The leak that started Jan .7 is still leaking.  It is a 4″ steam pipe coming out of the reactor core.But the spinners spin the situation as naturally being under control and the NRC’s Sheehan as always makes it sound almost routine. Nothing to see here.Worth noting that in the last dog and pony publicity tour Yankee had through the plant as part of it’s image fluff-up no reporters were allowed . Jay Thayer Entergy VP said recently “We’re trying to bring a lot of the nuclear material down to a reading level where it will be understood by lay people and the general public,” Well most if not all lay people will understand leaky valve and unable to repair.

After two attempts, maintenance personnel at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant have been unable to plug a leak in a pipe coming out of the reactor core. The leak was discovered on Jan. 7 in a valve gasket in a pipe in the plant’s reactor water clean up system. The leak rate of less than one-tenth of a gallon a minute is well within the plant’s technical specifications, he said, and is in the form of a steam plume. The leaky valve is in a four-inch pipe.

Ultra Light flexible non-restrictive ,regulating courtesy of the NRC

One option would be to power down the plant and install a replacement valve. Or it can continue to operate until the next scheduled or unscheduled outage and replace the valve then. Flexible ,regulating “The plant can continue to operate with the leakage for the time being,” said NRC’s Sheehan. “The leakage is being collected and then cleaned up.”

http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_11704641

(Bumpbed back up to the top. – promoted by JulieWaters)

Yes, three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.

• Total number of GMD diaries (as of the writing of this diary – includes all user diaries and draft diaries that might never have made it): 4020
• Total number of GMD diaries by Jack McCullough alone (as of the writing of this diary): 101
• Total number of GMD pageviews (give or take…no site meter for the first month): approximately 1,332,000
• Most unique visitors to GMD in one day?: Approximately 32,000 (to view this diary)
• Highest user ID number (as of the writing of this diary): 1044
• Very first “real” GMD diary? VT Anti-Choice Forces Hitting Town Meetings (Wed Feb 15, 2006 at 01:13:45 AM EST)
• Number of diaries that used the word “impeachment”: 309

And now, for the trivia contest! The first folks to get right answers into the diary comments win the prize listed below. At least until I post the answers, then the game is over. And I'll do that whenever I get around to it. Let's say late Monday (and no, front pagers are NOT eligible. Buy yer own GMD schwag).

Hard trivia question: What was the first prominent national blog to put a link to GMD on its blogroll? PRIZE: A GMD bumper sticker!!! (Answer: MyDD.com)

Really hard trivia question: What local political figure stepped up to speak for Vermont Democrats by saying the following about GMD – “some of the local Dems are starting to get turned off on this site and the hate that is begining to spew here” ? PRIZE: A GMD mug!!! (Answer: Former VT GOP Director and current head of the housing section of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, Tayt Brooks!)

Super-amazingly hard GMD trivia question: When the blog first started, there were four people who agreed to be front pagers – myself, kestrel9000 (then blogging under the username Ed Garcia), Jack McCullough, and 1 other person who never posted a diary, and informed me a couple weeks in that she just couldn't make the commitment after all. Who was this person? (Note: There's no way in hell anybody could know this… I don't know if Jack would even remember, so just go for the wild guesses – you might get lucky). PRIZE: A GMD sweatshirt!!! (Answer: Former Windham County Democratic Committee Chair, Lynn Bedell!)

UPDATED (& hijacked by) Caoimhin:  Birthday Announcement & Update, after the flip . . .

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY John Odum

Happy Birthday, John, and know you have at least a couple of these babies coming your way.

Now, Enjoy Your Birthday!!!  Encore . . .

— from all the DFHs

{Cross-posted on Broadsides.org}

Wait a second. I’m starting to think I saw this movie. You know, the one where the president at a time of crisis rushes around in a hyperkinetic fit telling us to follow his plan or face death to nearly everything and everyone we care about. And, by now, we all know how those movies end.

In the days after 9/11, President George W. Bush grabbed the bullhorn at the site of the former-Twin Towers and went rushing into what can only honestly be called a maniacal, ill-informed, ill-targeted, tragically executed and otherwise disastrous grand plan to topple Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Why? Weapons of mass destruction, of course.

But the overly-hyped Bush, jacked up by the tales of macho-triumph being spun by Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, put logic on hold and, instead, exported his fear and loathing to whip the nation into a malleable mob that would join the great suspension of logic and support any and all rash military acts as “the only thing” we could do. Well, that or face lung lesions and death from the onslaught of chemical and biological weapons that were  “just about” to rain down upon us.

They even added color to their great cartoon caper: The ridiculous color-coding of the nation’s risk alert status. That, my friends, was nothing but an elaborate psy-ops orchestrated upon each of us who drank from the chalice of American Culture enough to watch, see or read about the dangling lights of fear, fear and more fear. And they knew that when they needed something – say, a new bomber, bomb target or tax cut – all they had to do was up the fear meter and, as a result, scare/shock us into submission.

