I just uploaded a file to Green Mountain Daily that you can find here.

Its original was downloaded from the state legislature’s web site, and at the time it was downloaded (Thursday, 4/17, around 6:20pm), you could find it via this link.  I made a copy because I want to preserve the original draft budget changes, even if they are revised in the future.

So here’s the deal: although, as reported below, our oh-so-wonderful Governor is planning a $100M stimulus package, we need to make up a budget shortfall of $24.5M.  

The document I referenced above includes a series of budget cuts to make up that shortfall, including around $19M in cuts to human services.  These cuts include removing a planned adjustment to child care benefits to update eligibility levels which haven’t been updated since 1999.  They include cutting benefits for at-risk families. They include the elimination of all state-funded prescription programs.  The include upping premiums for state-supported health programs.  The include eliminating the prison in St. Albans and outsourcing the prisons instead, which means laying off lots of people whom I’m sure would prefer to have their unemployment benefits and stimulus package instead of a regular paycheck.

This is last-minute and the legislature could be voting on this as soon as tomorrow, so Shumlin needs to be called first thing Friday morning:

Peter Shumlin

Senate President Pro Tem, Senate Appropriations

Montpelier Phone: 802-828-3806

This is really big and I haven’t seen it hit the media yet.  If this happens, we’re letting down the people in our state who are, by far, the most vulnerable and have the fewest resources to fight back.

We can not allow this to happen.

You.  Have.  Got.  To.  Be.  Kidding.  Me.

Per The Rutland Herald:

t least three companies that contract with the state of Vermont for clothes and other materials are linked to overseas sweatshops, according to human rights advocates.

Several U.S. companies that recently supplied the state with shoes, boots, uniforms and other work-related clothes have some of their materials made in factories where there are reports of forced overtime, poor ventilation, union busting and even death, activists said.

“It does appear that the state of Vermont contracts with companies that are linked to sweatshops,” said Martin Cohn of Brattleboro, the owner of a public relations firm that conducted the research. “That means our taxpayer dollars are going to subsidize overseas sweatshops.”

Yikes.

On the plus side, this seems to be ready to change in the future, but, I mean, really.  Doesn’t anyone even care with whom they do business?  And can’t we find someone, you know, in Vermont who produces work clothes?  If not Vermont, can’t we at least find someone in ^&@! New England?

More from the Herald:

A bill promoted by a group of Brattleboro high school students that would prohibit the state from purchasing clothes from such companies has passed both legislative chambers and is scheduled to be signed into law by Gov. James Douglas.

Robin Orr, the director of internal services at the Vermont Department of Buildings and General Services, said the state never considered if its contractors are linked to sweatshops, but said she is taking this information seriously.

“If these allegations turn out to be true, we will not be contracting with these companies again in the future,” she said Monday.

Once the sweatshop bill is signed into law, all contractors with Vermont will be required to show assurances that the materials don’t have questionable origins. Orr said the state plans to put that into practice as soon as possible.

Why do I get the feeling that “as soon as possible” means “during the next administration?”

Argh.

Crossposted to Birding New England and Reason and Brimstone

Last year, I had a few brief sightings of eastern bluebirds, but they were few and far between and I only spotted them a few times.  This time, I’ve had multiple sightings of them.  While last year, several of my sightings were directly connected with nesting boxes, this time, the sightings have been frequent and in areas with no visible nest boxes throughout the region.

I’m still relatively new to birding, so I find it difficult to know how much of this is my eye changing over time and being better at spotting (combined with having much better camera equipment than I had two years ago), and how much of it is a change in the environment or conditions from this year compared to last.  

Cornell has some interesting facts on Eastern Bluebirds:

The male Eastern Bluebird does a “Nest Demonstration Display” at the nest cavity to attract the female. He brings nest material to the hole, goes in and out, and waves his wings while perched above it. That is pretty much his contribution to nest building; only the female Eastern Bluebird builds the nest and incubates the eggs.

Eastern Bluebirds typically have more than one successful brood each year. See a Birdscope article for data from The Birdhouse Network that show this graphically. Young produced in early nests usually leave their parents in summer, but young from later nests frequently stay with their parents over the winter.

Eastern Blue birds are, by the way, quite a bit different from Western Bluebirds, which tend to have a very similar shape, but the males have a darker throat and the females and less contrast on the chest and throat.

As usual, the photos are smaller versions of full-sized images, which you can get to by clicking them.

