Vermont Governor Jim Douglas became a lame duck by choice last week making the surprise announcement that he will not seek re-election to governor in 2010
Douglas with his near term travel plans in mind may have spoken with some unintended candor when he said during his announcement“The rewards of this job are many,” adding also that he is not running for any other office.
Putting thankfully to rest the persistent speculation about a Palin /Douglas ticket for 2012.
Palin said recently “I thought about how much fun some governors have as lame ducks… travel around the state, to the Lower 48 (maybe), overseas on international trade – as so many politicians do.” when she resigned rather than finish her term as governor of Alaska”.
The notoriously tight fisted budget hawk and newly lame ducked Governor Douglas had some other news this week .
Off to France
He will be enjoying the rewards of quite a bit of travel as he takes flight to France in September as the guest of the French government to investigate potential markets, export/import opportunities and resource exchange for Vermont agricultural producers.
And then off to Asia
On a previously announced trip tentatively scheduled later in October the governor will take flight to Asia, which will include stops in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. This will be an overseas trade mission flying with Vermont business leaders seeking investors for their companies showcasing the opportunities for investors here in Vt, as well as to promote general trade with these countries.
Obviously this is important, since you can't understand the rest of biology if you don't understand evolution.
Vermont does pretty well. If you look at the map you'll see that we're doing way better than a lot of other states, and those states are mostly no surprise. It shouldn't take more than the experience of the last eight years to tell you that you don't want your kids to be educated in Texas, for instance. In addition, I can't ever remember a big fight over teaching evolution in any Vermont school boards.
But still, we only rank a B. Why not an A? Here's what the report says:
This is a big day in Vermont, not just for the LGBT couples who may now enjoy their full rights under the law. Its an affirmation for all of us that Vermont continues to reflect what is best in us by moving forward toward greater social justice.
It’s other people’s big day; so I’ll just keep my bit brief. I’m delighted to be given the opportunity to join the team at GMD and promise to try to keep up with you all. My familiar turf tends to be around land use issues and the environment, but I’ll pipe-up from time to time on other things to.
Now that I’ve gotten my feet wet, I’ll let the real stars of Sept. 1, 2009 resume center stage. Congratulations to Julie and all the other lovers on this sweet day!
So what does this mean, if anything? Even though some of the members of the Vermonters Calling on Douglas Not to Veto Same Sex Marriage group are from out of state, the potential is obviously there to build a very large group of supporters on Facebook (which should then be used as a TOOL to fundraise, organize field activities, etc).
Why are the Republicans out-numbering us in supporters on Facebook? Should the liberal/progressive Parties and Candidates hire someone to specificly coordinate their online social networking (which would also include twitter, blogs, etc), or at least make it a higher priority for their Communication Director to deal with? Does any of this have an impact on the actual elections?
Yesterday Salmon spoke at Sen. Bill Doyle’s class on
>Vermont politics at Johnson State. Among other things
he said:
(1) He has not decided which statewide office he will
seek;
(2) He has not decided which party he will run in;
(3) Vermont Yankee must be re-licensed. – promoted by odum)
UPDATE 2 From a source close to Salmon: “The leading source of (the party-switching rumor) is clearly some Republican operatives who are trying to move Dubie off the dime… I can confirm that no one has a legitimate basis for these rumors.” Interesting – this merits continued watching, especially given Salmon’s comments in Doyle’s class. /update
UPDATE 3 The Rutland Herald has a piece about this. –julie.
He’s been dropping hints for a while, and has certainly been doing all he can to alienate many of the same people who worked so hard during his historic recount to get him where he is today, but is Auditor Tom Salmon Jr. planning to drop the Democratic Party and run for Governor as a Republican (most likely going up against popular Lieutenant Governor and presumed Douglas heir apparent Brian Dubie)?
That’s the rumor – one I’m told by a reliable source is a “90%,” – all but confirmed (but again – not yet confirmed… apply grain of salt).
Currently, Salmon has had Democratic consultants Jake Perkinson and Selene Hofer-Shall working on his re-election. One assumes he would lose their assistance if he makes the move.
We’ll see. Hopefully we can get more on this soon. It’ll be refreshing to see some truth-in-advertising on his ballot line, if this turns out to be true, and not just a wacky rumor. It could also simply be a trial balloon being floated among insiders. Time will tell.
