but, alas, the plan for the United States vis-a-vis Iran appears to be more of the same old neo-con war mongering.

Oh, sorry, here’s what I’m referring to:

Scientific output has grown 11 times faster in Iran than the world average, faster than any other country. A survey of the number of scientific publications listed in the Web of Science database shows that growth in the Middle East – mostly in Turkey and Iran – is nearly four times faster than the world average.

(Iran showing fastest scientific growth of any country, New Scientist, 02/18/10)

My take below …

I’ve been around the block enough times to come to the firm conclusion that fundamentalist religion demands a certain level of ignorance and lack of basic education in the sciences. This, in my well developed sense of reality, is true whether we’re discussing Islam, Christianity, Judaism or any other organized religion.

We WANT Iran to become developed scientifically. We WANT a well educated class of technocrats to develop inside that nation.

We want this because this is the best way to move beyond the ignorance so required of fundamentalist regimes.

If our plans for Iran had involved pushing them into the future, our desired results could not have better than what the New Scientist article proclaims.

Now if only we could bring this same advancement to the United States.

The following is on the Progressive Party website:

Seventy Progressives met in Royalton on Sunday for their quarterly State Committee meeting and passed the following resolution on a Just Transition:

The rest flows below the fold …

Why the Vermont Progressive Party Champions a Just Transition Resolution

Whereas: Job displacement that results from economic, ecological or social imperatives must be dealt with as the other side of the “social good” coin, and not cost workers or communities their health, wealth or assets. The cost of such changes should fall on those who can afford it; and

Whereas: The Vermont Progressive Party understands that climate change, the preservation of the environment and the danger of nuclear pollution are issues that directly affect working people because they are the most vulnerable and have the fewest resources to deal with these problems; and

Whereas: It will take the united efforts of all affected Vermonters to cope with these problems, especially those workers most directly affected by environmental protection measures and the closure of Vermont Yankee including their Trade Unions to bring about real change; and

Whereas: While it is true that a state-based single-payer or self insurance system is the only effective mechanism for controlling skyrocketing costs by saving millions annually wasted on administrative costs and insurance company profits while covering all Vermonters, it is also true that this will result in job losses for those currently employed by health care providers and insurance companies in processing insurance claims.

Therefore be it resolved: That the Vermont Progressive Party strongly advocates a “Just Transition” to a sustainable economy, always demonstrating a deep concern for both jobs and the environment.

Be it further resolved: That the closing of Entergy’s Vermont Yankee plant must include provisions for a “Just Transition” for the local community which faces the loss of revenue, and the VY workers who lose their jobs, and may, in this economy, never have a family wage job again. A “Just Transition” includes a firm commitment to guarantee jobs (at union wages) or income, as well as necessary retraining.

Be it further resolved: That the Vermont Progressive Party’s fight for a state-based single-payer system include provisions for a “Just Transition” for all those who lose their jobs because they are employed by health care providers to process insurance claims.

The levels of tritium being found in some of the wells is high enough to be straight from the reactor vessel … correct?

If the water being tested with that high of a tritium level is coming from the containment vessel, wouldn’t there be other radioactive ingredients?

All we keep hearing about is tritium … is this because nobody is testing for anything else? Is this because we’re still being lied to? Am I wrong in where I’m going with this??

Vermont’s statutes 1 V.S.A. § 128 state

“Person” shall include any natural person, corporation, municipality, the state of Vermont or any department, agency or subdivision of the state, and any partnership, unincorporated association or other legal entity. (Amended 1969, No. 207 (Adj. Sess.), § 2, eff. March 24, 1970.)

The state, or any state delegates, do not have a need for personhood as the state carries with it “eminent domain” … meaning the state can pretty much assume any rights not obviously outside the Vermont constitutional framework.

In light of the recent US Supreme Court mangling the most pressing of the rest is corporate personhood, but the arguments against corporate personhood are just as valid when used against any organizational personhood.

What are the candidates stances vis-a-vis corporate personhood specifically and organizational personhood in general?

Will you move to end the recognition of corporate personhood in Vermont by pushing to remove this from Vermont statutes?

Politico.com is helping to spread the word about some new fangled fervor on the part of the DC Democratic surrender monkeys.

Far from embracing calls for bipartisanship now that Republicans have a 41st senator, Harry Reid is acting as though he has nothing to lose and is taking down Republicans at every turn.

(Harry Reid comes out swinging at Republicans, Politico.com, 2/2/10)

Seems Obama’s Pretensions to Toughness speech that was billed as a State of the Union speech (aka election campaign speech) signaled the DC Democratic surrender monkey campaign to inform us that this time … really … THIS TIME things will be different.

