Lately, in the drive for campaign finance reform, Vermont is really earning its progressive stripes.

For one thing, our most senior senator, Patrick Leahy, has just brought a proposal to amend the Constitution out of committee, headed for a full Senate hearing.  

That new constitutional amendment would establish campaign finance limits that have been gutted in recent Supreme Court decisions.

For its own part, Vermont is leading the way in this initiative, having become the first state to pass a resolution calling for a new constitutional convention.

It’s still a long way from bringing about change.  Even if the convention were to actually take place, passing a constitutional amendment requires the assent of thirty-eight states: a tall order even in less divisive times.

Nevertheless, this is movement in the right direction at last; and that deserves a round of applause.

“Our country has flourished because we have worked hard to ensure that more, not fewer, Americans can take part in the democratic process,” Leahy said in his statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. “That is why common sense campaign finance laws are so vital in protecting our democratic institutions.”

There are those who suggest that Sen. Leahy should consider retiring, but this is a pretty good example of why we shouldn’t hope for that any time soon.  

It has taken many, many years for Leahy to reach the level of seniority and influence he currently exerts on Vermont’s behalf in Washington.

We are a teenie-tiny state with bold, progressive ideas.  We have benefited from the luxury of far more influence on the national debate by virtue of the Senator’s honed skills and seniority than we are likely to have anytime soon, once he retires.

At no time has that influence potential been more critical to maintain than in the aftermath of the Citizens United decision.

And that’s not all we’ve got going for us…

As the Senate’s only bona fide independent senator, Bernie Sanders has license to follow his own instincts.  He may not enjoy the enviable access to Capitol Hill’s inside track that Pat Leahy does, but his frankly populist touch rallies a much broader progressive audience; one that hasn’t felt at home with party politics.  

The Senator is currently  focusing  on an effort to expose and counter the inordinate influence enjoyed by the infamous Koch brothers, whose extremism reaches so far beyond legitimately “conservative” views that they beg a new label.

Closer to home, Progressive candidate for lieutenant governor Dean Corren, having successfully struck his own blow for campaign finance reform by qualifying under state law for public matching funds,  has adopted my own favorite answer to Citizens United,  and is advocating for universal public financing of elections.

Meanwhile, we’ll know very soon if Americans will simply follow the glut of money in casting their 2016 ballots.

I’ve got a feeling we may be pleasantly surprised.

We’ve certainly seen it happen time and time again in Vermont: a super wealthy candidate tries to sweep an election with an avalanche of media buys, but only succeeds in irritating the electorate and gets soundly trounced at the polls.

Can you imagine how sick and tired swing state voters are going to be of Koch-financed media blitzes.  Could Republicans be in for a rude shock if burnt-out GOP voters simply don’t show up on the big day?  One can only hope.

Franklin County Republican Chair Linda Kirker made one of her occasional forays into Messenger letters yesterday.  It was a predictable screed against taxes, “big government”  and the usual suspects.  In it, she insists that the Fed’s only role under the Constitution is to secure the borders and enable international commerce.

That’s it; end of story.  

She wants the states to independently handle everything else as they see fit and, presumably, according to their means.  Classic Tea Party will-o-the-wisp speak.

What was different this time is that Emerson Lynn’s editorial on the very same page did a great job of explaining how Congress’ reluctance to arouse tax nimbys (like KIrker) has left the national highway system approaching its own fiscal cliff on August 1, and what the lawmakers’ failure to support the highway trust fund would mean for Vermonters.

If nothing more than a coincidence, it was one I couldn’t resist.  Thus my letter in response:

The accidental juxtaposition of Emerson’s editorial on the state of American highways and Linda Kirker’s letter against taxation (in Wednesday’s Messenger) was fortunate and instructive.

Despite the fact that national Republican party politics have devolved into little more than opposition simply for the sake of opposition,  I don’t doubt Ms. Kirker’s personal sincerity here.  

Nobody likes to pay taxes; but there are other things most of us don’t like any better; like potholes, crumbling road shoulders and (God forbid) collapsing bridges.  

We don’t like flying into airports where we have no assurance that our plane won’t collide with one of hundreds of others trying to land or take-off.

We wouldn’t like buying beef and having to boil it until it turned grey in order to be assured that it was safe to eat.

We don’t want to find one day that we have to pay Fed-X rates in order to have a birthday card delivered to a favorite grandchild.