Quick Update: More than one source close to the Salmon campaign say this is “nuts,” and that is a direct quote… others say its for real. Time to let the real reporters have at it, I suppose.
FITNESS FOR DUTY – SUPERVISOR TESTED POSITIVE FOR ALCOHOL was today’s posting on the NRC Website for current event notifications.
A non-licensed employee supervisor had a confirmed positive for alcohol during a random fitness-for-duty test. The employee’s unescorted access to the plant has been revoked. Contact the Headquarters Operations Officer for additional details.
What is a non-licensed employee supervisor? Well, that means he was not one of the plant operators, but is a supervisor of another group, like engineering, maintenance, purchasing, or even health physics meaning dose measurement.
Not only is Vermont Yankee on a hiring freeze on orders from parent company Entergy, but the VT Legislature’s appointed oversight panel (VYOP) noted that staffing problems were endemic throughout the organization. In some departments 80% of the employees had been at VY less than three years, which according to VYOP is an indication of high turnover and inexperience.
Last spring, VY informed the Legislature that it would meet the VYOP recommendations, yet with an Entergy hiring freeze at a plant that already had staff shortages, how will that be possible? Now on top of failing cooling towers, equipment degradation and dose miscalculations we have supervisors arriving to work drunk.
NRC report and link below the fold.
Current Event Notification Report for September 1, 2009
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Operations Center
Event Reports For
08/31/2009 – 09/01/2009
FITNESS FOR DUTY – SUPERVISOR TESTED POSITIVE FOR ALCOHOL
A non-licensed employee supervisor had a confirmed positive for alcohol during a random fitness-for-duty test. The employee’s unescorted access to the plant has been revoked. Contact the Headquarters Operations Officer for additional details.
The licensee has notified the NRC Resident Inspector.
FITNESS FOR DUTY – SUPERVISOR TESTED POSITIVE FOR ALCOHOL
A non-licensed employee supervisor had a confirmed positive for alcohol during a random fitness-for-duty test. The employee’s unescorted access to the plant has been revoked. Contact the Headquarters Operations Officer for additional details.
The licensee has notified the NRC Resident Inspector.
People do this sort of thing every day, so this is nothing major for most people, but this is the first time it is legal in Vermont for two women to get married, so this is something I think of as somewhat important.
What I’m looking forward to, however, is the time in ten years when two women can get married to one another and not even think about what a big deal it is.
This is not a personal story. There are certain aspects of my personal life that I share gladly and willingly, but my relationship with my girlfriend, soon to be my wife, is not one of those things. You won’t see photos of us, personal stories, or anything like that, after the fold.
Instead, I will tell a story about politics, change, and evolution.
In February of 2004, Massachusetts was given a mandate by its supreme judicial court: enact marriage equality or fall afoul of the constitution.
It was that Spring that I watched most of the hearing at their constitutional convention, in which an attempt was made to amend the Massachusetts constitution in order to restrict marriage to one man and one woman.
What’s interesting about this was that even most of the proponents of this amendment quickly gave into the equal protection under the law argument. Here’s a (nearly half hour long) video which encompasses a lot of what happened during that period:
Here’s what I remember: the original version of this amendment was not intended to protect any same-sex couples. Quickly, this changed. And I mean quickly. I got whiplash realizing what had happened here: suddenly, civil unions, which had been a major controversy in Vermont just a few years earlier, became the conservative fallback option.
In the end, nothing happened in Massachusetts. The legislature let the court’s decision stand, and same-sex marriage became legal without any major calamities, craziness or much of anything unusual or unexpected.
It wasn’t until a few years later that Vermont started to address same-sex marriage. The initial process was a series of town meetings, one of which I liveblogged here.
I should explain something about Vermont here: a lot of people think we’re this super-liberal state full of old hippies or something. There is that element here, but we also have a lot of rural conservatives and some really vitriolic homophobia. (for some examples, see the reader comments to this story from Vermont’s Rutland Herald). Our fairly conservative governor even used anti-same-sex marriage rhetoric to fundraise (pdf file of his fundraising letter here).
So that’s why it’s still a bit of a shock that not one person opposing same-sex marriage appeared at that hearing I liveblogged. Other hearings had similar results: no more than one or two scattered opponents.
Fast forward two years, to 2009.
