( – promoted by Sue Prent)

By Sen. Bernie Sanders and Ryan Alexander

This nation is facing a $15 trillion national debt, and there is no shortage of opinions about how to move toward deficit reduction in the federal budget. One topic you will not hear discussed very often on Capitol Hill is the idea of ending one of the oldest American welfare programs — the extraordinary amount of corporate welfare going to the nuclear energy industry.

Many in Congress talk of getting ‘big government off the back of private industry.’ Here’s an industry we’d like to get off the backs of the taxpayers.

As a senator who is the longest-serving independent in Congress, and as the president of an independent and non-partisan budget watchdog organization, we do not necessarily agree on everything when it comes to energy and budget policy in the United States. But one thing we strongly agree on is the need to end wasteful subsidies that prop up the nuclear industry. After 60 years, this industry should not require continued and massive corporate welfare. It is time for the nuclear power industry to stand on its own two feet.

Nuclear welfare started with research and development. According to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, since 1948 the federal government has spent more than $95 billion (in 2011 dollars) on nuclear energy R&D. That is more than four times the amount spent on solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, biofuels, and hydropower combined.

But federal R&D was not enough; the industry also wanted federal liability insurance too, which it got back in 1957 with the Price-Anderson Act. This federal liability insurance program for nuclear plants was meant to be temporary, but Congress repeatedly extended it, most recently through 2025. Price-Anderson puts taxpayers on the hook for losses that exceed $12. 6 billion if there is a nuclear plant disaster. When government estimates show the cost for such a disaster could reach $720 billion in property damage alone, that’s one sweetheart deal for the nuclear industry!

R&D and Price-Anderson insurance are still just the tip of the iceberg. From tax breaks for uranium mining and loan guarantees for uranium enrichment to special depreciation benefits and lucrative federal tax breaks for every kilowatt hour from new plants, nuclear is heavily subsidized at every phase. The industry also bilks taxpayers when plants close down with tax breaks for decommissioning plants. Further, it is estimated that the federal costs for the disposal of radioactive nuclear waste could be as much as $100 billion.

Even with all of those subsidies, the private sector still will not agree to finance a new nuclear plant, so wealthy nuclear corporations recently secured access to $18.5 billion in taxpayer-backed loan guarantees. Maybe the Wall Street banks agree with the Congressional Budget Office, which estimated the risk of default on nuclear loans at above 50 percent. The nuclear industry’s financial troubles are not new. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, 100 reactors were cancelled due to cost overruns. Things were so bad Forbes called it “the largest managerial disaster in business history.” Despite this history, some want to dramatically increase federal loan guarantees for nuclear plants.

It is shocking that the nuclear industry continues to receive so much federal support at a time of record debt. Of course nuclear subsidies benefit some of the wealthiest and most powerful energy corporations in America, which may explain the persistence of nuclear welfare.

For example, Exelon, which takes in $33 billion in revenue annually, is the leading operator/owner of nuclear reactors in the United States. Entergy, with revenues of more than $11 billion annually, is the second largest. Together, these two companies own or operate almost one-third of U.S. reactors, and based on their revenue they are doing pretty well. Why do they need endless federal welfare for their industry year after year after year? Will it ever end?

Well, as Secretary of Energy Steven Chu confirmed at a recent Senate hearing, without federal liability insurance and loan guarantees, no one would ever build a new nuclear plant. Whether you support nuclear energy or not, we should all be able to agree that with record debt, we cannot afford to continue to subsidize this mature industry and its multi-billion dollar corporations. If the nuclear industry believes so fervently in their technology, then they and Wall Street investors can put their money where the mouth is. Let’s let them finance it, insure it, and pay for it themselves.  

John Edwards’s trial started this week, and the news just provides more revelations about what a scummy character he is.

When John Edwards started running for president I was in his camp. Among other things, he was the only candidate who really made eradicating poverty the central theme of his campaign. Luckily, given what we have learned since his campaign ended, he didn’t become our candidate.

I don’t care who politicians sleep with. For that matter, I don’t much care who regular people sleep with. When John Edwards was running for president, though, asking people to vote for him, work for him, and give him money, while at the same time he knew he was carrying on an extramarital affair that  was bound to demolish his campaign when it came out (hint: it always comes out), that’s when I do care. He wasn’t just putting his marriage and his family at risk, he was putting the faith and efforts of millions of Democrats across the country, and the fate of the 2008 election, at risk.

So that makes him pretty low in my book, but now it turns out that he’s even worse.

