Shock! Horror! OMGOMGOMG!!!!!!! From the usually cautious folks at VPR News…

GMP Wants Permit To Kill Endangered Bats

Images swirl into view. Scary, unpleasant images. I see Dotty Schnure strangling bats with her bare hands. I see the GMP Board skeet-shooting freeze-dried bats. I see David Blittersdorf* eating Little Brown Bat Pie for dinner with lava beans and a nice Chianti. I see GMP staffers tossing bushels of Tasered bats into the whirling blades of a windmill. I see, in short, a wanton slaughter of the furry little creatures.

*Yeah, I know he’s not with GMP, but he’s part of the Turbine-Industrial Complex. Close enough.

But then, there’s the actual story:

The utility has asked for a state permit to kill four of the endangered creatures a year at its 21-turbine Lowell wind project.

Four.

FOUR.

Cough.

Okay, if you read further, it’s four Little Brown Bats and three more of other species, for a total of up to seven per year. But still, that seems like awfully small potatoes. Given the oft-stated concern for bird and bat kills by turbines, I’d think that a mere seven per year would be a cause for relief, not concern. It’s certainly not cause for VPR’s sensational headline.  

The biggest threat to our bat populations is, of course, White Nose Syndrome, which is the reason our species are endangered. The second biggest threat is disturbance of maternal colonies, usually by development.

I don’t know where Kingdom Community Wind ranks in the list, but it’s definitely somewhere below domestic cats, who are responsible for killing millions of wild animals every year, including 230,000 bats in Britain alone, according to one study. (Somehow I don’t hear anyone demanding leash laws for cats.)

This won’t stop Vermont’s anti-wind activists from seizing on the bat issue, just as they seize on any pretext for opposing wind energy development.

And it won’t apparently stop VPR from putting its thumb on the wind-energy scale with an eye-popping headline and this howler from the body of John Dillon’s report:

Some environmentalists argue that since bat populations are already precarious, they should not face more threat from wind projects.

“Some environmentalists.” Which means “environmentalists whose primary issue is stopping wind energy.” Because otherwise, the environmental community in Vermont is unified behind wind development as part of a renewable energy strategy.  But those environmentalists — the vast majority — don’t get a voice in Dillon’s piece.

This isn’t the first time John Dillon — VPR’s primary environmental reporter — has seemingly tilted the scales against wind energy. And given the fact that VPR’s editorial process is extremely thorough, perhaps excessively so, I have to wonder if the entire news operation doesn’t lean that way.  

Looks like somebody at our state’s second-largest labor union had a sudden revelation. Because after several days of bringing public disrepute on themselves, the board of the Vermont State Employees Association took a step back from the brink, and figured out a way forward that won’t involve everybody looking like selfish idiots.

It all began, as I’m sure you know, last Wednesday, when a majority of the Board voted to fire VSEA Executive Director Mark Mitchell. The vote came after a seven-hour marathon meeting kicked off by two union lawyers accusing Mitchell of violating labor laws.

Adding fuel to the fire were trustees who support Mitchell. They went public with their side of the dispute. Which led anti-Mitchell trustees to fire back. Oh, and Mitchell himself sought counsel with an employment attorney, which carries the implicit threat of a wrongful-firing lawsuit. In other words, a big ol’ circular firing squad.

All this, of course, without regard to the harm that might be done to the union, its members, the liberal cause in Vermont, and the broader labor movement.  I mean, it’s hard enough, in this Koch-addled, clusterFoxed country of ours, to support organizing rights, without VSEA making a public spectacle of itself.

Today’s developments, for those just joining us: the VSEA board held an emergency meeting and voted to (1) reinstate Mitchell, (2) put him on paid leave, and (3) arrange for an investigation of the allegations against Mitchell.

I do hope the apparent perestroika holds.  

 VSEA doesn’t need any internal divisions when it’s about to launch new contract talks with the state. And public sector unions in general don’t need this kind of negative publicity when they’re already under siege.  

I don’t know who was right and who was wrong about Mitchell. All I know is that just about everyone acted poorly, rashly, with no apparent concern for the damage being done. The union lawyers and last Wednesday’s majority covered themselves in the opposite of glory by hearing the charges against Mitchell and firing him, all in the same day. It reeks, not of considered judgment, but of a putsch.

