The revolving door from government to private sector has apparently been replaced with ramp or chute, for faster connections. For example:    

As chief of Governor Shumlin’s ConnectVT Karen Marshall worked with private sector companies that were to receive roughly $410 million in federal funds. Other duties to be engaged in were efforts across state government to use broadband to improve the way that public services are delivered. Marshall was ConnectVT’s sole employee and for two years had an office with the governor’s other close advisors on the fifth floor of the Pavilion building. Prior to this appointment Marshall had been Chief Operating Officer of a document shredding company, and before that had been an executive with Comcast and Clear Channel Communications.  

Now shortly after the Shumlin administration announced a $5 million grant to VTel, Marshall has taken a job with that company, according to the Valley News.

Marshall, who made $115,000 a year as chief of ConnectVT, will be the new president of VTel Data Network. […] The company, based in Springfield, Vt., received $116 million in federal stimulus grants in 2011 for broadband expansion in rural, underserved areas of the state.

VTel is owned and run by Michael Guite, a former Wall Street analyst who has been struggling to bring broadband to rural Vermont for several years. Vermont’s Upper Valley residents may remember that he made news in 2008 for trying to relocate the remains of a War of 1812 veteran and family from their plot on Guite’s property.

[New:] While at ConnectVT Marshall helped forge a partnership between (the pre-merger) GMP, CVPS, and VTel. That deal was formalized in July 2011, and according to GMP’s COO amped up VTel’s expansion 20-25 percent. Guite, who would later become Marshall’s employer, then had high praise for her efforts. The CEO of VTel said,

the Vermont project will be using cutting edge technology that is unique in the United States and is of an international caliber. “I wish I could say this was our idea,” Guite said. “The cutting edge of innovation came from the utilities and the governor’s office. I’m proud they brought us into it.”

As a member of the Vermont Telecom Authority (VTA) board Marshall was present at two meetings  – the last one Dec.7 2012, where the million dollar grant to her new employer was approved by voice vote. She (Marshall) told the Valley News on January 10th that

she did not engage in job conversations with VTel until Dec. 12, when she and Guite “had a mutual conversation on the 12th in which I shared some of the challenges I face in balancing some of my family considerations with my current role.”

An executive code of conduct enacted by Governor Shumlin reportedly prohibits any lobbying of colleagues or legislators for one year after leaving government employment.

The Governor’s spokesperson in an email to the Valley News said (frostily?) in part,

When the administration learned that [Marshall] had accepted an offer with VTel, we let her know that she would need to end her state employment immediately.

And,

We wish Karen well in her new position.

Seems she’s doing just fine. These days some connected Vermonters climb the ladder, and others take the chute.  

As BP reports, 100+ years of settled knowledge has come under attack by members of the congressional Science and Technology Committee: but there are telling signs, even outside of Washington, that America is abdicating its traditional role at the forefront of  scientific inquiry

The New York Times has announced that it is closing it’s nine person “Environment Desk,” which was newly established just four years ago in 2009.

Spokespersons for the Times insist that this is simply a restructuring, in line with other shifts the paper has made, and that it does not reflect a lessening commitment to the subject which has heretofore seen stellar coverage by the Times.  However, industry watchers are less convinced:

Beth Parke, executive director of the Society of Environmental Journalists, said that while solid environmental coverage doesn’t always require a dedicated team, the Times’ decision is “worrying.”

“Dedicated teams bring strength and consistency to the task of covering environment-related issues,” she said. “It’s always a huge loss to see them dismantled … It’s not necessarily a weakening to change organizational structure, but it does seem to be a bad sign. I will be watching closely what happens next.”

And that’s not all the bad news.

One of the most important institutions of zoological study for more than a century, Chicago’s cash-strapped Field Museum of Natural History, recently announced plans to gut its natural history research program, slashing the overall budget by $5 million.

The budget cuts will be accompanied by the dissolution, on 1 January, of the 120-year-old institution’s classical academic departments – zoology, botany, geology and anthropology – and by the shuffling of member scientists into a new, leaner organization, broadly titled Science and Education.

A shock-wave from the news has been felt throughout the natural science community, and many fear similar measures may be adopted by other important institutions.

“It’s one of the great research institutions in comparative zoology, biodiversity and natural history, and it has been one of the leading centres of research for more than 100 years,” says James Hanken, director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “There’s no way the Field Museum will be able to maintain its position of prominence under those circumstances.”

Without a host institution to house and support their research, many natural scientists engaged in important work may find it impossible to continue.

