Per today’s Rutland Herald:

“We don’t have the specific cause, however, this type of leak is common in steam-generating plants with condensers. It can be caused by a defect created during tube manufacturing installation, or operational conditions,” he said.

I don’t know.  Maybe I’m picky.  But I’d personally think that if someone were running, for example, a nuclear power plant, they’d be a stickler for accuracy when it comes to this sort of thing.  Then again…

Williams said this month’s condenser leak was of the same type of leak that occurred in the condenser last year. He said the condenser has had several leaks over its life, although he said he didn’t have an exact number.

…maybe not.

CCTV Channel 17 will be airing a “DemocracyFest Preview Show” this Monday, June 29th, at 5:25pm.

It’s a live call-in show, so if any of you near Burlington want to watch and call in, that would be great! The number to call with questions or comments is 862-3966.

Nick Carter (some of you may know him from Gaye Symington’s campaign or VT Freedom to Marry) will host the show and 2 of our DemocracyFest Board Members have volunteered to be the guests.

I’m very grateful for this because I am totally TV camera shy! Back when I ran for State House against Tom Depoy in 2004, PEG-TV (Rutland’s equivilant of CCTV) had me record a 5 minute statement to play on their station. I seriously thought I was going to have a heart attack! Couldn’t breath or talk, heart pounding in my chest…Luckily the recording person was a very nice Dem and let me try several times before I finally calmed down enough to be able to speak in complete sentances. I’ve probably grown out of this a little (I have been able to overcome my fear of public speaking over the years), but still, when CCTV asked me to do this, my first thought was “Who can I con into doing this instead?” LOL!

Anyway, hope some of you will be able to watch and call in, and don’t forget to buy your DemocracyFest tickets soon! Ticket prices increase on July 1st! http://www.DemocracyFest.net

Half of states flunk

Kind of a shame to mention this unpleasantness after the recent reassertion of legislative power here in the state but as more tough issues are tackled by the legislature, and with steadily increasing lobbying maybe the time has come .This survey study of financial disclosure doesn’t necessarily reflect on any one persons integrity, it only reflects the fact that the reporting requirements are weak, at the bottom actually, here in Vermont according the Center for Public Integrity. Also note on the executive side that Vermont is one of 4 states as of 2007 that did not require governors to file financial disclosure reports at all. Last election Douglas did and Dubie didn’t release their income tax records and of course Gaye Symington did both .

Twenty of the 50 states “failed” in a survey of financial-disclosure requirements of state legislators, according to rankings released by the Center for Public Integrity .

Since 1999, CPI has from time to time been reporting on state lawmaker-disclosure requirements, and ranking the states based on a 43-question survey that measures public access to information on legislators’ employment, investments, personal finances, property holdings, or other activities outside the legislature.

Tied for the bottom of the ranking, each with a score of zero, were Michigan, Vermont and Idaho, which require no financial disclosure at all of lawmakers.

The complete rankings here ….. http://www.publicintegrity.org…

http://www.editorandpublisher….

Per today’s Rutland Herald, from LewisLouis [sorry] Porter:

In April, staff of the Forest, Parks and Recreation Department talked about ways to boost use of state parks, including how to increase reservations for gay marriages and accommodate couples who might now want to change plans as a result of the new law that goes into effect in September.

“I wanted to make sure we could accommodate any guests who had made reservations for civil union ceremonies who might want to reschedule,” Jason Gibbs, the head of the department, said this week. “I wanted to make sure we were accommodating those guests so we did not lose any reservations.”

Yes, that’s the same Jason Gibbs who worked as our governor’s official spokestooge.

I really don’t think I have anything to add here.

160-87, that was the final vote by tech workers at FAHC (Fletcher Allen Habitually under Construction) to join the AFT.  A huge congratulations to them all, because they now have a say on matters that affect them in the workplace.  I know, I know… having a say in matters that effect you (the Greek have a word for it, I’m not sure on the spelling but it’s something like “demo-cracy”) may sound crazy to some who prefer the idea that the people at the top, with the most power, who make the most money, deserve to just tell everyone else what to do, how to do it and when (without, of course, any “why”) but I think their lives will all be better- maybe a little, maybe a lot, but certainly better.