His trial started this week, and the news is carrying reports on the potential witnesses both for and against him. According to the Charlotte News and Observer: Cate Edwards, the grown daughter of the former presidential candidate and one-term Democratic senator, could be called to testify on her father’s behalf.

He doesn’t have to do this. He could plead guilty. He could decide not to involve his daughter. Instead, he’s having his daughter testify to defend him against charges that he gave campaign money to the woman he was having an affair with while his wife, his daughter’s mother, was dying of cancer.

How do you do that to your kid?

  Hydraulic fracturing is a natural gas extraction process that injects poisonous chemical laced water and sand underground into shale rock to force out trapped natural gas. In addition to problems with poisonous fracking fluid spills at the well, disposal of the fluid presents major problems. This week, by unanimous vote the Vermont Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee voted to prohibit hydraulic fracking. To become law the bill must be passed by the entire senate and melded with a similar house bill which will prohibit the practice for only three years.  

Due to Vermont’s unique bedrock hydro-fracking is not “commercially viable” but places not “commercially viable” now may become so at a later date; it is a changeable target. Areas in several states now actively fracked are viable now only because of changes in techniques and market forces. A short term prohibition such as the Vermont House version kicks the can down the road. This may suit the American Petroleum Institute’s lobbyist Joe Choquette who early in the debate urged Vermont lawmakers not to approve a permanent ban.

"We'd like a go slow approach to let the science of fracking develop and let regulators work out any problems that might occur."

The petroleum  industry lobbyist also thinks fracking in Vermont would be just great for farmers because

“It keeps farmers in farming because it adds value to their land”

What might this process look like?

What does this “adding value to the land” by fracking lease look like?

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has a story about their drilling boom and Ohioan Larry Piergallini, a lawyer/landowner who is handling drilling leases for a block of 200 farmers. The paper describes a frenzy of leasing, bonus per acre payouts, and lawyers, lots of lawyers. Lawyer Piergallini recruited his neighbors at an alarming pace. In two 12-hour shifts last August, Piergallini, 56, helped 550 families in Harrison and Jefferson counties execute leases with oil and gas companies covering 32,000 acres. Certainly makes us wonder what the rush was and recalls the old saying “act in haste repent at leisure”.  

The Plain Dealer mentions over half a dozen large law firms rushing to keep pace with the legal challenges of a fracking lease boom:

Leasing and title quandaries are just the opening volley in what will be years of legal work and probably thousands of lawsuits tied to exploration, drilling, production and pipeline construction.

In New York State in 2011 over 400 leaseholders filed suit against gas companies, and lease termination meetings are being held among disgruntled landowners.

When “adding value to the land,” unanticipated ripple effects, financial and otherwise, naturally result. In Ohio and Colorado underground disposal of waste frack fluids are linked to a series of local earthquakes. In addition to little earthquakes Ohio emergency personal must now train to deal with the increased costs and dangers of private companies trucking millions of gallons of hazardous fluids to and from wells on rural roads. Well site fires are also among the potential expensive difficulties municipalities must be prepared for.

So where will the fracking world be in three years’ time?  I would bet that fracking technology advances on a faster track than the one that might eliminate troublesome leasing agreements.

[Police access to medical databases is a major Fourth Amendment issue – one you can help keep for Vermonters who object to unwarranted search and seizure. A vote on an amendment allowing such access is due this week in the Senate. Contact info and bill text links are below the fold.]

It’s crunch time under the golden dome, and one of the things that might be crunched this week is Vermonters’ Fourth Amendment (U.S. Constitution) right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

GMD has for quite some time been tracking the attempts by law enforcement to go fishing in pharmacy records. And JVWalt posted just last Thursday on this issue and the “compromise” put forth in the Senate as an amendment to H.745, the Prescription Drug Monitoring Bill.

At issue is whether law enforcement officials will be able to use the Vermont Prescription Drug database to get information on individuals who might be abusing or selling certain prescription drugs – without any court review, a.k.a., warrantless access.

ACLU Director Allen Gilbert sent out an urgent message this weekend urging Vermonters who care about their constitutional protections to contact their state senators ASAP, as a vote is likely this week. by noon Monday, April 16.

The text of Gilbert’s message (posted with permission) – with text and contact links – is below the fold.

I don’t often send out personal appeals for help, but this issue is important.

A bill, H. 745, making changes to the state Health Department’s centralized prescription drug database has been working its way through the legislature. I’ve been following it closely for the ACLU because the Shumlin administration wants to allow police to obtain information from the database without a warrant.