“The Field Museum has some of the world’s authorities on certain insects and certain kinds of fossils,” says Hanken. “If those people no longer have a job, we in the scientific community have lost their expertise.”

Even though the President and our own Governor Shumlin promise to prioritize education, the outlook is not encouraging. Two decades of anti-intellectual politics and economic folly on Wall Street have already succeeded in undermining the foundations of ingenious curiosity in this country.

If, as it would seem, major new investment in education and pure science is realistically out of the question, I’m afraid we’ve seen the end of the golden age of American invention and discovery.

It’s bad enough when we hear gross exaggerations, misleading statements, and downright lies from the true believers in the anti-wind crowd. It’s even worse when we hear them from two State Senators, one of whom has laughably been installed as chair of the Natural Resources Committee.  

Recent statements and writings from Bob Hartwell and Joe Benning, co-sponsors of a three-year moratorium on new wind projects,  have made it clear that they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, and will use their influence to sabotage the implementation of a truly clean, safe, and reliable source of power. They claim they just want a three-year moratorium, but their rhetoric clearly reveals a staunch, unbending opposition to utility-scale wind.

Lest you think I exaggerate, allow me to turn to Benning’s recent opinion piece on VTDigger, which begins with a comparison of wind-farm development to rape.

Rape.

Really, Joe? You sure you want to go there?

His comment came after a visit to the Lowell Mountain construction site, which left him “horrified” at the “destruction.” Well, yes, a construction site in progress is never a pretty thing. But mountain ridgelines are kinda rugged, being made of rock and all. Go back a hundred years, and our “pristine ridgelines,” not to mention the entire landscape of Vermont, had been “raped” through clearcut lumbering and the opening of broad expanses to sheep farming, not to mention the godawful sludge we routinely dumped into our rivers and streams.

Fast forward a few decades, and our thoroughly “raped” countryside — “raped” far beyond anything that turbine construction could possibly accomplish — and the landscape has regained its pristine character.

I’m not saying that wind turbine construction has no impact. But the likes of Hartwell and Benning do their cause no favors with their wildly overblown rhetoric.  

You may recall the following pair of photographs posted on GMD by frequent contributor “simplify”:

Yes, wind turbines do carry environmental costs. But not nearly as heavy as the costs of nuclear, coal, oil, tar sands, or any future expansion of northern Quebec hydro power. Not to mention to looming and irreversible destruction of global warming. Even if we kept every single one of our ridgelines “pristine,” the carbon ain’t stopping at the Vermont border. If we don’t do everything we can to limit carbon emissions as quickly as we can, those ridgelines will never, ever be the same.  

And the limited environmental impact would cover a very small area. VPIRG’s 2009 report “Repowering Vermont” draws a roadmap to a completely renewable energy future. It says that six more projects the size of Lowell or Sheffield could provide more than 25% of our energy needs.

Six.

To get the same amount of energy from community-scale turbines, you’d have to build nearly 8,000 of them. How much impact on our environment and our viewscapes would that create?

In his VTDigger piece, Joe Benning asserts that “Big wind proponents claim these projects are the magical silver bullet that will solve our electric needs and cure man’s contribution to global pollution.” That’s a lie. Nobody claims that wind is the “silver bullet.” It’s a necessary part of the overall solution. VPIRG’s vision calls for a balance of wind, solar, hydro, biomass, plus a few others. But you can’t get to 100% without a significant contribution from wind. It’s the single biggest piece of VPIRG’s energy pie.

Hartwell and Benning have unrolled a new argument against wind: “the clear-cutting of hundreds of acres of trees that are our best carbon vacuum cleaners.” Sounds impressive, no?  “Hundreds of acres” is a lot of trees.  

The problem with that argument is, it undermines the rest of their case. Because “hundreds of acres” is a tiny, tiny fraction of Vermont’s 4,460,000 total acres of woodlands. To argue that cutting “hundreds of acres” out of that four and a half million will somehow negate the benefits of wind energy is absurd. It shows how far wind opponents are willing to go, how far they are willing to stretch the truth, to fabricate arguments against wind.

There are other anti-wind arguments. Indeed, one of the features of the anti-wind movement is the proliferation of their arguments. It’s like playing Whack-a-Mole — you disprove one claim, they switch to another one. I suggest a visit to VPIRG’s wind energy website, which gathers information about the benefits and impacts of wind — including an independent review of scientific literature that concludes there is no evidence to support claims of harmful health effects from wind turbines.

Also worth mulling over is a report from the Sierra Club, published last year, showing that prominent anti-wind advocates and groups often receive significant funding from fossil-fuel interests, who seek to delay or defeat renewable energy so they can go on making big profits pumping carbon into the atmosphere.