We wouldn’t like it if the the fish population in Lake Champlain gradually died off and it turned into a lifeless sea of green slime.

We certainly would want the Feds to send help if a forest fire, or an earthquake, or a storm event, or a nuclear accident, or a chemical spill was far too great for local

resources to address.

We wouldn’t like it very much if America’s international trade reputation became that of a third-world incompetent because we ceased to educate our population to a basic standard.

So long as investments in infrastructure, regulation and services are essential to maintaining a population of over three-hundred-million individuals in productive coordination, we will need to pay taxes.

Ms. Kirker has embraced the romance of the Constitution, but not necessarily the sense of the federation it codified

We could have done without federal taxation entirely; but then we would have frozen national infrastructure at the nineteenth century level, and could only enjoy our “freedom” as far as regional dollars alone could take us.

In a tiny state like Vermont, that wouldn’t be very far.As anyone who becomes  a member of Costco understands, buying goods and services in bulk saves money; buying those bulk items as a group saves even more money.  The larger that group, the more economical the outcome.

Yes, securing our borders is important;  and workable solutions rather than mere posturing would be appreciated.  

Yes, international commerce is also important; but if we want to be on the selling end of that equation more than the buying end, we have to maintain a twenty-first century infrastructure.

Federal government is not the enemy of the people; it IS the people…or would be, if gerrymandering, voter suppression and “purchased” elections hadn’t shaped the current Congress into a blunt instrument  of petulant inaction.

If the Republican Party could rededicate itself to its roots in justice, compassion, fiscal responsibility and environmental protection; and if it could focus its energy on action rather than reaction, it might find credibility among more than just a frightened fringe.

If it can not, the void its truculence has created in our two party system will eventually mean collapse of more than just the national highways.

Take heart, Ms. Kirker, the undocumented immigrants you speak of are coming here from Central America because our strong federation has brought a quality of life to the U.S. of which they can only dream.

Each state in Central America is an independent nation faced with crippling poverty, corruption, violence and lawlessness.  Its only resources are those it can muster locally, which will never be enough.

Have a look at the schools, the roads and the sanitation down there and then tell me again that we don’t benefit somewhat from our tax dollars up here.

Does anyone find it as amusing as I do that Republican Scott Milne is getting so little attention for his possible run for governor that he has resorted to doing a smear campaign on himself?

As Democrats yawn meaningfully, Milne is “telling all.”  Not only did he release a statement about youthful indiscretions that landed him three times in the pokey, but he also disclosed that he had a stroke in 2006.

In one breath, Milne insists he is just doing this in the interests of transparency and that he wants no distractions from the “substantial issues.”  In the next, he can’t resist taking a pot shot at Governor Shumlin who has, so far, shown singular disinterest in Milne’s checkered past:

“The Shumlin Administration spends more time hiding from the press than it does telling people what’s going on.”

Er…whatever, Man.  

Travel agent Milne must not get out much if he is under the impression that Peter Shumlin is press shy!

If this is the best he can do to get a flutter in the July papers, how is the very forgettable Mr. Milne going to make it all the way to November?

Will his version of an October surprise be something like:  

“When did I stop beating my wife?”

Only time will tell.

After a long and challenging examination of the question, Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources has issued what seems to be the final  thermal discharge permit of Vermont Yankee’s operating life.

The decision navigates a narrow ledge of compromise, recognizing the flaw in the existing formula, which has allowed Entergy to represent themselves as compliant when they have not always been, but not replacing it entirely for the brief duration of VY’s operating life.

even though the agency concluded that the formula submitted in support of Entergy’s 2005 application was inadequate, because the plant will be closing at the end of the year, it will allow the plant to operate under the assumptions of the formula, but with conditions.

To put it simply (and I’ll leave it to the scientists to give a more accurate explanation) Entergy has been allowed to extrapolate an “average” water temperature from deep areas in the Connecticut River to represent VY’s overall discharge temperature.

Of course, shorelines, where the richest systems of life tend to be active, are also the shallowest areas.   Thermal discharges to the river in general would result in increases to the temperature of those shallower and more biologically active regions that would exceed the temperature measured in a deeper zone.   The difference might be as much as five to seven degrees, which is highly significant to sensitive river populations.

