Daily Archives: September 19, 2008

Updated “It raises the question — ‘Is Entergy capable of running this plant?'” Wark said.

(Hey, the administration is interested in inspections.  I’m sure the fact that this is an election year is entirely irrelevant. – promoted by JulieWaters)

Is that a real spine or just an election year posture ahead of the curve ?

Better late than never I guess after the last year of downtime,evacuations and leaks.

Could they really be about to stand up for Vermont and against Entergy ?

Douglas administration wants new inspection of Yankee cooling towers

MONTPELIER — The Douglas administration Friday asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to come back to Vermont and reinspect the cooling towers at Vermont Yankee, saying the continuing problems at the Vernon plant were “unacceptable.”

In a sharply-worded letter, David O’Brien, commissioner of the Department of Public Service, asked NRC administrators to do another inspection of the towers and get to the bottom of the continuing problem.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/a…

 This was Gov.Douglas  then July 19,2008

The state Department of Public Service has declined to let members of a panel created by the Legislature to do a special audit of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant join an inspection of the plant set for Monday, officials confirmed Friday.

The Douglas administration has done a bit of a pivot on this after they blocked the Vermont Oversight Panel access to accompany NRC officials in their tour of the Yankee plant back in July.One wonders what might have been revealed in this July inspection if the Oversight Panel had not been denied access by Gov.Douglas .

Gov.Douglas policy post pivot……after the latest leak in the continuing troubled  cooling towers saga  ….Now

Wark said the state wanted the NRC to determine whether inspectors noted all problems in July.

“Did they miss it? What else did they miss?” he said.


Wark said the idea for a management audit came from Arnie Gundersen and the late Lawrence Hochreiter, two members of the Vermont Oversight Panel.

Gundersen, chairman of the panel, said he and Hochreiter pushed for the management audit before the most recent leaks at Yankee and finally got the support of the Department of Public Service.

“The oversight panel recognized the need for a management audit back in July, and we’ve been working with the department on that issue,” Gundersen said.

“Given the cooling tower problems, the transformer fire and related problems, and given the inspection of Indian Point (nuclear plant,) we thought a broader management review of Entergy and Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee would be appropriate,” he said.

On economy, Bernie more right (and more radical) than he may realize

Yesterday’s press release from Senator Sanders’ office yesterday called for a “four point plan” to salvage the economy that included a tax on wealthy Americans to pay for the massive corporate bailouts underway, greater regulation, a new economic stimulus package, and this doozy tossed in there like it was an ol’ casual policy notion (emphasis added):

Third, he said giant businesses like Bank of America should be broken up so no company in the future could bring the American economy down with it. Said Sanders, “This country can no longer afford companies that are ‘too big to fail.’ If a company is so large that its failure would cause systemic harm to our economy, if it is too big to fail, then it is too big to exist.”

Bernie doesn’t know how right he is. And from the tone of his press release, I don’t think he realizes just how radical his suggestion is, either. “Too big to fail” is obviously a ticket for disaster, but its not the size per se that’s the issue – its the overall character of the economic system.

All systems need diversity. It is both the means and the end for functional, healthy systems. If you have any doubt, look to nature as the guide. In terms of process, diverse, complex ecosystems weather diseases, disasters and gradual changes, whereas monocultures don’t. And as far as ends go, the very directionality of the natural world is towards complexity and diversity. Socially, its no coincidence that the “melting pot” US jumped to the top of the international heap by so many metrics, and its no coincidence that now that our cultural and economical diversity has been moving towards the simpler and less diverse, that status is plateauing.

Although I used to feel otherwise, I’ve gotten rather blandly analytical in my old age. The fact is that large scale market capitalism is neither inherently “good” nor inherently “evil” as the more parochial on the different ends of the political spectrum would say. Such dogmatic terms only muddy the water. Terms such as “beneficial” or “destructive” are safer, but even those are too reductive. Capitalism is unique in its organic quality that exists largely independently from the more straightforward organic natures of other large institutions, who owe that quality to a reflection of their human components. Large scale capitalism develops its own organics, and those organics are strangely circular. At smaller scales, capitalism encourages diversity and complexity making for a rollicking robust nature.