A few days ago, I wrote the following on MyDD:

She’s not going to win the nomination, not without doing serious harm to herself and the party.  But in the meantime, I don’t see a need for her to drop out before Pennsylvania or North Carolina, just as I don’t see a need for her to be shut down by Superdelegate edict.  She will lose after North Carolina, but it’s much better if it happens in a way which causes the least harm to the party.  Either her dropping out, or enough Superdelegates pledging to get Obama over the total delegate mark (even if MI and FL are included in the math).

This has to be done in such a fashion as to promote the (true) idea that Clinton had a fair shot at it but just didn’t pull it off: that this was a battle between giants where only one could win and the other lost it fair and square.  If Superdelegates jump in right now and virtually say “Clinton’s already lost, so don’t bother voting in Pennsylvania ’cause it won’t matter” it won’t be perceived as a fair contest.  I think it’s fine to wait for PA and NC to vote and then for them to start making real pledges towards one candidate or the other.

They should, however, be talking to Clinton privately and telling her that they will announce their support for Obama if she continues to make personal attacks on him, that the scorched earth approach will cost her considerably.

Per politico, today:

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said Tuesday it was “probably a mistake” when he said last month that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) should drop out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

I just don’t get why Senators don’t talk to me before they say things in public.

One of the first things he told me when we met was that he had been in the Hitler youth.  

The oddest thing about this was how casually he mentioned it.  My first week in College and all the 1st-year students were expected to meet with their advisers for an introductory lunch.

And here I was, face to face with a man who was part of an organization which would have willingly and obediently murdered half my extended family line.

I didn’t understand why he did this at the time.  I did understand that he wasn’t proud of it.  He wasn’t telling me this to promote himself or to show me what it meant.

I knew that he had been a child at the time, and likely had little choice in the matter, but even so, I found it odd that he began a conversation with this, as though it weren’t something to be ashamed of, as though it weren’t something to hide from, to run from.

It was a few years before I really understood what was going on, and it took another story for it to make sense to me.

This is not a story about history, though it is tied to it.  It is a story about today, and what comes next.  It is a story about what we do when we finally acknowledge what we’ve been part of, what it says about our humanity and how we chose to respond to it.

My social psychology instructor, in a class I took some time later, told us a story.  I’m going to render it in first person for dramatic effect, and I’m telling it from memory, so I probably don’t have the details down, so this is the basic gist:

A few decades ago, I took a job on a fishing boat off of British Columbia.  It was difficult work and we were pretty isolated.  We’d spend most of our time out in sea, and most of that time was spent fishing.  

We would joke a lot and socialize, because there was nothing else to do.  There was only one man on that boat that I ever thought of as a friend, and he didn’t speak to me other than to give one- or two -word instructions for the first five months of this work.

When we finally did have a conversation, he told me about his history.  He’d been a soldier in Hitler’s army: a foot soldier; a grunt.  He didn’t understand the bigger picture.  He just knew that he was a soldier and it was his job to fight for his country.  He didn’t know about the concentration camps, the ovens, etc.

When he finally did realize what he’d been part of, it was just before the war had ended.  And he just walked away: he threw down his gun and left his army and left his country and just kept leaving it.  He took job after job, saying as little as possible to avoid having to discuss his German accent.

By the time I’d met him, he’d managed to make it across the Ocean and across Canada.  We didn’t talk about him having been a Nazi much.  It was clear that he was ashamed of it.  It was clear that he didn’t think there was redemption for it.  So he just hid: from himself, his history, the first twenty-five years of his life.  I don’t know why he told me.  He hadn’t told anyone else.  For whatever reason, I think he just knew I was someone who wouldn’t judge him.  

He never left fishing after that.  We continued to write from time to time, and eventually the letter stopped coming.  I heard later that he had died doing that work.  I don’t know whether it was suicide or an accident, but I don’t think he expected to ever do anything but die on that boat.  He never did learn to face what he’d been involved in and that fear of his own past pushed him to become a shadow of a man, someone who could never move beyond it.

It was then that I finally understood my adviser: he knew that what he had been involved in was horrendous and that it was largely viewed as mass inhumanity, the worst of his generation.  And he knew that there was no easy path to redemption from that.

But one way of dealing with it, for him, was to be unflinchingly honest about it: never let anyone know him without knowing what he was part of first.  Never let anyone even get to know him without first knowing who he was and some of what he had done.  For him, he chose not to run or to hide, but he chose to never allow him the simple pleasure of meeting someone new without being seen through a specific filter, one connected with unrelenting evil and horror.

One man chose to flee from his past, separating himself from almost all social interaction, retreating into himself, and having few human contacts.  Another chose to face his past, looking directly at it and not giving others the choice but to face it as well.  