At the beginning of the year, I never would have thought we’d be approaching same-sex marriage as part of the discussion in Montpelier. But not only did we pass it, we passed it by significant margins. The state senate passed it 26-4 (!). The house passed it 95-52. This was in late May and early April.
Our governor vetoed this bill. He claimed it was a distraction from the real work of the legislator (unlike the extra time it took to deal with the override vote).
It came down to April 7th.
The requirement in Vermont for ovderiding a veto is 2/3rds of the members of each house. This was easy in the Senate, with support for the override of 23-5.
The house was much closer, with a necessity of 100 votes, and only 95 supporting the original, it was a very tough call. Not only did we win, we won by exactly the number we needed. The final vote tally was 100-49 (see my original post on this here).
Here’s the relevant part of the bill that got passed.
ยง 8. MARRIAGE DEFINITION
Marriage is the legally recognized union of two people. When used in this chapter or in any other statute, the word “marriage” shall mean a civil marriage.
That’s it. It’s that simple. It goes into effect today.
According to the article Nelson says the public option can’t get 60 votes to break a filibuster, and despite acknowledging nobody is talking about a government takeover of our nation’s health/medical care system “still any public option will not pass”.
And now for some real stupidity …
“A big part of (the bill) will be shoring up Medicare and Medicaid. We do not have a bill yet because the Senate does not have consensus. We tried all summer to get consensus,” he said.
That’s right … go back and read the above … Nelson the dumber is telling folks we can’t have a public option health insurance program because we need to shore up taxpayer funded health insurance programs.
Ahhh … the sweet, syrupy smell of political and personal stupidity.
PS. Here’s a way to a public option or even maybe single payer: in 2010 let the Democratic House members go down in flames. The White House will still be Democratic and so will the Senate (in name anyway) so there won’t be any real change from what we have now. Once the Democratic politicians see that progressive voters really mean it when they say “work on our agenda”, however, these same Dems will be ready to role their sleeves up to do the work of the American people.
Last week Virginia’s Orange County Board of Supervisors vote to approve the building of a new Wal-Mart Supercenter within the historic boundaries of the
Wilderness Battlefield – and one of the most significant battlefields of the Civil War. The Civil War Preservation Trust has been fighting Wal-Mart on this location for over a year – seeking an alternative location and compromoise – and after last week they desperately need everyones help to stop Wal-Mart from moving forward and opening the door to further destructive development.
Even State Senator Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate for Virginia Governor, has written a letter to the president and CEO of Wal-Mart pleading with him to move the location off the historic battlefield. Wake-Up Wal-Mart is helping in this fight and you can too by also writing a letter on the Civil War Preservation Trust’s website and also help spread the word yourself.
More from Blue Virginia and the Washington Post below:
Lowell at Blue Virginia has reasonably asked on the location:
Maybe I’m missing something here, like the (supposedly) urgent need to build retail right on top of a battlefield where 145,000 Union and Confederate soldiers fought and more than 29,000 were killed or injured. Can’t this store be located a mile down the road or something? What do you think?
[Civil War Preservation] Trust president Jim Lighthizer called on Wal-Mart to reconsider its decision to build within the footprint of the Wilderness Battlefield, near Fredericksburg, pointing to what he called, “nationwide anger generated by its proposal.”
“The ball is now in Wal-mart’s court,” he said. “It’s in the corporation’s best interest to work with the preservation community to find an alternative site. …We are optimistic that company officials will see the wisdom of moving somewhere else.”
That doesn’t sound likely, according to Wal-Mart regional spokesman Keith Morris. In an interview he said, “Two years ago, the county decided this site was one where growth should occur. We have looked at alternative sites and there are other sites but they require rezoning. There is no guarantee the county would approve another site.”
Morris pointed to the county planning commission’s second and little-noticed Aug. 20 4-3 vote that reversed a decision of the night before, when that commission deadlocked on the issue. A deadlock is considered a negative vote. Morris said that second vote was an indication of the county’s strong interest in seeing the store built at the proposed site.
There is a possibility that the Trust, as the lead organization of the Wilderness Coalition, will turn to the courts and appeal the board’s decision. Officials are debating their next step now.
Vermont’s (and GMD’s) Bill McKibben took his turn in the Colbert hot seat, discussing 350.org and global climate change. Bill was brilliant as always, Colbert was funny as always, and my only question is why didn’t Colbert have him on a long time ago?
