Is anyone else tired of Entergy’s rather lame PR push to gain support for relicensing Vermont Yankee?

If so, you will enjoy the entertaining and informative parody posted by VY challenger Fake-Rob Williams. You see, Fake-Rob Williams (a parody of VY official spokesman, Rob Williams) has discovered that the link provided on Entergy’s “I Am Vermont Yankee” site for the public to post their presumably supportive comments about VY is, in fact, non-functional.  

Leaping into the breach, Fake-Rob Williams has helpfully provided an alternative site for readers comments called “I Love Vermont Yankee.”  Against a bubblegum pink background,  “I Love Vermont Yankee”  echos the features on Entergy’s “I am Vermont Yankee” website, offering smiling celebrity pics as stand-ins for the suspiciously homogenized representations of “actual” VY employees that appear on the Entergy site.  Fake-Rob makes his own comments on Vermont Yankee; remarks that he repeatedly tried to submit on the “I am Vermont Yankee” site over the course of an entire day, finding that they NEVER appeared in the queue of that day’s submissions.  Fake-Rob’s comments were a series of “helpful” reminders of the many embarrassing faux pas committed by VY and it’s employees over the recent past.

“For example, absolutely none of the messages you submit to the “Show Your Support” section of the official web site will show up. I should know. I’ve been testing it all day. I sent in a message about certain financial shenanigans, and another one about pending environmental problems. Then I sent in one about the stoned control room operator, one about the guard who shot himself in the foot, and another one about the woman in charge of checking people for alcohol impairment. (She showed up drunk.) These are controversial issues, and we need support on all of them. Big time. So what’s up with an official website that doesn’t take my pleas for help?”

Intrigued, I crafted my own “helpful” comment to submit on the Entergy site, about how my family is prepared to do our part for energy efficiency by accepting the opportunity to glow-in-the-dark, courtesy of Vermont Yankee. Nine hours later, my comment has still not appeared in the queue although many more have been added.  Curiously, there is not one single negative comment; and all of the positive comments are uniformly literate and enthusiastic!  

Looks like Brad Ferland has certainly rolled up his PR sleeves on this one, but forgotten a few lessons in credibility.

Jim Douglas never met a ribbon he wouldn’t cut, and now he has officiated at a demolition. Nice parenthetical move, Governor!

The decaying bridge had a final moment of glory as it transformed from a lonely span across silent snow fields into a living garland of exploding debris.

As that image echoed in slow motion all over the internet, it got me to thinking about the frozen waters below. On a hunch, I phoned AOT and asked if anyone had thought to apply for a 1272 discharge order before the Governor pressed that fateful button. I was told by John Narowski’s office that no 1272 Order had been obtained because the bridge was under Coast Guard jurisdiction, but that permits had been issued in New York State.  Nice. Apparently no one in the Douglas administration paid equal attention to satisfying our own regulations.  

I am certainly no expert, but it would seem to me that when tons of mixed debris are to be discharged from great height into Vermont waters, a 1272 Order would absolutely be required; and no Federal jurisdiction would trump that requirement. Why else would there be permits regarding the blast from the State of New York?  Poor beleaguered Lake Champlain just can’t seem to get a break from the Douglas Administration!  

The Christmas bomber has unleashed a whole new level of ineffectual crazy on us.  I am not talking about the Nigerian perpetrator himself, but the new wave of airline regulations his attempt has triggered.  If they become permanent, air-travel that is already uncomfortable will be even more so.  First-up is a rule on international flights that prohibits travellers from leaving their seats or having anything on their laps in the final hour of the flight.   Anyone with a weak bladder might have to forgo the Continent this year; but would-be bombers will not be inconvenienced at all. They will simply detonate an hour earlier.

This new rule mimics the logic that, in the wake of the 2001 “Shoe-Bomber’s” attempt to ignite his Ked’s, has us removing our shoes for inspection before every flight.  The latest would be blaster left his seat and attempted to detonate himself in the bathroom one hour before arrival. Process of elimination.  One can only extrapolate that this approach will ultimately have us arriving at the airport a day earlier, stripping naked, submitting to a cavity search, then donning orange jumpsuits equipped with NASA waste collectors for the trip home.

We all know and love the rule change that netted a bonanza of free health and beauty products for some casual somebodies charged with emptying the bins of discarded toiletries at security check-ins.  Now how does that rule go again?  I try not to fly, but I think the current rule might go something like this: only 2-oz. containers of any one liquid or gel, sealed in a quart-size zip-lok baggie, with  a maximum of five items per baggie.  My husband, who travels much more than I do, once asked the security screener what would happen if he decided to open his baggie during the flight and take something out?  The security screener was at a total loss for an answer.  He clearly had been given no explanation for the purpose of the rule.  I think we all have similar stories of complete disconnect in the airport security chain, but the latest episode over Detroit compels me to share one more personal tale of security sillies.