As for Board President John Reese and other Mitchell supporters, they went public with the whole mess, which is precisely what they shouldn’t have done.

Today’s news is welcome, but there’s a long way to go to repair the damage and get the union as unified as possible heading into contract talks. With or without Mitchell, they’d better be ready.  

…And, speaking of the “confidence quotient” for Congress…

I have just returned from DC, where I joined representatives of the League of Conservation Voters from all over the country to bring an appeal to the doorsteps of our President, our Senators and our Representatives:

Act to address Climate Change Now!

We want to send a message to President Obama, that all the distractions of the past few months are no excuse to neglect the commitment he made in his second inaugural speech, to get the U.S. onboard with responsible climate action.

I seriously doubt that more than a handful of key Republicans continue to deny climate change in their most private conversations; yet, they have succeeded in paralyzing the U.S. response to this global threat.  That paralysis leaves us, as a nation, not just guilty of colossal neglect, but also vulnerable to incredible economic impacts for which we remain officially unprepared.  

There are good people proposing some kind of meaningful action ( like Bernie Sanders‘ bill proposing a carbon tax); but there are not enough of them and the problem has grown too big for a single bandaid fix.  

Even if, by some miracle, the carbon tax was adopted, there would still be contamination by methane from the newly introduced practice of “fracking” which represents a windfall for fossil fuel speculators but ignores the fact that the methane released in the process has roughly five times the potential for climate impact of carbon. We haven’t even succeeded in weaning the fossil fuel industry from it’s grip on the  government teat, so we are essentially suckling the demon child that will devour us all!

And, while the President spoke eloquently on Climate Change in January, it is now June and the agenda still appears to be to claim fuel “independence” by ramping up extraction and production of domestic dirty fuels. It’s as if Dick Cheney still haunts the Oval Office. Of course he does; and so do all the fossil fuel industry poltergeists.

I remember reading a couple of years ago about climate change deniers in the legislature of a southern state actually prohibiting state planners from factoring the impact of climate change into projections of shoreline decline over the coming years.  I’d like to think that even those folks are finally getting the picture now.

As if on cue,  as soon as Bill McKibben announced to the world that we had already exceeded the dreaded 400-ppm, the heavens opened to release some of the most violent storm and climate events of recent memory.

The City of New York, no longer the blase capital of the world, got ahead of the news (and they hope the next big wave) when Mayor Bloomberg announced a $20-billion plan to prepare the city for shoreline loss and the catastrophic weather events predicted for the future.  While Mayor Bloomberg may represent the leading edge of official U.S. response to Climate Change, he is well-behind much of the world, where many feel “the end is here,” and nothing is left but to adapt as the inevitable blight descends, leaving island nations homeless and others in economic and societal peril.

And where are all those great plans for reversing the trend?  Where are all those folks who claimed we would come up with a “solution” in plenty of time to prevent catastrophe?  Let’s hear something helpful from the roughly 1.5% of scientists who are always cited as experts by the knuckledraggers who restrain even the White House from meaningful action.

I only saw the really “good guys” on my Capitol Hill visits; but what they said was uniformly discouraging: “We’re trying but we can’t get much of anything done.”

Unfortunately, that isn’t good enough.  Climate crisis won’t wait for the political stars to realign with reality.  It’s here right now.

 Here is another in what seems to be a steady stream of polls in past few years that show confidence in Congress continuing down. Gallup found that Americans’ confidence in Congress as an institution down to just 10%.

The pollster telephoned almost 1,600 adults and asked: Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself have in each one – a great deal, quite a lot, some, or very little. The results place Congress last for four years running on a list of sixteen societal institutions.

This is the lowest level of confidence Gallup has found, not only for Congress, but for any institution on record.  

While Congress –  one of the country’s major democratic institutions – continues to unravel, according to Gallup four distinctly undemocratic institutions receive the highest ratings. The military, small business, the police, and the Church or organized religion are the four top institutions eliciting the most confidence.

Americans remain most confident in the military, at 76%. Small business and the police also continue to rank highly, with 65% and 57% of Americans, respectively, expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in these institutions.

