Second quarter FEC campaign finance filings are available, and VTbuzz’s Nancy Remsen and Vermont Press Bureau’s Hirschfield sifted through the reports so you won’t have to, unless you want to. There aren’t any surprises reported, and the summary is almost completely predictable. Senators Leahy and Sanders have plenty of money on hand. Governor Shumlin is also doing very well for campaign cash. While the Freep highlights the $101,000 Rep. Welch pulled in this quarter from 67 PACs, a spokesman for the congressman counters that 68 percent of the new contributors were individuals. Well, that’s some good summer reading just before a nap.

With an eye on fall fundraising and next year’s campaign season, Hirschfield at Vermont Press Bureau (available free here) reports that a potential rematch between Vermont’s Attorney General Bill Sorrell and Chittenden County State’s Attorney TJ Donovan has “generated the most early interest.” No hint on who, what, or where  this early interest generation happens to be sourced.  

Sorrell and Donovan had a frustratingly close primary battle in the last election cycle, with only 700 votes dividing them. Donovan, it is noted, has kept a pretty high profile since returning to his job as Chittenden AG. And TJ sounds hungry for a rematch:

“There are many nights I’m waking up at 3 a.m. thinking about how I could have made up those 700 votes,” Donovan said.

Sorrell says he is concentrating on the job and isn’t thinking of politics until this fall. But when you listen closely, despite his disclaimers, he actually does sound like a man with politics on his mind, especially how much happier he’d be without having to bother with them. Sorrell mentions how much more pleasant it was this year not to have to march in six different parades on the fourth of July. He adds most stoically:

“I won’t let the fact that campaigning is not always enjoyable be the determinant factor in whether or not I run again.”

Even so, Sorrell likely will not allow Donovan to steal a march on him in a possible rematch primary campaign. He said last year that he’d learned his lesson after being spanked by the Vermont Democratic State Committee’s vote against endorsing him.

Sorrell speaks like a man who is late for an appointment. Maybe make that, he sounds like a man  late for a ‘re-appointment.’ Perhaps an appeal to Governor Shumlin for a non-elected job? Maybe Shummy could use another ‘former Attorney General’ in his stable of personal lawyers.

Oh, here we go. IBM was legally required to tell the state how many employees were laid off in the latest round of job cuts at Essex Junction. And it did so.

But it doesn’t want you to find out.

IBM has provided the state with details about the number of jobs cut at its Essex Junction plant, but it wants the state to keep the information from the public.

The company claims that releasing the number could harm it.

Aww, poor widdle IBM. If we find out how many people lost their jobs in Vermont, the competitive position of a global behemoth will somehow be harmed. The potential injury is so huge that IBM’s claiming an exemption from the Vermont Public Records Act.

Yeah, I don’t buy it. This is just a continuation of IBM’s nondisclosure policy, intended to minimize the PR impact of domestic job cuts.

Sounds like the state’s not buying it either:

[Labor Commissioner Annie Noonan] says the state isn’t convinced the law applies to the job cuts number and citing requests to make the figure public, the department is telling IBM it needs to make a stronger case for withholding it.

Let’s see if Big Blue can come up with a more compelling pretext. As for the truth, we turn to the union that’s been watchdogging IBM’s reign of terror:

Lee Conrad, national coordinator of Alliance@IBM, said Tuesday IBM has been “stonewalling” on job cut numbers nationwide for years.

“They’ve not been transparent at all,” Conrad said. “They don’t release the U.S. figures any more. Frankly this doesn’t surprise me. The citizens of Vermont should be outraged that IBM is thumbing their nose at them, saying ‘We’re not going to tell you our figures.'”

We don’t know exactly how many people still work at Essex. But it’s estimated that employment has fallen from 8,500 in 2001 to less than 4,000 today. Probably a lot less, according to this comment from a laid-off IBMer, posted on the Freeploid’s website:

Not surprised at all about the IBM moves to keep the numbers confidential; they are much bigger than expected and Big Blew doesn’t want the folks to know that the end of this plant is near. My estimate… is greater than 600. Of course us older folks that were “pushed” to retire will not be in the final released number even though we were really layer off (sic). That coming from a company that is wondering why there is distrust.

