I love living in Vermont.  Our birds aren’t as exotic as the Southwestern Species, and we don’t commonly get the coastal excitement that they do over in NH and MA, but we get birds that are adaptable to the cold.  Fall in Vermont is especially interesting because we get boreal birds passing through as well as some occasional surprises.  One surprise happened to me just the other day in the form of this Barred Owl

I didn’t photograph it for long, but apparently it’s been hanging out in this one spot, not far from my house (I could walk there without too much hassle), for months.  

Below the fold, I’ll share some of our other local Fall birds, as well as a fairly major surprise/life bird.

These are all smaller versions– the large sized versions are linked.

In a few weeks, I’ll be doing a trip to New Mexico, which is the only place I’ve ever taken a plane to see birds.  We hadn’t planned to go back to Bosque Del Apache this year, but the sweetie got called to work in NM for a week, so I’m joining her partway through; will bird while she works and then we’ll head over to Bosque for two days and stay there for the weekend before heading home.  We see American Coots here and there in New England.  The first I ever saw was on a wet and not particularly useful birding day at Parker River Wildlife Refuge and it carries a special place for me because I was relatively new to birding and managed to ID it without help from other birders, so I kind of love seeing coots, even if they are fairly unexciting to a lot of other birders.   In Bosque, however, they are everywhere.  Funny thing, though.  Right after we learned about the whole New Mexico thing, I saw this bird pop up in our local marsh:

I take that as a sign.

On of our most common birds in Vermont, year round, is the Black Capped Chickadee:

Strange factoid about these adorable little birds: not only do their calls vary dramatically depending on time of year, the part of their brain that remembers their spring calls shuts down temporarily in the winter.  They don’t just not use their Spring calls in Winter.  They’re physiologically incapable of doing so.

Blue Jays are generally considered a bit of a pest, but they’re still amazing birds to watch.  Being corvids, they tend to be fairly smart.  They, along with our grackles, form a kind of a birder mafia in our yard.  In nesting season, they protect the area from larger predators (crows, primarily), which allow our baltimore orioles and black-and-white warblers to nest with less risk, but will mob the feeders and occasionally (though we’ve never seen this happen in our yard) predate on smaller birds:

Fox Sparrows are very much migratory for us– I’ve never heard of one sticking around, but we get them occasionally in the Fall.  This year, two hung out at our feeders for a couple weeks, but I haven’t seen them in the last week.  This photo was taken in late October, at nearby Herrick’s Cove

The Hairy Woodpecker is another year-long resident here.  I include this photo just because I love the look of it:

Northern Cardinals also hang around year-round here.  Older birders have told me that this used to be too far North for Cardinals, but in the last 30 years, their population has slowly increased to the point where they are commonplace.  I’m not sure if that’s due to warming or an increase in the number of people feeding birds and providing them with usable seed.  I suspect it’s a combination of both.

A couple years ago, Pine Siskins invaded.  By “invaded” I mean that we had hundreds in our yard.  Literally, you could walk through the yard and think there’s a bunch of thistle under the feeders and suddenly the whole scene would explode with birds flying everywhere– not thistle– just birds with black wings all over the place.  This year, we appear to have three, which I appreciate better than 200

The Red Bellied Woodpecker was a challenge bird for me– I’d seen one in Northern Vermont but failed to photograph it, but it was a horrible look, and it took me a few years to finally photograph one.  In the last year, however, I’ve had multiple unexpected sightings of them, managed to get some decent photos and now actually have one actively making a daily trip to our feeders:

Song Sparrows are also year-round for us.  I don’t have much to say about them, but I love this photo.  Any time I can get a very common bird in an unusual pose, it makes me happy:

                        The Tufted Titmouse is another bird that, like the cardinal, never used to be seen in Vermont.  Now they breed here:

I was very excited the first time I ever saw a White Crowned Sparrow.  They’re not rare here, but they’re not common either.  In Bosque, I expect to see them everywhere.

The White Breasted Nuthatch is another year-round bird for us.  They nest in our yard as well.  The babies are kind of adorable, but that’s to be expected, since the adults are as well:

Perhaps the most exciting bird for me this fall was the Townsends Warbler that appeared in Westmoreland, NH, a few weeks back: an e-mail went out to the NH-bird group and suddenly there were birders everywhere..  I had thought I was done with warbler season, but apparently it wasn’t quite done with me.  Not only did this bird stick around for a few weeks, but I managed to get this photo without anyone’s help finding the damned thing.

It’s been a strange fall for me– I’ve been dealing with a rotator cuff injury, so photography has been trickier– holding an 8lb camera isn’t as easy with significant pain in the shoulder, but it’s improved dramatically through PT combined with not being a moron.  

