An excerpt from blogger Jenna Lowenstein at 365gay.com

During the debate on ENDA [the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act] last summer, Congressman Rush Holt [D-NJ] gave a floor speech in which he quoted Congressman John Lewis quoting Martin Luther King:

“Mr. Speaker, our distinguished colleague John Lewis often reminds us of the words of Dr. King, “The time is always right to do the right thing.” Dr. King warned us against the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. I am concerned that when we break apart legislation, some pieces fall on the floor to get swept into the dustbin of history or to be considered only years later. We should not do this to members of our society who need and deserve the same protections as all other Americans.”

I think Holt’s and Lewis’ and King’s point is spot on. We can compromise on taxes and on infrastructure funding and on health care costs. But we cannot — we must not — sell out the fundamental right to equality.

And if that ain’t good enough, there’s always the money angle (also reported by 365gay.com):

[A]n impact study released this week suggests there is a link between the economy and gay marriage. The study, by the Williams Institute at UCLA, found that approval of gay marriage in Vermont could generate $31 million in new spending and $3.3 million in state taxes over three years.

Meanwhile, over in Maine, a marriage equality bill had 60 legislators lined up as cosponsors, both Republicans and Democrats, some of whom might also have been considering the economy, as well as the higher calling of equality.

Last month, Maine’s tourism industry said legalizing same-sex marriage in the state could save them from disaster as the state’s economy continues to turn sour.

Do the right thing, legislators. Vote old fashioned Vermont values: Equality and fairness.

(Saves me the trouble of writing this up. – promoted by JulieWaters)

The Oversight Panel Report for the Vermont Yankee Reliability Assessment shows Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee is not safe, clean or reliable. VY has a higher level of worker injury, is dirtier than other reactors, and is facing expensive, time consuming repairs.

Originally, the Comprehensive Vertical Audit as passed by the Legislature was expected to take 15,000 to 20,000 work hours. Instead, as managed by the Dept of Public Service, only about 6,000 hours were expended in the inspection. Significant problem areas, such as Main Steam Isolation Valve leakage and flow accelerated corrosion of piping and components, were not examined.

Even this abbreviated inspection found that Entergy Nuclear should not extend its license and cannot run reliably after 2012 without spending significant time, effort and money. There is no evidence to date that Entergy has the commitment necessary for this undertaking.

Contrary to Entergy’s repeated claim that the company employs a superior workforce, the Report questioned Entergy’s high employee turnover, high level of inexperienced staff, high level of vacancies in critical departments, and impending retirement of remaining experienced staff.

This is especially problematical because ENVY’s work process procedures “do not meet industry standards“.

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Procedure Quality – The NSA team found that the composition, presentation, and formatting of the majority of VY’s procedures do not meet industry standards

.

The report also cited ENVY for a “high worker accident or injury level in comparison to other plants” and “lower than desirable plant cleanliness practices”.



The degraded condition of the transformer, cooling towers, condenser and demineralizers-all high cost equipment expenditures with significant replacement downtime-compromise the reliability of electric production from Entergy Nuclear. Indeed,

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Condenser – Documents reviewed by NSA indicate that the condenser is near the end of its useful life and might not be able to operate reliably through 2012 without some remedial actions.

If Vermont Yankee can limp along until its shutdown date in 2012, that should be the end of it. From the reports, we’ll be lucky if they can make it that long without further compromising public safety.

In the media and in online forums, he’s vigorously defended his calling of the police and tasking them to stand ready to throw out Democratic City Councilors over 5 minutes of procedural kerfuffles (seen here:

“I had no choice but to have a police presence there in case this behavior continued–otherwise those two Councilors could have literally shut down the meeting.”

…and here:

“The Police were only going to be used if the two Councilors literally would not allow us to conduct the meeting. No matter how you feel on the particular issue in question, the minority should not be able to thwart the will of the Majority.”

). He’s found defenders aplenty from Republican and Progressive circles.

But apparently the spin war hasn’t gone so well, as this email was sent from outgoing Burlington City Council President Kurt Wright to council members and at least one member of the media (emphasis added):

ReplyTo: vinewright@burlingtontelecom.net

Subject: The last coucil meeting

Sent: Mar 16, 2009 4:59 PM

Dear City Council members,

Like all other Council members, I much regret that our otherwise constructive year of dealing collectively with important issues was compromised during the last two meetings. When I became your President, I committed to being fair to each of you personally though our interests were likely to differ on matters of policy.  With but one regular meeting of this Council’s term remaining, I am most hopeful that we can restore the approach that served us so well.

I know that some members take exception to my request for a police presence at our last meeting.  This decision on my part was not intended to intimidate members or influence the outcome of debate in the slightest, but merely to prevent the meeting from deteriorating into a completely chaotic state.  I did and do see my primary obligation as President to facilitate meetings so that the public’s business can be accomplisehed.

With 20/20 hindsight, I can appreciate the views being expressed by those who assert I made the request I did, unnecessarily and prematurely.  I regret any misundertanding that may have arisen as a result

of that decision, a decision that I made with pure motives, but that on reflection may have been premature.  I recognize that it is never a decision that should be made to casually or too soon.

I commit to my fellow City Councilors that I will use every effort as your President to conduct our last meeting in a fully constructive manner.  I ask each and every one of you to commit to achieving the same result.  I believe the legacy of this session will be as positive as possible if this goal is achieved.

