And no that’s not a quote but an interpretation … you decide.

Remember this post (my own post promotion alert): Barre Mayor lauzon … local prick and bully …? The article discusses lauzon feeling so full of himself that he, the Barre City Mayor, can damage a Barre City employee’s property in public no less! ‘”Your phone was vibrating so I took care of it for you,” [lauzon] said without elaborating.’

Now the prick comes out and basically says poor people suck and don’t belong in Barre.

“It’s just imperative that landlords and tenants understand that we’re serious,” Lauzon said, suggesting the city is still paying for some landlords’ decades-old response to a spike in vacancies that predictably accompanied an infusion of new rental units in the city.

Rents dropped, recalled Lauzon, who noted so did the caliber of tenants and the cash reserve landlords needed to keep their properties well-maintained.

(Barre council to examine rules on rentals, Barre/Montpelier Times Argus, 06/07/10)

That’s right … in lauzon’s little world all those people who finally had a chance to pay the rent on their homes are nothing more than low caliber tenants who collectively are responsible for trashing the city of Barre.

(Wonder how much of lauzon’s complaint has to do with him having to drop rents too and bring in lower profits?)

Barre City Mayor lauzon: local prick and bully who thinks poor people suck!

Shay Totten of 7 Days provides us with the following tidbit in his Fair Game blog (Switch and Bait, 7 Days, 06/02/10):

Battle Scars

More than 100 people gathered in Battery Park on Monday to take part in Burlington’s annual Memorial Day ceremony hosted by the VFW Post 782.

. . .

Missing in action was Burlington Mayor Bob Kiss, who was not formally invited to the event.

“Why?” asks Totten; and then answers with:

A Kiss surrogate upset vets and their families with an antiwar speech delivered at a November Veterans Day ceremony. Kiss never vetted the speech, and after it created a firestorm of public criticism, he apologized – more than once – to local VFW Commander Bob Colby.

So that’s what it takes to talk to those who’ve served in the military and their families? A deep devotion to and appreciation of the brutality of war? Well f**k you too.

Personally I think it was extremely selfish of the complainers involved. They don’t, after all, have a lock on how the public – military service or otherwise – views organized slaughter and destruction.

Oh, and according to an earlier posting regarding the event of the non-patronizing to war speech on a former Veterans’ Day:

Hausrath is a veteran and conscientious objector.

(Under the Influence, Fair Game blog, 7 Days, 11/18/09)

Mt. Abe offering new path to students, Addison County Independent, 06/03/10

Nothing to add … the news article covers it quite well.

Today’s pop quiz:

What do you do at 6:30pm when police and fire department personnel inspect an apartment at 10am for malfeasance, find reason for concern and secure the building?

Your pictorial answer below the fold …

(Suspected meth lab raided, Barre/Montpelier Times Argus, 06/03/10)

That’s right … put on a huge show of force against an empty building!

By the way, according to the second paragraph of the above mentioned article “Late Wednesday, officials said that nothing volatile was found.”

I suppose this is to be expected when one arms and psychologically preps the local police departments as if they’re going into combat against an army.

[THE UPDATE, 05/30/10]

Another leak in those non-existent underground pipes was found:

Plant spokesman Larry Smith said late Saturday that radioactive water and vapor leaked from a pipe in a pit that workers dug to find the source of an earlier leak. The latest leak involved 13 different radioactive isotopes.

(Another radioactive leak found at Yankee, Barre/Montpelier Times Argus, 05/30/10)

But, as usual, nothing to be concerned about.

[END UPDATE]

It is much more fun to write about progress, but when the world is so full of bald faced liars and these same bald faced liars are feeding the imaginations of the public …  well … as tedious as it gets one must point out the bald faced lies.

Face it, by all available evidence the tag team of Louisiana Entergy Yankee and our very own Nuclear “Regulatory” Agency are, with the quiet acquiescence of the Douglas mal-administration, bound and determined to lie to us about seemingly any and everything.