In 2012, the emergence of a small but highly vocal anti-wind movement caught Vermont’s environmental groups off guard. This year, the environmental community is ready to fight on behalf of wind as part of a broad-based portfolio of renewable energy. Last week’s formal announcement of the Hartwell/Benning moratorium bill was countered by a joint statement from VPIRG, the Conservation Law Foundation, 350Vermont, the Vermont chapter of the Sierra Club, the Vermont Natural Resources Council, the Citizens Awareness Network, the Northeast chapter of the National Wildlife Federation, and the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance. If you think that all those groups have abandoned their core mission, you are wrong. I’ll stand with them, and against an ill-considered moratorium supported by specious arguments.  

I don’t envy climate change when it eventually sits down to meet the Republicans on the House Science and Technology Committee. Will climate change be offended that one member believes it originated from dinosaur flatulence? A recent draft National Climate Assessment report says there is 

“Unambiguous evidence” the Earth is warming primarily from human activity. The assessment released through U.S. Global Change Research Program tallies the wide-ranging effects of climate change, such as water supplies stressed by declining runoff and increased risk of heat stress and waterborne disease, and notes that U.S. infrastructure is already being harmed by sea-level rise, storm surges and heavy downpours.

U.S. temps will continue to rise two to four degrees F; without actions to reduce global emissions, an increase of 10 degrees F is possible by century's end. This report, as you might imagine, suggests some action be taken to increase resilience to changes that it says cannot be avoided.

 For the next few years, however, the House Committee on Science and Technology probably isn’t the place to look for progress on this issue. Here are a few quotes that fly in the face of science from the Committee's Republican members.

Committee member Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) says, “I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old.” As if not to be outdone by his fellow congressman, Commitee Vice Chairman Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI)

decried climate change theory as a “massive international scientific fraud” and evidence of what he called “scientific fascism.” Another climate skeptic on the committee this year, Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), suggested in a hearing that “dinosaur flatulence” might explain historic warming patterns.

 Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX), the outgoing Chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, said,

“I'm really more fearful of freezing […] And I don't have any science to prove that. But we have a lot of science that tells us they're not basing it [global warming] on real scientific facts.” 

Incoming Chairman Lamar Smith (also of Texas) questions why the “lapdog media” isn’t skeptical of climate change and says the panel will “create a forum for discussion.” 

There's about as much hope of action from the House Science Committee run by Republicans that happily have planted their heads in the sand as there is of polar bears surviving massive glacial and sea ice meltdowns.

Ah, it seems like only a couple of days ago that I was celebrating a new era of openness and cooperation in the State Senate, with its Penitent Pro Tem John Campbell vowing to change his ways — and tangibilizing that change with the appointment of Phil Baruth as Majority Leader.

Come to think of it, it WAS just a couple of days ago. And already I’m having second thoughts.

I’m old enough to remember “the new Nixon,” the discredited loser in 1960 (presidency) and 1962 (Governor of California) repackaged and repositioned for his 1968 Presidential campaign. Turned out to be the old Nixon with a new-Nixon mask on.

Similarly, the new Campbell is starting to look a bit like the old one. His reshuffling of Senate committees was positive in many ways, but also bore the classic Campbell touches: a vengeful streak and a soupçon of political arrogance, There’s also significant room to doubt whether his new, steady-hand leadership will survive the stress of a new session.

Campbell seemingly flouted Governor Shumlin’s wishes in packing the Natural Resources Committee with supporters of a three-year wind moratorium. The measure is unlikely to pass the House even if it clears the Senate; but as committee chair, moratorium co-sponsor Bob Hartwell can cause a whole lot of trouble on wind, as well as smart meters and regulatory review for new energy projects. (With the state’s major environmental groups planning to ramp up their pro-renewables campaign, Hartwell’s committee may become a signficant battleground.) Beyond that, the memberships of both Natural Resources and Finance appear unfriendly to environmental initiatives across the board.  

Campbell’s mean streak was on display in the shafting of Ginny Lyons, longtime chair of Natural Resources, who was removed against her will (and without any good reason) after pushing hard for a reappointment; she left the building without comment after the committee lineup was announced. Also, there was Ann Cummings’ jump-before-she-could-be-pushed departure from the Finance Committee chairmanship.

The naming of Prog/Dem Tim Ashe as chair of the Finance Committee might seem to be a blow against Shumlin’s hold-the-line position on tax increases, but Ashe sounds like he’s willing to play nice. Peter Hirschfeld of the Vermont Press Bureau (article published in the Friday Times Argus; available behind a paywall here) reported that Ashe is “eager to help Gov. Shumlin fulfill a pledge not to raise broad-based taxes.”

