UPDATE: Today the Free Press continues to run the AP IMPACT report. Today’s story: tritium leaks, like those found at Yankee, are present in 75% of all U.S. nuke plants.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

You have to wonder, though, how many of the plants lied about even having the pipes the way Vermont Yankee did.

If you've been following the stories about Vermont Yankee and Fukushima you will be interested in this story published in today's Burlington Free Press.  

LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. – Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.

Time after time, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have decided that original regulations were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased without peril, according to records and interviews.

We have no information on whether specific changes have been made to the standards for Vermont Yankee, but given the age of the plant it seems quite likely that they have.

Due to space limitations the full story didn’t appear in the Free Press, but you should read it. The article discloses a series of failures in virtually every operational or safety system in nuclear plants across the country.

What’s our experience in Vermont: collapsing and leaking cooling towers, valve failures, leaks from pipes that the management claimed didn’t even exist, yet we are told that state regulators have no authority to even look at the safety of the plant that directly imperils residents of Vermont and New Hampshire.

Read the story, think about what’s happening in Japan, and think about what you want to see here in Vermont.

Bob Kinzel had a very interesting story on VPR the other day about Vermont's tax revenues and how they have recovered since the depths of the recession.

We've known for some time that Vermont's tax revenues have come back from the lows of a couple of years ago, but Kinzel's story explains why that is, and where the money is coming from:

(Kinzel) Between 2007 and 2009, state income tax revenues declined by roughly $72 million. 70 percent of the decline or $50 million, came from Vermonters who make more than $300,000 a year largely due to a big decline in revenue from their capital gains.

Now that the stock market is higher, state revenues are benefiting from a resurgence of investment gains from people in Vermont's top three tax brackets.

What's interesting here is the observation made by Jack Hoffman from the Public Assets Institute: 

(Kinzel) Hoffman says the revenue figures show that wealthy people aren't leaving the state because of Vermont's progressive income tax system.

What we've been hearing from everyone, and especially Governor Peter Shumlin, is that Vermont can't afford to raise taxes on the super-rich because they'll just take their money and leave, go to Florida or someplace.

The experience, though, shows that this isn't the case. Looking at the 3,000 Vermonters at the very top of income distribution, people who have plenty of money, and the smarts and resources to vote with their feet if they are so inclined, and they are telling us with their actions that they value the benefits of living in Vermont so much that they're willing to pay Vermont's taxes even on significantly increasing income.

Maybe the rich Vermonters who have been saying the state should raise their taxes are the ones who have it right.

In an unusually heavy turnout for a special election, Montpelier voters came out to support the proposed bond for the district heating plan, 963-609.

The turnout was 1572, just a couple of hundred below the Town Meeting Day turnout this year. This is likely due to the high level of awareness and promotion by both the pros and the cons.

In light of the results it’s hard to say the last minute flurry of activism made much of a difference. These results are pretty much what we see for the city budgets every year: in Montpelier, voters support the proposed budgets.

Or to put it another way, the people who came out and voted no today are the people who vote no on everything.

Congratulations to Mayor Mary Hooper, city manager Bill Fraser, and the members of the city staff and council who worked so hard to make this happen.

The discussion of Montpelier’s district heating proposal has taken an ugly turn in the last few days, and it has nasty implications for politics in the capital city. Aside from the merits of the heating plan, we should all be concerned about what this means for city politics.

The issue relates to a proposed city bond to take the next steps toward creating a biomass district heating system for downtown Montpelier. The plan will provide energy from local, renewable resources to heat Montpelier’s capitol complex, two of Montpelier’s three public schools, and the City Hall and other municipal buildings. In addition, the plant will include hookups to enable downtown businesses to get locally generated heat for their buildings.

Economically, the plan is a no-brainer. Out of a total cost of approximately $20 million, Montpelier is proposing to contribute $2.75 million. The plant will include an upgrade of the boilers at the state’s electric plant that will increase energy output, reduce emissions, reduce oil usage, and will be able to use locally-collected waste wood.