But now Obama’s got his hands on the fear joystick. And, sadly, he didn’t seem to learn much from the grand misadventures of Bush.

Obama, of course, was the unfortunate recipient of a nation spinning out of control economically. Thanks, George, indeed. So he certainly deserves a moment or two worth of understanding. But those moments are up for me.

Obama’s now rushing around with a metaphorical bullhorn of his own, yelling to anyone who will listen that we must throw one trillion dollars more to corporate criminals. That, or face a hideous economic death to anything and everyone we love.

Hmmm, smells like weapons of economic destruction to me.

And please, don’t misconstrue any of this to think I’m belittling the economic crisis this nation (and world) is facing. Sorry, but you don’t need an economist to know which the money winds are blowing today. Besides, I think those of us swimming at or near the bottom understand this economic crisis a whole hell of a lot better than the stuff-shirts who keep gallivanting before Congress with their hat in hand and their crocodile tears announcing that they’re now willing to forgo their bonuses for the year. Oh, the sacrifices!

Sorry, but that’s like letting a bank robber go free because they’ve promised not to rob again for a year.

Like Bush in his post-9/11 coronation of our new state-of-fear, Obama is flying the fear flag in the face of the economic catastrophe that has landed in his lap. According to Obama, we have no time. We have no options. And we must act now. Or else.

As much as I keep hoping for the director of this movie to step in and yell, “cut, cut, cut,” realizing it’s feeling all too familiar to last year’s movie, it’s not happening. Worse, it’s working – Obama is convincing that malleable mob to rush to action once again. Silly America, when will we ever learn?

Make no mistake, today’s economic crisis is Obama’s 9/11. It’s the defining crisis of his presidency. And, unfortunately for the believers in real change, it’s a crisis that Obama is already mishandling.

In his rush to act, Obama has entered the shark pool of big money and big influence and made nice with them all, resulting in a “solution” that can only honestly be called a maniacal, ill-informed, ill-targeted, tragically executed and otherwise disastrous grand plan to save a nation’s economy.

I know we’re in the Twitter and Blackberry age, whereby everything has to happen fast, fast and faster, and where everything that has to be said better fit in a “subject line,” but, my goodness, can’t we take a breath as a nation once in a while? We Twittered our way to war, yellow-ribboned ourselves in deeper, and now seem ready to instant message ourselves to economic oblivion.

In other words, shallow fucking haste. Or paper mache principles. Or both.

The economic crisis is now Obama’s – no matter what he inherited. He’s made it the first act in his very own presidential drama. And, sadly for us all, it will be the defining act that will ultimately pop the remaining hope balloons and send a nation back to reality: We got fooled again.

Obama had his moment served to him before Chief Justice Roberts had time to flub up his oath of office. Dangling there on the key chain handed over by the oh-so-happy to get out of there Bushies was a neon light that certainly flashed: Economic Disaster.

But Obama has failed in his response so far. He has cow-towed to the economic elite. He has bent over for only one consitutuency: The Right. And he has wielded his fear stick and told us all that we must do as his administration says or face … or face… or face… (oh yeah) the same old shit that got us into this mess: Corrupt power from the top.

Oh well, at least we all forgot about the war, the lack of health care, the lack of an adequate safety net, and the continued mockery of our dreams and ideals.

Go Obama, Go!

(and no, I’m not sure which is which):

Is there really $30 million in the new stimulus package devoted to saving the salt marsh mouse in  Nancy Pelosi’s district?

That’s what some conservatives are now charging, and the claim seems to be gaining some traction with elected GOP officials and conservative media outlets, who are using it to argue that the bill is stuffed with Dem pork.

But there isn’t any such money in the bill. And Pelosi’s office is saying that the claim is a “total fabrication.”

. . .

But I just contacted the House GOP staffer who wrote the initial email laying out this talking point, and he conceded that the claim by conservative media that the mouse money is currently in the bill is a misstatement. “There is not specific language in the legislation for this project,” he said.

The staffer held to the claim that the mouse money would ultimately be spent, however, arguing that the bill’s passage would ensure that money would ultimately go to the unnamed agency. “If the bill passes, the project will be funded according to what the relevant agency told our staff,” he said. “The bottom line is, if this bill becomes law, taxpayers will spend 30 million on the mouse.”

But Pelosi’s staff disputes even this point, arguing that the only projects being referred to here are federal wetland restoration projects – and that this wasn’t even Pelosi’s project to begin with, despite claims about “Pelosi’s mouse.”

