At least crawl out from under your putrid rock and apologize for going after a group who’s only crime was to empower those who our governments have dis-empowered … I’m still waiting … and no this is not going to go away.

You see, weasel, I know that as an attorney  you’re aware of the need for real evidence as opposed to outlandish and unsupported claims. And I know, weasel, that despite not having a scintilla of evidence you went along with your radical right wing buddies in DC to attack ACORN.

You are, welch, not only a weasel, but you are also a cowardly piece of crap.

Other pointers follow below (from oldest to newest, various authors, all GMD posts):

The Grand Ole Pitifuls …. or …

Why the fear? (has link to good article about good works of ACORN)

We found the voter fraud …

More stupidity from the DC Democrats …

This is not just about ACORN.

Totten Pimps for Welch (again)

Welch does the wrong thing on ACORN

Hey, maybe Welch’s ACORN vote WAS the right one after all…

ACORN’s Problems Are Very Real — But Conservatives’ Expose Is Clearly Biased (uh … actually, skeetervt, you too owe an apology for buying into the bullshit ala weasel welch)

Because these lies shouldn’t be left to grow …

Say what?

MICHAEL JACKSON TO BE EXHUMED FOR RE-BURIAL!

Open Thread

Post election grins and guffaws …

Hey weasel Welch …

I’m a tree hugger

Talking To Myself (Again)

More ACORNs for weasel Welch

Still wonder what they were thinking?

More nuts for the weasel …

A win for the weasel …

More nuts for the weasel …

So when do we hear an apology?

The Oak Tree shouldn’t be left to whither …

A lie is a lie ..

Weasel Welch still owes an apology (and other things) …

Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

In many parts sub-Saharan Africa, 60 percent of children come to school in the morning without breakfast, if they attend school at all. Many suffer from health and developmental problems, including stunted growth. Exhausted from hunger and poor nutrition, they often have trouble paying attention and learning during class.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) provides school meals for about 20 million children in Africa. While some national governments, including in Côte d’Ivoire, have provided school meals for decades, the food, fuel, and financial crises of 2007-08 highlighted the role that school nutrition programs can play in not only improving education, health, and nutrition, but also providing a safety net for children living in poverty. For some children, these programs provide the only real meal of the day.

Improved school menus provide students with much-needed nutrition while also creating an incentive for both students and parents to keep up regular attendance. Some programs include a take-home ration, targeted specifically at improving the attendance of girls. In exchange for an 80-percent attendance rate for one month, for example, students are able to take home a jug of vegetable oil to their family. Students also often share the nutrition information they learn at school with family members, helping to improve the nutritional value of meals made at home.

Earlier this year, the Partnership for Child Development (PCD), in partnership with the WFP and with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, launched the Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) program. HGSF, modeled in part after programs developed by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), works with governments to develop and implement school feeding programs, improving the diets and education of students while also creating jobs and supporting local agriculture.

Starting with five countries that were either already running school food programs or had demonstrated an interest in them and a capacity for implementation-including Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Mali, Kenya, and Ghana-HGSF hopes to create a bigger market for rural farmers through demand created by purchasing only locally grown and processed food for school meals.

“The definition of ‘local’ varies from country to country,” says Kristie Neeser, program coordinator at PCD. “Some schools keep their food purchasing within the local community and some keep their purchasing within the country. But what is most important is creating that relationship between the farmers and the government program.”

To best facilitate links between farmers and governments, HGSF works closely with the ministries of education to develop programs that will suit local needs and customs. In Ghana, for example, markets are run by “market queens,” women who purchase vegetables from farmers and then sell them to commercial buyers at markets. To avoid disrupting this system, HGSF works to incorporate the market queens with Ghana’s school purchasing process, instead of attempting to deal directly with the farmers, as programs in other countries often do.

Ultimately, HGSF hopes to work with 10 countries, transitioning each program to being fully government owned, funded, and implemented-creating a permanent safety net for school children and a dependable demand for local, small-scale, farmer-sourced produce.

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S.117 becomes law with Gubernatorial Whining Statement

Governor Douglas allowed S.117, an act changing the date of Vermont’s Primary Election to become law yesterday without his signature. This new law which moves the primary to August 24th brings Vermont into compliance with a Federal requirement regarding a minimum of 45 days for overseas voters (mostly service members) to return their absentee ballots.  

Other states that faced this issue include Minnesota which made similar changes months ago.  Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty signed it with Minnesota National guard troops present at the ceremony.  

However Governor Douglas opposed the change, and until today’s acquiescence had been coy about whether he would veto the bill.  

Characteristically he did not miss the opportunity to restate his well known objections including his concern that “Vermonters often enjoy their hard-earned vacations and surely are not focused on an election…”

Accompanying his press release with his own petulant version of a presidential signing statement, Douglas offered up a sort of gubernatorial whining statement that lamented ;

“But now, in the guise of assuring that the votes of our brave men and women in the military are counted, as of course they should be, the Legislature has passed S. 117, which in all likelihood will discourage voter participation.