So what are our own soldiers going to chose?  When those who engaged in atrocities come home, what are they going to do?  Hide?  Retreat?

While there are over 4,000 soldiers dead from that event, I’m a lot more concerned about the ones who have been left behind.  What sort of psychological damage will it do to them, long term, to have been put through this?  If they had a clear mission with a moral clarity behind it, it would be different, but they have no clear idea as to what their mission is.

I read GregMitch’s Kos diary, Why did soldier kill herself,  after refusing to torture? and one passage sticks out, with one woman talking about her experience after witnessing torture on the part of her fellow soldiers:

“It also made me think,” Williams says, “what are we as humans, that we do this to each other? It made me question my humanity and the humanity of all Americans. It was difficult, and to this day I can no longer think I am a really good person and will do the right thing in the right situation.”

Imagine this: being put through something that not only challenges your sense of morality, but places you in the position of not being convinced about your own humanity.

What do you think that does to a person?

When our soldiers finally do start to come home, will we have a way of helping them deal with this?  Will we help them know what is and is not right and good?  

Will we help them face their past and learn to acknowledge it and move forward, or will they just retreat out of fear, living a life of quiet desperation, retreating from their friends, their families and their lives?  Will we embrace them and give them the opportunity to heal or will we just see the emptiness in their eyes and turn away, afraid of what it reflects in us?

I don’t have good answers to any of these questions.

Does anyone?

Sometimes, when you don’t read the news for a couple days and try to catch up, you catch something interesting.  Every one of these is from Vermont’s Rutland Herald:

article 1 (April 1):

The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is operating at less than half power while a leak in a condenser is repaired.

[…]

Officials say staff will install a plug to keep water from the Connecticut River from entering the plant’s condenser.

article 2: (April 2):

“We think the plant is well-run. I think the public is looking for reassurance that the plant is well-run,” said Keefe, who both listened in and participated in the five different groups, which explored people’s concerns about Vermont Yankee, what opportunities or benefits the plant’s operation offered and what would be the likely implications if Vermont Yankee closed in 2012, as well as people’s unanswered questions.

Entergy Nuclear needs both federal and state approval to operate beyond 2012. While it appears on the verge of getting approval from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, state approval includes both the endorsement by the Legislature and a certificate of public good from the Public Service Board.

article 3: (April 2):

Entergy Nuclear said Tuesday it doesn’t know how many leaks there are in its condenser at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which was undergoing emergency repairs at reduced power.

Entergy Nuclear spokesman Robert Williams said the problem was discovered March 20 and the plant reduced power Monday night once a plan of action and an expert in the field was on hand to oversee the repairs. As a result, the reactor, which provides one-third of all the electricity used in Vermont, will be at reduced power for several days, he said.

article 4 (April 3):

Vanags said that Entergy Nuclear told him Wednesday that it had tested 75 percent of the 5,500 tubes in the section of the condenser where the problem was believed to be coming from, but that the company hadn’t found the source of the leak or leaks yet.

The plant is operating at about 43 percent power so that repairs can be made to the condenser.

article 5: (April 4):

Entergy Nuclear has given up trying to find the leak in its condenser at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, and is returning the reactor to full power.

Well, I’m reassured.

How about you?

A few days ago, I posted this to Birding New England:

In today’s Rutland Herald there’s a very good piece with a very bad title: “VINS: Owl population on rise in Vermont.”

The article itself is good.  It talks about the details behind the barred owl population and how its in trouble due to poor food sources this year, and how people are spotting them a lot more due to this malnutrition, etc.  The problem is entirely with the headline, which suggests that just because more people are spotting a nocturnal bird means that the bird’s population is on the rise.

The reason we don’t often spot owls is because most of them sleep during the day; if you see one up and about during the day, it’s usually because it’s having trouble finding a good food source and needs to expand its hunting beyond its normal hours.  Implying that the population is on the rise as a result of this is like saying that lower income families are doing well because they’re working two jobs.  

The photo, by the way, is of a barred owl that showed up by our house a few months back.  It was right at dusk, so it might have been just getting ready to do its hunting, or it might have been one of the many owls in trouble.

I want to take a few minutes to discuss what the problem is here, and what I see as endemic in media representation: as I noted before, the content is mostly good.  It discusses barred owls, the problems they’re facing, etc., though it doesn’t focus on why some of those problems occur.  The fact that many of the owls are being hit by cars, for example, is not because there are more owls than normal.  It’s because there are owls which are venturing outside of wilderness to find prey.  

