( – promoted by odum)

Sure it’s summer and the news is pretty quiet. But one of these Fridays, the Vermont State Supreme Court will issue its opinion on the Wal-Mart permit appeal in St. Albans. Wal-Mart? St. Albans? Wasn’t that denied like a decade ago? Permit Appeal? That sounds confusing. How could anyone possibly get up to speed on the convoluted and sketchy attempted resuscitation of the proposed Wal-mart in St. Albans during the Douglas years? Sue Prent to the rescue! In this interview, She gives just the right level of detail to explain the 18 year saga.

Coincidentally, the US Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of Wal-Mart in a gender discrimination case. You might remember Antonin Scalia issued this instant classic legal eagle opinon:

Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t. Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that.

So let’s hope Wal-Mart does not fare as well in VT’s highest court as we await their Supreme Judgment.

Sue lives in St. Albans, runs Pink House Studios with her husband Mark, and is an active member of Northwest Citizens for Responsible Growth, the local grassroots organization that has seen this Wal-Mart fight through from the beginning.

We also discussed her piece An Even More Inconvenient Truth which considers the whole logic of using economic growth as the measure of our economic health. And from her eleven years living in Canada, she can testify to the quality and equity of a universal single-payer health care system. Finally, Sue offered her support to women who want to run for office in Franklin County, which is a great idea especially given that

the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex

.

So as we wait for the VT Supreme Court to decide, we can be thankful that people like Sue are willing to stick their necks out and fight these protracted battles against behemoths for the sake of our future.  

  Word is everywhere that Brian Dubie may be stirring himself for a second run at governor. The results of a recent Public Policy Polling  poll show our Dubie losing 40-48 percent in a re-match race with Governor Shumlin. However the same poll shows his favorability rating at 48% – very close statistically but still greater than Shumlin’s 45%.  

This despite the notably nasty (for Vermont) 2010 race he ran. Many months later Dubie and his former campaign manager Cory Bliss were forced to issue personal letters of apology to settle a defamation suit. Also his 2010 campaign’s alleged illicit coordination with the Republican Governor’s Association on a campaign commercial is currently under investigation by the Vermont AG, following a complaint filed by the Vermont Democratic Party accusing the Dubie campaign of having directly aided in the production of an advertisement sponsored by the RGA. The filing also charges that former Gov. Jim Douglas "acted as an agent of both the Republican Governors Association and 'Friends of Brian Dubie'.”  

As a result, a group of Dubie’s influential Republican supporters (including Douglas) formed Friends of Brian Dubie Legal Defense Fund to pay Dubie’s legal costs from his last campaign.  

Since Dubie’s hard-edged campaign and subsequent loss, it’s easy to wonder whether he might have governed like Jim Douglas or more like Wisconsin’s right-wing radical Scott Walker. Dubie certainly didn’t hesitate to jettison large chunks of his renowned nice guy image in search of victory. Many of the new crop of Republican governors are following agendas well to the right of the rhetoric used in their campaigns and the overall political attitude of their states.New York Times data analyst Nate Silver pointed out that the pipeline of moderate Republican governors has run dry. Further, Silver says,

unlike the Democrats, there is no correlation between the ideology of the governors and the ideology of the states. Whether you have a Republican governor in a fairly liberal state like Maine, a moderate state like Ohio, or a conservative one like Idaho, that governor’s  agenda is likely to be aligned with the extreme right.

Also highly conservative are Dubie's ‘friends,’ the major funders of the RGA.  

Two major players in the RGA are alleged phone hacker Rupert Murdoch and David Koch, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s ultra-conservative backer. In July 2010 Politico reported

the RGA was the recipient of a whooping $1 million donation from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The RGA’s other seven-figure donor was David Koch. News Corp.’s media outlets play politics more openly than most, but the huge contribution to a party committee is a new step toward an open identification between Rupert Murdoch's  media empire and the GOP.  

If failed gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie decides he needs to take another shot at the state’s top office, can we count on legacy media outlets to keep these less-than-flattering facts in front of the electorate next year?  

Totten:

“What I’ve been pushing from the beginning is an increase in debt ceiling to avoid default, but have a clean debt ceiling vote,” Welch told Johnson. That means, just a vote on increasing the debt ceiling and debate budget cuts and tax increases another day.

“We have to have a balanced outcome,” Welch added. “If we’re going to move to a fiscal balance, there’s got to be shared sacrifice. This [Republican] plan in my view lacks that balance there’s no revenues whatsoever.”

To which Johnson added, “Wait, I’m confused here. You say you would have voted in favor of this bill if you had been the deciding vote?”

“Yes,” Welch added.

So this was like, what – a Nader protest vote in 2000? I don’t think it’s supposed to work that way in Congress. (Podcast link)

First, an excellent new video has been released by Fairewinds Associates and Arnie Gundersen, which provides much of the underlying science to boiling water reactors such as those employed at Fukushima and at our own little liability,Vermont Yankee.  

Nuclear Power 101: Fairewinds examines the fundamental advantages and disadvantages of splitting atoms to boil water. from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

Next, lest we forget the precarious nature of our domestic nuclear energy policy in the aftermath of a manufactured debt crisis, how about a look at what those merry pranksters at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have been up to lately?

It was recently revealed that the NRC has lowered safety standards in response to industry failures to meet previously higher standards.  The latest news is that the NRC plans to announce a lowering of the estimate of fatalities resulting from a nuclear meltdown.

That’s right.  In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, where ample evidence was provided that officials gravely underestimated both the vulnerability of the plant systems to failure and the appropriate scale of evacuations, the NRC is busy undermining its own safeguards.

