I am happy and proud to report that I was just kicked off the new “twitter for christians” website, http://www.christianchirp.com.  I suspect this was due in part to my user name being “GodsRightNut.”  Perhaps it was a question I posted:  “Can I be saved on the internet or does it only work on TV?”  No sense of humor over there, I guess.

Interesting to note that the owner of the site is no stranger to making bucks off of believers.  James L. Paris appears to have a number of fronts.  He runs a financial advice page at http://www.christianmoney.com/.  Here’s a website explaining how he became a believer; you can also buy his books there–http://www.whathappenedtojimparis.com/.  Get some christian financial tips at http://www.jameslparis.net/.  Attend one of Jim’s “Christian Financial Boot Camps” at http://www.christianinternetin…  And if you just can’t get enough, go to Jimbo’s christian news and politics blog at http://jameslparis.typepad.com…

Why not hop over to http://www.christianchirp.com and join the fun?  They can’t censor all of us…

( – promoted by Open Thread)

Received this email from Matt Dunne

I wanted you to be among the first to know.

Yes, I will enter the race to be Governor of Vermont in 2010.

We will make an official announcement tomorrow, but since the work of building our state’s future will be done by people like you, you are really the most important audience.

Here are the details:

What: Matt Dunne for Governor announcement

When:  10:45 am, Tuesday Nov. 3rd

Where: Tip-Top Cafe, 85 N Main St., White River Junction

The start of his campaign website is here.

http://bit.ly/DunneLaunch  

Here’s yet another example of the political equivalent of “penny wise and pound foolish.”

During the last legislative session, there was a lot of talk on this site about moving the primary earlier in the year. In Vermont, the primary election is so late that it essentially acts as an incumbent protection scheme if the opposition party has multiple candidates for a statewide office. It’s the number one source of the disincentive for parties to have primaries, when primaries are so needed to refresh and reinvigorate what often becomes a stagnant debate and electoral system. Now that Jim Douglas isn’t running for re-election, the dynamics may be different, but the same reasoning still applies. Want healthy primaries? Don’t stack the deck against them by cramming them too close to the general election. It’s about making our democracy work as well as it can – regardless of one’s political party.

There was also a more blandly technical reason – the pinch of turning around absentee ballots to overseas voters in the time between the September primary and November general. She may be a candidate for Governor, but Secretary of State Markowitz was doing her job responsibly when she, too, asked the legislature to move the date earlier into the calendar.

All of these problems, of course, still exist – but it didn’t have to be this way. The Senate, led by Peter Shumlin, took the bull by the horns and made a change (if an only marginally adequate one) last session.

Speaker Smith and the House couldn’t be bothered to do their share.

But the problem hasn’t gone away

A new federal law will force Vermont lawmakers to consider changing the date of next year’s primary at a time when that primary is expected to be a hot one.

[…]House Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morristown, said the bill didn’t seem like a priority when it came over from the Senate late in the session, but the new federal law might change that. “That might spur us on,” he said.

So now they’re stuck with dealing with it in an election year, which will amplify the catcalls that its all a dirty trick to give Democrats (who, of course, have a gubernatorial primary, while the GOP likely won’t) a leg up. And coming, as they will, so close to the actual election, Dems have to be concerned that some of those charges might leave an impression.

Whereas, if they had just done their jobs when it counted – months ago – any furor would have long since passed.

I’ve heard folks at the Statehouse on more than one occasion comment that “good policy is good politics.” One wishes the House leadership had heeded that advice on this issue.

Republican Candidate Pulls Out a Day After Right-Wing Group Pulls Dirty Trick With TV Ad Disguised as Liberal Group Praising Her Support for Abortion Rights and Same-Gender Marriage; With Less Than 24 Hours to Go Before Voters in Upstate New York’s 23rd Congressional District Go to the Polls, Can Democrat Bill Owens Prevent the Right’s Takeover Of a District That Obama Carried a Year Ago?

Conceding defeat to the Far Right: Republican Dede Scozzafava announced Saturday that she had halted her campaign in Tuesday’s House special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district, after pre-election polls showed her losing badly to Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman — and a day after a right-wing group pulled a dirty trick by airing a last-minute TV ad under the guise of a liberal group praising Scozzafava as “the best choice for progressives,” citing her support for abortion rights and same-gender marriage. Scores of right-wing out-of-state groups, including the Club for Growth and the Republican Trust Political Action Committee, have thrown their support behind Hoffman — a stunning demonstration of the right-wing domination of the national GOP. (Photo: AP)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, November 2, 2009)

By SKEETER SANDERS

In a stunning victory for the right-wing “Teabagger” movement’s all-out jihad to purge the Republican Party of its last remaining moderates and Northeastern liberals, GOP candidate Dede Scozzafava announced Saturday that she was dropping out of the campaign for Tuesday’s hotly-contested special election in upstate New York’s 23rd congressional district.