But as it moves from the micro to the macro (especially when it truly goes global), it wants to consolidate its new, grander-scale functionalities into sets of intermediary institutions that act as organs, and the system takes on a life of its own – a singular life and, as such, one that works against diversity and complexity.

The diversity point is probably self-evident, but so is the complexity when you think about it. The global economy and all its interdependent institutions creating a cross-border capital circulatory system are not really that complicated when you get into it. I think this is even part of the appeal to laissez faire purists. It’s not that hard to “get” at a fundamental level, and I think some people become so entranced (or even proud of themselves) when they do “get it” that they smile, get an endorphine rush, pat themselves on the back and turn off their brains then and there (Jack Kemp waxing aroused over the Laffer-curve comes to mind…). And the more these transnational systems have grown, the less complex they’ve gotten. Now the some of the absurdities have grown (the much discussed practice of short selling is pretty absurd, in a sense), but absurdities are not complexities.

And because the system has coalesced into something new and big, and also simple (simplistic?) and uniform, its easy for boneheads to throw wrenches into the mix, either through their boneheadedness, or through straight up greed (or both). Insuring bonds like you would a car, for example.

Although I don’t think its looked at this way, regulation has traditionally had the effect of building in barriers to some of these forces towards simplicity and uniformity. When misguided doofuses look at the resulting picture, though, all they see is blockages in the wealth circulatory system, so they want to cut them right out, despite the fact that by doing so, they’re allowing a new institutional entity to evolve that has less and less natural resistance to disaster, disease or gradual changes in the environment. It may get very big very fast, but it wont be long before it has a stroke.

But that’s where we are. The body economic is having a stroke. The Treasury Department and Congress are, at least at this point, trying to come up with a life support system.

Bernie’s suggestion, however – whether he realizes it or not – is to forcibly move back across the line we left behind years ago. By eliminating “too big to fail” corporations, he wants to fundamentally change the character of the global economy – in the process creating far more diversity and complexity in the system, and in that process, making it a far more disease and disaster resistant entity.

That’s not to say that Bernie’s proposal will take us back to purely localized economies – far from it. That’s still another institutional manifestation of capitalism entirely. And whether or not we’d want to turn things back that far or not is a great debate, but one that would take a lot more space.

Still, as far as the current Washington policymakers are concerned, I suspect that Bernie might as well have just recommended we move the US Capital to Mars…

More News You Won’t See about Hurricane Ike

The news blackout is now being called a brownout. Some outlets are sort of covering the davastation caused by Ike, but once again, they are focused on Houston and Galveston, and are largely ignoring the places that were actually hit by the brunt of the storm.

Like Chrystal City. The AP got some good shots, like these two:

 

People have been submitting whatever photos they can find to the site http://jakeabby.com. It’s worth a look. If you want to see what people face in these smaller communities in Ike’s wake.

Google Earth turns out to be a powerful tool for determining what these communities look like pre-and post Ike:

Once again, the old media have left actual reporting to the new media. Unfortunately, not everyone knows how to find the news in the new media, and the new media isn’t dumped straight into people’s living rooms in full color and surround sound on a near-constant basis.

So people still think Ike wasn’t so bad after all.

But it was. It just wasn’t bad enough in the right places.

The “official” body count is now 22. This is DOWN by 28 from 2 days ago (I guess there’s some pretty powerful mojo down Texas-way if they’re now resurrecting the dead.) Did Sarah Palin get her witch-hunting pastor to do some laying on of the hands to a few corpses, or is someone lying?

We know that tens of thousands of people chose to ride out the storm, since it was “only” a cat 2 hurricane. Unfortunately, it was a cat 2 with a storm surge similar in height, and with greater breadth than the one that hit Sri Lanka a few years ago.

The number of missing persons is astronomical. Once quote I read somewhere (no link, sorry, I don’t remember where I saw it) was from a rescue worker surprised at how few people – living or dead – they found when they first got there.

It’s also a bit disconcerting that a lion was on the loose in all this.