Montpelier will be able to repay the loan and pay for all the fuel for the plant for what we’re paying right now for heat. If the plant is built it will provide heat at a price equivalent to about $3.00 a gallon. How long do you think you’ll be paying $3.00 for fuel oil? Hint: those times are gone already.

And, to top it off,this is an economic development project for the city. We keep hearing that Montpelier is not business-friendly, but the plant will have excess capacity to provide low-cost heat for downtown businesses.

So I think this is a good plan, and I hope any Montpelier voters reading this will get out tomorrow and vote for it, but I also want to talk about the uncharacteristically nasty way the opponents have tried to defeat the plan.

If you’ve driven around Montpelier in the last few days maybe you’ve seen the anonymous red and white lawn signs suggesting that our street paving needs are more important than the need for the district heating plan, as though there’s a tradeoff: buy the biomass plan or repave our streets.

The thing of it is, that’s just not true. Whether we build the district heating plant or not, Montpelier taxpayers will be paying over $300,000 in 2011 dollars for heat for the foreseeable future, and that cost can only go up as time passes. If we build the plant, we’ll have a guaranteed annual payment of that same $300,000 (actually between $305,000 and $331,000) for the next twenty years.

No tradeoff. We’re just taking what we’re now spending on fuel oil and buying a new heating plant and buying the fuel for it for the same price. We’re going to spend that money no matter what–voting no doesn’t free up a single dollar for street paving.

Then there are the robo-calls. All across Montpelier today, voters got robo-calls against the proposal. The calls were anonymous, with no attribution of the voice on the phone or who paid for it. Rumors around town were that the calls were from long time Montpelier Republican Jack Lindley, and when I talked to him he confirmed that he had made and paid for the calls. He did not dispute that the calls were without attribution.

So we’ve got the combination of an anonymous yard sign, an anonymous robo-call, and misleading messages from the opponents. It’s really not the way we do things in Montpelier, or at least not the way we ever used to do things.

We have a City Council election coming up next year and if this is the way things are starting out, it has the potential to be pretty ugly.

This is an open letter to Montpelier voters from Mayor Mary Hooper concerning tomorrow’s special election. I’m reprinting it with her permission.

Dear Friends,  

On Tuesday Montpelier voters will consider allowing the City to bond for $2.75 million for a district heating system.  A yes vote means the City will continue considering whether a district heating system for the city and the state, with the opportunity for some downtown properties to hook on, is in our best interest.  A no vote stops the process-it releases the state’s commitment of $7 million and the $8 million federal grant will be lost to the city.  

This is a complex and evolving project.  All of us have questions, which have to be answered before we make a commitment to building the district heating system.  There is a lot of information on the project on the city’s

web site:  http://www.montpelier-vt.org .  I’ll just recite three basic facts here:

1.) The project is designed to cost no more than the city is currently spending heating three municipal buildings and two school

buildings with oil.  In other words-the cost of bonding and the cost of heating with the new system will be the same or less than the City is

currently spending when it buys 100,000 gallons of oil a year.  

2.) The approximately $300,000 we project to spend heating the five buildings will not be available to spend in another way if the bond is not approved.  

3.) If this project does not work we will not move forward with it.

And I made a mistake in my op-ed piece in the paper when I said the bond would increase the bonding of the city by 1%–it is 10%.  A big difference. I stand by the statement that it does not endanger the city financially.  I apologize for that.

Can we afford to make this investment?  We have to heat our buildings; do we believe that oil will stay below $3.05 a gallon, adjusted for inflation, over the next 20 years?  Or should we make an investment in our community to move to wood?  I think the question is can we afford not to pursue this investment?

As always, please be in touch if you have questions or concerns.

Mary

Mary S. Hooper

Okay, let’s see a show of hands. Who takes politics seriously?

Really. Who thinks that the decisions made in Congress, and the balance of power in the Congress, are important?

Apparently not the Congressional Democrats, and you know how we can tell? Just look at what they’re doing to Anthony Weiner.