Scozzafava — citing polls showing her badly trailing both Democratic candidate Bill Owens and Conservative Party nominee Douglas Hoffman — said that she was pulling out of the nationally-watched contest because her campaign lacked the money to respond to a last-minute blizzard of  TV and radio ads by right-wing, out-of-state groups backing Hoffman and attacking both Owens and Scozzafava.

Her withdrawal announcement also came just a day after an ostensibly pro-Scozzafava TV ad hit the airwaves, urging liberal voters to support her candidacy, specifically citing Scozzafava’s support for abortion rights and same-gender marriage — which are both anathema to hard-line social conservatives who form the backbone of the GOP’s still-shrinking voter base.

SCOZZAFAVA: I DON’T HAVE THE MONEY TO FIGHT BACK SMEARS AGAINST ME

In a sometimes-emotional press conference, Scozzafava told reporters that “The reality that I’ve come to accept is that in today’s political arena, [is that] you must be able to back up your message with money — and as I’ve been outspent on both sides, I’ve been unable to effectively address many of the charges that have been made about my record.

“It is increasingly clear that pressure is mounting on many of my supporters to shift their support,” she said. “Consequently, I hereby release those individuals who have endorsed and supported my campaign to transfer their support as they see fit to do so. I am and have always been a proud Republican.”

Scozzafava’s decision to pull out came just hours after the release of a Siena Research Institute poll showing  that her support had crumbled since September.

The poll, conducted from Tuesday through Thursday of last week, showed Owens holding a razor-thin one-point lead over Hoffman, 36 percent to 35 percent. Scozzafava trailed far behind at 20 percent, with only nine percent of voters still undecided.

The results marked a dramatic reversal from the end of September, when Scozzafava led with 35 percent, owens second at 28 percent and Hoffman trailing with 16 percent.

Many observers attribute Scozzfava’s reversal with the blizzard of attack ads against her by the Club For Growth and other right-wing groups, including the highly combative National Republican Trust Political Action Committee — which became notorious last year for its last-minute fusillade of attack ads against Obama that brought up the president’s controversial former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, in open defiance of GOP nominee John McCain’s strict ban on his campaign bringing up the now-retired minister, out of fear of being accused of “race-baiting.”

A LAST-MINUTE ‘DIRTY TRICK’ AD MAY HAVE SEALED SCOZZAFAVA’S FATE

Scozzafava’s fate, however, may have been sealed on Friday, when a last-minute TV ad hit the airwaves that appeared, at first glance, to be an endorsement of the liberal Republican, calling her “the best choice for progressives.”

The ad, which claimed to have been produced and paid for by a group calling itself “Common Sense in America LLC,” praised Scozzafava for her support of Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus package. But then it also lauded her support for abortion rights and cites her as “the only candidate who supports marriage equality” — same-gender marriage — as a rainbow flag, a universally recognized symbol of the gay community, appeared in the background behind a pair of wedding rings.

Within hours after the ads began airing, “Common Sense in America LLC” — not to be confused with the conservative media watchdog Common Sense America or with the libertarian group Common Sense For America —  was quickly exposed as a front group for billionaire Arkansas businessman Jackson T. (Steve) Stephens, Jr., a board member of the right-wing Club for Growth — which is heavily backing Hoffman.

Stephens, president and CEO of the Little Rock, Arkansas-based pharmaceutical company ExOxEmis, Inc. and a longtime contributor to conservative Republican candidates, personally donated $4,800  — the legal maximum under New York state election law — to Hoffman’s campaign, and is one of the Club for Growth’s leading donors, according to records on file with the Federal Election Commission.

A trace of the telephone number for “Common Sense in America” displayed near the end of the ad turns out to be that of the Little Rock headquarters of ExOxEmis.

