Did I laugh when I learned that the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce was hosting a presentation on “How to Survive Walmart” Thursday night!  

Not being a Chamber kind of a gal, I had to wait for Michelle Monroe’s account  of the soiree to appear in the Weekend Messenger; but I knew it had hit home when a local hospitality business owner hailed me on my front lawn and launched into the need for downtown retailers to stay open late.

She assured me there would be no problem competing with the Walmart if they just do that one teenie thing.

I replied that perhaps that would be economically feasible now that the City has begun investing heavily in sidewalk-scaping to encourage foot traffic downtown, but pointed out that the cost of staffing, heating and lighting a shop after five PM must somehow be offset by sales during that longer work day.  She agreed and dropped the subject.

The doors of our very own St. Albans Walmart are projected to open barely four months from now.  Interesting time to consider its “survivability.”

Back ten years ago, when the Northwest Citizens for Responsible Growth, of which I am a charter member, naively offered to host a presentation or panel discussion on the potential impacts of a Walmart locating in St. Albans Town for the Chamber, we were politely put off.  It took us a while to realize that they weren’t interested in hearing from anyone who might rain on their parade, but eventually we got the message.

Over the intervening years we have been told by the powers that be, over and over again, that a Walmart in the Town could only have a positive effect on downtown retail.  

Surely all kinds of new customers will flock to the City streets after visiting that novel and amazing new retail option located conveniently and immediately, right  at the highway exit!

These people will have plenty of cash in their pockets and downtown retailers have only to divine what they can sell that Walmart doesn’t already sell as cheaply as possible!  What could be so hard about that?

Oh, yes; and downtown retailers will have to keep their shops staffed and powered into the night on the off-chance that a few sated discount shoppers will feel the need to drop some serious cash downtown.

Sounds like a winning formula to me!

And to make the pitch to local Chamber members, the FCCC brought in the poster girl for downtown success in the face of Walmart:  Ruth Taylor of Littleton, New Hampshire.  Ms. Taylor is routinely asked to do similar presentations all over  because things seem to have worked out just fine in Littleton…but only in Littleton.

Retail in surrounding communities has simply dried up and blown away.  

That’s because those surrounding communities, like St. Johnsbury, Vermont, don’t have the secret ingredient, which is money, lots and lots of money.  

The money comes from various sources; donations, state funded downtown revitalization programs etc.  Little of the money appears to stem directly from Walmart, but rather from the threat of its impact, which serves to prime the pump and unlatch the coffers.

The money goes to things like streetscaping, gentrification, open-air events, etc.  It is not made entirely clear whether the primary retail visitors downtown are routinely coming to Littleton to shop at Walmart, then progressing downtown; or visiting downtown Littleton for its attractions, then stopping at Walmart as they leave town.  Put simply, is Walmart the draw or just the bonus feature?

Be that as it may, Littleton does derive some property tax income from the fact that Walmart is operating on their soil.

In this important way, St. Albans’ situation differs markedly from that of Littleton.  The City of St. Albans, where the traditional downtown is located,  will have no claim to tax generated by the St. Albans Walmart, because all those monies go to the Town of St. Albans, which has absolutely no interest in sharing.

The City has some equivalent funding sources right now because they have been awarded a TIF district and got a little chump change from developer Jeff Davis in exchange for withdrawing their appeal of his Walmart permit.  

That is, however, a finite situation, so I am glad to see that they are striking while the iron is hot.  But there are no guarantees for the future if Walmart dampens the anticipated property value boosts from the TIF.   And this is a very real possibility that has played out in many locations across America.

In fact, even the Town of St. Albans seems to be questioning how profitable the location of Walmart in their community will be, once the cost of infrastructure maintenance and policing is taken into account.  The Town Selectboard has already attempted to get permission from Town voters to impose a 1% local sales tax in order to offset anticipated shortfalls.  

The voters turned them down; but I am told that the local sales tax isn’t necessarily dead because, in the same election, the voters accepted a charter proposed by the Selectboard.  If my information is correct, the charter gives the Selectboard the privilege of imposing a local sales tax without returning to the voters for permission to do so.

So that’s bound to get interesting…

Even if, by some miracle, the Littleton model can be successfully duplicated in St. Albans City, the remaining towns in Franklin County seem destined to become retail deserts.

Is Walmart in St. Albans “survivable?”  I suppose that depends on your definition of the word.

Howard Shaffer came out with another of his dewey-eyed defenses of Vermont Yankee a few days ago in a letter to the editor. We know the line of patter practically by heart now: “…safe…clean…cheap…blah-blah-blah.”

The trouble is, the same people who read his op-ed very likely  also read the May 24th Free Press, which contained a hair-raising account of the struggle in Japan to contain the radiation at Fukushima and to keep the crippled reactors cool…(you know, so as to avoid a meltdown?)…as well as news of efforts to pressure the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to finally deliver on its 30 year promise to do something about nuclear waste storage.

And there has been no shortage of bad news from failures at aging reactors all over the country this year.

Taken altogether, it doesn’t add up to a safe or clean picture of nuclear energy; and cheap, we have learned, it is not.  Even Wall Street is abandoning ship on nuclear investment.

Meanwhile, Fairewinds Associates has a very compelling new video uploaded on their site, featuring Margaret Harrington in conversation with Arnie Gundersen and two Japanese women, journalist Chihio Kaneka and Fukushima resident Chikako Nishiyama, who share first-hand experiences of the aftermath of the 2011 disaster there.  