There’s an unrelated project I’ve been working on: this animation is 45 minutes of time compressed into 30 seconds:

It’s a practice run for a project I want to do in December, creating an animation of a series of shots that start in daylight and move into darkness, with the exposure time changing accordingly so that as it gets darker, everything takes longer to expose, creating some very odd timing effects in the overall effect.  The December project, if done properly, should involve people as well as other objects, which could make it a lot of fun.  I may also try it in a more populated area, such as Boston when I visit there next month.

I’m going take a moment to do the personal plug thing– I have, as I do every year, a birding calendar available.  Every year, I go through my photos and find, for each month, one of my favorite photos of a bird that was be found (usually in New England) in that month.  There’s an embed of the calendar here:

I also have a series of note cards that I’ve created.  If anyone’s interested in purchasing these for the holidays, they’re at Chickadee Cards.

What’s everyone else doing this Season?  How are the birds where you are?

  Congressional Republicans are targeting the EPA for heavy duty oversight when they gain the chairmanship of certain committees in January. One Republican congressman has given fair warning to an EPA administrator that she will be a regular guest in the hot seat and witness stand. Dealing with a barrage of congressional inquires will certainly do nothing to speed along one program the EPA is already lagging behind on.  

The EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) is a human health assessment program that evaluates risk information on exposure to environmental contaminants. The database contains information on human health effects that may result from exposure to various substances in the environment.  

A recent report by a non-profit research group says that despite much improvement and streamlining under the Obama administration the process lags far behind.

The EPA completed nine risk assessments of toxic chemicals last year and hopes to complete nine this year. While that’s “an improvement” from the Bush administration, “it would still take approximately 55 years to complete all of the assessments that EPA program offices need to complete statutory responsibilities,” a Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) statement says.

Among many problems highlighted are:

Thirty-two hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) regulated under the Clean Air Act are not listed in IRIS at all  

Three of 71 contaminants regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act are not listed

Eighty-seven of the 275 substances frequently found in Superfund sites and identified by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry as “high profile” have not been assessed.”

Maybe it will be more than half a century will pass before the EPA completes the IRIS assessment given what Rep.Darrell Issa of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Rep. Fred Upton a member and possible future chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee have to say today in the rightwing Washington Times

The new majority in Congress certainly has its work cut out to undo the big-government havoc that was wrought during the Democrats' one-party reign over the past two years.  

As the first holiday hang-over begins to clear it’s nice to see evidence that some good old habits don’t die hard.  Today, Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, the state’s biggest corporate success, joined that other icon of Vermont exceptionalism, Bernie Sanders in calling for an end to the Bush-era tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.  With development of a hugely successful corporation in his personal history, Ben Cohen has repeatedly demonstrated his ongoing commitment to social justice.  

Senator Sanders had this to say:

…at a time when this country has a $13.7 trillion national debt it would be a huge mistake, over a ten year period, to add another $700 billion to that debt by providing more tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country.

Citing the growing income inequity in this country and the desperate need of many on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder,  Sanders insists that we simply cannot afford to continue this largesse to the rich:

For people earning more than $1 million a year, the continuation of the Bush-era tax cuts would amount to an average tax break of about $100,000 a year. With the top one percent already earning, in 2007, 23.5 percent of all income in this country – more than the bottom 50 percent makes, that would be morally unfair and economically unwise.  Lastly, if we provide these tax breaks to people who don’t need them and drive up the national debt, the demand to cut spending on programs of importance to the middle class and working families of our country would only accelerate. That means cuts in health care, education, nutrition, housing, LIHEAP, etc.

Senator Sanders is also proposing that in lieu of a cost of living adjustment (COLA), seniors and veterans be given, “at the very least,” a one-time emergency check of $250.

The issue of extending the Bush-era tax cuts is likely to come up in the next week or so, says Sanders. One can only hope that, with the Blue Dogs largely a memory in the upcoming Congress and Republican obstructionism looming as an even harsher reality,  the Democrats will take this one last chance to address the ugly reality that we are slipping into the economic habits and profile of a third world country.  

 You Can Get Anything You Want…

This is a little story about how I got tasered on Black Friday.

You see I was at the Mall with some friends at 3 AM waiting for them to open the doors to Alice’s New Gadgets & Jump Starters, cause I want–I FUCKING NEED–more gadgets, and as good Republicans now, me and my friends thought we’d jump start the economy some more the old fashioned Republican way, you know, buying shit.

