If this sounds familiar, maybe it's because you read it here a couple of weeks ago. As much of a colossal media titan as Green Mountain Daily is, I'm glad to get the added eyeballs that the Free Press delivers.
(This flew under the radar yesterday…. but still important. – promoted by Christian Avard)
Financial problems may yet get the old nukes. Enexus the Entergy shell company that Vermont Yankee would have been part of is now on hold .Money is too tight and the markets uncertain.The current upheaval on Wall Street also substantially shrunk the decommissioning fund Entergy is supposed to maintain for the future.One wonders how fast Enexus might have crumbled in the recent mayhem in the money world.How’s a giant out of state company to run it’s five aging nuclear plants at a profit if it can’t spin them off into a protective shell ? Put them in a shell the liability stays in and the profit flows out .
Alex Schott, spokesman for Entergy in New Orleans, said Tuesday that Wall Street uncertainty led the company to put the creation of Enexus Energy Corp. on hold, but he stressed the company was still pursuing regulatory approvals.
Entergy still needs the approval of the Vermont Public Service Board and an administrative law judge in the state of New York before the plans go ahead.
Entergy had announced the spinoff a year ago, initially calling the new company SpinCo. The project has run into strong opposition in Vermont, especially in the 2008 Legislature, which raised questions about the financial stability of the proposed new company, especially in light of the fact that Vermont Yankee’s decommissioning fund was still underfunded
Gov. James Douglas vetoed a bill that would have required Entergy to either fully fund the cleanup fund, which is anywhere from $400 million to $600 million short of estimated costs, or provide a guarantee that it would.
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081029/NEWS/810290299/1003/NEWS02
It’s illustrated extremely well in the thread on this blog The latest WCAX poll: Symington and Pollina tied (and Douglas’s strategy revealed?).
Go ahead read it: the thread devolves into blaming Pollina and shouts to close down dissent and discussion … all because Pollina is obviously doing just as well, and maybe better, than Symington in the latest polling.
That is fear you read in that thread … the same thing the Republican Party has thrived on for decades, kept the Democratic Party compliant to the Repubs for decades, and helped do such as pass the misnomered PATRIOT Act and Military Commissions Act … oh … things like this:
“I asked him if he had a badge and he pulled out a white and blue laminate card with his name on it,” Griego. “It wasn’t even a badge, but it said ‘Al Romero, private investigator.’ He came in and he started asking me about my grandmother and I was trying to tell him that she didn’t live here. He’s like ‘OK, so let me just write some stuff down.'”
Griego said that Romero asked her questions about her grandmother’s voter registration card; her grandmother lives in a trailer down the street, but receives her mail at the house, she said.
“It freaked me out when he got upset, when I did tell him that, regardless of what happens, my grandmother is voting and it’s OK for her to vote.”
“He tried to tell me to tell her to be careful when she’s voting. He was trying to tell me stuff to scare her from voting.”
Bojorquez also said her mother felt wary about the visit.
“My mom is confused because she doesn’t understand why she’s being put through this because she voted. She doesn’t trust anybody anymore,” Bojorquez said, requesting that her mother’s name not be published again.
(GOP lawyer refuses to deny private eye visits, New Mexico Independent, 10/23/08)
(Thankfully ACORN is not full of fear and apparently is responding … see this Huffington Post story.)
AND FOLKS HERE WANT TO GIVE IN TO THAT????
The last time I checked my vote belonged to me. Not Pollina, Symington, Douglas, any of you or anybody else. Oh … by the way … about your vote? That’s yours!
Please do as you wish with it. I may disagree with your decision to vote for Symington or Douglas or someone else, but I respect your right to do so. I may disagree with your reasoning, and I certainly have no problem engaging in discussion or argument about your reasoning, but I will not try to shut you up.
And I will not become fearful because of your decisions to act in a manner you see most fit.
(PS. Did you ever consider this is exactly the reaction someone like Douglas would hope to see from the ranks of the Democratic Party faithful?)
(Semi-update disclosure…. I tweaked some text below to better make my point. Ah, the power of being a site admin…)
We needed a real poll and here it is, reflecting the change in the air that has been present ever since the Rasmussen fiasco of a poll gave Pollina a new boost. From WCAX:
The poll shows Republican Jim Douglas has 47 percent of the vote, Democrat Gaye Symington 24 percent and Independent Anthony Pollina a very close third with 23 percent.
So what’s with the big change? Although such generalizations are never absolute, there’s a real difference in the hardcore supporters of Symington vs. Pollina. Symington’s crowd really has its eyes on only one prize, and they’ve become utterly deflated as they’ve seen that gap continue to be so large. Morale is in the crapper.
Pollina supporters, on the other hand, are often just as passionate (sometimes more so) about beating Democrats as Republicans. So the then-illusory prospect offered to them by Rasmussen of beating the Democrat fired them up as much as anything. Morale is soaring, and what was illusory is illusory no longer.
And many in the neutral zone of the left are likely responding to that difference – exuberance versus glumness. Moths prefer the flame to the sad clown (is that a mixed metaphor? What is that?).