[photo AP]

I’m pretty sure I would not want to find myself sharing open space with a lion under any circumstances. And I hope, deeply, that the occupant of the sleeping bag in the photo was long gone before the lion decided to amble into the church.

Why does Jim Douglas feel the need to lie to and insult Vermonters?

( – promoted by JDRyan)

Some consider the fact that we Vermonters repeatedly elect Jim Douglas as well as Bernie Sanders a positive, healthy feature of politics in the Green Mountain State, a sign our democratic process is as healthy as our outdoorsy, covered-bridgey, and still, at times, despite average winter temps increasing four degrees in the past few decades, wonderlandy image.

I beg to differ.

The fact that Vermonters elect Douglas is evidence of the failure of our democracy. Vermont has, in the past, elected Douglas because we are comfortable with him, because he seems like a friendly guy. (Sound familiar?) But he only seems like a friendly guy because he has a master PR organization (funded by our tax money). Douglas has installed PR people in every important state department, and they control public access to information.  Anything positive is trumpeted, anything potentially controversial is buried and all the rest is spun.

Gov. Douglas, you want this year’s election to be about public relations and spin? You got it. Because this time around, you’ve made the largest public relations mistake of your career.

As with all Republican spin, it’s hard to know where to start.

Because Douglas’ PR mistake and serious error in judgment has to do with his dear colleague and friend, Gov. Palin of Alaska, it’s even harder.

First of all, Vermont Public Radio had Douglas on the air right after McCain announced the Palin choice on August 29. Douglas found Palin a very good choice. His reasons:

Palin has brought real leadership to Juneau.

She has brought ethics reform.

She has a strong commitment to combating greenhouse gas emissions.

She has spoken strongly of the need for energy independence and getting away from Big Oil companies.

A little later in the program he even called her an “environmentalist”…

Let’s see:

So, is that what you call an environmentalist?

Gov. Douglas added insult to injury a few days later when he insisted:

I think a lot of Vermonters will identify with her.

Err, no. Quite a few–a majority, I’m willing to bet–of us Vermonters:

  • are not under investigation for ethics violations;
  • do not make a habit of lying to the entire American people about our experience and record;
  • do not believe 20% of the domestic energy supply comes from Alaska (heck, Palin, far from knowing more about energy than anyone else in the US (McCain, incredibly, claimed she did), seems to know less than any Vermonter (except, perhaps Gov. Douglas?);
  • would not put a mining industry attorney in charge of a Sub-cabinet on climate change;
  • are very concerned about greenhouse gas emissions, whereas Palin does not “blam[e] the changes in our climate on human activity“;
  • And while many of us support hunting and are hunters, the whole aerial hunting thing…(see video above)? Wouldn’t go over very well.

    I could go on, and I know you could too.

    So, while a fair number of Vermonters do self-identify as…well, community organizers with real responsibilities…we’re not all that likely to “identify” with Palin.

    But…says Douglas:

    She’s bold and at the same time she is very respectful of other people and very polite.

    Dear Governor Douglas, that’s not what Vermonters call bold, respectful, or polite.

    Then again, Governor Palin did unconstitutionally use her office to support mining interests on a very recent ballot initiative. And I know one Vermonter who can identify with using the governor’s office to support special polluter interests.

    But enough about Douglas, what are other friendly neighborhood Republicans saying about Palin?

    Action Item: Attack on Women’s Choice

    Planned Parenthood and women everywhere need your help.

    On September 25th the 30-day public comment period will end regarding a proposed rule allowing doctors to withhold information from their patients significantly impacting women's right to choose her own health options.

    Please send a quick and easy email to oppose this rule by going here:

    http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/frcp08_adv1?qp_source=frcp08pporg

    From Planned Parenthood today:

    The Bush administration recently proposed a radical federal regulation change that would allow doctors to knowingly withhold information from their patients about widely accepted medical treatment options like birth control, emergency contraception, and abortion services. Even worse, this new rule could allow individual health care providers to redefine abortion to include the most common forms of birth control — and then refuse to provide them.