In September, I drove a friend to Burlington airport for a flight to Las Vegas.  She was attending her nephew’s wedding, and she had crammed as much as she could into her carry-on in the likely event that  her luggage got lost.

It was a Sunday, the airport was quiet and she had arrived well in advance of her flight.  When she reached the security screeners table, they asked her if, since there was plenty of time,  she would “mind” if they submitted her carry-on to one of their random full-searches.  She considered saying “no” because she didn’t like the idea of trying to cram everything back into her bag again; but she couldn’t see how she could refuse.  The screener opened the bag and “wanded” the interior with a preliminary swipe, then ran the swab through a spectrometer which reacted with an alarm.  All hell broke loose.  “PETN!”  the screener called out to another security staffer, “PETN?!” she responded concernedly.   A chorus rose of “PETN!, PETN!”  

The suitcase was unpacked and thoroughly swabbed, inside and out.  My friend was searched and asked again if anyone had had the opportunity to tamper with her bag.  She finally demanded an explanation and was told that PETN is essentially the “bang” in bullets, and there was a trace of it somewhere on her suitcase.  They told her that she could have picked-it-up just wheeling her bag through the airport!  The equipment was so sensitive that it could detect the tiniest grain of PETN. She stuffed her possessions back into her bag and was allowed to board.  It made a great story at the wedding; and on her way home again, she wasn’t even queried.  Then we forgot all about it until yesterday when the whole country learned that the Christmas bomber had somehow smuggled eight ounces of PETN onto his flight!

Ah, the myth of airport security:  extremely random searches with equipment so insanely sensitive that it can detect particles too small to detonate, and so expensive and time-consuming to employ that only a tiny fraction of passengers can ever be screened.  And who does the random screening nab for PETN?  Not Mr. Christmas bomber who sails through check-in on an international flight with eight ounces of the Big Bang…no, not him,  despite  the fact that his own father had already warned the authorities.  Instead, a middle-aged Vermont woman on her way to a Vegas wedding gets the full business.

When is National Security going to finally admit that we might as well be reciting incantations over passenger lists for all the practical good each new “regulation” does toward securing terror-free skies?  We’re never going to be able to throw enough money at the problem to actually solve it through screening and regulations.  In reality, if every single passenger was physically checked for every possible threat, and every single article in every single bag was screened as well, we might narrow the percentages considerably, but the cost of an airline ticket would quadruple, and we’d all have to get to the airport the night before our departure.  The airline industry won’t absorb the losses, the taxpayers won’t fund them, and the passengers will get the shaft pretty much as usual.

Welcome to 2010.  

Christmas Eve brought good news to many concerned Franklin County residents, when it was announced in the St. Albans Messenger that Lowe’s will not, after all, be seeking a permit to build in St. Albans.  Being a member of the Northwest Citizens for Responsible Growth, I can’t help celebrating this as a victory for advocates of smart growth practices.

The merchandising  giant had been seeking a preliminary decision from the St. Albans Town Development Review Board for a 122,000-sq. ft. retail facility to be located on open land behind the Price Chopper on Route 7 in St. Albans.  The location of the project would have impacted both wetlands and prime agricultural soils.  There were many reasons to challenge the project, including environmental and traffic issues, and the significant impact the store could reasonably be expected to have on the local economy where this retail sector’s customers already had many local businesses supplying their needs.

Even though the project had already secured a stormwater permit from the Agency of Natural Resources, an  earlier permit application had been withdrawn in 2004 because of a  moratorium established by the Town, temporarily limiting new store construction to 50,000-sq. ft. per project.  After that moratorium was ultimately lifted, Lowe’s returned to the permit process, presenting economic arguments at a DRB hearing in September 2009.   A second hearing to address traffic concerns was postponed several times before Thursday’s announcement that the project had been cancelled entirely.

According to the Messenger,

The company sent a one sentence letter to the town requesting withdrawal of its application to build…signed by Rob Jess, who declined comment, referring questions to the company’s public relations department, none of whom were available.

In the absence of an explanation, I can only speculate on the reason for this abrupt cancellation.  At the September hearing, the Northwest Citizens for Responsible Growth had submitted a petition for interested party status that was immediately denied by the St. Albans Town DRB; however, an unrelated group of local opponents was rumored to have submitted a second petition for status that may have been under consideration by the DRB.