The Church or organized religion in the Gallup poll ranked fourth at 48%. All this may not be a good sign for the future when confidence in Congress lags so far behind the military; the police and even small business-not that all three in aren’t deserving institutions in their own way. It seems as if a democracy that is functioning well and in balance would have institutional confidence levels more evenly divided.  

more data after the jump

Exposing the Real Ralph Nader

There are a lot of things people don’t know about Nader.

Any time the name ‘Ralph Nader’ comes up, it is sure to stir controversy.  It is like waving a red flag in front of the Democrats.

We’ve heard it all.  “He’s too old”.  Let’s look at that one. Would it be acceptable to say: “He’s too white, too Hispanic, too black, too short, too tall…”. Ageism is one of the most destructive prejudices that can exist in any culture. It devalues and trivializes an entire class of people – sometimes those with the most experience and wisdom.

Other cultures understand this. They value their elders. Only in the United States do we not ‘get it’.  The current trend would put Nader on an ice floe and replace him with a kid who just spent four years at a keg party.  That is the view promoted by the culture.  

Now is a time when we should celebrate all who contribute to our survival, young and old.  Age is irrelevant at a time when a 29 year-old and other relatively young men are making enormous contributions. Not only is age irrelevant, but also we need to take another look at the ‘paper chase’. Edward Snowden has taught us that being a high school drop-out is not necessarily a bad thing. Self education will be the way of the future.  

We also hear: “Nader can’t get enough votes.”  The right come-back for that one is: “No shit”. (Sorry for the less than creative language there. That’s the only response I can come up with for that old argument.)  A more polite answer would be, if the voters were capable of critical thinking NADER would win any election with a land slide.  Holding any candidate responsible for the actions of voters is fuzzy thinking.  

Voters – not candidates – are responsible for every vote they cast.  Voters have created the current conditions by consistently voting for the ‘lesser evil’.  Never, never, never let them off the hook.   Every ballot has a ‘write-in’ option. There is no requirement to vote only for candidates selected by a Party. Voters have unlimited choice. Our survival depends either on ballots or bullets.  Bullets have no conscience. Voters should.

There are a lot of things people don’t know about Nader.  He is smart.  Most people know that.  Even his critics admit that.   Most do not know that he is guided by a strong sense of justice and morality.

Nader is one of the most egoless Statesmen this war weary nation has ever seen.  I can prove that. Back in the 1970s the Electric Company had plans to build a floating Nuclear Power Plant off the coast of Atlantic City. A small group of citizens in Cape May, NJ fought this proposal. They were getting no where until Nader came from his home in Washington and helped. He came at his own expense. No fanfare. No publicity.  The floating Nuclear Plant was never built.

Nader is motivated by conscience. The list of Conscientious Objectors to USA policies is growing – Greenwald, Assange, Manning, Hammond, Snowden, and many others.  Nader was one of the original COs.  

We owe him a lot. He might never go down in history as President.  Instead he will always have an even higher status… that of Super Statesman.  He is honest. He is moral.  He is uncorruptable. He cannot be bought.  That is more than we can say about those we vote for and elect.

ROSEMARIE JACKOWSKI

Rosemarie Jackowski is an Advocacy Journalist, Peace Advocate, and author of BANNED IN VERMONT.

dissent@sover.net

ON THIS DAY: On June 16, 1933, President Roosevelt opened his New Deal recovery program, signing bank, rail and industry bills and initiating farm aid.

I celebrated when President Obama was elected.  I thought he would be the next FDR.

Instead of a New Deal for a new century, we have an expanded NSA, privacy violations, a country spying on its own people and drones murdering innocent women and children around the world.  

Instead of a New Deal recovery program, we have whistleblower heroes renamed as terrorists, who when captured and in prison are treated in ways that violate the Geneva Convention let alone all values of human decency and moral ethics.

From the Huffington Post:  

Daniel Ellsberg, the former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, leaked the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers

.

Is this the New Deal America voted for?

Change?

On this Father’s Day, I think our forefathers, who were called Rebels and seen as terrorists by Britain’s King George, would see our current lack of democracy and violation of personal rights and freedoms as an abomination.  