If that estimate is correct — 600 layoffs plus forced “retirements” — then the workforce at Essex Junction is not much more than 3,000. And, per industry insider Robert X. Cringely, IBM will continue to aggressively downsize its American operations for at least two more years.

And given IBM’s recent track record of corporate citizenship, I won’t be sorry to see them go. I’m very sorry that we’ve already lost the IBM that used to be, but that ship sailed long ago. The current IBM isn’t worth the trouble.  

I’m 76 years-old

I’m a mental case

This little black shit

He got in my face

He stole some of my guns

But he didn’t get ’em all

I shot him twice

His mamma watched him fall

Oh, please help me

I’m just an old white man

Protectin’ my property

I think you’ll understand

These fuckin’ blacks

Keep bustin’ our balls

There oughta be a law

Says we can shoot ’em all

Yeah I’m an old white man

My lawyer says I’m nuts

Gonna make a good defense

No ifs, ands, or buts

And when I get acquitted

Gonna move to Florida

Where they know how to deal with

All the black motherfuckers

Cause I don’t even know

Why I have to go to trial

I mean, shootin’ niggers

Has been an American style

Just hope my lawyer

Gets me found not guilty real quick

And next time I shoot someone

I’ll make sure he’s just a spic

Yeah, I’m an old white man

One of America’s best

Hope I get a white jury

That will lay this all to rest

What the Hell kind of country

Has this become

When a thirteen year-old black shit

Gets to steal an old white man’s guns?

So let’s get this over with

Put me on the stand

You’re not gonna convict me

You can’t lynch a white man

And if Martin wasn’t enough

This will prove the case

That you can shoot any black nigger

punk sonofabitch

Who gets in your face

Oh yeeeeaaaahhhhh…………….

(“Sinatra would have loved that.  And Glen Miller too.  Is it time to testify?”)

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.  

Spam our site, get your crap content deleted, and get banned. -eddie

GE just announced a new wind turbine design with a possible 24% increase in output. An interesting feature is power storage so that it can feed the grid when the impellers stop turning.

Imagine if we’d started this development in 1974! Instead, friggin’ Reagan ripped Carter’s solar power panels off the White House in 1980 thus starting the stunting of alternative energy for 30 years.

http://thinkprogress.org/clima…

I think industrial wind turbines are too huge for Vermont, personally. I wouldn’t mind so much if they were half the size.

Well, George Zimmerman is, officially anyway, NOT guilty of killing Trayvon Martin.  

There is really no point in re-litigating his guilt after the fact, because Zimmerman was a victim too, of sorts.  

He was a victim of personal weaknesses, maybe even prejudices; but most of all, both man and teenager were victims of  “Stand Your Ground,” which gives weak men a license to indulge their dangerous fantasies; and, at least this once, to stalk and kill an unarmed kid completely without consequence.

This isn’t even really about the gun, even though that will undoubtedly be the focus of debate going forward.

And it is because of the inflammatory nature of gun debate in this country that nothing will be done to reign in “Stand Your Ground,” even after this preventable tragedy; because the NRA won’t let this opportunity pass to make it be all about them.

Just watch it happen.

Oh boy, here we go:

PITTSFORD – Neighbors of the site proposed for a solar farm that would be owned by a Waterbury company are voicing their discontent about the project that would be on town land behind their homes.

This story — available only behind the Mitchell Family Paywall — is exactly the kind of thing that drives me nuts about the segment of Vermont’s “environmental” community whose agenda is a toxic combination of NIMBYism, denialism, and Tea Party-style Know-Nothingism. Stuff like this:

“Why can’t the industrial solar be in the cities?” asked George Clifford, who lives across from the site. “I think it’s absolutely ridiculous. I didn’t pay thousands of dollars to have industrial crap in my backyard.”