Entergy Nuclear officials failed to investigate five sinkholes that developed outside the reactor building for the past two years that were near the site of what turned out to be the radioactive leak at Vermont Yankee, according to a state report.

. . .

“These sinkholes were basically small depressions that are not unusual given weather conditions that can result in frost heaves, etc., and cause a depression. These were categorized as trip hazards and were not linked to the leakage,” [Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission] wrote in an e-mail Wednesday.

(Official: Entergy ignored sinkholes, Barre/Montpelier Times Argus, 05/28/10)

LET’S BE PERFECTLY CLEAR ABOUT SOME THINGS!

(my emphasis)

The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant had a radioactive leak years before the one found last month, confirming a disclosure last week by a consultant to the Legislature that a plant employee told him of a previous leak at the reactor, federal officials say.

Donald Jackson, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission section chief, confirmed in a conference call between NRC officials and reporters Monday that the 2005 leak occurred in the same pipe system that is the focus of the search for the source of the current leak. “In 2005, within the confines of this pipe tunnel, there was a problem with one of the pipes,” he said.

(NRC confirms Vermont Yankee had earlier leak, Boston.com, 02/24/10)

Simultaneously, of course, Douglas and his cronies were busy poo-pooing the above revelation:

David O’Brien, commissioner of the Department of Public Service, said on Tuesday that a 2005 leak at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is not related to the current tritium leak under investigation.

(O’Brien: 2005 leak not related to current tritium probe, VtDigger.com, 02/24/10)

Louisiana Entergy Yankee, the NRC and Douglas and his his cronies all lined up to blow off the seriousness of the revelation regards 2005.

A leak of tritiated water was identified (in a piping system said to be non-existent a mere 4 years later), and that leak was temporarily fixed (no public record of it ever being permanently fixed) … yet when sink holes started appearing in the vicinity of the 2005 leak they were deemed to be worthy of no more attention than a frost heave in an early spring corn field!

How about a bit of a flashback (my emphasis of course)?

A tritium leak discovered at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon poses no danger to the public, said officials from both the Vermont Department of Health and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Despite the low significance of the danger to public health and the environment, Yankee personnel have been mobilized to determine the source of the leak.

“Yankee has assembled a multi-disciplined technical team to investigate the source of the elevated level,” said Yankee spokesman Rob Williams.

Vermont’s chief of radiological health, Bill Irwin, was notified of the leak as soon as it was discovered.

“They’ve been very open and forthright,” said Irwin.

. . .

“Yankee and the rest of the industry have been taking a proactive approach in groundwater monitoring including communicating the results,” said Williams. “So, while there are no regulatory requirements to report tritium at these low levels, notifications were proactively made to regulatory agencies and the public.”

The only other leak of tritium discovered at the plant was in 1976, said Williams, when contaminated water was found to have leaked into the river.

(Tritium leak found at VY, Brattleboro Reformer, 01/08/10)

And the whole time Louisiana Entergy Yankee was lying to the people of Vermont the NRC stayed tight lipped DESPITE HAVING BEEN ADVISED BY LOUISIANA ENTERGY YANKEE OF THE 2005 LEAK (that occurred in piping Louisiana Entergy Yankee denied the existence of)!

So where do the lies stop?  

only I would’ve put it even more strongly.

(Thanks to Raw Story for the pointer.)

A Connecticut River fish caught four miles upstream from the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor this winter tested positive for low levels of strontium-90, a highly dangerous radioactive isotope recently confirmed in soil outside the plant.

(Fish in Connecticut test positive for isotope, Barre/Montpelier Times Argus, 05/25/10)

But not to worry because according to William Irwin (described as radiological health chief for the Vermont Health Department) the strontium contamination is not related to Louisiana Entergy Yankee – the toxic material is from 1960s era nuclear weapons testing and the Chernobyl explosion/meltdown of the 1986.

We’ve been down this road before. Louisiana Entergy Yankee is right now cleaning up strontium from depths in the ground unreachable by airborne contamination that Louisiana Entergy Yankee and the Douglas administration were happy to blame on the same long ago happenings!

