This isn’t so much of a discussion topic but rather an announcement.

Huffington Post’s Off the Bus is looking for help with the upcoming project.

Amanda Michel is the OTB project director (and Burlington, VT native) and they are looking for citizen journalists to cover Vermont politics. Here’s what she’s looking for

CAN YOU HELP US? Join OffTheBus’ Special Ops team, and report back to us on what’s happening in your town and state.

No traditional media organization can afford to dispatch reporters all over the country, and certainly not this “early” in the general election. But that’s exactly what HuffPost’s Off The Bus, with 2500 members, can do.

Last Monday Sen. McCain opened a campaign office in St. Paul, Minnesota. Tuesday Sen. Obama set up shop in Orlando, Florida. Friday McCain and the GOP will cut the ribbons on their new HQ in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. By next week scores of new volunteers and campaign staffers will be crawling all over the battleground states in search of votes.

We’ve got a real competitive advantage over traditional media, but that may not last long.

As an OffTheBus Special Ops recruit you’ll receive a reporting assignment each week. We’ll equip you with special reporting guidelines for each assignment.

The information you relay to us — contact information for local grassroots leaders, event locations and details, and more — will be stored in our database, and then made available as a resource to our members and writers.

To find out more click here or sign up here. I know they’re looking for photos of the state dem and rep party headquarters, so if anyone can help them out, that would be great. Thanks a lot.

… and BTW, wait to see what I have in store for Huff Post and GMD!  

Senator Russ Feingold on the FISA capitulation, expected to be taken up by the Senate this week.

“Sen. Dodd and I and Sen. Leahy are going to do everything we can to stop this mistake”

I hope so. Reid’s running roughshod over the Judiciary Committee and his consistent procedural deference to Senator Rockefeller’s Intelligence Committee agenda on this issue is giving Vermont’s Leahy – much touted as one of the most powerful members of the Senate – the untoward appearance of being something of a floormat. What’s worse is that it hasn’t seemed to bother him much.

Here’s hoping that Feingold’s words are a precursor to Leahy getting angered into action.

CALL TO ACTION: Jane Hamsher at firedoglake is coordinating and tracking calls to Senators such as Leahy. Click here to go to the post for the number, and to plug into her call tracking system.

Well, you might not be a fan of nuclear power, what with hidden carbon impact and all.  But in the short term, it's likely to be a strong player in the mix of power sources.

Years ago I read a letter to the editor in the Times Argus in which the author was advocating for micro reactors to be planted around the state and tied to the grid.  The reactors, the author wrote, would be very similar to those that power the US Navy's fleet of submarines.

At the time, my reaction was something along the lines of, “Ok, here's a crazy person who seems to 'spreading the risk' of containment failure throughout the Green Mountains.  No dice.”  Wel, it turns out the letter writer wasn't crazy after all.  In fact, according to “The Encyclopedia of the Earth,” US Congress has alread funded nine separate designs which “could possibly be deployed by 2010.”  The date of the article is Feb 12, 2008.

Interesting, eh?  Good, bad, or ugly, it looks like small nuclear reactors might become part of our energy future.

Below the fold:  Some snippets from the EoE article, and a link to a detailed blog article with pictures. 

For the full text:  http://www.eoearth.org/article/Small_nuclear_power_reactors

Why small reactors?

Today, due partly to the high capital cost of large nuclear power reactors generating electricity via the steam cycle and partly to consideration of public perception, there is a move to develop smaller units. These may be built independently or as modules in a larger complex, with capacity added incrementally as required. Economies of scale are provided by the numbers produced. There are also moves to develop small units for remote sites. The IAEA defines “small” as under 300 MWe. 

 US Congress funding:

US Congress is now funding research on both small modular nuclear power plants (assembled on site from factory-produced modules) and advanced gas-cooled designs (which are modular in the sense that up to ten or more units are progressively built to comprise a major power station). A US DOE report in 2001 considered nine designs which could possibly be deployed by 2010. 

So this is all news to me.  Who knows what we're going to see 20 years from now.  In the meantime, the Ontario government is planning to build a new, “traditional” nuclear facility in Toronto. 

Crossposted @ www.vermontbloggernaut.blogspot.com

At no point am I a fan of the oil companies, or many of the foreign governments/cartels behind them.  As far as I’m concerned they’re drug dealers on a much larger scale.  They got our whole planets economy hooked on their stuff, and eliminated any threats of competition to it.  They suppressed technology and inventions to get us where we are today; between a rock and a hard place.  Nobody, not even governments are strong enough to stand up to them.

That said I strongly feel that the United States is very much in the wrong by trying to tax oil companies windfall profits.  That is, while they’re still taxing us at the pump.  It’s clearly double dipping; tax users, and tax the suppliers.  Where does the taxing end?

Guess what, peoples wages aren’t going up, and because of the high prices people are driving less.  Time for the state and federal governments to wake up!  Time to find a new way to pay for roads and bridges because the projections won’t ring true, the budget shortfalls are coming; plan for it NOW.  End the regressive tax on gasoline, the incentive to cut down on use is already there!

If you want to make a windfall profits tax, make it across the board for ALL corporations.  Why single out the oil companies, and leave the war profiteers like Halliburton off the hook?  Any companies that make an excess percent of their normal profits, has to pay a certain amount of that percent to the government.  It’s simple.  Use this money to pay for state and federal infrastructure needs like bridges and roads, and pay off the national debt.  If it goes into the general fund it will just get eaten up by pork projects, and these don’t help the nation.

These are tough times, and they’ll only get tougher ahead.  Our nation needs to stop, assess, think, plan, and act.  By having a little foresight and acting now, we can get our country back on track.  We need to wrestle it back from the grasp of greedy corporations and foreign governments/cartels!

Here's a link I just got from Joanna Cole. I don't know her personally, so I can't vouch for her, but she does sound like someone whose values line up with the typical (is there such a thing?) GMD reader. 

Follow up at her site, but here's some of what she has to say:

 Goals:

The New North End of Burlington needs a woman's voice to help balance all the male voices.
I want to help bring about a State of the Art Healthcare Plan for all Vermonters that we can be proud of, leading the nation.

Issues:

1. Healthcare for all including Mental Healthcare.
2. Energy Efficiency.
3. Finding a new way to fund Education (fairer than based on property taxes)