Forget their inability to move things in a decent and progressive direction up to today. The past doesn’t exist. All we need to do is look forward and take the surrender monkeys at their word because this time … really, don’t laugh … THIS TIME it will truly be different.

Just don’t vote on their record.

Not long ago GMD front pager asked Anybody in Montpelier know Ellie Light?

Now we know …

Steward, 51, is a traveling health care worker based in Frazier Park, California. He admitted to being the author of letters published in dozens of newspapers across the country — sent with fake addresses from a variety of locations — under the name “Ellie Light.”

(Exclusive: ‘Ellie Light’ regrets damage done to Obama, blasts right-wing ‘conspiracy theorists’, RawStory, 01/31/10)

Revealed: Retired CIA agent ‘made up’ waterboarding details, RawStory, 1/26/10

“Now comes John Kiriakou, again, with a wholly different story,” Stein noted in Foreign Policy. “On the next-to-last page of a new memoir, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror (written with Michael Ruby), Kiriakou now rather off handedly admits that he basically made it all up.”

From the above referenced Foreign Polic article (CIA Man Retracts Claim on Waterboarding, Foreign Policy, 1/26/10):

“What I told Brian Ross in late 2007 was wrong on a couple counts,” [Kiriakou] writes. “I suggested that Abu Zubaydah had lasted only thirty or thirty-five seconds during his waterboarding before he begged his interrogators to stop; after that, I said he opened up and gave the agency actionable intelligence.”

But never mind, he says now.

. . .

“Now we know,” Kiriakou goes on, “that Zubaydah was waterboarded eighty-three times in a single month, raising questions about how much useful information he actually supplied.”

Interesting side note to the Foreign Policy article. Apparently the pro-torture Kiriakou went on to work for Senator John Kerry.

Hey .. did I forget to thank President Obama for helping maintain our status as a torture nation? Oh, and the rest of the Democratic DC surrender monkeys too?

(Updated with ECFiber response to BFP oped after the break)

they got the mojo, they got expertise, they got the companies ready to do the building and now they got the certificate of public good:

7461 FINAL ORDER AND CERTIFICATE OF PUBLIC GOOD In Re Petition of ValleyNet, Inc., for a Certificate of Public Good to own and operate a cable television system in the State of Vermont, to provide services in the City of Montpelier, and the Towns of Barnard, Bethel, Brookfield, Chelsea, Granville, Hancock, Hartford, Norwich, Pomfret, Randolph, Reading, Rochester, Royalton, Sharon, Stockbridge, Strafford, Thetford, Tunbridge, Vershire, West Windsor, Williamstown, and Woodstock, Vermont

Now all they need is the cash.

East-Central Vermont

Fiber-Optic Network

Box 8, White River Junction, VT 05001

January 24, 2010

To the Editor:

The Free Press article of January 17 on the ECFiber project in 22 towns in central Vermont is deeply disappointing. Your reporter relied exclusively on the questionable criticism of one self-styled expert, despite the opportunity to contact many more reputable sources.

Your readers should be aware that the critic, Terry McGarty, outlined a brief against Burlington Telecom and projects like ECFiber months before the Free Press’s article on January 17, painting them as “socialist” on his blog. A number of years ago, however, McGarty attempted a similar, unsuccessful project in a number of towns in western New Hampshire. He now blames his failure on local town officials’ inability to appreciate the appetite of private investors (himself among them) for return on their capital. He has now become an ardent public interest critic of community broadband. What he and your reporter have failed to tell your readers is that like the electrification of rural America, the build out of broadband infrastructure in rural areas requires a more patient, public-oriented approach.

ECFiber’s business plan numbers did not come out of thin air. They are based on signed, fixed-price contracts with major vendors–equipment manufacturers, engineers and construction firms – whose credentials are beyond question. The engineers and construction experts involved in ECFiber’s design and costing have build over 100 comparable networks.

All prices have been thoroughly vetted by a major certified GSA contractor familiar with costs and prices approved by actual Federal contracts. The Free Press’s reporter declined our offer to supply him with the names and contacts of many engineers and operators who would vouch that ECFiber figures represent the norm in the industry. Instead he chose to focus solely on Alcatel, the one company which, due to a non-disclosure agreement, he knew could not provide the data he sought.

Unlike the “back of the envelope” figures supplied by the Free Press’s “expert” source, ECFiber’s financial model has been based on fully delineated and detailed financial metrics. ECFiber’s estimated cost per subscriber is about $6000, including not only the capital cost of the basic fiber network and connection costs of 50% of passed homes, but also the cost of all Central Office equipment, all operating costs, debt service, taxes, etc., during the period before the project becomes profitable. This figure is completely within the norm for comparable networks throughout the US and is compatible with profitable operations, as the Free Press reporter would have found if he’d bothered to check McGarty’s claims. In contrast, McGarty’s figure of $50,000 per mile for fiber network construction in rural areas is completely unsupported.