I’m asking you to consider sending an e-mail, or making a phone call, to your senators opposing a warrantless access amendment the Senate will take up next week (the week of April 16). I provide a sample message, below.

But first, let me explain why we are worried about police having warrantless access to information in the Health Department’s prescription drug database:

1. When the state’s prescription drug database was created in 2006, the legislation promised the database would be used for health, not law enforcement, purposes. The Shumlin administration now wants to break that promise by allowing police to obtain reports on patients from the database. If the legislature breaks its promise on the privacy of prescription drug information, what’s to prevent a similar retreat from the promise to protect the privacy of information in the state’s soon-to-be-launched e-medical records exchange system?

2. While we agree Vermont and other states face a serious prescription drug abuse problem, there’s little data showing prescription drugs sold on our streets are coming through pharmacies. A federal study done in Utah described how a majority of prescription drugs on the streets of that state were not dispensed by Utah pharmacies, and therefore wouldn’t show up in the state’s prescription drug database. During legislative hearings, no one has presented anything but anecdotal evidence about the source of the drugs available for sale on Vermont’s streets. In truth, no one really knows where they’re coming from. It’s not worth undercutting privacy rights for uncertain results.

3. The Shumlin administration argues that police already have warrantless access to Vermonters’ prescription drug records in pharmacies – what’s wrong with giving police warrantless access to the Health Department’s drug database? While it’s true that police can walk into any drugstore in the state and look at anyone’s prescription drug records without a warrant, that authority is based on an outdated statute passed long before federal privacy protections (under HIPAA, the Health Information Portability and Accessibility Act) were put in place. Were the state’s drugstore access law (passed in 1968) to come up for consideration today, it’s doubtful the legislation would pass.

4. We acknowledge that there are times when law enforcement can access our private information. Indeed, the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment sets up the procedure to obtain such information — by police going to a judge, showing probable cause that a crime has been committed, and getting a warrant. This procedure has been in place for more than 200 years. It works. But increasingly, police have sought end-runs around the Fourth Amendment’s protections, particularly when seeking personal information in government or private databases. The fight over police access to prescription drug database information is really a fight over what kind of access police will have to electronic data about our private lives. What the legislature does now will likely be looked at later as a precedent in defining police access to e-data.

5. The warrant requirement plays an important role in the balance of powers among the branches of government. Allowing police access to Health Department data allows an otherwise unauthorized transfer of personal information between two administrative agencies without judicial review. It is judicial review that protects personal privacy rights. Removing that review removes citizens’ main protection against government intrusion in our private lives.

Here’s how the administration’s warrantless access would work, according to the proposed amendment: Police receive information from a pharmacist or health care provider that a person may be criminally misusing a prescription drug. Police open an investigation of the person. Police ask the Health Department for drug database information on the person. The Health Department MUST provide police with the person’s name and date of birth, and the name and address of pharmacies where s/he’s had a script filled. No specific drugs or quantities are noted – just enough information to point police to a specific pharmacy(s) to check out the individual and his/her purchases.

The text of the proposed warrantless access amendment is on our Web site; the text of the prescription drug monitoring bill (H. 745)   as it passed the House is on the legislative Web site.

I generally would assume that readers of this blog have contacted their legislators at least once in the last decade. In case that’s an (ahem) unwarranted assumption, I’ll close with Gilbert’s suggestion for how best to make your opinion on this issue known:

Here’s what to do:

Please send an e-mail to the senators in your county by Monday noon (April 16)  [Your] senator […] may be receptive to arguments that police should have to get a warrant before receiving reports from the prescription drug database. A simple message is fine: “I am concerned about the privacy of medical information. I don’t want police to have access to information in the state’s prescription drug database without a warrant. Please vote against any amendments to H. 745 that would allow warrantless access.”

If you know any other senators beyond your own county, consider contacting them, too. If you’d like to expand your efforts even further, contact all 30 senators.

Besides using e-mail, it’s also possible to fax written messages to senators. Fax to 802-828-2424 (include the senator’s name). And you can leave a simple verbal message for an individual senator by calling the statehouse Sergeant at Arms office (during business hours) at 802-828-2228. Include the number of the bill (H. 745) in your message.

Finally home phone numbers for senators can be found on the legislative Web site.

Thanks for considering this request. Please call or write with any questions.