(Pelosi’s Office: Conservative Talking Point About $30 Million For Mice Is “Fabrication”, The Plum Line (blog))

A few months ago, I posted what’s the purpose of a taser.  Today, we see a remarkably similar story:

In their ensuing struggle with Robinson, police said he began moving toward the knives. Post and another officer swept Robinson’s legs to knock him down, according to affidavits, but Post slipped on the beer-soaked floor and landed on a bottle.

With Robinson concealing his hands and continuing to resist, Post said he fired his Taser into the center of Robinson’s back. Robinson stopped fighting after a five-second burst and officers were able to cuff him…

We need an active policy about when and where to use tasers, and that policy needs to be held up to public scrutiny.

Speaker Smith and Senate Leader Shumlin, in a bold attempt to take Douglas’s issues and positioning out from under him have proposed a dramatic restructuring in state government; consolidating the Department of Labor and Department of Economic Development and dissolving of the Agency of Commerce.

The move would eliminate several jobs, move others, as well as outsource many tourism-related functions to the private sector through grantmaking. In addition, many of the current responsibilities of the Department of Housing and Community Affairs would be transferred to a beefed-up VHFA and Housing and Conservation Board (see the fact sheet that went with the press release below the fold).

So a totally surprising, bold, and deft (to keep it so under wraps) move. It’s total Shumlin style, but with a finesse and discipline that Shumlin by himself could never show, and suggests that the Senate President has found in Speaker Smith and Majority Leader Nease fellow political gamesmen who can pull off the implementation of these games. So what on Earth am I concerned about?

Simply that, as those who have seen Spinal Tap know, “it’s a fine line between clever and stupid.” And if you’re gonna live on that line, eventually you’ll cross it, because nobody is ever as clever as they think they are.

Here’s the thing – this proposal is big, and its impacts are unclear… except for the fact that the impacts will be big, particularly for many constituents and advocacy groups that are critical allies for the Democratic leadership (such as the VSEA). Allies that did not know this was coming and did not see it coming. And as dramatic as this is politically, those allies will be less concerned with politics than policy, and when the dust settles, a lot of those critical allies will certainly feel shut out – and may well feel pissed off, particularly if there prove to be unforseen policy implications (and I’m sure we’ll get to those in coming days).

Now maybe this time it’ll all be fine. I hope so, ’cause it’s sweet to see our side be the bold, clever side for a change. Great, actually. But given this announcement and the Speaker’s recent surprise infrastructure-based stimulus proposal, are we to assume that this is the new modus operandi? Two weeks from now will we all be blindsided by a radical new environmental permitting regime? A complete overhaul of school financing? And all crafted behind tightly closed doors with an eye towards snagging Republican talking points?

Two things. One: the activists and advocates who work, network, promote and lobby on the issues affected by such stealth policy swerves will get very tired very quickly of being left in the dark and blindsided – and critical relationships could suffer (especially when & if the policy implications prove problematic).

Two: Pulling these kind of rabbits out of the hat in an ongoing way takes a fine and firm level of control. Control over the caucus (including keeping many fellow legislators in the dark), control over the message, and control over everything else that gets proposed, advanced or promoted in and around the Statehouse. Dramatic moves like this are always predicated on very specific conditions in the political environment – and those conditions can change the day before a carefully laid secret master plan is announced. Clever has the potential here of turning into too-clever-by-half.

I’m thrilled to see bold and aggressive tactics from the Democratic leadership here – I just hope Mssrs. Shumlin and Smith do not make the classic mistake of overestimating themselves and getting burned. None of us are really as smart as we think we are, and they should take care not to either overextend or build communications houses-of-cards.

Senator Shumlin and Speaker Smith’s Proposal to Consolidate the Department of Labor

and the Department of Economic Development

? Combine Department of Economic Development with the Department of Labor

? Transition the majority of the Department of Tourism and Marketing to the

private sector, public-private partnerships or non-profits as appropriate.

o Most of the total budget would be redirected as a grant. A private entity

made up of industry stakeholders will be responsible for promotion and

operate VermontVacation.com. The grant will be overseen by a policy

staff of three to four positions.

o Vermont Life Magazine will remains in the Department of Labor and

Economic Development.

o Two Exempt positions (Commissioner and Principal Assistant) will be

eliminated and the savings will accrue to the General Fund.

o Four or more Classified positions will be eliminated and the savings will

be included in the grant to the outside entity. The expectation is that some

of these positions will be employed by the outside entity to perform the

needed functions.

? Transfer most of the duties of the Department of Housing and Community Affairs

to VHFA and VHCB. Historic Sites and Preservation functions will be

transferred to other Departments.

o The housing and planning functions will be transferred, with the existing

funding, into VHFA and VHCB. Policy oversight will remain with a staff

of three legal and planning positions in a small division of the Department

of Labor and Economic Development.

o The VHCB Board will be appointed by the Governor, the President Pro

Tem, and the Speaker of the House.

o Fourteen Classified positions will be eliminated. The associated savings

will be distributed to VHFA and VHCB, with the expectation that many

positions will transition to these entities.

o Historic Sites and Historic Preservation and Activities will be moved to

Buildings and General Services or Forest, Parks and Recreation.

o Historic Preservation Tax Credit activities will be moved to the Tax

Department.

o One Exempt position (Deputy Commissioner) will be eliminated and the

savings will accrue to the General Fund.

