A stinky situation is brewing in South Burlington. On June 28 and 29, VTrans will replace a culvert liner on Dorset Street near Kennedy Drive. The technique causes a strong odor, like a very pungent epoxy or paint. The state says there is no health risk.
So reads Vermont WCAX news’ almost light hearted report .The situation may be a little more involved. Although the Vermont.gov. website posted a strong smell and odors warning in practically the same don’t worry about a thing language.
This culvert rehab process known as trench-less repairing has in the past raised some legitimate health concerns. Cured-in-place-pipe (CIPP) styrene based technology is a burgeoning repair method for culvert and recently even drinking water pipe rehabilitation. A lining tube is saturated with a styrene based thermosetting resin and installed into the pipe. Subsequent curing with a heat source results in a pipe within a pipe.
No digging, fewer delays and perhaps no problems if done carefully.
The state of Virginia within the last two years revised its procedures and lifted a ban on this repair. In 2007 it was found the process could result in contamination of soils and receiving waters from the release of unacceptably high levels of styrene into the environment.
Water samples collected from pipe outlets at five of the seven CIPP installations showed detectable levels of styrene. Styrene concentrations were generally highest in water samples collected during and shortly following installation. The maximum duration that styrene was detected at any site was 88 days following the CIPP installation.
Although the sites in this study were not directly linked to sources of drinking water, styrene levels at five sites were higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's maximum contaminant level for drinking water of 0.1 mg/L.
Certain measurements were also found to exceed the concentration required to kill 50% of several freshwater aquatic indicator species.
Possible causes included: poor installation that did not contain styrene condensate
uncured resin escaping from the liner
insufficient curing and a degree of permeability in the lining.
Virginia’s substantial modifications to VDOT's CIPP specifications included; An inspector training program
Increased project oversight
Water and soil testing prior to and after CIPP installation.
I'm not much of a political animal myself; but I am coming to a rapid understanding of how exactly the tail wags the dog.
The national example-du-jour of Shirley Sherrod speaks volumes about what a powerful weapon of opportunity the unprincipled right has found in the distribution of misinformation through new media. Ms. Sherrod maintains that she was told to pull over on the road and resign her post immediately because Glenn Beck was going to target her on the rabid Fox.
Of course the whole thing turned out to be a red-herring, but the partisans at Fox and their Republican back-slappers have managed to get plenty of political capital out of embarrassing the White House while distracting the entire country from all of the truly relevant happenings of several news cycles. And it ain't over yet.
Is this the shape of things to come in the era of multi-tasking media consumption? Has the Cynical Right found the ideal way to exploit our ever-shortening attention span? Gone are the inhibitions that used to restrain fantasy in traditional news outlets. Not only can you make any outlandish misrepresentation of the facts that serves your agenda, but now, you may also have every expectation that your broadcast lies will impact policy decisions in the highest offices. And the beauty of it is that there is absolutely no downside for the lying liars and their corporate sponsors. Like Pavlov's dog, the public has been conditioned by reality TV and celebrity tweets to gorge themselves on scandal and speculation. They'll believe anything for five minutes, so long as it's slathered in breathless hyperbole. Just keep it coming and for godssake don't give 'em time to reflect!
This got me to thinking about that dubious Dubie link Julie talks about down below. Wisely, Julie challenged the poster to provide more context, which was never forthcoming. Now, this could be an attempt by some individual who genuinely doesn't support Dubie, but I think it's equally possible that this is another red herring, on the same lines as the Sherrod ruse but much less artful, designed to entrap and embarrass his Democratic opposition. What makes this seem even more likely to me is the error in identifying Dubie as running for "re-election" that appears in the opening statement. It is so glaring as to be easily overlooked by the casual viewer who is just waiting for the video clip to begin. Were anyone to take the bait, weak as it is, Dubie's promoters could have had a field day attacking the Democrats for perpetuating misinformation. Most attractive about this scenario, from Dubie's standpoint, is that it would serve as a marvelous distraction, providing cover for Dubie to dodge truly relevant issues for many days to come. Bait and switch, bait and switch.
Now, as I said before, I am a political neophyte; and Dubie himself doesn't strike me as all that crafty...all that ANYTHING. So I may be completely out-of-order here. Still, I can't help but wonder if all those road trips to court campaign funds might have also netted him a mess of DC dirty tricksters.
Late last night a friend of mine in Washington, DC wrote to tell me that Michele Boyd at Physicians for Social Responsibility in DC was alerting folks that the Senate Appropriations Committee will take action today on its Energy and Water Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2011.