The ANR is acknowledging the error in Entergy’s thermal discharge model,  but allowing it to remain in place for the remaining months until VY’s planned shutdown.

Entergy had requested that the limits established in its discharge permit be modified so that it might avoid the expense of powering its cooling towers.  The ANR permit is tailored to give both sides of the argument a margin of victory.

New conditions of the permit included changes in allowable water temperature increases due to plant discharge in the spring and the fall… The summer limits were not changed, said (ANR Secretary) Markowitz.

She says that, under the circumstances, it is unlikely that Entergy will be forced to use its cooling towers; but the overarching verdict on the company’s science is clear:

“The draft permit upholds the Connecticut River Watershed Council’s contention that bad science underwrote the thermal discharge limits in the previous permits,” stated a press release issued on Wednesday.

It looks like the decision may be one that both sides can live with.

Though no one is saying so, faced with the likelihood that getting Entergy to do the right thing on decommissioning will be a long and expensive legal process, it appears that ANR is already shrewdly picking its battles.  

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This seems like an appropriate time to announce to my friends at Green Mountain Daily that, as of this month, I have the pleasure of becoming a part of  the Fairewinds Energy Education team.  I will continue writing on all kinds of topics on Green Mountain Daily; but, when I write on the subject of nuclear energy, I will be sure to remind my readers of that association.

Dick Mazza’s knickers not withstanding, Dean Corren is getting down to business.  

With the first substantive press release from his campaign for Lieutenant Governor, the candidate, who has already demonstrated the proactive ability to qualify for matching funds,  shrewdly allied himself with the state’s Democrat-in-Chief; to wit:

BURLINGTON, VT — A candidate for Lieutenant Governor announced his support for equal and open access to high speed internet service, calling it one of the keys to growing Vermont’s economy. The announcement came on the same day Senator Patrick Leahy led a hearing at the University of Vermont on preserving an open internet.

Dean Corren, the Progressive candidate for Lt. Governor, said he was grateful that Sen. Leahy held this hearing in Vermont, and his attendance reflects the importance of this issue to Vermont’s economic development. “The internet must be used as an interstate tool of competition and a race to the top,” said Corren. “Let’s not create a race to the bottom in which the largest companies can outbid Vermont’s startups and growth companies for access and bandwidth, we must preserve equal access across the board,” he said.

“Some of Vermont’s fastest-growing businesses, and a great deal of our future economic potential, rely on unfettered access on a level playing field,” says Corren, citing his own work as Chief Technology Officer for Verdant Power. In developing energy from tidal flows in the East River in New York, Corren explained he often needs fast access to send and receive large graphics files, along with streaming video of installations at remote sites.

“This is one of the great economic development issues of our era — even greater in scope than uniting the nation by railroads, the internet unites the world socially and economically in a way that should yield enormous benefits to Vermont.

“Today’s challenge is to make sure we realize the benefits of the technical capability to serve the world with information and information services, without being throttled,” said Corren.

“In the new information economy, the fundamental communication infrastructure is critical to Vermont’s development of clean, well paid jobs,” said Corren, “and we cannot sacrifice Vermont’s small employers for the sake a of a few corporate giants.”

Take that, Dick Mazza.  

Every so often we have to give a shout-out fto the Conservation Law Foundation, who tirelessly fight the good fight and take plenty of verbal abuse in the bargain.

Having successfully engaged the attention of the Obama Administration’s EPA on  Lake Champlain, and brought greater scrutiny to phosphorus contributions from agricultural sources, CLF is looking to expand the state’s requirements regarding run-off control from all non-agricultural business use within the watershed, as well.  

Under provisions of the Clean Water Act CLF is asking the state to mandate limits on pollution from all commercial, industrial and institutional uses within the watershed.

The Conservation Law Foundation is asking the state to use its existing authority to require commercial, industrial and institutional property owners to obtain permits that would limit the amount of pollution flowing from their properties…

Runoff from parking lots, big box store roofs, campuses and other impervious surfaces carries pollutants and nutrients into Lake Champlain. That accounts for about 14 percent of the lake’s phosphorus loading,

While there is bound to be some political push-back, it appears that Natural Resource Secretary Deb Markowitz is in agreement, at least in principle, with the CLF’s assessment that “green infrastructure” should be a component of all development, urban or otherwise.