Allen Gilbert

Executive director, ACLU-VT

137 Elm St.

Montpelier, VT 05602

802-223-6304

agilbert@acluvt.org

Governor Shumlin had a close encounter with bear-kind Wednesday AM when trying to rescue his birdfeeders after shooing bears away. The bears apparently didn’t go far enough away, and when the Governor went out to try to grab the feeders he was charged at and chased by the foursome.

From the AP’s writeup:

Shumlin tells the Valley News editorial board that Vermont “almost lost the governor.” He says he was within “three feet of getting ‘arrrh.'”

We’re glad you’re safe, Governor.

Here’s some information from the government of Ontario about what to do in a bear encounter. It’s oriented toward encounters in the wild, but can be helpful at home, too. Though, of course, at home, you have the option to go inside and lock the door.

[corrected the date – thanks norsehorse]

In the mean time, a Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife press release warned people to take in bird feeders due to bears on March 22. If you still have your feeders out, please take note:

3-22-2012

Remove Bird Feeders to Avoid Tempting Bears

VERMONT FISH and WILDLIFE

Press Release

For Immediate Release: March 22, 2012

Media Contact: Col. David LeCours, 802-241-3700

Remove Bird Feeders to Avoid Tempting Bears

WAITSFIELD, VT – The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department says it is receiving reports of black bears emerging from their winter dens and looking for food. As a result, the department is urging people to take down their bird feeders to prevent the bears from getting into trouble.

“We are receiving reports of bears getting into bird feeders,” said Fish and Wildlife’s Col. David LeCours. “People can help now by removing any food sources that may tempt the bears. That includes taking down bird feeders and not feeding birds until December 1.”

“Also, don’t leave pet food outside, wash down your barbecues after using them, and secure your garbage containers,” he added. “And above all, never purposely leave food out for bears. Feeding bears may seem kind, but it is almost a sure death sentence for them.”

“Help keep bears wild,” said LeCours. “We care about these bears as much as anyone. Having to destroy one that has become a threat to human safety is not a pleasant experience, and we know that moving them to another location doesn’t change their behavior. They continue to seek food near people because they have learned that it works.”

Vermont law prohibits a person from killing a bear that has been attracted to any artificial bait or food such as bird seed. The fine for doing so can be as high as $1,000.

Bears often eat seeds in the wild, so a birdfeeder chock full of high-energy seed is a concentrated source of what a bear considers natural food. And they are smart. Once bears learn to obtain food around people’s homes, they will be back for more.

To learn about black bears, go to the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department’s website (www.vtfishandwildlife.com) and look in the Library section for the Black Bear Factsheet.

2nd reading ofJRS15 passed the VT Senate 26-3:

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives:

That the General Assembly expresses its disagreement with the holdings ofthe U.S. Supreme Court in Buckley and in Citizens that money is speech and urges Congress to adopt Senate Joint Resolution 29, and be it further

Resolved: That the General Assembly urges Congress to consider therequest of many Vermont cities and towns to propose a U.S. constitutionalamendment for the state’s consideration that provides that money is not speechand corporations are not persons under the U.S. Constitution and that alsoaffirms the constitutional rights of natural persons, and be it further

Resolved: That the General Assembly does not support an amendment tothe U.S. Constitution that would abridge the constitutional rights of any personor organization including freedom of religion or freedom of the press, and be it further

Resolved: That the Secretary of State be directed to send a copy of thisresolution to the Vermont Congressional Delegation.

The proposed Amendment (S.J.Res.29):

`Section 1. Congress shall have power to regulate the raising and spending of money and in kind equivalents with respect to Federal elections, including through setting limits on–

• `(1) the amount of contributions to candidates for nomination for election to, or for election to, Federal office; and
• `(2) the amount of expenditures that may be made by, in support of, or in opposition to such candidates. 

`Section 2. A State shall have power to regulate the raising and spending of money and in kind equivalents with respect to State elections, including through setting limits on–

• `(1) the amount of contributions to candidates for nomination for election to, or for election to, State office; and
• `(2) the amount of expenditures that may be made by, in support of, or in opposition to such candidates. 

`Section 3. Congress shall have power to implement and enforce this article by appropriate legislation.'.

Of course Franklin County's GOP Senator voted against it:

Mr. President, This resolution is overly broad and linguistically imprecise.Were the Congress to enact a constitutional amendment based upon thisresolution as drafted, it could lead to unintentional consequences that wouldthrow into question two hundred years of law and precedent.