(GMD has a policy of front paging all diaries from people currently running for statewide office in Vermont. – promoted by JulieWaters)

“Challenges for Change” is a good idea gone bad. The bait and switch is now evident.  It was advertised as a way for state government to achieve better outcomes with less money, but the reality is proving much different from the spin. The result of many of the proposed changes will be cost-shifting to local communities, less enforcement of laws that protect our quality of life, and less access to services our families need. In other words, worse, rather than better, outcomes.

Releasing non-violent offenders is a good goal that will save state money, but we must think through the consequences and understand that our local communities will face higher costs to support these folks as they come back into the community. We cannot just release them and count that as a savings.

It’s possible that we could be more efficient in our economic development strategies, but simply eliminating regional development corporations and regional planning commissions to consolidate them into state-sponsored agencies takes focus away from our local communities, where economic development needs to happen. It also takes away local control.

Certainly, the permit process could be more streamlined; however, shifting the responsibility for permit review to private business and reducing enforcement efforts is not the answer. The proposals in “Challenges” may actually result in a slower permit process and more pollution, just as the water quality of Lake Champlain is getting worse.

In addition, “Challenges” does not even achieve the targeted savings. Even if all of the proposed changes were acceptable, we would not achieve the $38 million in savings that we need.  

Despite this shortfall and despite the consequences of the changes, “Challenges” is being pushed through the legislative process at breakneck speed. I reject this crisis mentality. We have other options. We should use those options and make a thorough examination of the proposals before us in “Challenges.”

The architects of “Challenges for Change” have created an apparent emergency to rush the proposals through, claiming that the only other choice is severe cuts to essential services. We have money paid by taxpayers sitting in the state’s piggy bank – the rainy day fund – that could be used for some of the budget gap that is to be filled with “Challenges” changes. We are also expecting to receive more federal Medicaid money that can be used to fill other holes in the budget.

As a committee chair, my responsibility is to thoroughly consider any proposals put before me through the committee process. Many of my colleagues in both the House and Senate share my concerns and are beginning to ask serious questions about the reasons for and the consequences of these proposals. Any wholesale changes to our service delivery system must be examined carefully – both to determine whether savings will actually be achieved and also to ensure that Vermonters retain access to services they need.

I will not allow these changes to be made unless the process is thorough, transparent, and truthful. Some of the ideas in “Challenges for Change” are good ones, and they must be examined, considered thoughtfully, and implemented. However, we must not make these changes in haste and without deliberation, despite the challenge. Vermonters deserve better from us.

-Doug Racine

http://dougracine.com/

In a press release issued today, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it

will conduct additional inspections at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, operated by Entergy Nuclear and located in Vernon, Vt. Through enhanced specialized inspections, the NRC will oversee Entergy’s efforts to address groundwater contamination at the site and to review and assess the company’s response to an NRC Demand for Information (DFI) issued in early March.

In January, Entergy notified the NRC that it had received positive sample results for tritium from a groundwater well at Vermont Yankee. The NRC has been closely monitoring Entergy’s actions to identify, mitigate, characterize and remediate the source of the contamination. The NRC’s Resident Inspectors and regional specialists continue to provide oversight of the company’s actions through direct observations and independent assessments.

Both NRC and Entergy continue to maintain that the “tritium contamination does not pose any health or safety concern for members of the public or plant workers”.

NRC has continued this stance in spite of the extensive release of thousands of gallons of tritiated water and research by reputable scientists who contend that NRC does not adequately address the health effects of tritium.  

California and Colorado have set significantly more stringent tritium release standards of 400 pico curies per liter in California and 500 pico curies per liter in Colorado compared with the NRC standard of 30,000 pico curies per liter before even requiring reporting of tritium, and EPA requires a limit of 20,000 pico curies per liter for drinking water.  See original document below:

NRC Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee deviation memo 4-2-2010

Cross posted from Border Jumpers, Danielle Nierenberg and Bernard Pollack.

Nearly 40 years after Francis Moore Lappé wrote Diet for a Small Planet-one of the first books to take a hard look at the environmental and health problems caused by the meat industry-her daughter Anna Lappé has written a book exposing how the industrial food system is contributing to climate change. In Diet for a Hot Planet, Anna describes how are diets can be a crucial tool in the fight against global warming-and she gives a recipe for what an environmentally sustainable diet should look like, including more locally grown foods and eating less meat.

For more information, check out Anna’s “Taking a Bite Out of Climate Change” website.

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1. Comment on our daily posts — we check for comments everyday and want to have a regular ongoing discussion with you.

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 UPDATE–Oh, that slavery thing?

Guess I just kinda forgot.

Elections have consequences. We can celebrate that at the national level when we have a president who ends torture, prevents a depression, and makes the first steps toward health care reform.

We can also see it at the state level, and it isn't always pretty.

Take Virginia, for instance. Just last month we saw Virginia's new attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, order all of Virginia's colleges to start discriminating against gay people, reasoning that there is no basis in Virginia law to treat them as equal human beings.

RICHMOND — Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II has urged the state's public colleges and universities to rescind policies that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, arguing in a letter sent to each school that their boards of visitors had no legal authority to adopt such statements. 

