two-vote requirement

“freeze” of school budgets

merger of underfunded higher eductation

A few months ago I had a conversation with a friend of mine who used to work in Washington and she was criticizing the Democrats for their ineffectiveness. And one exampe that she chose was the way they never were able to work effecitvely with Arlen Specter.

I just saw this in Blurt, the Seven Days blog.

Cathy Resmer just posted it, along with the Stuck in Vermont video that Eva Sollberger did about Peter last summer. 

Many Vermont bloggers look at Peter as a kind of godfather. He did the kind of journalism that we aspire to: irreverent, insightful analysis, personal perspective and voice, and a commitment to progressive values. While he was writing it, his Inside Track column was weekly required reading for everyone who wanted to understand what was going on in Vermont politics and government.

We'll miss him.

Breaking news from NBC, AP, and the Times: Bill Richardson has informed Barack Obama that he’s withdrawing his name as the nominee to be Obama’s Secretary of Commerce.

It seems almost inevitable that issues will crop up with at least one nominee, as well vetted as they seem to be. Up to now the consensus has been that Obama’s been handling the transition perfectly, or pretty close. Now this comes up.

I’m sorry to hear this. I’ve always liked Bill Richardson, and I disagreed with people who were ridiculing him as the “resume candidate” during his brief presidential run. Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t see anything wrong with running on the basis of a record as strong as Richardson’s. Not that I ever thought he had a chance.

Apparently it has to do with a pay to play investigation into the business dealings between some company and the state of New Mexico. Naturally Richardson says there has been no wrongdoing.

I hope he’s right.

I was away last week when this news broke, but I still think it's something that we need to keep our attention on.

I'm talking about the perennial question of where we're going to get our energy, and specifically electricity.

We have a somewhat robust renewable energy community here in Vermont, comprising a lot of effort in efficiency,  small hydro, and wind.

Wind, of course, has been the most controversial, largely because people driving around the countryside don't have to look at compact fluorescent light bulbs, or small dams, but they are very concerned that they will have to look at giant wind turbines.

So even if you accept the claim that wind turbines are ugly (I don't, but let's go with it for the sake of discussion), tell me which you think is uglier.

This:

More after the jump.

Or this:

Newly elected Representative Paul Poirier is up with a new web page, which he'll use to keep his constituents current on his activities.

Here are some highlights.

On Vermont Yankee: 

In summary, I have not been supportive of continuing operation at Vermont Yankee beyond 2012. There are too many unknowns and many unanswered questions concerning storage of nuclear waste and the plant’s safety record.

And on his victory in the contested election :

On December 24th, I received a copy of the Attorney General’s report of its investigation into the alleged improprieties involving the Barre City voter checklist. I am pleased that the investigation made no findings of voter fraud and confirmed that the Barre City election officials acted appropriately within the state election laws. I am happy with the report’s findings and pleased that the city’s hard-working polling officials have been vindicated.

Hop on over to see what Paul has going on, or sit down with him at one of his district meetings, the third Saturday of every month.

Congratulations, Paul. We look forward to seeing you back in the State House.

If you've been reading here or watching the news, you know that Douglas is trying to have it all his way, as in his way or the highway. We've started to see some alternate points of view being raised, but he's still had the bulk of the coverage.

Tomorrow is another chance to hear another voice. Paul Cillo was a great legislator from Hardwick until he was voted out in the “Take Back Vermont” civil union backlash. He's now the President and Executive Director of the Public Assets Institute, which is working on providing public policy and advocacy resources for Vermonters, right now primarily in the area of health care, education, and family economic security.

 Listen to Paul tomorrow on Vermont Edition, either on your radio or online, and get a different view of Douglas's neo-Hooverism.

Just a quick note this morning. The Illinois Supreme Court has rejected Attorney General Lisa Madigan's complaint to have Rod Blagojevich declared incapacitated and removed from office.

Without comment, the court denied an emergency request from Lisa Madigan, the state’s attorney general, to consider removing Mr. Blagojevich from office as well as a motion for a temporary restraining order that would have immediately stripped Mr. Blagojevich of many of his powers, including the authority to appoint someone to fill the United States Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. 

Apparently there is no written decision, but if I get one I'll put it up.