RIGHT-WING ATTACK ADS SATURATE TV, RADIO STATIONS ACROSS DISTRICT

The 23rd Congressional District in the northeastern portion of the state, is a sprawling area that includes all or parts of Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Hamilton, Jefferson, Lewis, Madison, Oneida, Oswego and St. Lawrence counties. It includes the cities of Ogdensburg, Oswego, Plattsburgh (part of the Greater Burlington, Vermont metropolitan area) and Watertown. The district includes most of the Adirondack Mountains and the Thousand Islands region, and borders Canada to the north.

Local TV and radio stations across the district — from Syracuse to Burlington — have been saturated for the past two weeks with campaign attack ads in a frenzied blitzkrieg by right-wing groups to the prevent the House seat vacated by John McHugh from going to either Owens or Scozzafava — but have concentrated their fire most heavily on Scozzafava.

McHugh, a popular moderate Republican who easily won re-election by a 65 percent landslide last year, stepped down in June after he was nominated by President Obama to serve as secretary of the Army, but wasn’t confirmed by the Senate until September. Before moving to the Obama administration, McHugh was the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.

McHugh’s departure from Capitol Hill left the 29-member New York House delegation with only two Republicans. A Hoffman victory in tomorrow’s special election would be a major upset, in that Republicans are nearly invisible in the two regions of the country — the other is the West Coast — where Democrats dominate not only its congressional delegation, but also the region’s state legislatures and governorships.

Moreover, Republican officeholders in the Northeast — because Democrats so thoroughly dominate the region — have, out of electoral necessity, been more moderate than Republicans in the rest of the country, particularly on social issues.

N.Y. RACE PART OF RIGHT-WING PURGE OF GOP NATIONWIDE

Scozzafava’s apparent defeat is the most dramatic display yet of what appears to be a nationwide attempt by the hard-line right-wing “tea party” movement to purge the GOP of all of its last remaining moderates and Northeastern liberals. The movement asserts that Scozzafava, because of her support for abortion rights and same-gender marriage, is far too liberal and does not belong in the party.

Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele appeared to give at least tacit approval Friday to the purge, telling Politico.com that a Hoffman victory is essentially a Republican Party victory. “You’ve got two Republicans running in that race. My upside is that one of them will likely win,” Steele said. “We want to be supporting the one that wins.”

In Missouri, Liz Lauber, running in the Republican primary to unseat five-term Republican incumbent Representative Todd Akin, made support for Hoffman a major campaign issue last week, issuing a direct challenge to Akin to endorse and donate money to the Conservative Party nominee — which Akin promptly did.

A spokesman for Akin, however, insisted that the congressman’s endorsement was not a response to Lauber’s challenge, but rather to “calls received from constituents asking where the congressman stood on the race.”

Spokesman Steve Taylor told The Washington Times that “It would be difficult to surpass the lawmaker when it comes to conservative credentials — he has a 100 percent rating from the American Conservative Union and has routinely voted to limit the size of government.”

In Florida, moderate Republican Governor Charlie Crist is being challenged in the 2010 GOP Senate primary by conservative Marco Rubio, a former speaker of the Florida House or Representatives, who has made an issue of Crist’s outspoken support for the president’s economic stimulus package.

But Rubio could be hurt by another hot-button issue among conservatives — immigration.

Rubio is a Miami-born Cuban-American contesting for the Senate seat that was vacated by another Miami-born Cuban-American: Mel Martinez, who resigned in August for what he said were “personal reasons,’ but amid widespread rumors that Martinez had become disillusioned with the GOP after a bitter feud with hard-line right-wing nativists within the party over immigration during his tenure as GOP national chairman from November 2006 until he quit the post in October 2007.

The nastiness over the immigration issue, with thinly-disguised overtones of anti-Latino bias, has caused a deep rift to develop between the GOP and Latino voters, including the conservative, longtime Republican-friendly Cuban-American community in southern Florida — and may have been a factor in Martinez’s resignation.

(Crist appointed George LeMieux to serve out the remainder of Martinez’s term. LeMieux declared he would not seek a full six-year term in his own right.)

WITH SCOZZAFAVA OUT, CAN OWENS DRAW ENOUGH MODERATES TO STOP HOFFMAN?

With Scozzafava now out of the race — although her name will remain on the ballot — the question immediately arises: Can Owens draw enough support from moderate Republicans and independents in the district turned off by Hoffman’s social views — and his strong backing from hard-line right-wing outsiders — to stop him tomorrow?

With polls showing the race too close to call, a last-minute push by top Democratic heavyweights for Owens — including an Election Eve campaign swing  through the district today (Monday) by Vice President Joe Biden — is certain to add to the drama.  