I'm sure similar arguments were made against the 14th Amendment as well.  Of course, there were actually unintended consequences: corporations have been given more protection under it than African-Americans!  So I can see why Sen Brock would be worried…

ntodd

Backers of a bill that would allow police access to the Vermont Prescription Monitoring System have pulled in their horns, at least a bit. The bill had attracted a fair bit of skepticism among lawmakers, active opposition from the Vermont ACLU among others, and a bit of derision in these quarters. As you may recall, the bill would have opened police access to the state’s prescription drug database, which was designed only a few years ago for purely medical purposes — to manage patient treatment, not to give the cops access to a whole lot of confidential information.

All the skepticism, opposition and derision has apparently had an effect. Vermont Digger reports that a compromise measure will come before the Senate Judiciary Committee, that would significantly weaken the bill’s original intent. It also includes a tasty bit of bait for liberal Senators: a rider that would decriminalize possession of an ounce or less of marijuana. (I foresee a spike in the kitchen-scale market.)

Committee chair Dick Sears is shepherding the compromise, which goes something like this:

With the compromise, police would be able to access the name, age and address of a patient who they believe may be diverting prescription drugs for illegal use. Police could also receive access to the name and address of the pharmacy and doctors where the patient accessed certain scheduled drugs – generally opiates.

Using this information, the officers could then go to the actual pharmacies and ask for prescription information under a law that was passed in 1968.

The investigation would have to start from a tip from a health care provider.

While I’m encouraged that public pressure has so quickly wrought such a major change in a dubious bill, I’m also a bit confused.  

From this description, I don’t see how the bill is meaningfully better for police than current law. Any access of the database would have to be aimed at a specific patient, and arise out of a tip from a provider. The only information they can get from VPMS is a patient’s name, age and address — and they can more easily get that from the tipster. They do get one shortcut: VPMS would give them a list of all the pharmacies patronized by the patient. That does save a little time and shoe leather; instead of going to all pharmacies in a given area, they’d know which ones to visit. But they’d still have to visit the pharmacies to get the prescription information. .

In short, the cops would get precious little actual information out of the database itself. Which makes me wonder if the real purpose of this bill is to get a foot in the conceptual door of police access to VPMS. Once the foot’s in the door, further leverage can be applied in a future Legislative session.  

I have no evidence that this is the case. But the bill, on its own, seems like a fairly minor change. It’s certainly a far cry from the original bill. But I remain suspicious.  

In the past, I’ve seen Edward Hopper’s Painting “Nighthawks” (below) recommended as an appropriate cover illustration for Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”:

… more below the fold …

Hemingway’s story is a conversation between a pair of waiters, one young, confident, and in a hurry; the other old and world-weary. The snippet below picks up mid-conversation with the young waiter:

“And what do you lack?”

“Everything but work.”



“You have everything I have.”

“No. I have never had confidence and I am not young.”

“Come on. Stop talking nonsense and lock up.”

“I am of those who like to stay late at the cafe,” the older waiter said. “With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.”

“I want to go home and into bed.”

“We are of two different kinds,” the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. “It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the cafe.”

Sometimes, people just need a refuge – a place that provides some security against a cold world, a place like Hemingway’s “Clean Well-Lighted Place,” the corner cafe in Hopper’s “Nighthawks,” or even a shelter in which to sleep.

As many of you know, GMD front-pager Julie Waters passed away this week from complications of myasthenia gravis. Julie’s favorite cause locally was the Greater Falls Warming Shelter for the homeless in Bellows Falls, Vermont. The shelter’s mission: “to provide a safe, warm overnight shelter during the winter months for those in need.”

The shelter lost its permit to operate this past fall due, in large part, to funding issues, and Julie has been one of the many people active in the community attempting to raise funds to save people from the cold of a Vermont winter by restoring the shelter. While we barely had winter by VT standards this year, our version of “barely winter” remains dangerously cold for anyone without a place to go. Temperatures in the teens and single-digits are unkind to humans.

Here’s Julie playing at one fundraiser for the shelter:

Her wife Cyndi has suggested donations to the shelter in lieu of flowers.

Coincidentally, as of a few days ago, the Immanuel Epicsopal Church in Bellows Falls issued a fundraising challenge for the shelter. They’re offering $6000 in matching funds for up to $6000 in donations.

Wouldn’t a donation to restore the shelter be a wonderful way to say thank you to Julie for all she offered us during her time here?

If you would like to donate in Julie’s name, you can make a donation from the Southeastern Vermont Community Action (the shelter’s sponsor).

If you pay by PayPal:

On the second page in the process, click the “Add special instructions for the Recipient” link, and enter:

The Greater Falls Warming Shelter in memory of Julie Waters.