Sure, he’s got himself in a bit of trouble by his ridiculous and outrageous behavior, but the question is what should he, and what should the Congress, do about it?

The answer is clear: he should refuse to resign, stay in office, and keep fighting.

Matt Yglesias pointed out almost a month ago, before the Weiner story broke (I know, how do you ignore the punning potential?), that the way to win these sex scandals is to refuse to resign. If you don’t resign, barring some significant illegality, you have a good chance of surviving. If you do resign, obviously, you’re all done.

Look at admitted criminal David Vitter. When he was caught up in a prostitution ring he admitted that he had patronized prostitutes. He didn’t admit what later came out, which was that apparently his kink had to do with prostitutes forcing him to wear diapers.

Where is he sitting now? In the United States Senate.

Did you hear any of his Republican colleagues calling on him to reisgn? Of course not, because they know that they’d rather have a criminal who consorts with prostitutes in their caucus than risk the chance of losing his seat to a Democrat.

In Weiner’s case, while his activities may have been distasteful, creepy, or somewhat irresponsible, he did nothing against the law. His sexting interlocutors were adults, and apparently consenting. What’s more, his constituents, who you would think have a legitimate interest in who represents them, want him to stay.

Elections have consequences, what is going on in Congress is a fight for the future of the country, and Anthony is an effective fighter for progressive causes. We can’t afford to lose him.

Why isn’t this obvious to Congressional Democrats?

At Rational Resistance we’ve had problems with Evan Bayh for years, titling our first post on the subject “Evan Bayh sucks“.

In case you’re wondering, it’s still true.

Yes, he’s now part of a new “Dream Team” you might say at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, working with George Bush’s boy Andy Card. As Ari Berman reports at The Notion, the group blog of The Nation,

Now he’s just a hired gun for big business. In a delicious bit of irony, Bayh will spend the summer denouncing the very financial reform legislation he voted for while in the Senate. Whatever principles he ever had are now long gone.

His mantra? Bipartisanship, or in other words, use a fake Democrat to get Democrats to start acting like Republicans.

So yup, in case you’re wondering, Evan Bayh still sucks.

You may have heard the news about John Campbell's property tax problem. His house was on the delinquent tax list and it was due to go up for tax sale. He paid the taxes Tuesday and resolved the problem.

Here's the thing, though. I never would have heard about this if I hadn't gotten an e-mail at the office from Pat McDonald, chair of the state Republican Party. From what I can tell, they sent their press release to all the registered lobbyists in the state.

 Campbell has come clean about this situation and has admitted that he had trouble making his payments because his income from his law practice wasn't enough to pay his taxes.

He is making a financial sacrifice to serve the people of Vermont, and it's personal.

The Republicans? Using his financial troubles to make a cheap political point?

That's very, very low.

Just a follow-up on the commitment to democracy demonstrated by the Republican regime in Madison.

First off, if you haven’t already seen it, read our coverage of the arrest of Burlington filmmaker Sam Mayfield for covering the Wisconsin State Legislature.

Second, why would Republicans in Wisconsin work to get Republicans to run in Democratic primaries?

Pretty simple, actually. Right now six Republican state senators are facing recall elections this year, due to their undemocratic practices in this year’s budget/union-busting fiasco. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is reporting that, fearing a strong Democratic campaign, the Republican Party is running fake Democrats in the primary, with the idea that if they get on the ballot they will squeeze out any real Democratic candidate.

When it comes to running fake Democratic candidates in this summer’s recall contests, top state Republicans have one thought:

Sources tell No Quarter that state Republican Party officials are aiming to line up spoiler Democrats – loyal Republicans who run as Democrats with no intention of winning – in all six recall elections for incumbent Republican senators.

Finally, a court in Wisconsin has granted a permanent injunction blocking enforcement of Scott Walker’s illegally passed union-busting bill.

Patrick DePula reports at Mudflats:

In what is seen as a win for public labor Unions, Governor Scott Walker’s controversial Anti-Collective Bargaining law was struck down.