And in a new round of TV and radio ads, liberal groups, including Accountable America, attempt to tie Hoffman to the Wall Street financial crisis. Meanwhile, MoveOn.org has launched a fundraising drive to defeat Hoffman, who the group says represents “teabaggers and hate groups.”

It could become a very long night on Tuesday.

# # #

Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

Looking ahead to game 4 of the World Series, but I'm feeling a little grim. I've been rooting for the Phillies who lost the crucial Game 3, largely because of a bizarre decision by Phillies starter Cole Hamels. Tom Verducci at Sports Illustrated explains:

When Pettitte stepped in, Hamels was working with a 3-2 lead, a runner at second base and — here's the key part — one out. Pettitte is a career .134 hitter who has come to bat a total of 12 times over the past three years. Hamels could dispose of him with fastballs, the way J.A. Happ would do the next inning, and he would be one out away from being out of the inning. Instead, Hamels threw a first-pitch curveball up, and Pettitte slapped a single to tie the game. Why in the world would he throw something slow — and up, no less — to an American League pitcher?

What a screwup. An obvious screwup. Anybody who knows anything about baseball knows that – and it cost the whole team. So what did Hamels have to say for himself?

“I made the right pitch to Pettitte,” Hamels explained. “A pitcher doesn't hit an oh-and-oh curve in a bunting situation.” I was incredulous. I had to follow up, and asked him, “Just to clarify, you thought Pettitte was bunting, so you threw a breaking ball up to try to get him to pop up a bunt?”

“Yes,” Hamels said. “That's what I get my fair share of the time when I'm bunting. He swung and got a hit.

Baseball is very, very difficult to understand sometimes.”

This had nothing to do with bunting. This was not a bunt situation. Sounds like a guy who screwed up and doesn't have an excuse for himself, so he's trying to recast the whole thing into something different to make himself look less bad. 

Hamels clearly did not regard the pitch to Pettitte as a mistake. I couldn't believe it. There is no way Pettitte is bunting there. There is virtually no advantage to be gained from moving a runner from second to third and be left with two outs… It's Baseball 101.

A terrible call. A costly call. A big mistake that could be the turning point for the whole Series. Here's a pitcher who's got too much pride to own up to his goof… so much that he can't even talk about his actual screwup without trying to change the subject to Burlington Telecom… er, I mean a bunt situation…

Wait – what were we talking about again? 

Speaking for me only.

As many of you may know, the United Nations issued a fact finding report on the 22-day Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On April 3, 2009, the President of the Human Rights Council established the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict with the mandate “to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from December 28 2008 and January 18, 2009.” Justice Richard Goldstone, former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, was chosen to head the mission.

The report, according to Human Rights Watch, “determined that both Israel and Hamas had committed serious violations of the laws of war during the 22-day conflict last December and January, some amounting to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.”

Per psychology today:

Yesterday, Mr. Delong, a 10th and 12th grade Honors English teacher in Piasa, IL was suspended for assigning an article about homosexuality in the animal kingdom to his students. Should teachers ask their students to read about controversial topics? Should we allow parents veto power over the curriculum?

This suspension makes one thing clear: we’re not even supposed to have the discussion about certain topics which make some people uncomfortable.

A few years ago, I got an e-mail from a former student.  It’s one of the many things floating around the internet, which is listed in some detail at snopes.com.  

The specifics of the e-mail itself are not relevant– it’s about ANWR and how it wouldn’t be that bad to drill in it after all, and how it wouldn’t do that much damage.  Feel free to read it for yourself if you like, but this story isn’t about that.  This story is about her comments after I challenged her a little on it, and why these e-mails, along with so many other pernicious lies tend to be so pervasive.  

This was her response:

I just thought it really interesting as it honestly gets harder and harder to find the truth in these situations! These days with internet…who knows what is real and what is fabricated which is exactly why I sent this along to all. It may be the truth, it may not, damn these things are hard! It is just another piece of the puzzle. Honestly, how do you know this is NOT the case? I don’t!

It was at this point that I suspected I had failed as a teacher, and more importantly, it was at this point that I got a glimmer of what was to come.

The point of these e-mails is not to make an argument.  It’s not to present facts and support them.  It’s to call things into question and give people plausible deniability.

Take, for example, the many e-mails that got sent out during the election of 2008: Obama the Muslim.  Obama the non-American.  Obama the friend of terrorists.  This, of course, was not done just through e-mail, but sometimes even supported his opponents.