I thank you all for your co-operation and service to our City.  To paraphrase Councilor Shannon at the end of the last meeting “lets all admit mistakes were made on all sides” and move on.  I think that advice was very wise

and I hope we can all abide by it and move forward–in the best interests of our city, because to continue with this would not be in the best interests of our city.  Thanks,

Kurt Wright

Okay. Given that he defended his decision loudly and publicly, will he submit his mea culpas equally publicly?

JACKSON, Miss. — Entergy officials have determined what caused three high-tension power lines to fall onto Interstate 20 on Friday, which closed the interstate for most of the day.

“A guy wire failed at the anchor rod in the ground,” Entergy spokeswoman Mara Hartmann said. “When it failed it broke and as it was under high tension, that caused a pole to snap. The part of the pole that snapped fell and broke another pole causing the high tension lines to sag over the highway. The line was hanging over the highway but was not low enough to touch cars or trucks but probably would have snagged on an 18-wheeler.”

http://www.wapt.com/news/18942…

Conservative “intellectual” John McLaughry on same-sex marriage this morning:

Marriage serves at least three important social functions: procreation and child rearing, mutual care and assistance, and reining in young males with raging hormones by linking approved sex to a serious and long-lasting social commitment.

It’s so hard to debate with people when they don’t even pretend to think, let alone think critically.

(We were raising some eyebrows at the numbers ourselves back a bit… – promoted by odum)

A question by an unnamed Vermont state official at an ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) implementation conference has  Earl Devaney* Chairman of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board questioning job estimates. Devaney said: “This whole thing has got me very nervous.”

*(Devaney was the former inspector general at the Interior Department, he helped unearth the Jack Abramoff scandal)

According to a press pool report from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Implementation Conference, an unnamed state official from Vermont asked if state job numbers on the recovery.gov Web site were made up.

Devaney, according to the pool report, pointed to the difficulty of defining a saved or created job.

“We need to all be playing off the same sheet of music,” Devaney went on. “If I’m going to be held accountable for this Web site, and there’s a graph in there that talks about jobs created or saved, it’s going to be as accurate as I can get it.”

Devaney, according to the pool report, pointed to the difficulty of defining a saved or created job.

And if anyone knows who the Green Mountain stater who asked the original question was,we would love to know .

http://www.propublica.org/ion/…

CAUTION: simple math with no fancy interpretations presented below!

(Unfortunately I still have to refer back to this site for numbers. My problem isn’t with their numbers, but the faulty, deliberately so I believe, interpretations made about the numbers.)

There is one caveat: I can’t account for every vote in my totals below. For example, if somebody had listed Kiss below 3rd ranking, I’d have no way to know. I also have no idea how many folks had somebody other than Kiss, Montrol or Wright as their first choice and also listed Kiss anywhere down ballot. I looked on the Burlington web site and couldn’t find any official breakdown. It should be noted that any ballots I can’t include would only increase the approval numbers I demonstrate below … thus at worst I underestimate the level of support for the final outcome.

These numbers seem to be the accepted official vote tallies for Burlington’s recent mayoral election:

Below seem to be the accepted count for those who voted for Kiss, Montrol or Wright as their first choice:

Add up all the ballots that have Kiss’ name on them … doesn’t matter where. Simplest interpretation is just about everybody with that name on the ballot will be okay to happy with Kiss as mayor.

I come up with 7,089 ballots that had Kiss’ name listed on them. In the last round of counting there were 8,374 ballots counted.

The simplest explanation for the above numbers: about 85% of the ballots cast in the final runoff round are fine with Bob Kiss being mayor! In total? 79% of all the ballots initially cast in the mayoral election listed Kiss as one of the preferences.

So take your pick … 85% or 79% approval of the outcome … it was a great day for Burlington and a huge success for instant runoff voting.

The only anomaly is folks using faulty interpretations of data in an attempt to thwart the election process that delivered what Burlington’s voters so obviously wanted.

There’s a nice little report from the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force.  

I strongly suggest everyone go and read the summary, but I’m writing with a whole other idea.  I think we might have a way to both address civil rights and save Vermont’s economy.  One paragraph from the summary struck me:

Brian Pearl, a vocal opponent of the freedom to marry from Grand Isle, testified graphically about sexual acts.

Is anyone else thinking that Vermont’s best bet is to start an internet pornography business?

Crossposted at P U L S E.

On March 16, 2003, I was a graduate student at the School for International Training in Brattleboro, VT. That morning I recall hearing on Democracy Now! that an Evergreen State College student was run over by an Israeli bulldozer. The girl’s name was Rachel Corrie.

Corrie was defending property belonging to Samir Nasrallah, a local pharmacist. Eyewitness accounts say the bulldozer ran over Corrie twice. The driver claims he didn’t know Corrie was there… That’s pure rubbish. We all know it was deliberate.

I remember going to my Assessment & Evaluation class that day knowing the news. Yet what I remember most were the reactions of two friends and classmates of mine, both of whom went to Evergreen State College with Rachel. Neither of them came to class that day. One wrote an impassioned e-mail to all my classmates about Rachel and the wonderful life she lived. The other was in our on-campus coffee shop. I will never forget her not crying but “wailing” upon hearing the news that Corrie was killed. That memory will forever haunt me.

The following interview was conducted on March 14, 2003… two days before Rachel Corrie was killed. As today marks the sixth memorial of Rachel’s death, I want to play back this YouTube so you can hear Rachel’s words and understand the oppression Palestinians experience on a day-to-day basis. It prides me that there are Americans out there who believe the Israeli occupation is an occupation of violence. We will never forget you Rachel!