But I think it brings to light the Douglas strategy of late very, very clearly. A strategy conventional-wisdom-gurus Eric Davis and Garrison Nelson apparently haven’t figured out yet. And its smart.
The notion that Douglas is afraid of Pollina is something I can hardly type without cracking up. Republicans are the last people who think Pollina could ever be elected Governor – especially over Douglas (hey, don’t shoot the messenger, here…). But they are concerned about the prospect of their man Jim losing in the Legislature. If he comes in under 50%, there are lots of Democratic legislators just itching at the chance to vote him out. Trust me.
But here’s the thing: they know if Symington doesn’t come within 10 points of a victory, Dem legislators will be hard pressed to justify electing her. And I think its safe to say that neither Symington nor Pollina will be willing to help give the other public support and cover under such a sceario if they come in at number 3 (which is revolting, frankly).
So they’ve figured out the obvious – Symington’s support is inversely proportional to Pollina’s. Therefore, if they don’t consider Pollina a threat, and Symington has to be kept as far out of range as possible, ignoring Pollina becomes just plain stupid. Run against both of them, equating them and raising Pollina’s profile – insure a low split. The most basic of math, and way too easy. If they were scared of Pollina, they wouldn’t be running these kinds of ads, they’d be hitting him on the Milk Company and the Campaign Finance flip-flops. They’d be mean.
This stuff? Well look at the reaction. It’s just pumping Pollina up.
The only – and I mean only – way around this is if Symington and Pollina make a pledge now to throw in with the number two in the legislature and start priming their voters and nervous legislators for the possibility. That becomes a net plus for us because if either of them were running at Douglas head on, it seems highly unlikely that they could keep him below 50% on their own. Both of their negatives are too high.
Fat freakin’ chance of that happening, though.
This is just fluff, but I thought it might be fun to share. PoliticsHome.com is an elections news aggregator site run out of England which has a page tracking the US Elections. As part of that, they have a panel dubbed the Online100, which is a combination of left, right, center and “non-aligned” participants in the greater blogosphere (including major media blogs). Everyday they ask us a couple questions and post the survey response. Today, they asked us the “big” question, and here's the just-released result:
The Blogosphere Predicts:
5% margin of victory to Obama
Electoral College: Obama 338, McCain 200
The PoliticsHome.com Online100 Panel, the daily poll of leading online voices in the United States, has issued its prediction of the Presidential Election result next week. Each member of the panel was asked to predict which candidate will win, and by what percentage margin. The average prediction was then calculated at 5%. The panel was also given a list of each of the potential battleground states and asked to predict the winner. The majority winner for each state was taken as the result.Well known names on the Online100 panel include Arianna Huffington, Karl Rove, Joe Klein, Joe Trippi, Gerard Baker, Mike Allen, Mark Halperin, Mark Blumenthal, Charles Johnson, Dana Milbank, Jonah Goldberg, John Fund, Jake Tapper, Chuck Todd, Marc Ambinder and Andrew Sullivan. The survey is anonymous and PoliticsHome does not release individual results.
The Online100 panel consists of 100 leading online voices, weighted evenly between right-leaning, left-leaning and non-aligned, and contains a spectrum of voices from the online mainstream media, big national blogs, and statewide blogs. PoliticsHome launched in the United States in August in association with Pollster.com.
The Electoral Map: Blogosphere Predicts
The panel sees Obama winning the popular vote by a five percent margin, and it sees him coverting that margin into 338 electoral votes, 68 more than the needed 270, and 52 more than the 286 won by Bush in 2004.The panel presented a list of 19 contested states and were asked to choose who would win on November 4th: “Toss up” or “don't know” were not options.
The panel predicts Obama will win 11 out of 19 states still in play, with McCain prevailing in Indiana, North Carolina, Missouri and West Virginia. However, Obama sweeps the battleground states of Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico; five states carried by President Bush in 2004.
BATTLEGROUND STATE
PREDICTION COLORADO DEMOCRAT FLORIDA DEMOCRAT GEORGIA REPUBLICAN INDIANA REPUBLICAN IOWA DEMOCRAT MINNESOTA DEMOCRAT MISSOURI REPUBLICAN MONTANA REPUBLICAN NEVADA DEMOCRAT NEW HAMPSHIRE DEMOCRAT NEW MEXICO
DEMOCRAT NORTH CAROLINA REPUBLICAN NORTH DAKOTA REPUBLICAN OHIO DEMOCRAT PENNSYLVANIA DEMOCRAT SOUTH DAKOTA REPUBLICAN VIRGINIA DEMOCRAT WEST VIRGINIA REPUBLICAN WISCONSIN DEMOCRAT
(Important diary, but you see in it the real problem with holding Douglas accountable… the blogs cant do the campaign’s, the legislature’s, the press’s and the AG’s job for them. – promoted by odum)
Jim Douglas has continued his polling expenditures and must know something the rest of us only suspect. This race is tight and Douglas is very worried about breaking 50%.
Could a scandal finally break Douglas’ calm demeanor? One involving taxpayer money and dirty campaigning, at a time when the unemployment is at a record high?