That's what we keep hearing, right? That the UAW has pushed wages and benefits up so high that the American manufacturers can't make a profit on the cars they sell. We hear that the labor costs for Ford are $71 and hour, whereas the Japanese companies, even for plants here in the United States, are only paying $49 an hour. And that's supposed to be outragous, right? After all, how many of the people who hear these statements are getting paid $71 an hour? Therefore, the problem must be the UAW.

Yeah, but no.

When you look at the figures, you see a totally different story. It's true, the all-in labor cost of Ford (or “Ford's”, if you work in production) is about $71 an hour, $22 an hour more than what the Japanese companies are paying. That's a big gap, and would seem to support the claim that the American companies are overpaying their workers. The components of that difference, though, are significant. Ford pays a little more in hourly wages, benefits, and health care. The big difference is the “legacy costs”, benefits, especially health benefits, paid to retired workers.

Why such a difference? Three reasons. First, the retired UAW workers have a union bargaining on their behalf, so they get benefits the Japanese companies aren't paying. Second, the Japanese companies don't have the same number of retired workers in the United States. They haven't been here that long, so if you look at the total number of workers the company has ever employed, the American companies have hundreds of thousands of retired workers, while with the Japanese companies with plants in the United States, almost all the workers they've ever employed are still working for them. The Japanese companies do have retired workers, of course; they're living in Japan.

The big difference is that the retired auto workers living in Japan, like the current auto workers living in Japan, are covered by national health. They aren't imposing a financial burden on their auto companies because they are covered by a public system. That component of the cost is just taken right out of the cost of a Japanese car, wherever it was made. In other words, what we learn from this is that decades of our refusal to consider national health are causing a major drag on American industry.

This isn't the whole story, of course. Primarily, this doesn't address the question of how the American companies will get to the point of building cars Americans want to buy, and that is a crucial point. Still, if we take out the legacy costs and focus on the questions of design and marketing, we can see that it's not the UAW that's causing the problem, but management. Therefore, we can't fix the problem by following the Republican prescription of beating up on the unions.

We've been enjoying the farce in Illinois as much as the next guy. You know, the Tony Soprano quiz, the comparisons to the Abscam defendant asking if there was any money sticking out of his pockets, the fishwife of a first lady picked up on tape as she screams in the background. I mean really, even though he's a Democrat, and we want him out, this is right up there with Duke Cunningham or Ted Stevens in entertainment value.

Still, I am concerned about the latest move by the Illinois Attorney General to get the Illinois Supreme Court to remove him from office on the pretext that he has become incapacitated by the criminal charges. Here's what the Illinois Constitution says:

(b)  If the Governor is unable to serve because of death,
conviction on impeachment, failure to qualify, resignation or
other disability, the office of Governor shall be filled by
the officer next in line of succession for the remainder of
the term or until the disability is removed.

They also have a gubernatorial succession statute: § 1. (a) In the event that the Governor, for any of the reasons specified in Article V, Section 6 of the Constitution of the State of Illinois, is not able to exercise the powers and discharge the duties of his office, such powers and duties of the office shall be exercised by the officer next in line of succession . . .

The constitutional and statutory provisions are the basis for the A.G.'s action in the Supreme Court. Her argument is that “these criminal allegations strike directly at Mr. Blagojevich's decision-making process, and specfically at at his capacity to separate his personal financial and other interests from the exercise of his public, executive authority.”

My question is this: how is this different from any other case in which corruption of a public official is alleged? Every time he tries to sell his gubernatorial power, whether for the appointment of a new senator, or approval of a construction permit, isn't it clear that he has failed to separate his personal financial and other interests from the exercise of his public, executive authority? If the A.G. is able to prevail on this basis, doesn't it swallow up the impeachment process entirely?

It seems to me that it does. There are times, and this is one of them, where the passion to rectify some obvious evil overwhelms our commitment to the rule of law, and to following the established procedures and practices to achieve the public interest. In my view, though, these are exactly the times when we are most in need of adhering to our established laws and practices.

So to the degree it's any of my business, as someone who doesn't live in Illinois, I want this guy out, and the sooner the better. If he is impeached, great. If he sees the writing on the wall and resigns (although his ability to see the writing on the wall seems to be pretty seriously impaired). What shouldn't happen, though, is that somehow people decide that Governor X or President Y has to go, and they pursue some illegitimate, ad hoc, process to get rid of him.

Even with that haircut.