? Eliminate the Agency of Commerce and Community Development

Administration

o Six Exempt positions will be eliminated and savings will accrue to the

General Fund.

o Two Classified positions will be eliminated and the savings will accrue to

the General Fund.

? Thirty-five state positions would be eliminated (11 exempt and 24 classified) with

the expectation that some of these positions will transition to the outside entities

newly tasked with these responsibilities.

Do we really want it to be relicensed?

Six years ago in 2003 Governor Douglas  declared “After more than a decade of discussion we can, and we must, act now.” Now  State Commerce Secretary Kevin Dorn says he wishes the environmental groups would stop drawing attention to  a book by Peter Greenberg.

The book in question is “Don’t Go There!: The Travel Detective’s Essential Guide to the Must-Miss Places of the World.” in which he states

“In 1999, two dogs died after ingesting Lake Champlain’s blue-green algae-covered water. How bad is that? … The water often looks cloudy and green and smells foul, due to algae blooms, and the depletion of the lake oxygen has affected fish … Beaches along the lake are frequently closed in order to safeguard human and animal health ….”

But wait there is more.Another group Secretary Dorn may wish would stop talking about he condition of the lake may be the press release from the U.S. Geological Survey(USGS) that states  

A variety of man-made chemicals has been found in the streams and wastewaters that discharge into Lake Champlain. The chemicals found include pesticides, fire retardants, fragrances, detergent degradates, and caffeine. The chemicals were found at extremely low concentrations, measuring a few parts per billion. The concentrations were highest in waters released by sewage treatment plants, combined sewer overflows and small urban streams. The lowest concentrations were in larger rivers, an undeveloped stream, and the lake.

Although the concentrations were low, the significance of such a mixture in the environment is unknown. How these chemicals affect fish and human health at the levels found is not well understood and an area of ongoing research.

All this on the heals of this summer’s EPA report stating that the Vermont must do a better job in its clean-up efforts.This report caused an unusually angry response from the Governor and the EPA later backed off slightly perhaps under pressure .

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/a…

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

http://governor.vermont.gov/to…

The stinkin’ truth on the lake

The Free Press Outdoor column weighs in on the Lake or as the articles title says the stinkin’ truth .Fisherman are right on the frontline line and see the living prove of a troubled lake . The Governor’s cheerleading rings more and more hollow as he tries to find a way to squirm his way off this hook .

Is Champlain a disaster? Well, maybe not yet, but if we use Champlain’s fish populations as our litmus test, something is surely amiss. And it does seem to be getting worse.

We catch pike with these huge, ugly growths (lymphosarcoma) and we’re bracing for the arrival of the fish-killing VHS disease, which, we’ve been glumly assured, will be here before you know it.

The fishing can be good — no doubt about it — but there’s a strange feel on Lake Champlain these days, as if nature is seriously whacked and careening in the wrong direction from which there will be no return.

I have no idea whether Greenberg is a fisherman, but as far a truth-sayer? Well, he ain’t far off.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

Entergy wanted to raise a bit under $200 million in the market, then decided to try for $500 million, but got no takers.

They were so sure of themselves, they prematurely included money from the sale in their 4th quarter financial results.

Now it’s estimated Entergy’s share price will drop by 3.5% to make up for the failure to remarket this debt.

I think this company is in trouble, and so does the market.

http://247wallst.com/2009/02/1…

Entergy Pulls Remarketing Offer (ETR)

Posted: February 12, 2009 at 10:44 am

Entergy Corporation (NYSE:ETR) was unable to find buyers for $500 million worth of Senior Notes that are a component the company’s 7.625% Equity Units (NYSE:ETRPrA) due February 11, 2011. It has canceled the remarketing period for the notes.

….

The bad news is that Entergy had reported its fourth quarter earnings including the remarketed shares. Because that didn’t happen, the company will need to include the shares in its per share calculations for 2008, “causing the number of shares to increase compared to the amount reflected in the release.”

Ouch. At the end of October 2008, Entergy had about 189 million shares outstanding, so the share dilution here is about 3.5%. Not awful, but shares are down nearly 2% in early trading.

Paul Ausick

February 12, 2009

Just four days after his appearance was announced, Ben Stein withdrew as the prospective commencement speaker at UVM’s graduation ceremony in May.

In his place, former Vt. Governor and chair of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, will address the graduates.

University Communications announced Dean’s appearance on Friday.

(Dean to replace Stein as speaker, UVM Cynic, 02/17/09)