After health care reform passed Cuccinelli announced that he'll join the groundless federal case challenging the health care reform law.

The latest move is right at the top, though. In addition to a new Republican AG, Virginia has a new Republican Governor. You know what he's into? Supporting slavery and treason.

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has quietly declared April 2010 Confederate History Month, bringing back a designation in Virginia that his two Democratic predecessors — Mark Warner and Tim Kaine — refused to do.

The last Republican governor, George “Macaca” Allen, also signed on in favor of the Confederacy back in 2002.

The next time you hear some conservative attacking liberals as being anti-American and unpatriotic, just remind him about this.

I’m going to start this out saying that I am not looking particularly favorably at the leadership of the Vermont House right now.  The Challenges for Change idiocy they are supporting is dangerous, foolish and wrong.  

I have a lot to say about that, and I will get to it in another post.  Today’s piece is about last year at this time.  On April 7th, 2009, the Vermont legislature passed marriage equality into law, overriding a veto by Jim Douglas and removing restrictions from marriage based on gender or sex.  

So this note is partially a thank you to the legislature for what they accomplished and a reminder that sometimes steadfastly opposing the governor when he is on the wrong side is very much the right thing to do.  

It’s also a plug for the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force, which was instrumental in the process of getting the veto overturned.

The rest of this is mostly personal, but its’ not irrelevant.  Some of it I’ve written before.  Some of it is new.

Right now, we’re trying to get our taxes done.  We’re married, but it’s not recognized at the federal level, so we still have to file our federal taxes as individuals.

Vermont’s taxes, however, are based on federal taxes, which we need to file jointly to get the right numbers for Vermont.

This means that we have to do a separate federal return as a married couple, which we will not file, and base our Vermont tax form on THAT document.  Nice.

But still, I feel lucky.  At the very least I didn’t get invited to a fake wedding while other people attended the real thing.  But I digress.  There are places where people do not only view lesbianism as bad, but as enough to render you unfit for simple human decency.  

Vermont is not such a place, and the simplicity of this is part of what I think can change the rest of the nation.

Back in September, I wrote about going to the town clerk’s office the very first day that same-sex marriage licenses were being given out in Vermont.

We did the formal ceremony in Mid September.

It was quiet, mellow and really kind of nice.

Before the ceremony everyone told me that marriage changes everything, that no matter how much you think it won’t, it changes you.

Maybe so. But if so, I just haven’t noticed it.  Just like before, we take time off from work to help one another when it’s necessary.  When we have bills to pay, we pay them together.  It’s all just… there, just like it’s been for more than a decade.

I know I’ve only been married for a short while, but honestly, what’s most special about this for me is the ordinariness of it: the week before the ceremony, people asked me if I were nervous. I really wasn’t. The week after, people asked me how it went. And then everything went back to normal.

What I love about being married isn’t the idea of it being special or different. It’s the idea of it being just ordinary.

And honestly, I think this is what scares opponents of same-sex marriage more than anything else. They want to call it “special” rights. They want to call it an attack on traditional marriage. But the fact of it is that it’s just what it is: two people who made a choice for themselves. In our case, it was two people who made a choice for themselves, had a nice quiet ceremony and had a surprisingly uneventfully pleasant party.

So let me just say this: pretty much everyone I know, even people I know who are really conservative, seem genuinely happy for us.

I think this is where the people who oppose same-sex marriage will, in the long run, fail: not because they’re wrong (which they are) but because when ordinary people know same sex couples who are married, they can see exactly what is there: people who care for one another in the quiet, dull, and ordinary ways everyone else does. When groups claim that same-sex marriage will destroy something, it’s prevalent on them to prove it. When they make such unrealistically and obviously false claims, all it takes is an act of truth to prove them wrong.

Married life, for me, is still just life.  

The bill passed Tuesday evening 11-0. The full Vermont House plans to pass the bill soon and then it moves to the Senate, where lawmakers are also pledging quick action because for legislative leaders this bill is a priority.

 See WCAX for the whole story:

http://www.wcax.com/Global/sto…

“It is 100 percent the primary issue to protect Vermonters from having to pay the cost,” said Rep. Tony Klein, D-East Montpelier.

“You have a promise to green field with not one penny in an account to accomplish that point. We now know that the waste is going to be stored there for decades if not 100 years and there is not one penny set aside to manage that waste, so that’s why we need to do this bill,” Klein said.

The decommissioning bill assures Vermonters that the corporate parent, whatever firm that may be, Entergy or if sold another firm, has enough money to decommission to NRC standards and also enough money to meet Vermont’s more rigid greenfield requirements.  This requires that the parent company post a guarantee covering decommissioning to a greenfield standard of Entergy’s current estimate of $40 million.  I personally believe this estimate is too low; discussion follows.

Fairewinds Associates testified on Friday April 5 to the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee  regarding the discrepancy on decommissioning costs as projected by TLG Services, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Entergy.  See report entitled Fairewinds Cost Comparison TLG Decommissioning http://www.leg.state.vt.us/JFO…