But the intent of these stories was never to convince people that any of what they said was true.  It was to give people pause and concern.  It was to drive up the negatives.  It was to cause people to call Obama into question.  People who were uncomfortable with not voting for him simply because he was black suddenly had a whole new set of excuses as to why they should be concerned with him.

Back to what my student said:

It may be the truth, it may not, damn these things are hard! It is just another piece of the puzzle. Honestly, how do you know this is NOT the case? I don’t!

This, of course, is absurd.  You learn the truth about things by evaluating sources, investigating them and making reasonable and justified conclusions.   There is, of course, one thing she was right about: sometimes it is hard.  But that’s part of the responsibility of living in a free society: knowing what the &^%! you’re talking about or, at the very least, not basing the most major part of your political activity on things you don’t understand.

Years ago, a friend told me a story: she and her partner were walking on a bridge at dusk; there was another couple nearby.  At some point, a huge number of bats flew out from under another bridge and across the water.  One of them, sort of whimsically, said “there go the fruitbats.”  She, of course, didn’t know if they were fruitbats or some other kind of bat.  They were just being silly.

The other couple nearby overheard them.  The woman asked her guy “those are fruitbats?”  At this point he concocted a fairly elaborate story of the nature of these ersatz fruitbats, why they hang under the bridge, what sort of fruit they eat, etc.  The guy, obviously was making it all up, probably to impress his date.  But I think about that story sometimes and wonder how readily and comfortably we lie, pretend and simply make it all up as we go along.

Bear in mind: I’ve no problem with a good tall tale.  As children, we live and thrive on tall tales: spinning stories out of nothing but our imaginations.  But there is a point that needs to come where we grow beyond these things, learn to have conversations in a world that has some connection to reality, and learn to put aside the childish approach towards reality which trades not in honesty and respect but in simply saying whatever you think will make you win.  Even in the example I outline above, I’ve no real problem with some guy just babbling on about fruitbats to impress his date.  

But… there’s something happening that’s really been bothering me for some time now, and I think it’s this:

We don’t argue any longer.

By “we” I don’t mean everyone.  I’m talking in the realm of politics and policy; I’m talking about the way we used to argue.   Here’s an example of then Senator Paul Simon, presenting an argument, a point of view, a perspective, on how we should interact with the rest of the world:

Note the lack of name-calling, the lack of interpersonal squabbling.  Agree or not, Senator Simon is trying to tell you why you should agree with him, not berating or attacking you for failing to.  Similarly, Bob Dole is clearly capable of a good argument:

But why argue when you can diminish, ignore, cajole and pretend?  Why argue when you can simply suspend someone for introducing a topic?

Why argue when you can just intimidate instead?

Why argue when you can, instead, simply pretend that Obama is affiliated with terrorists?  Why argue when you can shout people down?  

Why stand on the merits of your own facts?  Why rely on reason?  Why bother with tools, research and skills when you can just shrug and treat all positions as equal, no matter how ridiculous argument is?  Why take responsibility for knowing, for learning, for doing?  

I’ll tell you why.

Because it’s worth it.

I’d never heard of “Free Vermont Radio” until July of this year, when I received the following e-mail:

I have added your music to the site http://www.freevermontradio.org

We play 99% Vermont Music!  If you have anymore please sent to us at..

Free Vermont Radio

attn: Artist Submissions

P.O. Box 28

East St. Johnsbury Vermont, 05838

Also, here are some banners you can put on your sites to send fans over to request your music…

http://www.freevermontradio.or…

Thanks,

Dennis Steele (Founder)

Free Vermont Radio

It was a little strange.  I do sometimes allow some of my music to be on internet radio stations, but usually there is an agreement in place, and usually people ask first.  I have a lot of music that I allow people to download for free, but I’m clear about the use of such files.  From my own web site:

Permission is granted to use parts of the site (such as downloading an mp3 file or an image) for personal and not-for-profit use. Web content may not be published on any other site without permission.

So that, in itself, is a bit of a flag for me.  It, however, gets worse.  Turns out there’s a connection (and a fairly overt one) between Free Vermont Radio and Second Vermont Republic.  

As you might expect, when someone tries to do business that involves me (whether they get my permission or not), I want to know who it is and why.  So I did a simple google search: “Dennis Steele Vermont.”

This was the first link I got.  It’s Dennis Steele speaking before the SVR convention, along with links to Free Vermont Radio.