Well, like I said, it’s 3 AM, but there’s a whole lotta people lined up.  All kinds of people.  There was hippies and yuppies and yippies and peace people and anarchists and Tea Baggers and gays and vegans and Communist gay vegan libertarians and Second Vermont Republic folks smoking pot and what looked like the entire Vermont Progressive Party and little kids screaming and dogs barking from parked cars and some environmentalists holding candles and signs and a bunch of people even we couldn’t figure out who they were except they looked like those folks you see every day collecting empty bottles and cans from the garbage bins and Tom Salmon and Michael Colby were there too.  

Whew.  I’m glad we got there early cause as a good Republican now me and my friends practice FIRSTNESS.  You know, that’s how you gotta do it these days to get your stuff, and that Tom Salmon guy must know about it cause he starts in elbowing his way up the line telling everybody how happy he is that they voted for him only some folks must not of cause next we know there’s all this swearing and pushing and the environmentalists are hitting people with their signs and the anarchists are screaming at the Tea Baggers and the yuppies are yelling at the bottle people and the Gays start hollering too just like all the straight people and kids are running around whining and the dogs are going ballistic now and then I see Michael Colby handcuffing himself to a shopping cart.

Well, of course the police came.  They got everything under control except they couldn’t get the handcuffs off Michael Colby and they started lecturing him about that shopping cart being private property while somebody from the Tea Baggers I think pushed one of the Progs behind us up against the window hard and next thing we knew there was all this screeching coming from the alarm system and everybody started pushing and screaming and biting again, saying things like: ‘ I been in Vermont longer than you!’ and ‘I’m a real Vermonter cause I was born here!’ and ‘Why don’t you go back to fucking New Jersey where you came from!’ and ‘Just sign the fucking petition, you asshole!’ and next, a WCAX van pulls up and starts filming all this stuff and the reporter sticks a mic in my face and asks me what I came here to buy.  ???

See, I didn’t know how to answer that one cause the things a good Repubican buys are supposed to be secret so I says I was just here to get a pack of gum and a soda before they start taxing it and this cop looks at me and calls me a smart ass and I says ‘No sir, I’m a Republican,’ and next thing I’m on the ground writhing in pain and shock and awe cause this cop put the taser to me cause he must have been some kind of liberal or maybe even a hippie, and I can see them hauling away Michael Colby still handcuffed to the shopping cart and from there on the ground I can see Tom Salmon’s now got my place in line.

Well, I couldn’t get up and glad I didn’t cause the cops are tasering everybody now and cops are on the radios calling for backup and more tasers and helicopters to drop gas and straight jackets and Bill Sorrell pulls up in a car and tells the cops they should be checking to see if any of us are illegal aliens and now it’s 4 Am and they’re opening the doors and Tom Salmon gets in first and then they lock the doors again and this causes everybody to go completely nuts and they start jumping on the cops and grabbing their tasers and tasering them back and tasering each other and little kids are tasering each other and this National Guard helicopter drops a bunch of leaflets telling us all to go home and lock our doors and turn off our lights cause some Mexican farm workers are on the loose stealing organic vegetables and how this is the only National Guard helicopter and unit left in Vermont cause all the rest of the Guard is in Afghanistan and the ones who came back are on Holiday Leave and probably down there in the mob scene with us just trying to shop for new gadgets before they have to be assigned to Bill Sorrell for crowd control after he makes his next announcement about some great tax idea he’s got, so me and my friends got the hell out of there real quick cause we’re good Republicans and this is what happens when the liberals and the gays and Michael Colby conspire to ruin the traditional American civil right to shop for all the stuff we need to buy to help corporations fix the country cause you know sure as shit this mob of maniacs is going to fix anything and I even forgot what gadget it was that I needed so I’ll come back the next time they have a 4 AM sale and hope to hell this time there won’t be a whole bunch of non-violent offenders lined up on work release just to molest the little kids and sell dope to the anarchists and yuppies and do pre-versions with the barking dogs.

But I still say it’s good to get there FIRST.  I’ve never been tasered before.  Now I have a new, even longer song to write.  You can get anything you want in America.  You can be anything you want.  And now, like a good Republican, I’m going to sit back, light a big number, make a martini, put on some Neil Diamond, look at my bank statement and fill out my taxes late and cheat on them cause after all when a good Republican is tasered just for going shopping, I think it’s time all good Republicans just stopped paying taxes all together and let all those crazy anarchist-gay-vegan-bottle picking liberals take care of the mess they’ve made.  When a Rich Person like me can’t even go to the mall anymore, I tell you I think the Terrorists have won and we might just as well elect Sean Penn our next President so he and Madonna can turn the whole country into a Halfway House.  And give the keys to bin-Laden.  Or Ralph Nader.  Boy, I could use a nice sleigh ride.   I wonder if Michael Colby got released?

