Hello GMD Readers,

Among other things, I am director of Vermonters for Voting Integrity.  We are a non-partisan group working to improve the security and reliability of the Diebold voting systems used throughout our state.

One of the main things we have been advocating for years is to audit the machines.  When they are not audited, they are vulnerable to both fraud and computer error, either of which can result in incorrect election results.

As you know, we have a new Secretary of State, and a new opportunity to hopefully improve the security of the voting machines used in Vermont.  I have personally spoken with Secretary Jim Condos and he has expressed his interest in improving the audits that are done on the Diebold machines — something we have been advocating for years.  This is great news!  But right now is a pivotal moment and we need your help to do a small thing that will have a big impact.

If you think the integrity of the election system is important, today I am asking you to do one simple, quick, and painless thing — please sign our petition demanding that Vermont conduct regular and robust audits on the Diebold voting machines.

I am going to submit the petition at the end of this week so it is vital to get all the signatures we can possibly get in the next few days. Your simple action will have a direct effect.  If you’ve already signed, please get one other person (or more) to sign it.

Here is the link where you can take 30 seconds to sign:

http://www.petitiononline.com/vtaudits/petition.html

If you have any questions or wish to discuss this issue, please feel free to contact me directly or check out our website VTVOTERS.ORG.

Sincerely,

Gary Beckwith

Vermonters for Voting Integrity

Some days, just opening the paper is enough to break a sweat.  Today’s Messenger editorial page held attacks on the move to universal healthcare in Vermont by two usual suspects, Sen. Randy Brock (no link available) and Vermont Tiger’s master of economic rationalizations, Art Woolf.  On-message for the insurance industry, both invoke the classic defense against radical change to a failed system: change is scary.

Yes, boys, it is scary.  No, we don’t know just yet exactly what the final plan will mean in terms of either savings or funding; but we do know that if we don’t gird ourselves to wade in and just do the work, the “system” as it stands is completely unsustainable and will ruin us all.  And what’s this bugaboo that Randy Brock resorts to as his closing zinger?

“We have only to look to our north and see where Single Payer will likely take us.  Higher taxes, long waits for care, shabby facilities, a loss of doctors, and a bloated bureaucracy.  It’s not a pretty picture.”

Maybe not from where you sit, Mr. Brock, comfortably wrapped in gold-plated private health insurance that will avail you of the best care that money will buy here in the land of commoditized healthcare.  But from where most people sit on the pavement, what Canada has looks like a very pretty picture indeed! And maybe you haven’t heard about their lower infant mortality rate, greater longevity and greater quotient of happiness.  

Do taxes make you squeamish, Mr. Brock?  Maybe the Canadians are happier than us because they have come to some sort of acceptance of taxes as part of the social contract that ensures a decent quality of life for everyone no matter how unlucky they might become.  Is that so hard to understand?  As far as long waits for care are concerned, do you have any idea how long forever is? That’s how long the working poor have to wait for preventive care in the U.S.

If Mr. Brock’s and Mr. Woolf’s ostrich imitations weren’t discouraging enough, there was an editorial reproduced from the Rutland Herald (also, no link available.)  The Herald piece started innocently enough, enjoying the left-handed compliment paid to Vermont by the New York Times in commenting about our lack of a balanced budget amendment in the state constitution.  As you may recall, the Times called the state a “fiscal goody two-shoes,” and the Herald was optimistic that this might help our bond-rating (I’m not kidding.)  

This leads into some hand-ringing on the part of the Herald over what might happen to that supposed bond-rating boost if we dipped into the rainy day fund to ease some of the pain and dysfunction in social services. Okay… I might not agree with the premise, but it was a positive enough observation.  Then the Herald, IMHO, went clean off the rails, pretty much dismissing the genuine pleas for help from that sector as a lot of overblown nonsense:

“During the budget debate, many advocates for those needing assistance went to the Legislature to argue for their clients.  That’s their job.  But if one were to catalogue all hardships they predicted collectively, one would expect to see the poor starving in the streets.  That’s simply not going to happen.”

Callous much lately?

It must be nice to move in social circles that belie the tremendous evidence of genuine need that are all around us.  It must be nice to have the luxury of financial security that allows you to turn up your nose at the care that is available to all Canadians, regardless of their ability to pay.

Peel me a grape, Beulah!

( – promoted by odum)

Caught a bit o’ Rob Roper on the Ethan Allen Institute Vanity Project* this morning. (A “bit” is all I can take.) And boy, did he have a doozy to start the show.

Talking about George Till’s SurveyMonkey poll, he posited that, as far as we know, the non-doctors who took the survey are all supporters of single-payer. And so, Roper concluded, the results of the survey are even more dramatic and meaningful!

Just think: if 53% of responders said they would stop practicing in VT if it adopted single-payer, and single-payer advocates had their thumb on the other end of the scale, then that means an unknown but very large majority of actual doctors might leave the state! And if the 44% in favor of single-payer included a lot of its advocates who are not doctors, then that means a majority of Vermont doctors must be against the idea!

Which, of course, ignores the basic issue: we have no real idea who took the survey, so we have no real idea whether the results mean anything or not. But by all means, Rob, spin away.

*a.k.a. “Common Sense Radio” on WDEV.