Which kinda leaves me wondering how much Prog is left in this Prog/Dem, and whether he had to make any promises in order to land the chairmanship, but let’s move on.

The real worm in the Senate apple might, ironically, be Campbell’s most bruited reform measure: his promise to bring some contentious bills to a floor vote whether they are cleared by committee or not. As Seven Days’ Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz reported, this has ruffled more than a few feathers among Senate vets who are fond of the committee system — especially those who will be chairing committees, and don’t want to see their authority diluted.

But beyond that is another sticky wicket. The committee system acts as a safety valve, allowing leadership to smother inconvenient legislation. If issues like death with dignity, marijuana legalization, and a wind moratorium are brought to the floor, then Senators will have to cast some politically dicey votes. That’s part of the job in many cases; but if a Senate bill is likely to be killed in the House, then those votes will have been cast in vain. And they may prove to be political albatrosses in 2014. Legislators don’t like to stick their necks out for no good purpose, and Campbell’s reform has opened the door to exactly that.

Sometime between now and adjournment — or multiple times — Campbell may have to choose between breaking his single biggest promise and forcing his colleagues to take risks without potential reward. Either way, all those senators who stifled their doubts and granted Campbell another chance may well come to rue their generosity.  

I’m not a big fan of Sunday morning talk shows. The national ones are tedious and repetitive, the same Washington insiders spouting the same conventional wisdom, even when they manage to go a week without John McCain’s bloviations. But I see that I missed something last Sunday: an appearance by Bruce Lisman on WCAX’s You Can’t Catch Me — er, I mean, You Can Quote Me. His presentation was designed to reposition his vanity proj — I mean, nonpartisan advocacy group, Campaign for Vermont. (One apparent casualty of the repositioning: the word “Prosperity,” which has sometimes been appended to CFV’s name.)

As far as I can tell, this was his first significant media appearance since former Douglas Administration stalwart Jason Gibbs came on board as CFV’s communications consultant. Looks like Jason recommended a new, more friendly, bipartisan face for the organization.

The interview included numerous claims of nonpartisanship and political centrism; an indirect admission that CFV made a mistake by introducing itself to Vermonters through a blitz of anti-Democratic radio ads; an acknowledgment that he’s spent “about $400,000” on CFV and hopes to start raising some money from other people in the new year; a hedged denial that he has any political ambitions; and lots and lots of long, ambling, unfocused answers delivered in a near-monotone. (Interviews are not the man’s strong suit.)

You want details? We got details…

Although CFV seems to have dropped the word “prosperity,” Lisman made it clear from the gitgo that his sole focus is on building “a diversified and dynamic economy” that can (somehow) create “more jobs than there are people.” I hope he didn’t really mean that; it’s an impossible goal.

Anyway, rebranding. Here’s how he sought to define CFV. (And I should warn you, reading extended Bruce Lisman quotes can lead to headaches, dizziness, nausea, and disorientation. The operation of heavy machinery while reading Bruce Lisman quotes is contraindicated.)

We’re trying to build this coalition of Vermonters regardless of political orientation, you know as long as it’s center left or center right, kind of fits the moderate definition, and we’re trying to engage in coalition in big ideas and think there’s more influence to be had and more power in nonpartisan than there is in being political.

Nice of him to admit that he’s seeking “influence” and “power” there. Gee, I thought he was just trying to elevate the terms of political discourse. Freudian slip?  

As for how and why CFV got labeled as a conservative group, the finger of blame pointed ever outward:  

Sometimes a new and different entity — I think we’re an advocacy group that wasn’t around for one issue, wasn’t around for one six-week period, but here it is a year plus, year and a half later, if you will, and we’re still rolling out our ideas and trying to influence, if you will, the course of discussion. I think faced with something new, people were quick to say, I might like their ideas, but I’d like to have it defined by their political orientation and I’ve said from the beginning, if you like our ideas, you don’t need any particular further definition. But I understand how things are and in particular, in the business of politics can get mean, so just labeling things does take place.

Whew!

When you boil down all that prolixity, if you will, what you get, if you will, is “Campaign for Vermont is so new and different that you people didn’t get it.”

Uh-huh.

Really, Bruce, you came by your unwanted labeling the old-fashioned way: you earned it. You earned it through ads and position papers that almost exclusively hewed to a right-wing, free-market view of the world, while offering nothing but criticism for Vermont Democrats. It didn’t help that many of your early attacks were later employed by the Republicans during the campaign.