The project was to have been located in one of two areas designated by the Town Planning Commission and endorsed by the Northwest Regional Planning Commission as “growth centers”  but never submitted to the State for formal approval.  The two “designated growth centers” are located in largely undeveloped areas at Exit 19 and Exit 20 of I-89, but the traditional center of the Town is at St. Albans Bay.  The first big box store to announce its intention to locate in the Exit 20 “growth center’ was the long contested JL Davis Walmart project.  That project received Act 250 approval some time ago, but appeals of that permit by several entities, including the NWCRG, are still under consideration by the Environmental Court.

Whatever the reason for the Lowe’s cancellation, we can only hope that the Town will take this opportunity to step back long enough to consider whether transformation of farmland near exit 19 to big box retail is really the best use of the area’s resources.

I’m keeping this short and as much to the point as I can.  It was reported in today’s Messenger that a Mexican farm worker, employed died yesterday in an accident on a Franklin County Farm:

Vermont State Polic Det. Sgt. Jim Claremont said the death occured at a Howrigan farm on Paradee Road at about 4 PM…The victim was a young man from southern Mexico, between 16 and 20 years old.

 As of press time today, the victim had not yet been identified.

I will add a link to the story later, but just learned that Vermont Workers Center will hold a candlelight vigil in the young man’s memory this evening, between 5 and 6:00 PM, followed by a procession, at the Worker’s Center 294 North Winooski Ave. in Burlington.  I will paste the announcement from the Worker’s Center below the fold.

Vermonters Grieve “Invisible Life and Death” of Migrant Farm Worker Killed in Tragic Farming Accident.

Candle Light Vigil remembers and mourns “Invisible Life and Death” of Oveth Santis Cruz and calls for Immediate Immigrant Rights in Vermont.

Wednesday, December 23rd

5pm-6pm, followed by procession

Vermont Workers’ Center, 294 North Winooski Avenue, Burlington

On December 22, 2009 on a bone chilling winter afternoon in Fairfield, Vermont on Howrigan dairy farm 17 year old Oveth Santis Cruz from the town of Las Margaritas, Chiapas, Mexico was killed in a tragic farming accident. The death was confirmed by his co-workers and family members last night as concern and sadness spread throughout the migrant farm worker community mourning the young migrant farm workers’ death. Oveth is survived by roughly 80 extended family and community members who currently live and work on Vermont dairy farms.

Although, Oveth Santis Cruz’s family members might like to gather together as a family and community here in Vermont to mourn this tragic death they expressed fears that doing so would mean risking deportation – they are not free to do so. As Vermont resident Brendan O’Neill, a family friend, migrant farm worker advocate, ESL teacher, and member of the VT Workers’ Center, who was in touch last night with relatives who survive Oveth, commented, “Sadly, here in Vermont and throughout the United States migrant farm workers cannot even gather as a community and mourn family members deaths without fearing deportation. Family members have expressed concern to ensure that Oveth?s body is respectfully and swiftly returned to his family in Chiapas, Mexico.”

Today, Wednesday December 23, 2009 Vermonters are invited to gather for a silent and solemn candle light vigil organized by O’Neill and hosted by the Vermont Workers’ Center that will begin at 5 p.m at 294 N. Winooski Avenue in Burlington at the Vermont Workers Center to honor the hard work, sacrifice and tragic death of migrant farm worker Oveth Santis Cruz. The candlelight vigil procession will leave from the VT Workers’ Center at 6pm and make its way through the streets of Burlington to continue the vigil in front of the UU Church on Church St. O’Neill adds, “Oveth Santis Cruz is one of approximately 2,000 migrant farm workers who have come to the aid of our Vermont Dairy Farms in crisis and yet despite their essential contributions to Vermont due to an unjust, broken and oppressive U.S. immigration system they are forced to live and in this case die in fear, silence and in the shadows.” He added, “In the state of Vermont and throughout the United States the invisible hands that milk so many of our cows and pick so many of our vegetables, which literally puts the food on the table, live and die invisibly without the dignity and respect that all human beings deserve.”

The vigil is dedicated to the life of Oveth Santis Cruz and calls upon Vermonters to commit themselves to work for real immigration reform that recognizes and respects the basic needs, dignity and human rights of all immigrants.

According to Thursday's Free Press,  there has now been a 90% die-off of the cave-dwelling bat population in the northeast due to a still unidentified pathogen associated with the fungal condition known as “white nose syndrome.”