Cheers, and good luck in bargaining.

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

I was fortunate enough to speak briefly with Senator Leahy about the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court during a break in floor activity on Tuesday, which happened to be the day of the renewed GOP attack on the nominee.

The first phase of the Republican effort to scuttle Sotomayor’s nomination has, in a sense, collapsed in on its own weight. Jump started by the much-maligned hit piece from Jeffrey Rosen that played crudely to gender stereotypes without any meaningful corroboration, the Republican media hit machine (in particular Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh) turned the dial up to 11 almost instantly in an outrageous display of sleaze and name-calling. They went so over the top so quickly, that the whole effort seemed to stumble among Republicans in the Senate as well as the public at large.

But earlier this week on the Senate floor, phase 2 began. Led by new Senate Judiciary ranking member Jeff Sessions of Alabama (who himself was rejected for a federal judgeship by the Senate back in 1986  for being, as Senator Kennedy described him at the time, “a throwback to a shameful era which I know both black and white Americans thought was in our past” for his characterizations of groups such as the NAACP as un-American), this new round of attacks seems to be attacking on more fronts than the crude race-baiting and gender stereotyping that characterized phase 1, yet still seems on the edge of falling right back into those same, ugly memes.

Senate Democrats, led by Vermont Senator and Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, have wasted no time in pushing back. For his part, Leahy seems to relish the opportunity. He is clearly in his element in such a debate, but one has to wonder if the timing is especially opportune. After all, Leahy was a leading voice against the extra-judicial excesses of the Bush administration for years – and has advocated for a process through which some of those excesses might be brought to light. Although he is clearly a big supporter of our new President, it must be frustrating to see the new administration unexpectedly eager to continue many of those policies on the one hand, and uninterested (if not outright opposed) to any kind of truth and reconciliation process targeting the previous regime. Given all this, might a Supreme Court nomination that he can really take the lead on in the Senate be just what the doctor ordered?

Whatever the case, Vermont’s senior Senator directly addressed the attacks on Sotomayor’s character and stated unequivocally that she will come through the process and reach the Court. The text of his comments after the flip

Leahy wasted no time (or words) laying out the motives for the over-the-top Republican attacks on Sonia Sotomayor, which now include her position on gun rights, the “empathy” thing, her involvement in the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund – even attempts to tie her to the mortgage crisis.

Leahy: “They had fundraising letters going out even before she was nominated. You had immediately Rush Limbaugh, on television, saying she was the equivalent of the head of the Ku Klux Klan. And Newt Gingrich… saying that she was biased and bigoted and so on, or words to that effect… I think a lot of the Republican Senators I’ve talked with are embarrassed by this and want nothing to do with it. She’s going to be confrmed. I expect she’ll be confirmed by a comfortable margin.

I look at today when a number of law enforcement groups endorsed her. Of course, (Manhattan district attorney) Bob Morgenthau strongly endorsed her, and talked to law enforcement and others who were with her when she was a prosecotor and said she was extraordinarily well prepared and very tough.

They didnt think that a weekend spent in Vermont was quite the punishement they’d like to give me.”

odum: “It seems clear that Senator Jeff Sessions is going to be a very, very different ranking member than Sen. Specter, with whom you seemed to put a lot of effort into having a good working relationship. He has a different approach to politics, he’s been described as an ideologue by critics. You’ve worked with hard-right counterparts in the past – such as Orrin Hatch – but Sessions would seem to present unique challenges that might take you out of your preferred modus operandi…”

Leahy: “…I’ve had periods of being chairman and ranking member as Specter has. Of course Specter and I first knew each other when we wer both prosecutors. I was State’s Attorney in Chittenden County, he was District Attorney in Philadelphia, so we’ve known each other for years. He’s a cancer survivor, my wife’s a cancer survivor, they’ve talked about this, they’ve had long talks about cancer treatment. One year he was given a cancer group’s hero award, she presented it – next year she was given it and he presented it, so we have that kind of personal relationship.