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.

There’s a certain aspect in which the “Medicaid Enterprise Solution” (MES) being sent out for bids (see full bid here) is a good thing: it seeks to integrate multiple systems that do not work in correspondence into a single one.  

And that’s pretty much where it ends, which is probably why, on a week in which we’ve heard of people waiting for ridiculously long hours, people having their benefits delayed during the worst of seasons, this has been sent on a Wednesday evening before a four day weekend.  

So what’s their solution?  More outsourcing:

The State intends to establish a public and private collaborative partnership with the Vendor to jointly develop the desired MES…  Emphasis should be placed on the most cost-effective and efficient suite of systems and services that allow the State to fully meet the needs of its citizenry now and into the future…

This piece is intended as preview, as I just got this bid last night and am posting this primarily to get it up and out there so it doesn’t get lost in the long weekend.  I am working on a longer, more detailed, piece which helps to translate some of the coded language in this proposal, as well as illustrates some pitfalls in this sort of proposal that the Shumlin administration will seriously need to think about before implementing it.

Cross-Posted at ASR:

The shaky position of Burlington’s city-owned telecommunications company, Burlington Telecom, has been publicly apparent for quite some time now, but recent events have powerfully highlighted its uncertain future. It’s been in negotiations with its creditor, Citi Capital, to restructure its debt load for months, but, according to Seven Days, those talks have recently broken down and Citi Capital is demanding the either the repossession of BT’s infrastructure or the repayment of the lease from Burlington’s general fund. As a BT customer, this definitely has me concerned since I have little desire to find myself suddenly sans Internet as a result of the crisis.

As such, it is vitally important to find a just resolution to this problem, but I’ve been unimpressed by the ideas that have been floated thus far. A straight-up bailout from a City or State funding source seems to be (and should be) off the table since it would be profoundly unjust to the taxpayers who don’t utilize BT’s services. Similarly, selling the service to a private company with the cash on hand to quickly resolve the debt issue is equally problematic. Substantial public resources have gone into building Burlington Telecom, and to turn over the value embedded in that investment to a private concern while in a state of crisis (and thus likely not receiving a fair-market price) would be equally irresponsible and as much a theft from the taxpayers as a bailout. Finally, simply letting it fail due to what is essentially an artificial scarcity of capital would again be a disservice to the taxpayers and citizens of Burlington.

However, I believe there’s another route out of the BT crisis that has not been sufficiently explored: mutualization. By selling the service to its users in the form of a consumer co-operative (similar to Vermont Electric Co-op), BT could continue serving them while, at the same time, it would eliminate the risk and burden placed on non-BT subscribing taxpayers. Furthermore, selling Burlington Telecom to the “Burlington Telecom Co-op” would open new sources of capital to BT that would allow it to lessen its dependence on out-of-state financing.

The first source of capital would be member equity; each subscriber would be required to hold an ownership stake in BT and, depending on the number of subscribers, this could easily put several million dollars into its coffers right off the bat to get itself back on track with Citi and retire some of its out-of-state debt. Second, it could sell bonds to its members. Paying a greater rate of interest than most individuals can find for their savings while still keeping them lower than those paid to Citi, such bonds would create three benefits. First, they would allow BT supporters to put their money where their mouths are and pony up the capital necessary to support BT’s solvency and success. Second, they would allow for the retirement of a substantial portion of BT’s outstanding debt with debt at a lower interest rate, thus reducing the financial pressure on the company. Finally, such bonds would mean that the interest payments would accrue to BT’s stakeholders in Burlington and be fed back into our local economy rather than feeding an out-of-state banking conglomerate that has sucked up billions in Federal bailout money.

Additionally, the new co-op could also potentially obtain capital from a wide variety of sources that exist specifically to assist co-operatives. Indeed, one of seven guiding principles of the co-operative movement is “cooperation among co-operatives.” The mutualization of Burlington Telecom would be an excellent opportunity for Vermont’s co-operative movement to publicly honor that principle by purchasing BT bonds. Our state has more food co-ops per capita than anywhere else in the country, many of Vermont’s credit unions have assets in the hundreds of millions, and utility co-ops are omnipresent. If those institutions act according to their principles and step forward to invest in a fellow fledgling co-operative institution, the benefits would accrue to both their institutions and the people of Burlington. While the details of such a plan must still be worked out, I sincerely believe BT’s mutualization is the only just path forward; it deserves serious public consideration before the taxpayers are ripped off, one way or the other, in a corrupt and/or exploitative resolution of the Burlington Telecom crisis

How about this, just in from the St. Albans Police Dept?