I also did a little more searching.  I noticed this:

When it comes to buying locally and supporting Vermont made goods and services, fifth generation Vermonter Dennis Steele truly puts his money where his mouth is. The Kirby businessman and Vermont Patriot has just launched a new Internet radio station, Free Vermont Radio, entirely devoted to promoting Vermont musicians and their music worldwide.

The new radio station had hardly been broadcasting a week, when its collection of Vermont based music surpassed one thousand tracks (individual tunes) from dozens of CDs. Dennis often receives as many as 10 or 12 CDs a day from Vermont musicians eager to share their music with the rest of the world.

I have to say, it’s got to be really easy to collect one thousand tracks when you just cull things from peoples’ web sites without their permission.  I have to wonder how many other musicians made it onto this site without their permission.  

The idea looks nice: local Vermonters supporting Vermont music.  And on the surface it seems like a good thing.  But this is not what that site is.  That site supports SVR, a group which willingly organizes with white supremacists secession movements.  Steele’s 2008 speech at the SVR came well after news about their involvement with the League of the South was first widely publicized.

Let me be clear about this: Steele is welcome to use his web site to support any belief or any organizational affiliations he so chooses.  He is welcome to do this.   But I think he’s got an obligation to come clean about where the music on his site comes from, whether or not the people involved gave permission to be affiliated with supporters of White Supremacists and whether or not he actually pays any money out to any of the musicians he uses on his site.  I’m all for freedom, I’m all for music and I’m all for Vermont.  

I just don’t see how “Free Vermont Radio” supports any of these things, unless it just means that Vermont musicians provide material to this “radio” station for free.

This year I carved a smiley face. It took a lot less time to do, but you can imagine how boring the picture is. This was from two Halloween’s ago.

The kids haven’t decided what they are going to wear tonight running house-to-house, street-to-street, as they go trick or treating.  The top two choices are “The invisible Person,” which is a black sheet covering the entire body with black shoes and a black candy bag and the trick is to only visit neighborhoods with no street lights; or “Space Man” which involves wearing clear plastic laundry bags as a space suit.

I was thinking about dressing up as Entergy/Vermont Yankee. All I need to do is wear torn clothes, shoes with holes in them and spill whatever it is that people give me.  

What are you doing?

Vermont just received approximately $69 million in federal funds to be matched by utilities for developing smart grid technologies. Tom Evslin, Douglas’ new Chief Technology Officer (Czar?) and former telecom entrepreneur says that these funds will help Vermont do in five years what would have taken eight under normal funding conditions.

More than just smart meters the grid will also open up the potential for entirely new services or improvements on existing ones, such as fire monitoring and alarms that can shut off power, make phone calls to emergency services and etc.

The Seattle Times reports that the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who transformed the telecommunications industry are now trying to do the same with the grid. The prize? There are 144 million residential meters in the U.S. “The battle for the meter is raging,” Google and several startups are also working on the creation of so-called home area networks to save energy.  

Power usage closely monitored by consumers and distributors will result in better use of available resources. Savings and efficiency are all for the good. As utilities sell power more efficiently they may also find demand dropping just as cash is needed to buildup   new services and networks. What kind of brave new grid will result? In a slightly disturbing comparison, many industry experts are comparing the new world that the power industry is entering to the one that the telecoms faced several years ago.

One expert explains  

In the days of rotary phones, the telcos had complete control and consumers didn’t have much to do with it other than pay the bill. …While the price may have dropped for traditional telco services, these companies have had a huge number of new opportunities opened up for them. We believe that the same thing will happen with the utilities market………..

Once the subscriber is in the picture, it will drive demand for new types of services and new ways of communicating. These in turn will help the utilities to invent new forms of value, and to become more innovative.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) supports this comparison.

Also like the telecom network, the Smart Grid is almost entirely owned and operated by industry. Therefore, Smart Grid interoperability and cybersecurity standards must reflect industry consensus, with active participation, and where required, leadership and coordination by government.

Vermonters watching FairPoint struggle into chapter 11 may not find anything comforting in these telecom comparisons. And besides: who understands their telecom plan?

Federal and State regulators understaffed and under budgeted will be presiding over the industry as it creates new forms of services and morphs into a new service beast.

Maybe aggressive public service watchdogs as smart as the smart grid are needed for the new market as it evolves?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.c…

. http://smart-grid.tmcnet.com/t…

http://www.nist.gov/smartgrid/