Now obviously I cant tell him what to do, but I have told everyone that I’m not going to set different rules for her than we had for (Chief Justice) John Roberts, and I’m not going to sit and let her be a punching bag for week after week after week without being able to respond.

I have voted on every member of the US Supreme Court. And I’ve been here for all the hearings, not only for the ones who are there, but some of the ones who are no longer there like Justice O’Connor and Chief Justice Rehnquist. I voted on his nomination as Chief Justice, not as Justice, but – I have a rule that I will not meet the special interest groups of the right or the left when it comes to a Supreme Court nominee. I remember some of the groups on the left picketing in front of my office because I was going to support David Souter. They said we can’t have a right winger like him. Well, the same groups would love to have him stay (laughs). So I have to make up my own mind. And I will. And I only half-joke about being up in Vermont and working on the break. Our house is really kind of a nice quiet place to work. I dont have the phones ringing, I don’t have distractions, I can be in my chinos and a t-shirt…”

odum: “Sounds like blogging.”

Leahy: “Yeah- cup of coffee and my pajamas.”

odum: “It seems like there’s a real potential here for hearings to become a real watershed event on race and gender in America. With Sessions his history with racial issues on the one hand, it just seems like both Sotomayor and Sessions have the potential to become almost archetypal figures of the past vs. a more multicultural future, which could make these hearings into a real cultural arena. Do you think there’s the potential for the hearings to play out that way?”

Leahy: You may have – I think its possible Senator Sessions will surprise people.

Well, we’re going to give people a chance to see – this is going to be a fair, its going to be a complete hearing. And it will wrap it up.

Sanctimonious? Check.

Family values? Check.

Busted? Check.

 It's not just liberals, even conservative pinheads like Fred Thompson (R., Law & Order) are using the Sanford scandal to make political hay. Somehow I got on Fred's e-mail list (okay, who's been sabotaging my e-mail account?), but sometimes it's good for a laugh. After all, if it weren't for Fred Thompson I wouldn't know the true message of l'affaire Sanford: We need term limits. 

But guess what, Fred: Sanford is already term-limited. Placing any bets on whether he'll make it to 2010?

And the Vermont angle: Who's worse for his state–Sanford in Buenos Aires, or Douglas in Montpelier?

Friday, June 26, is your last chance to case your vote for Green Mountain Daily for Best Political Blog in the Seven Days Daysies survey.

You probably know about the Daysies: they're the way Seven Days recognizes the best of Vermont, especially Chittenden County, as selected by their readers.

The format's a bit different this year, but the idea's the same: vote your choice of the best stores, restaurants, theaters, and, yes, BLOGS.

There's a catch, of course. It's nothing as tricky as Catch-22. (“That's some catch, that Catch 22.”) It's just that you have to vote for at least 25% of the categories (24 votes) for your vote to count.

But you can do that. You live here, you go out, you watch TV. You can do it.

So hop on over to Seven Days and vote for your friends at GMD. Just make sure you do it by 6:00 p.m. Friday.

…and no, I can’t say with any certainty why. From his column this week:

So who started the GMD rumor? GMD bloggers?

The line refers first to the buzz that Senator Ed Flanagan was eyeing a Lieutenant Governor’s race. Totten continues from there, euphemistically piling onto the other rumors mentioned on this site – that Dubie is considering not running and Barre Mayor Lauzon is considering running in his stead, that former Vermont CARES Director Tim Palmer is considering a run – with phrases like “aren’t entirely accurate” and the like.

In an unhappy email exchange with Mr. Totten over the matter, he simply avoided the matter with a mocking insistence that he hadn’t actually used the l-word. Honestly, one of the last things I care to engage in since I’ve become a grown-up is strange, petty little word-parsing games. Totten sent a thesis message loud and clear: Euan and I (and by extension everyone on the site?) just make shit up. He went on to present his supporting “evidence.”

Obviously, I’ll let Euan respond herself, but for my part, a response to such an outrageous charge is clearly called for.

