bridge for their daily transportation .As with the last bridge closure commuters ,commercial vehicles and more importantly emergency equipment will need to take detours around the deteriorating bridge .The bridge’s priority for repair has been advanced from 99 to 17 after being declared unsafe.The situation seems to demand that we do more rather than continue with do less as a policy .

State transportation officials shut down Richmond’s main bridge over the Winooski River Thursday evening after discovering that steel under the structure had deteriorated to the point it was no longer safe for vehicles.

…Filkorn said the bridge is used by about 6,000 people each day coming in and out of Richmond. Its closing will add at least a dozen more miles to commutes, he said, and threaten to leave the downtown businesses looking like ghost towns.

And perhaps even worse, the shut-down bridge creates major headaches for local emergency officials. The local fire department has stashed one of its trucks on the other side of the river just in case, Filkorn said.

http://www.timesargus.com/apps…

Another of Bush’s departments may be finding a way out of enforcing  consumer and worker protection laws. Perhaps this has potential Vermont implications. The whistleblower protection law part of Sarbanes -Oxley Act may have a hole worn in its enforcement by the Department of Labor .The Labor Dept. is claiming that employees of corporate subsidiaries aren’t covered under the law .

Sharon Worthy, a Labor Department spokeswoman, said the agency “believes that there is no legal basis for the argument that subsidiaries of covered corporations are automatically covered” under the Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower provision.

With another view is Senator Leahy who was involved in the writing of the law quoted saying that the law was written to be broadly interpreted “It prohibits publicly-traded companies or “any other officer, employee, contractor, subcontractor, or agent of such company” from retaliating against employees who provide information or assist in investigations related to alleged fraud.”

The government has ruled in favor of whistleblowers 17 times out of 1,273 complaints filed since 2002, according to department records. Another 841 cases have been dismissed. Many of the dismissals were made on the grounds that employees worked for a corporate subsidiary, says Richard Moberly, a University of Nebraska law professor.

This may be a stretch and a needless worry.More likely just another added ,maybe unforeseen benefit of forming Enexus.Enexus will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Entergy maybe immune from the whistleblower regulation as the Bush labor department sees it .Who knows how this could play out in the event of a whistleblower coming forward with some grievance .However given the Bush Labor Dept’s enforcement it might make it unlikely if not impossible for someone to take that risk without protection under law .If ever an industry required complete whistleblower protection it is nuclear power as practiced at Vermont Yankee.

http://online.wsj.com/article/…

Here is an nice little example of some election year executive pettiness on our governor’s part .It an official routine except when its not .

It’s a protocol laid out in the Vermont Constitution, a routine that hardly raises an eyebrow.This morning, Gov. Jim Douglas leaves for the Republican National Convention in Minnesota. This evening, Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie is expected back in Vermont from the convention.In the hours in between, that makes Speaker Gaye Symington acting governor. It’s a role she has filled numerous times during her four years as speaker

…This time, Symington said Tuesday evening, she hadn’t heard a word from the governor’s office about filling in. She has been given none of the advanced notice she usually has. She said she didn’t know both Douglas and Dubie were going to be out of state at the same time.

Douglas’ spokesman, Jason Gibbs, downplayed the existence of an official routine. “The governor is governor, whether he’s in Vermont or any other state,” Gibbs said. “In this era of modern communication he is able to communicate and correspond with his office.”

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

 But what there’s more today about the Douglas,Dubie absent notification

A message was sent by email although there is a disagreement about whether that was the agreed upon method of communication to Symington’s assistant Alex Maclean.In this era of modern communication its surprising the Governor’s office didn’t follow up on the message .

Gov. Jim Douglas’ spokesman, Jason Gibbs, said the governor’s staff had an agreement with MacLean that when the Legislature was not in session, the best way to reach her was by e-mail. MacLean said that was not so.

Nonetheless, Symington, who is the Democratic candidate challenging Douglas in the election, is acting governor through Friday. Gibbs downplayed the importance of the role.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

It’s all about them and they show no hesitation about using the suffering of New Orleans to their advantage as a prop.

Unreal,this deserves contempt and derision in the media which is just not happening .The same McCain that was literally eating cake with Bush when Katrina hit New Orleans now needs the City and it’s people as back drop .What total shark jumping foolishness.At long last is there no Republican with any shame ?

ST. PAUL — Hurricane Gustav is blowing the Republican National Convention off course with tomorrow’s proceedings all-but-canceled and John McCain floating the idea that he might deliver his acceptance speech Thursday night from the area blasted by the storm.

……….”As long as we properly handle the Gustavication of the convention, it may be a positive,” said one GOP operative. He added that with the exception of speeches by Palin and McCain “everything else is just an opportunity to make a mistake or distract from the historic nature of the ticket.”

…………Gustav takes much of the focus off of Palin and, even if she does speak on Wednesday night, the tenor of her address will likely be much more in her comfort zone; she is likely to avoid direct partisan attacks and instead talk about the fundamental goodness of the country — a recipe for her speech to be well received by a nation looking for encouragement.

http://voices.washingtonpost.c…

is definitely not saying yes …….

The New York Times in an editorial today titled Fish to Slaughter states “Entergy is eager to renew its reactor licenses, which expire in 2013 and 2015. That means that regulatory agencies can require the company to do the right thing.”

Enexus /Entergy’s spin-off shell if SEC approved will own five aging nuclear plants in NY,Vt,and Ma .. Note should be taken of the contrast in tone New York state takes dealing with this corporation . New York state has worked to force Entergy to adhere to financial agreements and environmental rules that have been previously made. It is an attitude seldom seen here in Vermont as Gov.Douglas demurs to the New Orleans based utilities demands with a nod and veto.Short sighted fear of losing “low” rates and a general sympathy for all things corporate is guiding Douglas. Any demand such as long term guarantees on the decommissioning funds are seen by a fearful Gov.Douglas as a threat to our current rates . Enexus leveraged financial scheme that is bringing it into being sounds worthy of Enron’s creative arrangements. If the new company Enexus, like a spoiled child granted all it’s previous wishes comes to Gov .Jim Douglas to renegotiate the existing power contract terms “low” rates how will he say no ? Last week the paper carried another example of the different treatment Entergy gets .

In New York ,Entergy’s proposal was disclosed this year in securities filings, which laid out a new holding company called Enexus that would include nuclear plants in New York and Vermont. In a clause in one of those filings, Entergy claimed that Enexus would not have to live up to the revenue-sharing agreement between Entergy and New York.

Under the existing agreement, Entergy is supposed to pay New York up to $72 million annually through 2014, and state officials had expected to receive the full amount. The money is due to go to the State Power Authority, which provides low-cost electricity to businesses and municipalities and administers various programs like replacing coal furnaces in public schools and providing energy-efficient refrigerators to public-housing residents.

Following negotiations in recent weeks with the Power Authority, which was threatening legal action, Entergy backed off from arguably the most controversial part of its spin-off proposal – at least in the minds of New York officials.

In Vermont, the other state where the law requires state regulators to sign off on the spin-off, lawmakers passed a bill earlier this year calling for the Public Service Board to require Entergy to make additional financial guarantees to a decommissioning fund before approving the spin-off. But Gov. Jim Douglas vetoed the measure, saying Entergy might raise electric rates after its current contract expires in 2012.

Gov.Douglas  may find himself re-negotiating sooner rather than later .This view on Entergy’s plans and prospects from Zacks Investment “Anticipated rate increases, a relatively strong balance sheet and decent earnings visibility at the Entergy Nuclear business are some of the company’s attractive investment features.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08…

http://www.chron.com/disp/stor…