On November 23, 2010 the St. Albans Police Department initiated a criminal investigation regarding a threat of violence against the building occupants and State employees at the Vermont State Office Building on Houghton Street in the City of St. Albans. The actual threat was posted on Facebook by a client who was identified as Robert McMillan, age 31 of Fairfax Vermont. McMillan was upset about perceived slow services and a lack of speedy financial assistance that he was seeking.

It would appear that Mr. McMillan has encountered the log-jam in state services that we have been discussing here.  This is what the police report that he posted on Facebook:

“This message is too anyone who is friends with the workers at the state building, tell them to stay home if they don’t want to be in the middle of a riot… if people don’t get their benifits and I find enough people, let’s just say, columbine was nothing.. Hunger, will make people do crazy things..”.

McMillan was apprehended in Fairfax and will face a charge of False Public Alarm.

While Mr. McMillan’s threats may not have been genuine, they bring to the table the reality that, when cutbacks in public services that would normally be extended to unstable people are joined by failure to deliver relief to the desperately poor, the combination can have terrible implications for civil society as a whole.

Per Peter Hirschfeld via the Rutland Herald and VT Press Bureau:

Under a court ruling from the early 1990s, the state must process applications for food stamps and welfare benefits within 30 days. However the state’s own data indicate that more than a third of Vermonters applying for food stamps (now called 3SquaresVT) have been forced to wait longer. Waits have exceeded the 30-day threshold for about 30 percent of people seeking access to health-care programs; 28 percent of applications for Reach Up, a program that provides cash assistance for basic needs, are past due.

“The problem is that thousands of Vermonters are turning to the state at a time of serious economic crisis and the state has an obligation to process their applications for assistance,” says Christopher Curtis, a staff attorney for Vermont Legal Aid. “It’s absolutely essential that the problems be addressed. These families can’t afford to wait.”

And:

Steve Dale, commissioner of the Department of Children and Families… attributes the problem to an increase in the number of Vermonters seeking assistance and some logistical logjams in a $3 million modernization program intended to make the application process more efficient.

[…]

“The primary driver for the timeliness issues is first and foremost sheer numbers,” Dale says.

So… here’s the thing about those “efficiencies.”

There are good and bad ways to design the sort of system we’re discussing, and none of them should cost anywhere near $3 million dollars.   But even if they did, they should be done right.

It’s easy to make big broad claims about efficiency and implement new systems to review applications, but if the people staffing those systems aren’t properly trained to use them, if the systems themselves are designed in a fashion which is clunky and burdensome and if the state servers themselves are not up to the task of handling the workload, you’ve end up with a system which is no more efficient than the original, but has managed to eliminate personnel who can help when the machines fail and removed the human support face from the process.

Note: if I seem ranty about this, it’s for a reason: it intersects two of my major pet peeves.  Screwing the poor is one.  Bad technology is another.

If you design a database structure properly (and this is not rocket science), it is easy to use.  I don’t mean that it’s acceptable or functional.  I mean easy.  I mean, application review takes two minutes in a properly handled system.  But let’s grace it out and say five minutes to make room for the complicated applications.  I mean that follow-up requests from those reviewing get automatically sent to a server which generates a point of contact for the people who submitted the original (whether it’s via e-mail, postal mail or phone).  

I mean that a team of ten well-trained people, should be able to process 600 applications in a single day without any issues whatsoever.  If, and this is a big if, the technology is done properly and implemented well.

There’s a number listed in the piece above– 24,000 people between July 1 and November 15.  That’s just under 140 days, and just under 100 working days.

That’s 240 new applications per day that we, as a state, are apparently incapable of handling, despite our efforts to become more “efficient,” all because we rushed to implement a new structure that was not ready to go, was not fully functional and was properly vetted.  

This isn’t just frustrating, annoying and pathetic.

It’s obscene.

In the news today, via MarketWatch::

The Federal Reserve’s governors and regional presidents have grown more sour on growth and unemployment, with some saying it could take more than six years for the jobless rate to return to normal levels, according to a summary of projections released Tuesday.

Also in the news today, via the NYT:

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago

Tepid action from Washington has not stopped the wealth polarization process that a full-on Depression would bring, it’s merely slowed it from would have been incredibly fast to really really fast.

While some are wondering whether further trouble in Afghanistan could cause Obama to be primaried (hey, it happened to Jimmy Carter…), I still think if anything’s going to create that kind of dynamic, it’ll be the economy. Sure, it’s a pretty unlikely scenario at this point, but one wonders…