Everyone here at GMD – or any other comparable, equally masochistic I-don’t-get-paid-for-this-so-why-do-I-put-myself-through-it hobby – have different motivations. For me, I realized recently that I have a deep, primal loathing of bullies. More often than not, GMD has been my way to stand up to the bullies and sometimes – if I’m very lucky – get them to back down.

But regardless of our individual motivations, we take this very seriously.

When I go up with a rumor, I’m clear about it. I characterize it as “rumor” or “buzz” or “hubbub” to be clear that’s what I’m talking about. If I feel even more solid, I won’t label it at all. I consider it reportable if I hear it from three different sources – or if I get it from a source that I consider super-credible. On the Lauzon/Dubie issue, I was not the first front pager to hear that statehouse rumor – but I did get it’s veracity confirmed by one of those super-credible sources. With Palmer as well, I wasn’t the only front pager who was aware of the rumor, but I did get it confirmed from a credible source who had, in fact, heard it from the source. The Flanagan buzz came from Euan first (I only posted it before she did because she wasn’t near a computer and put it out there for the group to post), and she has revealed that her sources were, again, super-credible. Euan, of course, is a former editor of the late publication Out in the Mountains, so suggesting she is making things up in print is even more outrageous.

Seriously, folks. We’ve been around for years, now. Our information almost always pans out, and if something doesn’t add up, we come out and say so.

In this case yesterday, Totten’s column spurred a flurry of emails among front pagers. After another round of laying out of the sources of the collected buzz to each other, the suggestion was made that we return to these sources and push to get them on the record. But these sources – and others – only passed along the information with the understanding that they wouldn’t be connected to it. If we go running to them and lean on them to give more just because a bully is kicking sand in our faces, we will simply lose their confidence in the future – and rightfully so.

Here’s the thing; Totten is no political novice. He knows how rumors work. They wouldn’t be “rumors” if the subjects were prepared to go public. They would be headlines. When he asks, they dodge – naturally. To use this as evidence to an accusation of lying is bizarre. He knows how it works. He chose to pretend he doesn’t in order to perpetuate a smear to tens of thousands of his readers.

As to the claim that he didn’t actually use the word “liar,” well, he’s also a professional writer, and no amount of smug word-parsing changes the message that he very specifically and intentionally communicated.

As I said, I can’t say why Totten would smear us in print like this. Yes, there is some personal history there, including a breach of personal trust on a pretty spectacular scale (especially when you consider that a journalist deals in the currency of trust and confidentiality). Perhaps a story that will get told one day.

But let’s be serious. GMD has thousands of weekly readers, Totten has tens of thousands. GMD is a completely amateur, volunteer-driven labor of love, Totten works for a professional operation. Euan and I are those dreaded pesky bloggers, sitting around doing this in front of the TV (okay, Euan was also a professional journalist – an editor, even), while Totten is the serious professional and expert.

The other little irony here is this: Totten seems to have gotten himself into a bit of a pot/kettle, “glass houses” position. Last month Seven Days ran a very long article about Ed Flanagan in the Senate, and whether he is too disabled to serve based on the sequelae of his motor vehicle accidents. They caught some heat for that article, not least because it was, shall we say, very lightly sourced. They had their reasons for running the story they ran, even without sources willing to go on the record, and they’re entitled to use their news judgment for that.

But that’s what we do, too. We report the facts we have, we report on the buzz when in our judgment the buzz is a legitimate news story, and the result is that GMD is recognized nationally as required reading for people who want to know what’s happening in Vermont politics.

So we bug him. Or at least we do from time to time. Fair enough. We bug a lot of people. It’s what we do.

But choosing to sink to the level of bully? That’s low. And it should be beneath him.

Ok, so David "Diapers" Vitter apologizes after his affair and gets a warm round of applause at the GOP luncheon. Same with John Ensign. I suppose Mark Sanford will get a full on Argentinian banquet from the GOP before the week is done. Larry "Wide Stance" Craig? They tried to get him to resign.

You know, they really need to drop this "family values" nonsense and just stick with the warmongering/plutocratic/corporatist bit. At least we know they're never gonna be hypocritical about that, right?