Solidarity/Support Vigil for the People of Japan

by Press Release | April 24, 2011

For Immediate Release

April 24, 2011

Contact:

Debra Stoleroff

Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance

debra@vtlink.net

WHAT:

Solidarity/Support Vigil for the People of Japan

WHEN:

Tuesday, April 26, 2011 4:30 pm – 6 pm

WHERE:

State House steps, Montpelier

WHO:

Concerned citizens and the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance

http://vtdigger.org/2011/04/24…

State will likely bank on power from Vermont Yankee after March 2012

by Jon Margolis | April 25, 2011

In the week since Entergy Corp. announced it was suing Vermont in federal court, challenging the legitimacy of the state’s role in extending the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant’s license, “the smart money” seems to have decided that the company is likely to win, keeping Yankee on line until 2022.

http://vtdigger.org/2011/04/25…

Whether the conclusion the writer arrived at based upon the sources given is accurate, is anyone’s guess. This would be difficult to determine since they’re all anonymous.

Conspicuously absent are any direct quotes or statements whatsoever from anyone who would allow themselves to be named. So, entire story merely conjecture, based entirely upon hearsay.

But most of the chatter among lawyers, and in the state capitol, seems to assume Entergy’s eventual success.

He said, she said. An “irreverent legislator” said, “most of the chatter” said, that’s a story? It could have been written in a bar jotting down comments made w/in earshot & arrive at the same conclusions.

Though “most” are assured of this eventual outcome, “none” of them would be named?

I should think if the money were so “smart” & the wisdom so “conventional” those possessing these assets would be willing to go on record. Since they were not, there is no way to guage the accuracy of the story which makes it dubious at best imho.

Eeny meeny miny moe. Only time will tell.    

  In the face of an impending pay-wall I clicked on the last of my twenty free articles in the New York Times to read Vermont Exercising Option to Balance the Budget

It is hardly more than a quick peak at what is familiar to Vermonters

Technically, Vermont could play fast and loose in this season of fevered budget-chopping: it happens to be the only state with no budget-balancing requirement.

But Vermont, it turns out, is a fiscal goody two-shoes.

A fiscal goody two shoes (fewgadsake ‘take two Norman Rockwells out of petty cash for that reporter’ But can’t the New York Times do better than that if they want people to pay?) However it  all burnishes Shumlin’s maple syrup versus vinegar credentials established at his testimony to the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The Times article references the Public Assets Institute support for a  Snelling style solution of temporarily raising income and sales taxes and notes the 50 wealthy Vermonter’s begging to pay higher taxes. Quoting Progressive State Rep.Paul Poirier (where was Pollina ?)  .

“In the last three years, our little state of Vermont has cut over $300 million in direct services to people,” Mr. Poirier said. “Why not ask people who have done well during this recession to step up and pay a little more?”

I don’t agree with it but it’s understandable that the last thing in the world Peter Shumlin wants in the current political environment is to go into his reelection having raised taxes. He is smart and can turn on a dime when the need arises but right now, no way will he hand the Republicans and issue to bang him over head with. Got to admit to liking Shumlin and being very pleased he’s governor, but it rankles and he may just as well run his fingernails over a chalk board as say stuff like this

Jim Douglas coughed up this stuff everyday for eight years, too bad we are still hearing it from a Democrat.  

Entergy seeks injunction to allow Vermont Yankee to run pending decision on action filed earlier this week:

Vermont Yankee nuclear plant’s owners, who filed suit this week over whether the state can legally close the plant, are now seeking a court order that would prevent that from happening until courts have ruled on the jurisdiction challenge.

http://www.reformer.com/localn…

The previous court action filed by Entergy earlier this week in US District Court in Burlington against the State of Vermont

takes direct aim at Vermont’s unique law that gives the Legislature a role in nuclear plant operations.

http://www.vpr.net/news_detail…

Entergy has stated it needs to keep operating until that case can be decided & so that they can purchase fuel for next refueling outage:

The court filing notes that Entergy needs to decide by July 7 whether to buy more fuel for the plant if it is to keep running after next March.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

State officials say they have every right to exercise control over the continued operation of Vermont Yankee, whose original permit expires in March 2012. The state Senate voted 26-4 last year against renewing it. Under a 2006 state law, Entergy’s owners need the OK of the Legislature to continue operating the plant past March 2012.

http://www.reformer.com/localn…

(Shumlin needs to hear this one over, and over, until he gets it.   – promoted by JDRyan)

The Wall Street Journal blogs, no friend of taxation on the rich, reports on a study of New Jersey’s rich folks and when and why they might move.

The study, by sociologists Cristobal Young at Stanford and  Charles Varner at Princeton, studied the migration patterns of New Jersey’s millionaires before and after 2004, when the state imposed a “millionaire’s tax” that raised rates on those earning $500,000 or more to 8.97% from 6.37%.

The study found that the overall population of millionaires increased during the tax period. Some millionaires moved out, of course. But they were more than offset by the creation of new millionaires.

Somebody oughta tell Governor Shumlin, quick! And Shap Smith, and Lucy Leriche and John Campbell, and Hinda Miller and …

We’re having a party for you

Because we love you oh yes we do

And cause partying is what we do

We’re making a big mess for you

Here’s some plastic plates and cups

And some vomit that needs cleaning up

And our signs that say “Green It Up”

Made from bioundegradable stuff

Yes this is your special day

And all this garbage is our little way

Of saying the things we can’t say

Cause we’re assholes but we hope that’s OK

So here’s to you one more time

Blow out the candles on the strip mine

Make the sky blue and the sun shine

As we drive to the gas station line

Yes we love you o dear Mother Earth

Love you to death down to our astroturf

And the junkyard your tsunami unearthed

And all the oil and all it is worth

Yes we’re having a party for you

We thought it’s the very least we could do

After all that we’ve put you through

It’s hard to come up with something new

Happy Day, Earth, You Old SonOfAGun!  Your check is in the mail.

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.