Currently, what's proposed, which we just learned late yesterday, is:
$10 billion in new nuclear loan guarantees (that'd be enough to finance another new reactor, at taxpayer financial risk)
$7 billion in fossil fuel loan guarantees
Up to $3.8 billion in renewables and efficiency loan guarantees.
This notice and a subsequent conversation early this morning concerned me greatly, so I wrote to both Senator Leahy and Senator Sanders.
This winter, Fairewinds Associates' chief engineer Arnie Gundersen uncovered a significant safety flaw in the new generation of nuclear plants, the AP1000. The NRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) took his report so seriously that it asked Arnie to testify in late June for more than an hour. These are the reactors that the Senate is considering for loan guarantees.
The entire letter I sent to Vermont's Senators is posted after the fold.
In response to my letter and emails, I received the following responses from our Senators.
From Senator Leahy's staff this morning:
We are hearing rumors this issue may come up in the Appropriation Committee this afternoon. If it does it will be an amendment offered in Committee and not be a vote in the full Senate.
If an amendment is offered we believe it would be aimed at including additional funds to the loan guarantee program, which Senator Leahy will vote against.
(An update: this video has been removed from youTube. So far, no one has come to take credit for it, so this leads me to believe that my initial assessment of it was entirely accurate. Will the anonymous user who posted it acknowledge what was done here?
This was posted to youTube under the moniker PoliticsVT, who had two videos. They have both been removed. - promoted by JulieWaters)
In the past week, a video's been referenced in the comment threads here that suggests that Brian Dubie wants to tax small stores and that it's okay to tax them as much as we want:
A few problems I see with this:
the quote in question isn't from Brian Dubie, but instead tax commissioner Richard Westman;
the quote itself isn't specifically sourced. It references "Vermont Public Radio" and "April of 2010" but doesn't provide anything specific enough to find out exactly when this statement was claimed to have been made
The quote is taken out of context with no clarity as to what the intent was behind it.
It's extremely easy for me to imagine that this was someone saying that this is what us liberals think, that it's okay to tax mom and pop stores as much as we like. Without a broader context, I don't see how we can make a judgment about this specific quote, but it's presented as some sort of attack on Dubie himself.
Look, we've just seen a really nasty example of what can happen when clips are edited for partisan political purposes. I've no problem with attack ads, but they need to be properly sourced, documented and valid. I don't see an indication that this one is, and given that I asked for clarification from the person who posted the links and never received a response, I'm inclined to think that this is bogus.
I'm sure Dubie would make a horrible governor. He's shown more interest in platitudes than policy. But we need to go after him for what he's actually involved in or avoided.
And yes, I'm going after something produced by someone who clearly shares my goals, because I don't think my goals are truly served by this sort of approach.
It's good for neither politics nor policy to muddy the waters of our debates with this sort of innuendo.
There are plenty of distortions and inaccuracies finding their way into the public forum these days, so it is doubly important that our sterling roster of Democratic gubernatorial candidates remain scrupulous about their facts. If not, there may be hell to pay. This week, when the Shumlin campaign made certain questionable assertions of primacy in the area of single-payor healthcare advocacy, Matt Dunne's campaign responded by crying "foul:"
In a mailing sent out to Vermonters this week, Shumlin writes," "I am the only candidate in this race who has sponsored a single payer health care bill..."
Similarly, in a response to questions from the Burlington Free Press on Vermont's social safety net, Shumlin writes "I am the only candidate who sponsored a single-payer health care bill."
However, in the 1993-1994 Legislative Session, House Bill 0763 titled, "Vermont Health Security Plan/Single-Payer Health Plan" was co-sponsored by several House Members including Matt Dunne. In fact, Dunne has had a long history supporting single payer health care legislation and his current health-care plan is based on a single payer system.
The Dunne campaign is asking the Shumlin campaign for a public apology. It is also demanding that a Dunne-approved correction from Shumlin be sent (at Shumlin's expense) to all the voters who received the original mailer that contained the erroneous statement.
When Obama was running for president there were people saying that he needed to stand up to his attackers. Others, like my friend, fellow blogger, and state Senate candidate Phillip Baruth, said that he knew what he was doing, he'd lived in the country and dealt with racism all his life, and that we should have confidence in him.I wasn't necessarily sold, but it seemed to be working for him so I didn't complain too much.
The basic outlines of the story are clear: Serial liar and right-wing scaremonger Andrew Breitbart published a heavily edited video of two minutes of a speech by Shirley Sherrod, an official at the US Department of Agriculture. Breitbart's claim was that Sherrod is a racist and that she is using her position with the USDA to screw white people. Within seconds the Obama administration leapt into action and fired her without even finding out the truth of the story.