And this:

[Amy] Moriglioni, who said she heard about the meeting only when Clifford mentioned it a couple of hours beforehand, said there are pros and cons to solar farms, especially in how they are made.

“We are not fond of them in our house, at least not here,” she said.

Makes me grind my teeth. Which four out of five dentists do not recommend.  

To answer Clifford’s nonsensical question, you can’t put large-scale solar in cities because THE BUILDINGS BLOCK THE SUNLIGHT. Just like you can’t put wind turbines in Lake Champlain because the winds aren’t strong enough. But really, Clifford doesn’t care about the question; he just wants no solar farms anywhere near his house. That’s all. Same with Moriglioni, who wants the field kept open so she and her kids can walk across it.

This is not environmentalism. Indeed, since our biggest environmental threat is climate change, this is the exact opposite of environmentalism.  

If we are going to do our part to limit climate change, then we’re going to have to find places to site renewable energy facilities. If we’re not going to do our part, then we are no better than the Koch Brothers or Exxon Mobil or Jim Inhofe.

And despite our pure-hearted efforts to preserve Vermont as some kind of turbine-and-panel-free Eden, the effects of climate change will come barreling across our borders and turn our state into something profoundly different.

Vermont’s climate will be similar to that of southern Tennessee and northern Georgia by 2070 if CO2 emissions continue to climb, the Union of Concerned Scientists reports.

And please don’t tell me that the answer is small-scale, community-scale, Vermont-scale renewables. That’s part of the solution, to be sure; but it can’t possibly provide all the energy we need or anything close to it.

(Straying off topic for a moment: if you’re concerned about bird and bat kills at large-scale wind turbines, how many critters would die in the blades of countless home-scale windmills?)

The best approach to a clean-energy future is a balanced development of (large and small scale) wind, solar, in-state hydro, and any other renewable, low-carbon option we can come up with, as well as all the efficiency efforts we can muster. If you do without one option, you increase reliance on the others. Take anti-wind carpetbagger Luke Snelling, whose “clean energy plan” cuts out ridgeline wind; instead, he calls for a massive increase in solar power (along with continued heavy reliance on nuclear and Hydro Quebec, both of which bear heavy environmental costs). How massive? Try a 2,592% increase in solar in the next 17 years.

Problem is, as proposals start coming for new solar arrays, the vocal opposition starts to appear —  as in Pittsford and earlier in Charlotte. If this trend continues, we won’t be able to get anywhere near Snelling’s target. Or anywhere near any reasonable target for reducing our carbon footprint. And our efforts to create a greener, cleaner energy system cannot possibly succeed.

And, in the name of NIMBY-driven denialism, we will have done our part to kill the planet. But at least we’ll protect George Clifford’s “thousands of dollars.”  

Once again Vermont's IBEW Local 300 has distinguished itself in opposition to progressive values.

You may remember a couple of years ago when the IBEW endorsed Republican candidate Brian Dubie for governor. The move was preceded by the clownish antics of the IBEW's representative to the Vermont Democratic Committee showing up at a meeting with a plastic knife sticking out of his back and he got him removed–or “voluntarily” retired–from his post on the State Committee. 

 Today it's not attacking the Democratic Party, it's defending the police officer who is now charged with shooting an unarmed man. Here's part of what I found on their Facebook page this morning:

 Law enforcement officers all across the state are obligated to protect and serve the communities for which they work. With the indictment of Corporal Nokes, officers are forced to protect and defend their own livelihoods first, not just from the perpetrator, but from a system where the leadership is unwilling to stand by them and support them for making split second decisions that save the lives of the community members, as well as their own. 

If you happen to be a reader who has some objection to the police shooting unarmed people maybe you want to go on over and let the IBEW know what you think. 

For me, I just think it's important to point out that prosecuting one person for an alleged crime is not by any means an attack on all law enforcement officers.