The headline as presented: Obama seeks to force votes on spending cuts. The headline as it should have been presented: Obama not really that different from dumbya bush.

According to today’s (05/25/10) Barre/Montpelier Times Argus Obama is on the king making push:

President Barack Obama sent legislation to Congress on Monday that would allow him to force lawmakers to vote on cutting earmarks and wasteful programs from spending bills.

Rather than deal with democracy which involves input from numerous sources, apparently the darling of the (suckered) liberals wants the ultimate and final say-so over as much as possible.

This is how kings and dictators act … just like President Cheney in the not distant at all past.

The second worst part about Obama’s grab for greater centralized authority? Apparently he doesn’t even need it! A process for removal of unwanted spending already exists … it’s called congressional action.

Oh yeah .. the article also makes mention of yet another alternative that is written into sub-constitutional law (my emphasis):

There is already a process under which Obama can ask Congress to cut wasteful programs, but lawmakers are free to ignore the request. Republicans have urged Obama to send the Democratic-controlled Congress a package of such rescissions, and promise to employ a cumbersome process available under existing budget laws to force a vote. But Obama has opted not to officially send Congress such spending cuts, and has instead worked with Democrats to kill a handful of programs and force reductions in others.

Got that? What is in existence is working! Nonetheless king wannabe Obama desires more centralized dictatorial authority.

Add in all of these: Wall Street bailouts; a medical insurance “reform” that ensures greater profits for the already glutted with our cash big insurance corporations; expanded war and increased military spending; governmental secrecy; more offshore drilling with more environmental permit waivers; a banking “reform” bill that does nothing to change what needs to be changed and a push for nuclear and coal power to name a few.

Oh, and this insistence that in the face of a massive environmental and economic disaster caused by big corporate BP’s Gulf oil spill government can do nothing beyond stand in front of cameras and pontificate about how much government is doing when we all can see Obama has either encouraged or allowed our government to be totally neutered.

I guess if you prefer your sex with folks of the same gender you’ve found some solace in Obama, but not only is that all you will get … for the rest of us Obama has been nothing more or less than dumbya bush II.

Wake up folks, the headlines are obvious if not actually in print.

Two articles and then a question:

Vermont school boards try to keep their united front policy (Burlington Free Press, 05/23/10) discusses what is a common practice in Vermont regarding school board cohesiveness on board decisions.

Third school vote set in Williamstown (Barre/Montpelier Times Argus, 05/22/10) discusses a Williamstown school budget vote and quotes me as a board member at odds with the board majority.

The question: was I caught in the act of possibly violating a tenet that I in principal wholly accept?

My initial response is no, and that is one of the reasons I (a non-chair member of the board) talked with the reporter regarding the upcoming budget vote.

Why did I do so? In my opinion Williamstown needs a robust and public debate of our local school budget that encompasses all the aspects. I don’t see this as a question only about the numbers and programs, but I also see this as about responding to the community in a way that builds trust and respect between those who run the system and those who the system is meant to serve the interests of.

Too I have been publicly vocal regards my feelings on the subject of how much we need and the desirability of yet one more vote on a voted budget. If someone from town were to walk up to me and ask my views on this new vote I would be saying things that include what I was quoted as saying in the above TA article, and I most certainly would not be saying “you should talk to the board chair”.

I view the Times Argus as another means of communicating with the very same people who might approach me on the street or in a store with questions. A query regarding the school budget is a question that deserves to be answered in an open and honest manner.

To be sure I support the school board’s right to bring a money question before the town, and while I disagree with the decision to do so one more time I applaud the board as a whole for taking a fiscally sound approach … if it’s wanted it has to be paid for.

That is my initial rationalization … I’m interested in other folks’ views specifically on whether I overstepped a boundary and more generally on the whole “support the outcome of the board vote” concept.

(I think this is an interesting question, to which I hope some of our candidates will be inclined to respond. – promoted by Sue Prent)

if consolidation of Vermont’s (for now) local school districts makes such eminent fiscal sense, why does the state have to offer cash incentives to entice the (for now) local school districts to consolidate?