Things have been changing so fast that when I walked out to the end of my driveway this morning the headline on the front page was that Thomas Vilsack was sticking to her firing, even though by now it was clear that the whole thing was built on a lie, but by the time I got back to the house and turned on the radio the same Secretary of Agriculture was considering reconsidering his decision. You can almost picture people running up and down the halls at the White House, bumping into each other, throwing files in the air, and tripping over their own ties.
By the end of the day the White House and Vilsack were apologizing to her, practically begging her to take her job back, and that might happen. Even Breitbart, that lying sack of shit, was pretending to feel sorry for her.
So why is the Obama administration rolling over for a lying, right-wing hit man like Breitbart? What is he really afraid of? There were a lot of people who didn't like it when Obama appointed Rahm Emmanuel his chief of staff, but I kind of liked it because he is a fighter. The problem is, there's no fighting. Just when is this administration going to decide that it's not going to play dead for every right-wing attack?
What's next? Is Obama going to invite Sherrod and Breitbart to the White House for another beer fucking summit?
North Beach Park, Burlington, Vermont USA • (L to R) John Odum, Bill Peberdy (BP), Jack McCullough, Caoimhin Laochdha (in back), Julie Waters (with banjo), Sue Prent, Maggie Gundersen, John Ryan (JD) and Hobbes (Hamburg Summit Mascot) - Missing GMD writers: greenvtster, mataliandy NanuqFC, and kestrel9000 (Ed Garcia)
The Annual Hamburger Summit. There is no political barbecue quite like the Hamburger Summit, held jointly each year by VDB (Vermont Daily Briefing) and those of us here at GMD (Green Mountain Daily).
Some call us a motley crew, but here we are. I couldn't get hold of this photo to put it up with Julie's post picnic post, so get the whole story from Julie here on GMD.
(Another 1st person candidate piece. - promoted by JulieWaters)
Throughout the campaign, we’ve been working to change the culture in Montpelier by engaging Vermonters in the Vermont tradition of public service and inspiring them to get involved in their communities and their state government. By engaging directly with community organizations, those of us in the political sphere can learn first hand the needs of Vermonters, provide authenticity to our civic leaders and give a voice to people who have often been absent from the democratic process.
Nowhere did I see this effort in action more than during a service politics event we held in Montpelier last month. At the event, a group of volunteers from the campaign joined members of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board and members of the Parks Department to prepare a new and improved trail from the Cummings Street low income housing project to the town recreational fields and pool.
When Jim Douglas was running for Senate a long, long time ago, it was congressional pay raises (and the accusation that Senator Leahy was "squealing like a stuck pig.") Against Racine, it was a baseless attempt to tag him as a "flip flopper." Scudder Parker was, nonsensically, "Mr. Property Tax." Clavelle was red-baited as a sandinista. Symington was dinged on her financial releases.
The way Jim Douglas and his election machine played the game was to avoid the issue by finding a way to fan a triviality into a character attack. In other words, politics by smear. It's dishonorable stuff, and Douglas seemed to relish it. On the other hand, it suggests he understood just how weak he was on the issues.
In any case, the question has been whether heir apparent Brian Dubie would resort to the same playbook, and it seems the answer is "yes." In his case, though, he seems content to let the machine's usual suspects do the dirty work for him, softening up the target they've apparently decided they are most likely to face in the General Election: Secretary of State Deb Markowitz. They've done so in a coordinated attack over the past few days, and will continue in an upcoming report on nursing licensing fees due to hit the papers soon. Details after the flip.
When picking a candidate, I generally employ the "who is the most liberal person with the best chance of winning" test. Like many of us, I have used some variation on that test since since the 1980s when I was an 18 year-old casting my first ballot in Burlington.
Deb Markowitz's commitment to progressive policies and her ability to run for office successfully (and her proven ability to manage an elected office transparently and effectively) make her my choice for Governor. In a year when we are blessed with the opportunity to vote for several committed progressives, trusting a particular candidate to run a winning campaign and then govern effectively, carries even more weight.
When Jim Douglas was running for Senate a long, long time ago, it was congressional pay raises (and the accusation that Senator Leahy was "squealing like a stuck pig.") Against Racine, it was a baseless attempt to tag him as a "flip flopper." Scudder Parker was, nonsensically, "Mr. Property Tax." Clavelle was red-baited as a sandinista. Symington was dinged on her financial releases.