Every major elected official inlcuding Bush, Leahy, Welch, and every other US Senator, Congressperson and Governor knows that you can campaign on the public dime but you need to pay some, or at least PRETEND to pay, the taxpayer back.
But NOT Douglas:
After a week of dodging repeated questions about whether the Douglas campaign follows Dean’s lead, the governor’s campaign manager Dennise Casey told “Fair Game” on Monday: “No, we don’t.” (Seven Days, Shay Totten)
This is a CRAZY big scandal…
And you can even tell Douglas want to sweep it under the rug by “dodging repeated questions”. But it has been over a week since Shay reported this and nothing… silence.
The question is how can the story break to reach mainstream? Will it take Symington or Pollina to do a press conference and maybe even run TV ads based on it?
If you remember, the VT press corps ignored the Elizabeth Ready story on her resume discrepancies until Randy Brock threw a press conference and ran commercials.
What can a committed group of folks, like those who read GMD, do on something like this?
Loading ...From the Symington campaign:
Democratic candidate for Governor Gaye Symington raised $116,931.47 since the last filing report was submitted in September. The report also shows expenditures of $272,338.99 for the period, and cash on hand of $42,928.55
For the campaign to date, the total raised is $491,301.75 and total expenditures are $448,373.20
There have been 2,082 total contributors, 89% of whom live in Vermont.
Not sure who saw the recent TV interview with Joe Biden but it was one of the worst of the 2008 election. Barbara West of WFTV in Orlando asked Biden questions that sounded like they came straight from FOX. Biden wasn’t having any of it.
Here’s the kicker, West is a former UVM professor and a former Miss Vermont. Here’s her bio.
Yellow clothes collection boxes
…Planet Aid, a charity that collects used clothing in 140 distinctive yellow boxes around the state, has received unfavorable ratings from at least two review organizations.Twenty of the nonprofit group’s clothing-collection boxes have appeared in Burlington and Chittenden County in the past year. There are now 140 boxes at gas stations and convenience stores across the state.A collection box at the Rotary Gulf station on Shelburne Road in Burlington explains why people should give to them: “Planet Aid sells your donated clothing to thrift stores and used clothing suppliers in the U.S. and worldwide. The net proceeds are used for development programs in Africa, Asia and Latin America.”
…The Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance said Planet Aid spends just 28 percent of its expenses on its charitable programs — considerably less than the 65 percent the alliance sets as a standard.The Better Business Bureau criticizes Planet Aid for characterizing its selling of old clothing as a recycling program. “The Alliance,” it said in its report, “believes these are actually fundraising expenses
…” http://www.burlingtonfreepress…
This article caught my eye,as my worry has increased about where the RNC will ultimately donate Sarah Palin’s $150,000 worth of clothes.I don’t know a thing about Planet Aid other than seeing one of their yellow donation boxes in a nearby town and now reading an article in the Free Press about low ratings it has been given by two charity rating groups. A quick search tells me that Planet Aid has been criticized in the past. It appears that the basis for the low ratings is threefold: one being the hard-to-factor value of “saving” discarded clothing from the landfill and two, selling the clothes and then channeling the money(profits) to other charities,three competing in a way with older established groups .The overall environmental value is a tough one to quantify, I would think.The profit of donated clothing sold versus the money in turn donated leaves a documented trail – money in money out ratio.
This group itself may have problems but it seems like a good model to explore for an application of Vermont’s new L3C law.It might remove an organization from the gray area between selling ,operating expenses and “re-donating” that this group seems to have fallen.Earlier this year the Vermont Legislature passed a new law for a new hybrid-style low-profit/non-profit corporation. According to reports, an L3C with a carefully written operating agreement, could perform the best services of both a profit and a nonprofit under one structure. The designation allows for the creation of a hybrid between a nonprofit organization and a for-profit corporation. The entity would be a low-profit company with “charitable or educational” goals. $150,000 worth of good Republican campaign clothes will soon hit the charity world.
I want Gaye Symington and Anthony Pollina to lock themselves into a room and not come out until one of them is running with the other’s support.
Because that person would become the next governor. And if they both stay in the race, its welcome back governor Douglas.
I asked Gaye what she thought of the idea. “Not much” was her immediate response. She said that it was the 11th hour, and this should have been worked out long ago.
But that has it exactly backwards. Only because it is the 11th hour does it make sense to think about unity. In the early months of the campaign, each campaign had every reason to make their case that their candidate would be the star for us to hitch our wagon to.
But neither Gaye nor Anthony have taken that commanding lead. They should sit down together, realistically decide who has the forward momentum, who has the dynamism to win, then give us a real chance to get rid of Douglas.
Why couldn’t Governor Symington work with Agricultural Commisioner Pollina, or Governor Pollina work with Transportatipn Secretary Symington, for example?
It seems obvious to me that Gaye has struggled during this campaign and is barely holding her own if not sinking. Anthony’s performance on the campaign trail and in the debates have been able to keep him abreast with Symington in spite of a fraction of the campaign money, He is my obvious candidate to choose
But if the two of them emerge and tell me that Gaye is to be the standard bearer, I would do everything that I could to help her get elected. Likewise, If Dems would support a Pollina choice, we could change the political landscape in this state in the next ten days.