On CFV’s finances, the last we heard, Lisman had spent about $200,000 on that big initial ad blitz of last winter. Now he says he has spent “about $400,000.” Here’s how he explains his big political investment, which was second only to Miss Daisy, Lenore Broughton, herself:  

What I said from the very, very beginning was that I would finance this enterprise because it’s different. I don’t — I didn’t know if it had been done before. I didn’t claim to know a lot about politics and know probably even less today, but I was learning about public policy and I wanted to be able to show people that we could grow an enterprise that would last, that had good value, and would gather support. And so — and that’s why I financed it, to show — I thought I should put my money where my brain was on this. Money to action, if you will. I’ve got a goal this year of making it sustainable, just to raise money from others, so it continues for a long time.

I tell you, you listen to Lisman talk, if you will, and you wonder, if you will, how in Hell he rose to the top of a Wall Street giant. But let’s again boil this down: He self-funded it because he didn’t know any other way to build an advocacy group. Not for this former Bear Stearns executive to beat a path through the grass roots and build a movement through the quality of ideas. Instead, he took the rich man’s route: buying himself a place in the public square.

What’s more, he pretty much admits that a lot of that money was wasted — indeed, was counterproductive. Darren Perron brought up CFV’s early radio blitz, which was harshly critical of the Democrats without calling them by name. The essence of Lisman’s response, stitched together out of his scattered replies: He said that in its first year, CFV “tended to be a little more reactive” than they plan to be from now on; he also claimed that there was only one ad directly slamming the Democrats, which is either an outright lie or massively misleading.

When pressed on whether 30-second attack ads are an appropriate means of “elevating discussion,” he replied, “I don’t think you will hear us offer that kind of ad this year, 2013.” When asked if the ads were a mistake, he said “No,” but then admitted that “What I’ve learned, learning as we go, 30 seconds or 60 seconds doesn’t allow you to explain the context for things.”

That’s about as close to “We screwed up” as you’re likely to hear from a guy who doesn’t think Wall Street did anything particularly wrong in the runup to the 2008 economic implosion.

Most of the second half of the interview was about education. And if you think the excerpts I’ve included above were scary, you ought to try to plow through his endless circumlocutions on education policy. Me, I’m gonna give it a pass.

Two more notes from the interview. First, he was asked about a possible run for office, and he issued the standard non-denial denial:

I don’t have a plan to run for office. I have a plan to keep Campaign for Vermont as a nonpartisan entity and through that, influence those who are in politics.

And when he was asked if that meant he’s never going to run for office, he again stopped short of an absolute denial: “Never plan to run.”

And toward the very end of the program, Lisman was asked about the proposed wind-energy moratorium. And he absolutely ducked the question:

There should be a really good discussion. One thing we said in our — we put out our energy piece, is — and I’ve said a couple of interviews and certainly experience, we’re in favor of renewables and we’re in favor of retaining the best of Vermont and regardless of what I say here, I wouldn’t be here unless I loved the state and you wouldn’t either. We choose to be here, mainly. Is there a reason to make it better, more interesting, all that? Of course. The issues around energy are quite complex, but to simplify it quickly, the state is very focused on electricity. It’s only 12 or 15 percent of the total energy package —

At which point he was interrupted, as time was almost up and the inquisitors tried one final time to get a straight answer. “Wind moratorium, where does Campaign for Vermont stand on that issue?”

I don’t know if we need a moratorium, but we need a discussion because electricity rates are the highest in the country and alternatives haven’t come on, and there are questions about transmission lines above 20%, so the answer is we need to consider how we’re introducing and how much we’re asking people who want afford it, how much they can spend.

Wow. This, from the person who wants to elevate our discourse. This poorly stated, incompetently veiled adherence to free-marketism. He may want you to believe that CFV is a mainstream, broad-based movement, but so far it remains entirely his creation. And for him, every issue is about money and business. He spent his career in the canyons of Wall Street, and it shows.  

I know that I seem to drone on about all things nuclear, raising stories that happen far away from Vermont; but I do so because so little attention is paid to the topic outside of any immediate crisis.

As with all technical issues, most of us are ill-equipped to connect the dots and fully understand how systemic dysfunction occurring thousands of miles away may predict trouble we might ultimately face close at home.

Today’s tidbit  was gleaned from the pages of Enformable,  which consolidates a lot of nuclear-related stories from across the globe.  Links are provided in Enformable’s post to the original news sources.  It is a tale of government contracting for nuclear decommissioning which has a predictably bad trajectory.