I’m glad to hear that.  I think most Vermonters simply assume that is already the case, and that all of the issues with lake pollution are the fault of farmers, who often feel aggrieved by the manner in which the phosphorus issue has painted them the villains.

We have a long way to go to enjoying a cleaner lake.  More than a century of dairying, and over-fertilized crops has left a deep deposit of phosphorus in the sediments of Lake Champlain; and that is as much the fault of poor USDA policy as the farmers themselves.  

Even if farming in the Champlain Valley was to cease entirely, today, that sediment would continue to bring up algae blooms in St. Albans Bay every time it was disturbed.  A solution that would permanently remove or stabilize the phosphorus deposit remains persistently ellusive.

This issue has even been raised as yet another very good reason to oppose the laying of pipeline beneath the Lake.

“Fourteen-percent” of new contributions (from development) is a very significant number, however; and represents an opportunity for great improvement if initiatives to curb those discharges are adopted at the statewide level.

So, when you inevitably read letters from the development community in your local paper, complaining that they are being unfairly targeted by CLF, remember what a thankless job CLF does to protect Vermont’s natural resources; and, maybe write a letter of thanks to counterbalance the hue and cry of the able-but-inconvenienced.

Yesterday, for the fifth and final year, First Nations people from Alberta were joined by other native and non-native Candians, and by people from around the world, to undertake a spiritual walk  around the toxic industrial mine site that is the Athabasca Tar Sands.  

They have chosen once again to make the difficult journey, exposing themselves to petro-chemical vapors that lay heavy in the air at the site, in order to raise awareness of the assault on native Albertans’ health and the global threat that the massive extraction operation represents.

“During the Healing Walk, hundreds of people walk 9 miles through what were once traditional hunting, fishing and gathering grounds, but are now wide expanses of strip mining and drilling that constitute one of the largest industrial undertakings the world has ever seen. There, they offer healing prayers for the land and build unity among people impacted by tar sands development through panel discussions, workshops, music and drumming.”

Climate Change experts have warned that fully exploiting the sticky reserves of the Tar Sands could mean the end of life on earth as we know it, greatly accelerating the all ready frightening speed at which our global ecosystem is being forced out of its sustainable “sweet spot.”

This year, Vermont is taking it personally.  

A group of Vermonters who share concerns about air and water pollution and are actively working to stop the plan to move tar sands oil through an aging pipeline in the Northeast Kingdom,  pooled their resources to send KC Whiteley of Montpelier to Alberta to join the Healing Walk and bring a message of solidarity from Vermont.

“Vermonters care about their land just as the First Nations people in Alberta care about theirs,” Whiteley said. “We want to show our support for their cause, and I will bring their stories home.”

Even as the First Nations group assembled to walk in Alberta, Rep. Peter Welch continued the fight to prevent passage of a bill that would open Vermont as a corridor for moving tar sands oil to east coast refineries. Such an “accommodating” arrangement would have real potential to befoul local waters and contaminate farmland; and that’s before the carbon payload is unleashed on the rest of the world.

The National Wildlife Federation reports that organizers of the Healing Walk plan to hold future events in other locations impacted by tar sands extraction and processing.

If Congress can’t be dissuaded, in some coming year, that could be Vermont.

State auditor, Doug Hoffer has just released a report on the database employed by the Green Mountain Care Board to keep tabs on costs and other trackable indicators concerning health care provided to Vermonters.

“The Vermont Health Care Uniform Reporting and Evaluation System (VHCURES) is a digital catalogue of all fees for medical services and products that insurers paid over the last seven years for Vermont residents.”

While the report does not represent an actual audit of the system, it does provide thoughtful insight into how the database might better serve to inform individual Vermonters of  their healthcare choices.

Release of the report coincides with efforts by the GMCB to entertain bids from contractors to overhaul the existing system.  It’s observations will hopefully guide the Board in evaluating which contractor can provide the most accessible solutions for the public, as that is where the Auditor finds that the current the database system falls short.

As more and more Vermonters are opting for higher deductibles and therefore becoming directly responsible for a higher percentage of the cost of the healthcare services provided to them, it is crucial that they have the necessary tools to make informed choices.

Those tools must provide information not only on comparative costs but on quality of care as well.  The goal is to move toward greater accountability so that, equipped with the facts and figures before they go in for procedures, consumers may effect some control over the marketplace.