Mr. McGarty’s questioning of the 50% take rate is also baseless – ECFiber pre-registrant database already has reached nearly 25%, with the town of Barnard at fully 88% (and this is despite a virtual standstill of activity in the wake of the private financial market collapse, while EC Fiber has been exploring alternative financing opportunities). This has been achieved with a marketing investment approaching $0.00. Most municipal Fiber-to-the-Home projects running for 4 or more years have achieved a rate of 60% or more, making our estimate somewhat conservative.

As ECFiber grows in strength and nears reality, and as dozens of other similar efforts around the country also grow in strength, we fully expect the campaign against municipal Fiber to the Home networks to intensify. Incumbent carriers hate the idea of a community-oriented network providing competition and succeeding without tax-payer financing – even on the ?level playing field? that Vermont law requires. Who can blame them – given the huge profits they can realize with a minimum of effort and expense, while providing second-rate, last-century service over an antiquated, obsolete infrastructure.

ECFiber feels that its project stands on its own, technically and financially, and we welcome review and input from qualified and objective experts.

Sincerely,

Loredo Sola

Chair ECFiber Governing Board

ECFiber is a community-owned, subscriber-funded group of towns working to build a Fiber-to-the-Home network to provide phone, television, and ultra-high-speed internet services to 100% of the homes and businesses in 22 towns in East-Central Vermont. For more information, see www.ecfiber.net.

(with a quick addendum below)

Subtitle: My Head Hurts

(My emphasis of course)

“The transformation is based on the fact that even though we do fairly well on test scores, we still lose a lot of kids,” [Vermont state school board vice-chair] Stokes said. “We spent a year, we even went to prisons to talk to inmates and ask them what could have been done to help you? Where did the education system fail you? One of the things they said was, ‘We were lost in the shuffle. We never felt that we as individuals counted and how we learn and what could have been put in place to make us enthusiastic about learning, that just wasn’t there.‘”

(A vote for school consolidation, Barre/Montpelier Times Argus, 1/20/10)

So what did Ms. Stokes do with her new-found information? Why … she and her buddies voted to reduce the number of school districts and increase the size of schools!

All this while receiving guidance from a report that begins with this quote: “The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn’t need to be reformed, it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and can naturally discover their true passions.”

I just love it when people in government tell me I’m stupid enough not to see through their smoke.

Meanwhile on the Times Argus page devoted to publicizing the latest from bullshit artist and Vermont education commissioner Vilaseca (such page formerly known as the opeds) …

We have school buildings, with their operational budget, staffing and transportation costs, that house fewer students altogether than would be in a single classroom at our larger schools.

Oh yeah, Vil the Bullshitter also likes to support his vacuous crap with a report that begins with “The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn’t need to be reformed, it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and can naturally discover their true passions.”

Anybody paying attention? Oh, and can anybody tell me exactly what the import of the ratio regarding school board members to students is?

It appears Pelosi can now be listed along side Obama and Reid as Washington DC surrender monkey:

Given the opposition [by radical right wing DC Dems] in the Senate, Pelosi, D-Calif., signaled late last year she did not view a public option as a requirement for a final compromise. Asked in an interview Dec. 16 whether she could support legislation without it, she said, “It depends what else is in the bill.”

More recently, she listed her goals for a House-Senate compromise without mentioning the provision she long has backed.

(HEALTH CARE OVERHAUL Government insurance option appears doomed, Barre/Montpelier Times Argus, 01/11/10)

I don’t remember anybody screaming about whether the glutted medical care insurance industry gets to keep 20% or 15% of the premiums, but apparently that has become the issue of import for Pelosi.

No wonder Weasel “The ACORN Attacker” Welch likes her so much … she won’t make him look weak and ineffectual.

And the Entergy Yankee gift that keeps giving [pollution]:

[Entergy Yankee spokesbot Rob] Williams said that one thing the special team had to decide was whether to drill other wells to locate the source of the contamination.

. . .

“Anytime you’ve got contamination in groundwater, the concern is ‘Is it indicative of a larger problem?'” [Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesbot Neil Sheehan] said.

(Entergy begins probe of radioactive leak, Barre/Montpelier Times Argus, 01/11/10)

I mean … what the hell? Why would we need to locate the source of radiation contamination? Why would the presence of tritium in the people’s ground water (you know … drinking water and such) just outside a broken nuclear plant be any indication of a larger problem?

***sigh***