Coupled with the massive  collapses occurring among bee colonies, this is not just a sad scenario, but an extremely alarming one with regard to our food security.   These creatures play a vital role in natural insect control for fruit and vegetable crops.  What is happening to our future chances for survival on a purely subsistence level while all of our energy and resources are directed toward “growing” an already enormous and dysfunctional consumer economy and waging an irrational war on the other side of the globe?  We have surrendered much of our investigative science capacity to corporate agendas, and what remains in the way of publicly funded efforts is  frequently targeted by the right, either as a waste of money or a moral menace.  Ignorance and hubris threaten our very survival, but as we are witnessing in Copenhagen, the industrialized giants seem to be locked in a paralytic state of denial.  This will end badly.

Kudos to Senator Ginny Lyons (D-Chittenden) for striking yet another blow against developer-driven sprawl!  As reported in today’s Free Press, Sen. Lyons yesterday disclosed the contents of a 49-page bill that proposes to restructure the Act 250 permit process, eliminating the role of the Agency of Natural Resources in that process, and effectively “streamlining” it for speed, cost-efficiency and effectiveness.

This bill represents the first attempt in decades to do something definitive about the permit process…It is time to focus on better protecting our natural resources and to achieving our goals of concentrated development surrounded by a working landscape. – Sen. Lyons

Sen. Lyons’ bill would seem to be the streamlining rewrite of Act 250 that Gov. Douglas has been whining for since he first took office;  but, no. When contacted by the Free Press for comment, his spokesperson, Denise Casey apparently expressed concern with

…any permit reform led by the Democratic supermajority…

and added that

These environmental organizations are impossible to please.

Oh, dear;  those “environmental organizations” she refers to must be the same ones that routinely draw attention to the decline in the water quality of Lake Champlain since the Douglas administration came to power.  

Undaunted by evidence to the contrary, according to the Free Press, Casey  still chose to

defend(ed) the governor’s environmental record citing his focus on programs to reduce pollution of Lake Champlain.

Go figure?

Vermont’s current permit process governing land-use is a multi-tiered system, requiring that a project be reviewed and approved at the local level; obtain permits addressing environmental and other concerns from divisions of the VT. Dept. of Environmental Conservation; and then, once all those permits have been issued, if the scale and potential impact of the project are great enough, undergo yet another level of review under Act 250.

As itemized in the Free Press article, the effect of Sen. Lyon’s proposal would be to:

.Abolish the Agency of Natural Resources, the Department of Environmental Conservation, the Environmental Court and the Natural Resources Board.

.Replace them with a Department of Environmental Quality headed by a full-time, five-person Environmental Council.  The departments of Fish and Wildlife, and Forest and Parks, would become freestanding departments.

.Send all environmental appeals to the new Environmental Council.

.Consolidate all state environmental permits into the Act 250 development review process.

.Broaden the categories of persons who may take part in contested permit cases.

.Allow appeals of growth-center designations and aspects of municipal and regional plans.

The last two items are of special interest to me.   As a member of the Northwest Citizens for Responsible Growth, I have first-hand experience of how difficult it is to secure a voice in the current permit process.  We have devoted thousands of hours of amateur effort and received an even greater number of hours in contributed professional assistance through the efforts of the Vermont Natural Resources Council and Preservation Trust of Vermont, just so that our significant concerns about a proposed Walmart box store in St. Albans could be presented  within the Act 250 review process.   Why should it be so arduous for citizens to participate in shaping their own communities?

It is to be hoped that uncoupling the state permitting process from a system that lends itself to politicization will better serve the interests of the people, both in terms of efficiency and upholding the true intent of Act 250 which is to preserve our environmental heritage.  While this bill is not expected to come to the floor in the 2010 session, it is encouraging to hear that the important work has begun.

As our shot at universal coverage slips slowly away into the pockets of big pharma and the health insurance industry, it might be a good time to redirect naysayer’s attentions to a country that was much maligned by tea-baggers as an example of a public healthcare system gone terribly wrong.  

I was watching ski-jumping on CBC this afternoon when suddenly a public service spot came on requesting that everyone in Canada be vaccinated against H1N1.  “We have plenty for everyone,” the smiling spokeswoman said. No matter what your opinion is on vaccination, it’s pretty obvious that the Canadian healthcare system has it all-over the U.S. when it comes to providing emergency care for its population in this particular health-care crisis.

Why are we such patsies down here?  

The news that the Obama administration will champion targeted assistance for small U.S. businesses is a welcome turn of events after decades of public policy that has routinely favored huge multi-national corporations over  the enterprising little guy.   It also provides an opportunity to focus on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the insidious way its operations have been redirected to serve the interests of the powerful few rather than those of the many.