The story concerns the Hanford Reservation in the desert region of Washington State, where the Manhatten Project was carried out and plutonium produced for military use since the end of World War II.

In all, nine nuclear reactors were built at Hanford, the last of which ceased operation in 1987. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency now estimates that as a result of the nuclear work done at Hanford’s facilities, 43 million cubic yards of radioactive waste were produced and more than 130 million cubic yards of soil ultimately were contaminated.

According to Alternet ( also quoted above:)

During Hanford’s lifespan, 475 billion gallons of radioactive wastewater were released into the ground. Radioactive isotopes have made their way up the food chain in the Hanford ecosystem at an alarming rate. Coyote excrement frequently lights up Geigers, as these scavengers feast on varmints that live beneath the earth’s surface. Deer also have nuclear radiation accumulating in their bones as a result of consuming local shrubbery and water. The EPA has deemed Hanford the most contaminated site in North America

Hanford also has the distinction of being the most costly environmental clean-up of all time, thanks in no small part to the current efforts by Bechtel National Inc. to run the bill up as high as possible.

Less familiar to us than the infamous Halliburton, Bechtel has left its own trail of shady and shoddy contracting activity, mostly with regard to pipelines.  But it seems, the more spectacular the failures, the more likely the failing company is to get a second, third and fourth bite at the apple of government contracts.  

ACORN should have been so lucky!

…And Bechtel got to bite off the biggest environmental clean-up contract of all time at Hanford. The numbers are staggering.

Bechtel holds the $12.2 billion contract to build a plant to treat up to 56 million gallons of radioactive waste left from the past production of plutonium from the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

Despite decades of cleanup efforts and billions of taxpayer dollars spent, only a tiny fraction of Hanford’s radioactivity has been safely contained

Apparently even this isn’t going to close the books on Bechtel’s compensation:

Bechtel has submitted a request for at least part of a $15 million incentive payment for reducing sodium. DOE still is evaluating whether payment should be made…Despite decades of cleanup efforts and billions of taxpayer dollars spent, only a tiny fraction of Hanford’s radioactivity has been safely contained, and the situation appears to be getting more polarized if not hostile.

So contentious is the issue within the Department of Energy that a DOE employee claims she was detained and prevented from leaving a meeting at the Hanford facility.

No doubt Bechtel, which has its fine hand in Fukushima remediation as well, will be rewarded with an even more lucrative contract in the future.

Which brings me to my point.  

Does anyone really know how much decommissioning a nuclear reactor like Vermont Yankee will cost by the time the loser in Entergy’s game of hot potato finally has to pony up?  

We know that the reserve fund is significantly less than the estimates; but how realistic are those estimates; and how much power over cost-containment would the state ultimately have (if worst came to worst) when the DOE’s own contractors are able to so successfully game the system?

What was that claim again?  “Cheap, reliable and clean?”

I know that I seem to drone on about all things nuclear, raising stories that happen far away from Vermont; but I do so because so little attention is paid to the topic outside of any immediate crisis.

As with all technical issues, most of us are ill-equipped to connect the dots and fully understand how systemic dysfunction occurring thousands of miles away may predict trouble we might ultimately face close at home.

Today’s tidbit  was gleaned from the pages of Enformable,  which consolidates a lot of nuclear-related stories from across the globe.  Links are provided in Enformable’s post to the original news sources.

It is a tale of government contracting for nuclear decommissioning which has a predictably bad trajectory.

The story concerns the Hanford Reservation in the desert region of Washington State, where [part of] the Manhattan Project was carried out and plutonium produced for military use since the end of World War II.

In all, nine nuclear reactors were built at Hanford, the last of which ceased operation in 1987. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency now estimates that as a result of the nuclear work done at Hanford’s facilities, 43 million cubic yards of radioactive waste were produced and more than 130 million cubic yards of soil ultimately were contaminated.

According to Alternet (also quoted above):

During Hanford’s lifespan, 475 billion gallons of radioactive wastewater were released into the ground. Radioactive isotopes have made their way up the food chain in the Hanford ecosystem at an alarming rate. Coyote excrement frequently lights up Geigers, as these scavengers feast on varmints that live beneath the earth’s surface. Deer also have nuclear radiation accumulating in their bones as a result of consuming local shrubbery and water. The EPA has deemed Hanford the most contaminated site in North America

Hanford also has the distinction of being the most costly environmental clean-up of all time, thanks in no small part to the current efforts by Bechtel National Inc. to run the bill up as high as possible.