Thursday Morning, Dane County Judge MaryAnn Sumi issued a permanent injunction against the bill, effectively killing it until the Supreme Court is able to act. Sumi’s 33 page decision said there was “clear and convincing evidence” that Republicans who control the Legislature violated the state’s open meetings laws. This referred to GOP actions at March 9th committee meeting where the measure was passed without providing proper notice to the public.  Also at that time, the Capitol building was locked down tightly keeping many members of the public away.

“

That’s the good news: At least one branch of government in Wisconsin still believes in the rule of law.

You've probably heard the story of Peter Shumlin's preference for a justice to replace Associate Justice Denise Johnson, who has announced her retirement from the Supreme Court.

Justice Johnson has been a giant, and a model for many of us, especially lawyers, for her commitment to civil liberties and social justice, even if it hasn't always made her friends or landed her on the winning side of split decisions.

Now that she's leaving, Governor Shumlin's first appointment to the Supreme Court is the most important choice he's had to make so far. For this reason, it was very interesting to hear what he had to say about what he's looking for in a justice.

If you talk to lawyers around the state, they will say that the smart money for a new Supreme Court justice is governor's counsel Beth Robinson. She is widely recognized as smart, and she was the leader of the push for same-sex marriage, an issue that has been central to Shumlin's policies and values for years.

According to Bob Kinzel on VPR, Shumlin says he wants to name a person who is “smart, understands the law, and is tough on crime.” This news will probably be disappointing to Shumlin's liberal supporters.

It's worth thinking about what “tough on crime” means.

Judges, and especially appellate court judges, don't get to decide what happens to criminals. The Legislature defines the crimes. The Legislature decides the range of sentences that convicted criminals get.

Over the last fifty years or so, when politicians have talked about judges being tough on crime or soft on crime what they've mainly been talking about is not crime at all, but constitutional rights, and specifically the constitutional rights that people charged with a crime–in case you're wondering, the technical description of those people until they are convicted is “innocent”. These people are you, me, and everyone else who might be accused of doing something against the law, but is entitled to the full panoply of constitutional protections, protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, against self-incrimination, and all kinds of other protections, until we are convicted.

It was his stands in favor of protecting innocent people's constitutional rights that stimulated the “Impeach Earl Warren” movements in the 1960's.

The last time we had a Democratic governor it was Howard Dean, but the old Howard Dean, before he remembered that he was a Democrat. He was also tough on crime. In fact, it was somewhere between a rumor and an open secret that he had a litmus test for his judicial appointments.

Back in 1994 the Vermont Supreme Court reversed the murder conviction of a woman named Rebecca Durenleau, who had been tried and convicted of getting her boyfriend to murder her husband. When the case went up to the Supreme Court, the court held not only that the evidence of her guilt was entirely circumstantial, but that the evidence, even if you believed every bit of evidence the state put on, wasn't enough to prove her guilt.

Howard Dean hated this decision, and the word was that if you were a lawyer, no matter how smart you were, and how well-respected your accomplishments, you couldn't get a judicial appointment from him unless you disagreed with the Durenleau decision.

I've never been in that position, so I have no direct knowledge, but it was common knowledge at the time. 

That was Dean's version of being “tough on crime”.

What's Peter Shumlin's version of “tough on crime”? We don't know. I do know that in these times, when constitutional rights have been under assault by the Nixon/Reagan/Bush court for decades, state constitutional rights are more important than they have ever been.

I also know that constitutional rights aren't just something we read about in books. They protect every one of us, but only if we have judges and justices who will stand up to protect the rights of one of the most unpopular segments of society: people who have been accused of committing a crime, but who are presumed to be innocent until the government, observing all the constitutional rights the defendant has, proves to a jury of their peers that they are guilty.

 Oh, and there's one other thing I know. One of the lawyers who represented Rebecca Durenleau in that appeal that drove Howard Dean up a wall, was Beth Robinson.

So whatever Peter Shumlin means by “tough on crime”, I hope he also realizes how important it is for the courts to protect the rights of everyone who is accused of a crime, but is presumed innocent until proven guilty.