What peaked my interest was an e-mail link to a story in the Colorado Independent, that was sent to me by my friend Perry Cooper.  It seems that the Aspen Chamber of Commerce has called-out the U.S. Chamber for

questioning of global warming science and other policies it’s adopted that are aimed at thwarting climate-change legislation.

I quickly discovered that the U.S Chamber has quite a reputation for such activities, as reported by Sourcewatch:

U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business lobbying group in the United States, “used to be a trade association that advocated in a bipartisan manner for narrowly tailored policies to benefit its members. Since 1997 or so, it has become a fully functional part of the partisan Republican machine,” with CEO and president Thomas J. Donohue “raising its budget to $150M a year from corporate chiefs satisfied with his ability to move policy through a Republican Congress,” Matt Stoller wrote December 13, 2006, at MyDD.

The Chamber claims on its website that its mission is to “advance human progress through an economic, political and social system based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity, and responsibility.” It describes itself as “the world’s largest business federation representing more than 3 million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region.”

However, the Chamber is “dominated by oil companies, pharmaceutical giants, automakers and other polluting industries,” according to James Carter, executive director of the Green Chamber of Commerce.

As detailed in this Washington Post article,  the Chamber has also taken a highly activist role in frustrating the current efforts toward healthcare reform.

They have opposed legislation that would restrict imports from countries engaged in sweatshop labor practices and fought against the Employee Free Choice Act that would make it easier for labor to organize.   Trumpeting the virtues of “free trade” the Chamber has positioned itself against virtually every measure that would advance the cause of “fair trade” in U.S. and world enterprise. The end result is that there have recently been a number of defections from the U.S. Chamber in response to the sharp right turn that its activities have taken.  Most notable among those departures was Apple Computers which withdrew from the Chamber in protest over its position on legislation addressing climate change.

As small business owners ourselves, my husband and I recognize that implementing public policies like universal healthcare, workers’ rights, a living wage and clean environmental standards is the only way to ensure the survival of “free” enterprise and a stable economy.   By endorsing a profit-driven race to the bottom without regard for the human and environmental consequences, the U.S. Chamber and it’s mega-corporate handlers is courting future economic collapse.  Rather than the flawed model of “trickle-down” economics, it is full participation by all sectors of the U.S. population that will be the engine of long-term prosperity.  

Whenever I see Art Woolf’s name on the op-ed page, I brace myself for another truly incredible argument from beyond the looking glass. His letter in the Nov. 30 Messenger (cross-posted on Vermont Tiger) once again renders me near speechless.  He begins by observing that Vermont dairy farmers are “in a terrible pickle.” Ignoring completely the role that dairy conglomerates and retail giants like Walmart have played in creating this “pickle,” Woolf advances the following argument which barely alludes to the toll his beloved “free market capitalism” has taken on U.S. dairy farmers:

“Prices for their products are way down (in part due to the tremendous reduction in international demand for milk caused by the financial crisis and economic recession) and their costs keep going up. But it is disingenuous for Senator Sanders to suggest that despite being against allowing “guest” workers into the U.S., the predicament of the dairy industry in Vermont and elsewhere is so “desperate” that a guest worker program is needed to provide the farms with workers willing and able to do the manual labor jobs that farmers are unable to fill with local workers.”

He then goes on to state the obvious:

“Agricultural laborer jobs just don’t pay enough to attract Vermonters…”

and that

“If Vermont farmers had to pay a wage high enough to attract Vermonters, their economic plight would be even worse than it is today and even more farms would go out of business.”

That said, Woolf’s interest in the dairy farmers’ plight and any consequent threat to local food security seems to have been spent as he moves quickly to the real meat of his matter; namely, equating small local dairy farmers with financial institutions that benefitted from TARP!  

“The question is why Senator Sanders seems to understand this when it comes to farmers and their need for unskilled labor…So it’s OK for unskilled guest workers to work on Vermont farms to help them survive in a competitive market, but not OK for U.S. financial institutions to hire skilled guest workers to help them survive in a competitive market (?)”

This, from a member of the Economics Department at UVM, Vermont’s premier agricultural school, is a real mind-bender.  Apart from the obvious incongruity of equating small local food providers with greedy financial giants that have impoverished the nation while claiming huge personal bonuses, Mr. Woolf appears to be asserting a failure on the part of American economic academics such as himself to produce a pool of skilled domestic financial workers to serve at U.S. financial institutions.  If this is in fact the case, doesn’t that support one of Senator Sander’s other arguments that we should be committing more resources to raising the standard of living and education of American workers and their families rather than outsourcing jobs and opportunity to the lowest global bidders?

Earth to Professor Woolf:  Please do your homework.