Less familiar to us than the infamous Halliburton, Bechtel has left its own trail of shady and shoddy contracting activity, mostly with regard to pipelines.  But it seems, the more spectacular the failures, the more likely the failing company is to get a second, third and fourth bite at the apple of government

contracts.  ACORN should have been so lucky!

…And Bechtel got to bite off the biggest environmental clean-up contract of all time at Hanford. The numbers are staggering.

Bechtel holds the $12.2 billion contract to build a plant to treat up to 56 million gallons of radioactive waste left from the past production of plutonium from the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

Despite decades of cleanup efforts and billions of taxpayer dollars spent, only a tiny fraction of Hanford’s radioactivity has been safely contained

Apparently even this isn’t going to close the books on Bechtel’s compensation:

Bechtel has submitted a request for at least part of a $15 million incentive payment for reducing sodium. DOE still is evaluating whether payment should be made.

Despite decades of cleanup efforts and billions of taxpayer dollars spent, only a tiny fraction of Hanford’s radioactivity has been safely contained, and the situation appears to be getting more polarized if not hostile.

So contentious is the issue within the Department of Energy that a DOE employee claims she was detained and prevented from leaving a meeting at the Hanford facility.

No doubt Bechtel, which has its fine hand in Fukushima remediation as well, will be rewarded with an even more lucrative contract in the future.

Which brings me to my point.  Does anyone really know how much decommissioning a nuclear reactor like Vermont Yankee will cost by the time the loser in Entergy’s game of hot potato finally has to pony up?  We know that the reserve fund is significantly less than the estimates; but how realistic are those estimates; and how much power over cost-containment would the state ultimately have (if worst came to worst) when the DOE’s own contractors are able to so successfully game the system?

What was that claim again?  “Cheap, reliable and clean?”

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Belated posting with my apologies. Vaguely Disturbing Cartoon Edition.

Governor Peter Shumlin, for grabbing Vermont politics and government by the scruff in a New Year’s blitz of announcements and initiatives. And just to top it all off, the guy schedules an outdoor event for early January and comes up with a warm, sunny day. What, did he appoint The Man Upstairs as his new Secretary of Meteorological Arrangements?

He began his 2013 offensive by addressing one of 2012’s biggest scandals (the Jim Deeghan case). He called for a new law that would let government claw back a public sector employee’s pension benefits if they were gained through fraudulent activity. Then came a series of personnel shuffles plus a hint of major education reform initiatives to be announced this week.

After that came new transparency measures, allowing everyone to get more information about state government online, not to mention a proposal for greater public access to records of criminal cases and investigations.

Monday brought some well-conceived measures to reduce recidivism, and Tuesday was the dedication of the new mental health care facility to be built in Berlin, plus the news that its funding is pretty much taken care of through a combination of FEMA funds, insurance payments, and money already set aside in last year’s budget.  

The Gov has certainly hit the ground running. What’s especially noteworthy is that most of these efforts are not the stuff of sexy headlines — they’re a matter of honestly trying to make government work better and more efficiently. Good stuff.

With one exception…

Governor Peter Shumlin, for persistently ducking and evading any sort of a stand on gun control. And for not making a whole lot of sense when he did say something.

There is some merit in his advocacy of a 50-state solution, but it’s hard to accept that there is no role whatsoever for states or governors, especially those who pride themselves on their leadership. Couldn’t we at least tighten our incredibly lax gun laws to match those of nearby states? Do we really need, for instance, to allow 16-year-olds to buy guns and carry concealed weapons?

Beyond that, there is absolutely no merit in Shumlin’s call for some kind of measure to keep dangerous weapons away from the mentally ill. The American Psychiatric Association says that “The vast majority of violence in our society is not perpetrated by persons with serious mental disorders.” Just look at the recent Bennington case of a respected schoolteacher who suddenly started posting threatening messages online, and was seen loading his Bushmaster into the trunk of his car on a Sunday evening. If he intended harm to students or staff, no amount of mental health screening would have prevented him from (a) owning a weapon of war — he’d bought it a few years earlier — or (b) snapping without any prior warning or diagnosis.

And although Shumlin has said he would support “sensible” gun legislation on a national level, one has to question exactly how he would define “sensible.” The only restriction he’s called for is the unattainable “keep guns away from crazy people.” Hell, he’s refused to say whether the Bushmaster qualifies as a weapon of war. And given his high ratings by the NRA, I’m left to wonder if he shares that organization’s definition of “sensible.”

After the jump: Fresh air in the Senate, another obnoxious agri-giant, the Vermont Democratic Party, and more.