This is not the change, I thought I would see.  It is not the FDR-style New Deal most Americans expected.  It is a dishonor to our forefathers and the freedoms under which these United States of America were founded.

Reflect on this situation again on George Orwell’s birthday:  June 25, 1903.  He did forewarn us that big brother is watching…

As Evangelic Christians and their Leaders have uniquely intimate relationships with the Holy Trinity, they know with Extreme Certainty that the powerful gay and lesbian community has incurred the wrath of God numerous times in the past two decades (see Hurricanes Sandy, Katrina, and Bonnie, the Haiti and Northridge Earthquakes, and the Japanese Tsunami, as documented here), how then do those Spiritual Great Ones find cause for the Worst Fire in the History of Colorado, currently destroying All Things Good outside of Colorado Springs, the place many consider to be the Evangelical Vatican?

As you may recall, one of the features of Randy Brock’s Titanicampaign for Governor was the fact that he outsourced many of its functions to out-of-state firms with a history of working for ultraconservative candidates. Indeed, he spent a boatload of money on “experts” from Ohio, Indiana, and California, as well as the shameful amount of cash hoovered up by his supposed friend, Darcie “Hack” Johnston.

One of those “experts” was Nick Everhart, president of the Ohio-based Strategy Group for Media. who served as Brock’s “media consultant.” In other words, Everhart was in charge of deciding which ratholes Brock would pour his money into. Nice work if you can get it.

Well, Buzzfeed has a long and very juicy story about dissension within the ranks at Strategy Group, including the extremely sudden firing of Mr. Everhart on April 6.

It’s well worth your time. It documents a cultlike atmosphere within the firm, and thoroughly displays its extremely conservative (and right-wing Christian) orientation. Buzzfeed reporter McKay Coppins describes the firm as…

…the largest, most combative, and perhaps most controversial band of messaging warriors in Republican politics. Their blandly named company, Strategy Group for Media, has spent more than a decade developing a slashing formula for turning the party’s right-wing rejects into members of Congress. Now there are at least 40 Republicans in Congress who have worked with the Strategy Group, which serves as a campaign and strategy clearing house for the uncompromisingly conservative wing of the congressional caucus that has been at the center of American politics since 2010.

… The company had the rare distinction of working, serially, for two presidential candidates last year – Michele Bachmann then Newt Gingrich. Other clients include the great Right hopes of 2016: Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.

I guess Randy Brock didn’t make the list of “distinctive” 2012 clients. Sorry, Randy.  

Everhart’s abrupt exit came after a falling-out with company founder Rex Elsass, who is a real piece of work if the article is to be believed. You can read all the gory details at Buzzfeed; for our purposes, the story is a useful reminder of the kind of people Randy Brock chose to get in bed with.

Which makes you wonder what kind of Governor he would have made. There are several Republican Governors around the country who ran on relatively inoffensive platforms who have now swerved hard to the right (Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Michigan’s Rick Snyder, for example).

Was Randy Brock another stealth candidate for the Koch Brothers/Tea Party agenda? Thankfully, we’ll never know. But the same question could be asked more broadly of the Vermont Republican Party: are they really all that different from their national brethren, aside from ceding ground on lost-cause social issues that are tangential to the agenda of the national party’s paymasters?  

From Ellsberg to Snowden – the best is yet to come…

Today is the anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. We could celebrate by signing petitions to free Jeremy Hammond. He has fallen between the cracks because so much is happening. We cannot abandon him or Manning or Assange.

About Snowden… Why can’t someone file a Federal False Claims Act Suit on his behalf. Imagine if he received 30% of all the money the government spent on the illegal activities he exposed. He is one of the people who would use the money wisely and compassionately.

Also – imagine if our schools taught about Snowden and used him as a role model, a defender of Democracy and Freedom of the Press – finally a REAL hero instead of those guys who slaughtered Native Americans. I know that most schools won’t allow the truth, but the contribution of Snowden must be incorporated into the schools and the Youth culture. They are the voters of the future.

When’s the movie coming out? Who will play the lead? How about a rock band named “EDDIE AND THE WHISTLEBLOWERS’.