When the Union of Concerned Scientists learned that the NRC had concluded a six year research project, the results of which seem to minimize risks associated with nuclear power, they used the Freedom of Information act to make sure that the New York Times was provided with a draft version of the report.

The conclusion, to be published in April after six years of work, is based largely on a radical revision of projections of how much and how quickly cesium 137, a radioactive material that is created when uranium is split, could escape from a nuclear plant after a core meltdown. In past studies, researchers estimated that 60 percent of a reactor core’s cesium inventory could escape; the new estimate is only 1 to 2 percent.

There are a number of problems with the data yielded by the research, including the small perimeter of assumed impact, and the decision imposed on the research to focus on the”best-estimate” rather than worst case scenario.  Anyone who has followed the unfolding catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi will immediately see the fallacy of this approach, and it does little to dispel the overwhelming impression that the NRC’s relationship to the industry is entirely too cozy.

This is a prime example of how even factual data may be mined in such a way as to produce the desired results.  It is not difficult to imagine the culture at the NRC that allowed regulatory failures at U.S. plants to be rationalized into lower standards rather than penalties and strict remedies.

Now we learn that that culture is not uniformly pliant, and that a sharp division exists within the NRC itself.  

In the aftermath of Fukushima’s nuclear accidents, an NRC task force has produced twelve safety recommendations that it would like to see “aggressively” implemented at U.S. plants.  NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko is among those advocating for immediate adoption of the recommendations, but not all commissioners agree on the urgency:

Some commissioners are not supportive of taking action on all 12 safety recommendations made by the task force within three months. Commissioners William Magwood, Kristine Svinicki and William Ostendorff have called for more study of at least some of the recommendations, while Commissioner George Apostolakis supports taking action in 90 days.

At today’s Senate hearing on the matter, Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders joined Chairman Jaczko in calling for immediate action:

“I applaud the recommendations made by the task force, but I am disturbed that a majority of the NRC does not want to move forward on all 12 recommendations within three months,” Sanders told the commissioners. “I know what delay means in this town, it means nothing is going to happen.”

Okay, this is getting scarier. VPR:

The Vermont Health Department says the radioactive substance strontium-90 has been detected in the flesh of a fish north of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.

…this is the first time strontium-90 has been found in a part of a fish that is edible.

The Health Department says it cannot determine the source of the substance

Strontium-90 is one of the most dangerous constituents of reactor waste. It is a “bone seeker” and is associated with bone cancer, cancer of the soft tissue near the bone, and leukemia.

Yikes.

Unnecessary (emphasis added).

(Senator Patrick) Leahy: “I’m not happy with [the Reid/McConnell debt ceiling bill currently being voted on] at all and I’ve made that very clear to the leadership and to the White House. But I also realize what the alternative was and I was pragmatic enough to do that. The easy thing would be to say, ‘Look, I’ll vote against this because it’s not good enough for me.’ Well, the fact is it’s this or default. It’s not the choice one would like but it’s the choice we have.”

Disagreement is one thing. We are entitled to our own opinions, after all – but we are not entitled to our own facts. It is not a fact in any sense of the word that “it’s this or default.” There are numerous other options being floated: unilateral action under the 14th amendment, printing of currency offset by the Fed’s “qualitative easing” activities to make it currency-neutral, the running of an “overdraft” account with the Fed, effectively transferring the debt – and more. Any one of these may or may not work, but that’s the point. What Sen. Leahy dubs a “fact” is anything but.

Not to mention that if it’s really that cut and dried, what is he effectively saying about Senator Sanders and Representative Welch, who oppose the deal? Try and tell them they are choosing default and ingnoring the “facts.”

Need a more knowlegable authority than me? A more qualified economic mind than Sen. Leahy? Here’s economics Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman:

And even now, the Obama administration could have resorted to legal maneuvering to sidestep the debt ceiling, using any of several options. In ordinary circumstances, this might have been an extreme step. But faced with the reality of what is happening, namely raw extortion on the part of a party that, after all, only controls one house of Congress, it would have been totally justifiable.

At the very least, Mr. Obama could have used the possibility of a legal end run to strengthen his bargaining position. Instead, however, he ruled all such options out from the beginning.

But wouldn’t taking a tough stance have worried markets? Probably not. In fact, if I were an investor I would be reassured, not dismayed, by a demonstration that the president is willing and able to stand up to blackmail on the part of right-wing extremists.

Almost all of these are smaller versions of the image.  Clicking on them gets you to my web site with larger versions and more detail.

As GMD urged him to do this morning, Peter Welch voted against the debt ceiling “compromise”.

Here is his statement, also available on his web page:

“From the start of this debate, I have been guided by two objectives: First, America must pay its bills. Congress and the President should negotiate, but America should never default. Second, we need a balanced agreement that puts everything on the table.

“While I am pleased that, with this agreement, America will continue to pay its bills, I voted against it because it is not a balanced plan with shared sacrifice. It ignores glaring inequities in the federal tax code while cutting programs important to the middle class, seniors, and low-income Americans. There is simply no excuse for condoning continued tax breaks for Wall Street hedge fund managers, the ethanol industry and big oil companies while the middle class struggles to hang on to their jobs, pay their bills and send their children to college.

“I also voted against this bill because it validates the tactic of putting a gun to the head of the American economy to advance a party's agenda. Never before has a willful majority in Congress held hostage the full faith and credit of the United States of America in order to get its way on the budget. This is a dangerous precedent that will make it more difficult than ever for Congress to meet the many challenges facing our country. It is regrettable that those who employed it have succeeded.”