A common problem with raptors and vehicles stems from them being such good hunters.  They focus on prey and when they find the right prey, they are extremely good at just going for it as quickly as possible.  In the wild, this works extremely well for them.  When cars are in the mix, it’s easy for them to get hit by drivers who are going too fast because the bird is focusing on the prey and the driver isn’t expecting a large bird of prey to come flying across the windshield.  

It’s even worse, because many birds of prey are edge feeders, which means they do most of their hunting at dusk or dawn.  This works well, because prey animals are generally in transition from sleeping to waking (or vice versa), which distracts them from the hunters.  But it also means that it’s taking place when visibility is poorest for drivers.  

So… you get this article which is not a poor article by any stretch, but the headline here is completely misleading given the situation.  A one-year spike in population is not a population on the rise.  But for most media, writing about science is an afterthought.  They think it might be interesting, so they write something up that gets printed.  But it’s not thorough or detailed and, like any story of complexity, it misses key elements; and then you throw a headline like this into the mix and you get a royal mess where people get just informed enough to think they understand the picture, but not informed enough to have any real understanding about the story.

Can you tell that things like this frustrate me?

per the Rutland Herald:

House Speaker Gaye Symington said Tuesday she is thinking seriously about running for governor, confirming Statehouse speculation in recent days that the Jericho Democrat might seek the higher office.

“People have been encouraging me to run for governor,” Symington told the Vermont Press Bureau. “I am seriously considering running.”

Symington added that until the legislative session is complete, she is spending most of her energy on lawmaking.

“My focus is on managing the House and completing the session,” she said.

Gov. James Douglas, a Republican, and Progressive Anthony Pollina have declared their candidacies for the governorship.

Crossposted to Daily Kos

ISLAND POND, VT– In an unprecedented move, conservative leaders took their boldest move yet this week in opposing same-sex marriage by threatening to divest themselves altogether from the institution of marriage should civil union laws be replaced with same-sex unions.

This strategy was devised during a week-long retreat in which conservatives from around the state met to fight the lavender menace.

 The conference was sponsored by several groups, including “Fagbusters,” “Women in Subservience to Dominant Men (WiSDoM),” “Americans Against Unwanted Godless Heathens” (AAUGH), “TAKE BACK VERMONT FROM THOSE BAD BAD PEOPLE WE DON’T LIKE AND NO WE’RE NOT THE SAME AS THAT HEALTHCARE GROUP AND NO WE DON’T MEAN YOU SHOULD BRING SOME MAPLE SYRUP HOME, BUT IF YOU WANT TO, WE’VE GOT SOME IN THE BARN AND WE’LL BE GLAD TO GET SOME FOR YOU IF YOU CAN JUST GIVE US A MOMENT, NO IT’S REALLY NO TROUBLE, SO LONG AS YOU’RE NOT ONE OF THOSE QUEERS.”  

“We’ve got to put a lid on this,” said special guest Louisiana Senator David Vitter, during a speech at the conference. “If we let those people marry, it’s going to muck up marriage for all of us, making it a soiled and dirty institution, no longer graced by the sanctity of God. If this happens, next time I get divorced I won’t even bother with a new trophy wife. I may be forced to give up on traditional marriage entirely, and visit prostitute after prostitute instead, provided they’re all real Americans.”

The comment was met by applause from many of the conference attendees, all of whom coincidentally happened to be men older than fifty.

Related:

• Massachusetts Supreme Court Orders All Citizens To Gay Marry;


• Gay Couple Feels Pressured To Marry

Per a Daily Kos diary, Leahy just called on Clinton to withdraw.

I’ve been reading about the idea of the superdelegates all coming together to settle the race and get it over with.  I think that that’s a good idea, but this has to be done in such a fashion as to promote the idea that Clinton had a fair shot at it but just didn’t pull it off: that this was a battle between giants where only one could win and the other lost it fair and square.  

If Superdelegates jump in right now and virtually say “Clinton’s already lost, so don’t bother voting in Pennsylvania ’cause it won’t matter” it won’t be perceived as a fair contest.  I think it’s fine to wait for PA and NC to vote and then for them to start making real pledges towards one candidate or the other.

They should, however, be talking to Clinton privately and telling her that they will announce their support for Obama if she continues to make personal attacks on him, that the scorched earth approach will cost her considerably and that she’s pushing herself out of the nomination of this continues.  

So I’m not sure whether or not it’s a good idea to be calling for her to resign right now.  From most Senators I’d say no, but Leahy is so highly regarded within the party that it might carry weight.