State Senator Phil Baruth, Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell, and (we hope) the people of Vermont, for what appears to be some real change for the better in the Senate. In the 2012 session, Campbell repeatedly slammed the less senior Senators (including Baruth) while running an often-dysfunctional chamber. When he had to run for re-election as Pro Tem, he promised better organization and communication.

The ascension of Baruth to the position of Majority Leader is a concrete sign that Campbell will let some fresh air into the musty chamber. Our best to Phil on his new post, even though we fear his new responsibilities will make it even harder for him to keep up his renowned blog, Vermont Daily Briefing (last updated November 2). But if we must, we will happily trade an incisive, well-written political blog for a more open and productive Senate.  

Vermont’s toothless laws against operating unlicensed hunting preserves. Last week, two Fairlee residents were accused of operating a private hunting ground. They charged customers as much as $6,000 for the chance to bag a moose, boar, buffalo, or other animal.

Steven Hill, 51, and Chiaki Ito, 21, both of Fairlee, were accused Friday of seven counts of operating an unlicensed captive hunting facility. They face up to $1,000 in fines for each count and could lose hunting, fishing and trapping licenses for up to three years.

And there’s the rub: these guys were raking in the dough for illegal hunting, and the maximum penalty is $7,000 in fines. That’s not much of a deterrent. The state no longer issues new permits for hunting facilities because they can harbor dangerous diseases. If Vermont has a real interest in limiting private hunting grounds, it needs to stiffen the penalties for offenders.

The Vermont Democratic Party, not rebuilding but reloading. After a dominant performance in 2012, the VDP has made a couple of behind-the-scenes hires aimed at cementing its hegemony. The party is hiring Ryan Emerson as communications director and field director, and Nick Charyk as  political director. Both men came to prominence in last year’s campaign. Emerson brought TJ Donovan within a $200,000 SuperPAC injection of upsetting Attorney General Bill Sorrell and then spearheaded Treasurer Beth Pearce’s lopsided win over Lenore Broughton’s checkbook — er, I mean Wendy Wilton.  Charyk was director of the Vermont Democratic House Campaign, which overcame Lenore Broughton’s checkbook and added to the Democratic majority in the House.

The hires provide steady employment for a pair of up-and-coming political minds and add to the Democrats’ organizational power, at a time when the Vermont Republicans still don’t have any paid staff and are counting on Reagan-era retread “Angry Jack” Lindley to create a youth movement in the VTGOP. Lookin’ good for 2014, folks.

Processed food giant ConAgra Foods, for stealing Bo Muller-Moore’s “Eat More Kale” slogan. A new ad for its Healthy Choice frozen yogurt features a woman who claims to be a recovering kale-aholic. Early in the commercial, she is shown wearing a fake “Eat More Kale” T-shirt — with a different design than Bo’s, but definitely the same slogan. (The cherry on top of this shit sundae:  the amply-proportioned woman is shown jumping and shaking in slow-motion so we can all be mesmerized by her bouncing bosom.)

It’s bad enough that one giant purveyor of industrial food, Chick-Fil-A, is trying to stop Bo from using his slogan. Now we’ve got another one attacking from the other side.

I can only hope, for the sake of cosmic justice, that ConAgra will be sued by Chick-Fil-A for trademark infringement.  

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington, for once again having to settle lawsuits over its failure to prevent child sexual abuse by priests. The latest development is just one small step in a long, painful journey toward truth and reconciliation — a journey that the Church has actively resisted in every possible way. There are many noxious elements to this sad story, but I’ll tick off a few that really tick me off:

— The Church put the interests of itself and its priests above all else, sweeping allegations under the rug, refusing to share information with law enforcement, and constantly shuttling accused priests from church to church and diocese to diocese.

— Even while evading its responsibility, it has continued to claim absolute moral authority. We’ve been told that sexual abuse in the priesthood is rarer than in other professions. Well, it should be rarer. It should be NONEXISTENT, no? And the fact that it’s relatively rare doesn’t excuse the Church’s decades (probably centuries) of negligence. At the same time, they’re denying the Eucharist to pro-choice politicians, urging their parishioners to vote Republican, and making vast and arrogant claims of religious privilege.

— Its internal structure has made a mockery of the civil justice system. For doctrinal purposes the Church is a single entity directed by the Vatican; but financially, each diocese is a separate entity. That means the pasty old men in the pointy hats never have to fear selling off their treasures, even though they clearly allowed a corrupt system to continue. Whatever the Burlington Diocese is paying out — and they won’t tell you how much that is — we know one thing for sure: not a penny is coming from Rome.