Coming so soon after the software glitches that plagued the Healthcare Connect roll-out, it’s nice to see a proactive interest from the Auditor’s Office in giving Vermonters a much more rewarding experience with VHCURES.

Information is power; and it can be hoped that, armed with the information gleaned from a more transparent and accessible healthcare database, consumers will demand greater efficiencies in order to bring the escalating cost of healthcare under control.

A man of the people, Hoffer is always looking for ways to better serve the interests of ordinary Vermonters. No surprise that he has no challenger in the November election.

Those “Gazelles” BP wrote about?  The second herd is lining up at the trough, and once again, Frank Cioffi is the maitre d’.

Responding to rumors that Vermont’s biggest corporate gimme machine, IBM,  is about to take its much diminished business elsewhere,  Mr. Cioffi and the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation are proposing that Vermont shovel another $4.5 million into Big Blue’s gaping maw.

And that’s not all!

The full menu, per the Burlington Free Press:

• Grant $4.5 million from the Vermont Enterprise Fund to IBM campus ownership in support of the local workforce and campus infrastructure. Cioffi pointed out that the money would be available only after July 1, and it is Gov. Peter Shumlin’s decision, in consultation with the Legislature, how to deploy the dollars.

• Fund and support the various workforce training programs available in the state and rebuild the “highly successful” manufacturing and technician training partnership between Vermont Technical College and IBM.

• Identify a “public entity buyer” for the IBM campus wastewater treatment facility and other campus infrastructure, using state and federal resources to acquire and subsidize operating costs, as the IBM infrastructure is “the most significant in our state.” Cioffi believes this is important regardless of whether IBM continues to own the facility, as other manufacturers could benefit from the infrastructure.

• Engage a statewide action team on IBM immediately, led by Shumlin and including the state’s most experienced economic development professionals. GBIC recommends Commerce Secretary Patricia Moulton to lead the team for the governor.

• Form a regional-level team to work with the state team that includes Cioffi and the executive directors or presidents of Franklin County Industrial Development Corp., the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission, the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce and the United Way of Chittenden County. Cioffi also recommended the regional team include municipal leaders from Essex Junction, Essex and Williston and board members of GBI

That’s right; the plan is to rain so much money and public payroll hours on IBM that they just have to give us one last dance.  It’s what we do!

But let us not forget what Cioffi said just days ago about li’l ol’ Vermont’s realistic expectations of outbidding other locations for Keurig’s affections:

(when asked) if the State of Vermont through VEGI had the ability economically to compete with other states and nations. “Probably not” said Cioffi, but he supports VEGI spending.

Could we expect anything else with regard to Vermont’s #1 corporate crush? Probably not.

This could be bigger than it looks.

On Monday, in one of those infamous “5-4” decisions, the Supreme Court signaled something of a change in the weather.  This time, the “five” sided with progressive interests rather than against.

The question was whether or not the (Obama administration) EPA would be allowed to impose regulations controlling greenhouse gasses.  It sharpened the pen of an earlier (2007) decision that reprimanded the (Bush administration) EPA for rejecting a petition from a group of citizens who joined the State of Massachusetts in asking that they be permitted to establish statewide regulations for auto emissions.  In that instance, SCOTUS found that the EPA had improperly rejected the petition:

Instead, EPA rejected the rulemaking petition based on impermissible considerations. Its action was therefore “arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise not in accordance with law,” §7607(d)(9). On remand, EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute.

That, too was a 5-4 decision with arguably a progressive outcome, but was cautiously framed around the arbitrary nature of the EPA’s position with regard to the petitioners and carefully avoided the “third rail” of climate science.

While that decision offered no opinion on the scientific validity of human induced climate change, Monday’s decision kind of does, by implication.

The agency made such a finding, saying that “elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere” pose a danger to “current and future generations,” and it set limits on emissions from new vehicles.

The ruling failed to support the “primary rationale” on which the (Obama administration) EPA sought permission to act.  To do so would have had implications far beyond the limited scope of power plant emissions, which were the immediate focus of EPA action.  It can be hoped, though, that this decision will favorably weight future attempts to extend the regulatory arm of the EPA to strictly limit vehicle emissions.

Has a “tipping point” finally been reached, where the science of climate change is poised to leave the arena of political whimsy and join “terrorism” as something both liberals and conservatives can embrace as an actionable threat?

We can only hope so.