To be continued……………

Well, I’ve been reading some of the Vt. Digger comments (not all) by obvious Little Dems who say Jeremy Dodge has been ‘playing’ back and forth with Shumlin, setting himself up as a martyr on one hand, and, on the other, a slick self-interested con man whose next move will not necessarily be what he says it will be, nor mean what it really means.  I love it!

For what it really means is potentially great theatre, in which Governor Sleaze gets sucker-punched left and right, and, instead of us wondering what the Gov’s latest bullshit will be, we’ll have the spectacle of a low-income habitual offender using all his mentally diminished skills to take our Gov through the political ringer and then the cleaners.  You gotta love it!

Headline:

WHAT THE FUCK DOES HE WANT?!…Shumlin and Diamond Beg Dodge To be Reasonable; Shumlin’s Approval Rating At 29%; Most Vermonters Think Governor Dumber Than Dodge

Yes.  This could get really good.  Bend over, Shummy.  Wish you had moved next to Bill Sorrell now?

Hell, Gov, probably the very first time Dodge saw you as his new neighbor, he said to himself:  “Look at this rich asshole.  I call him meat.  This is gonna be better and easier than any scam I’ve ever pulled.  Just gotta play him.  Yeah, that’s what you do with rich assholes.  And he’s the Governor too.  Can’t afford any scandal shit.  Think I’ll just mosey on over there and see if he wants any landscaping done.  Be neighborly.  Boy, almost too easy.  Meat.”

Hell, if this keeps up, Dodge might end up with Shumlin’s job too.  Sort of a cross between those two classic movies, ALL THE KING’S MEN and A FACE IN THE CROWD.

With more than a little bit of The Culhanes thrown in:

Grandpa:  “That there Governor still thinks he pig-fucked you, Jeremy.”

Jeremy:  “Awh.  He don’t know one end of a pig from another.”

Lulu:  “He sure is in for a surprise.”

Clem:  “I made some posters up for your election next year, Jeremy.”

Jeremy:  “You didn’t use any of that paper I took at WalMart last year, did you?”

Clem:  “Nah.  The Governor gave me a bunch of his letterhead papers.  Said he’d bill me for it later.”

Jeremy:  “You won’t have to worry about that.”

Lulu:  “I wonder what time it is now.”

Grandpa:  “Time to call up them media folks.  Clem wrote a whole new different statement.  On the Governor’s paper.”

Jeremy:  “Tell the media I said ‘Hey’ and that I really like the Governor.  That he’s a nice man.  Even though he disses me.”

Grandpa:  “You bet.  They’ll love that.”

Lulu:  “I wonder what’s on the TV now.”

Grandpa:  “Not us. Yet.”

Jeremy:  “But tune in tomorrow, Lulu.  For a new episode.”

Lulu:  “Jeremy?”

Jeremy:  “What, Lulu?”

Lulu:  “When you get that 2 million dollars and get to be Governor, can you buy me a suitcase of Bud and a quart of Jack?  And put a Cee-ment Pond in on the Statehouse Lawn?”

Jeremy:  “Done.  Boy, I wish I didn’t have to pay them two Republican lawyers forty percent of that 2 million.”

Clem:  “Hey, Jeremy.  I got an idea about that.  And how to make them wind up paying us.”

Grandpa:  “First, let’s finish off the Governor.”

Jeremy:  “He’s as good as finished.  At least on one side.  Gotta flip him.”

Clem:  “I’ll say.”

Lulu:  “I wonder what I’d look like as Secretary of State.”

Grandpa:  “Good, child, good.  Better than even that Deb lady.  Right, Jeremy?”

Jeremy:  “I think I’ll head over to the WalMart.  Anybody want anything?”

Yes.  Tune in again, folks, when we’ll hear Jeremy say:  “I think Governor Shumlin is the swellest fellow I’ve ever done business with ever.”

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.

(Our next episode of Governor Hee-Haw may include the famous skits: “I’m A Pickin'(Shumlin) & I’m A Grinnin'(Dodge)” & Shumlin & Diamond doing a rendition of “Gloom, Despair and Agony On Me.”  He searched the world over for a great real estate deal, but he met another dealer and (spit) it was gone.)