This will ensure the funds go toward the shelter.

Or, use the ChipIn “widget”:

Goodbye Julie, we’ll miss you. You made a difference.

I just wanted to add this link to an excellent piece from The Valley News, featuring comments by Kim Greenwood of the Vermont Natural Resource Council.

__________________________________________________________

In the wake of Tropical Storm Irene, Governor Shumlin’s “git ‘er done” directives regarding stream bed recovery efforts, may have plumped the machismo of his national image, but they flew in the face of regulatory wisdom.

This raised an angry welt within the administration as ANR’s Deb Markowitz publicly protested; but it delighted the target audience of weary locals and developers impatient with regulatory constraints.

The governor drew his line in the sand then and there, and he did not stand on the inconvenient side of sustainability.

Now Vermont’s Department of Fish and Wildlife has released its annual report, and unsurprisingly, it is getting little attention from the press or the governor’s office.

The report explains that, in the normal course of things, when a major storm event such as Irene occurs, if stream beds are allowed to recover without significant interference, populations of fish and other aquatic life return to normal within two to four years.  

By contrast, the kind of dredging and stream-straightening that occurred after Irene, when the governor allowed regulations to be temporarily waived, degrades habitat so that it will take much, much longer for aquatic life to recover after all.

Where aquatic habitat has been severely altered through streambed and natural wood mining, channel widening and straightening, complex habitat features will need to re-establish before improvements in fish and aquatic populations can be expected. While relatively short reaches of impacted streams may recover in a matter of years, the recovery of longer reaches may take decades and will depend upon the availability and mobility of upstream sources of coarse streambed material and natural wood, as well as the magnitude and frequency of future flood events.

That means dollars and cents to Vermont, where angling tourism represents a significant source of state and local revenues, demonstrating once again one of the many ways in which responsible regulatory enforcement is not the enemy of economic vitality, but it’s essential counterpart.

Consider this little nugget of facts lifted from the report:

The 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife Associated recreation estimated that over 63 million dollars were spent by resident and nonresident anglers in Vermont (USFWS 2008). Of the variety of sport fisheries available in Vermont, stream trout fishing has always been one of the most popular. A statewide survey of Vermont anglers confirms this and estimated over 875,000 trout fishing trips in streams and rivers by resident and non resident anglers in 2009 (Connelly and Knuth 2010). Degradation of aquatic habitats will likely impact the quality of stream fisheries in several Vermont watersheds.

We already know that the unplanned effect of stream dredging and “straightening” is to increase the risk of flooding from subsequent major storm events, since such ill-considered engineering serves only to speed up the course of water traveling in the artificial channel.

You have to wonder if anyone from the Governor’s office is listening, though.  I have heard no acknowledgment of lessons learned, and even as I write this, the Governor is advocating to weaken citizen access in Act 250 regulation of development.  He still seems to want to telegraph the message that he is anti-regulatory when it comes to anything other than VY.

But somehow his arguments for “streamlining” the permit process (like those of former Governor Douglas) recollect all too figuratively the negative effects of guttering the streams in the aftermath of Irene.  One of the only things that saved Vermont from the recent real estate collapse experienced in most other states, was the “braking” effect of our considered permit process.

Governor Shumlin’s sense of urgency about all matters regulatory may be more a reflection of the need to move to a four year gubernatorial term than anything else.  Perhaps if it were unnecessary to begin crafting a reelection campaign immediately after taking office, we might see our governors do a better job of concentrating on job one.  

Not all accomplishments are a matter of speed, and not all growth should be a matter of breadth. There is depth and “topography” to be considered.  

Just ask the trout.

Sorry, Congressman. You can take off those librarian glasses and ditch the meek demeanor. You have finally been unmasked by a true patriot: Allen West, nutball Republican Congressman from Florida.  

The truth, courtesy of Talking Points Memo, comes in a video clip from West’s own office:

The unedited video shows West’s declaration at a town hall event. “I believe there are about 78 or 81 members of the Democrat Party that are members of the Communist Party,” he said, followed by a long, dramatic pause, during which there were assorted moans and whispers in the audience.

After about 30 seconds, West unfurled his deadpan punchline: “The answer to that: It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus.”

And Peter Welch is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Ipso facto, Q.E.D., mild-mannered Petey is a Commie. Now that we know this, I’m sure we’ll do the right thing and elect Paul Beaudry or whatever true patriot the VTGOP scares up to run for Congress this year.

As for you, Peter Welch: go back to Moscow, you Red lackey!