Through Ms. Kaneka, who acts as her interpreter, Ms. Nishiyama,  a Kawauchi city councilwoman, describes how due to a misunderstanding of  the way radiation plumes distribute themselves, the people of her village were told to evacuate to another location which was actually significantly more exposed to radiation than was the village they left behind.  

From the two women’s account, we get a sense of the chaos and misinformation that further  complicated an already very dangerous situation.

Moving forward to the present and the ongoing effort to simply contain the simmering stew of Fukushima, it is apparently becoming more and more difficult to staff the endless shifts of workers extending far into the forseeable future because exposure levels are rising too quickly.  It sounds like no one really knows  what the endgame will be, because it is just barely possible to keep a lid on crisis as things now stand.

It is remarkable to me that this situation gets so little rise from the public at large.  

The worldwide industry is  adept at message control and has such a long and uniquely intimate history with government “regulators;”  and none of us ever wants to believe the worst will happen to us; so we buy the pretty talk from people like Howard Shaffer,  we trust officials to protect us, and we make ourselves satisfied with half-truths and half-answers to difficult questions.

One of Mr. Shaffer’s principle arguments for the economic value of VY, is that 75% of energy generated in Vermont comes from Vermont Yankee.  Of course he neatly avoids discussing the fact that Vermont currently buys none of its power from the aging facility.  So its economic value to Vermont is highly questionable, especially since there is a growing sense that Entergy cannot make good on its decommissioning commitments when the time comes; and we will most likely be facing a cost for clean-up that will cancel out any cost benefit the state has enjoyed from the heavily subsidized location of VY on our soil.

Mr. Shaffer’s valentines to VY only serve to remind us that a festering carbuncle continues to lodge on Vermont’s border, from which we derive little benefit but must tolerate considerable risk.  

From Ms. Nishiyama and Ms. Kaneka we get a better idea of just what the “worst case” scenario might look like.

We had a bad week at our house because our three year old Pomeranian rescue suddenly had a first-time seizure, which rapidly became cluster seizures; and, on Tuesday we had to rush her to the emergency vet in Williston.

They stabelized her, identified her condition as idiopathic epilepsy, and got her started on the regime that will allow her to live a relatively normal life hereafter.  

When it comes to our families and our pets, we’re pretty good at accepting that, following a health crisis, some permanent changes must be adopted immediately in order to avoid a repeat or escalation of the crisis. A single life-threatening incident, coming out of the blue, is usually sufficient to get us on the right track.

Why does this proactive instinct not extend to our response to environmental crisis?

In the aftermath of the record twister that leveled Moore, Oklahoma we are learning that few buildings in the community provide so much as an above-ground “safe room,” let alone a basement, for inhabitants to wait out the storm. This, despite the fact that this little town lies squarely in a region known as “Tornado Alley.”

That deficiency extends even to the schools, one of which collapsed in the storm, killing seven children.

Given the storm history of the area, wouldn’t you think the local permit body would proactively require, not “recommend,” a minimum amount of protection in each new build?   But no; we are told Oklahomans are so hostile to the role of government in their lives that they will not tolerate such regulation.  

It is only when you read between the lines that it becomes clear that cost is the real driver here:

“When you look at the flat land, and the amount it would cost to excavate and remove the dirt, the cost of the foundation to build a basement just adds a substantial amount to the cost of a new home,” Mr. McCarty (a local builder) said.

Before we get to feeling too superior to Oklahoma in the regulatory proaction department, we need only look back to Hurricane Irene and Governor Shumlin’s sanguine order to disregard Vermont’s own stream protection rules in the aftermath of the storm.  The very purpose of those rules was to minimize the risk of similar events unleashing even worse outcomes on both the environment and the population.  

And here we are, poised once again at the beginning of an active storm season, having made relatively little progress toward adopting stricter protocols for storm mitigation; and having lessened the likelihood that existing rules will be enforced, by underfunding the work of the Agency of Natural Resources.

The new reality is that, if we are to cope with growing climate disturbance and the costly environmental and human impacts that come in its wake, we must invest even more money in the process, and support regulatory initiative as the positive it is for a sustainable future. The alternative is a future little different from the present plight of Moore, OK.

Before we enroll too enthusiastically in the current meme, that regulation in Vermont should be “streamlined;” let’s devote a little more concern to effective enforcement.

There certainly should be an ongoing effort to avoid redundancy and inefficiency in the state’s regulatory systems.

However, the commitment should not be to making developers’ jobs easier, but rather to ensuring that Vermont’s natural environment will continue to support a healthy ecosystem (including our human population) into the distant future.  It should not be to favor short-term business interests over the science of long-range sustainability.

Too much government intervention?  Just ask those homeless Oklahomans whether they wouldn’t appreciate a little more about now.  

News that the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission (CVRPC) and Central Vermont Economic Development Commission (CVEDC) are considering a merger sailed into my mailbox this morning with a note from a friend.

“Terrible idea,” was all he wrote.  That was all he needed to write, because I know exactly what he means.

While planning commissions and economic development commissions must find ways to work together for the greater good of the communites they serve; each should be aware of its distinct mission.

The mission of an economic development commission is to pursue opportunities for economic growth in order to grow the tax base and bring new jobs to the community.

The mission of a planning commission is to ensure that growth occurs only in the places where infrastructure exists to support it, where the community believes it will best fit into their long-term needs, and to protect the community’s greater quality of life for future generations.  

Sometimes doing the right thing for the long-term best interests of a community, means a planning commission should recommend against a project that has potential to grow the tax base and even create some jobs in the short-run, but will negatively impact the quality of life for residents, in the long-run.

Just because these conflicting interests  seem to rarely assert themselves in Vermont doesn’t mean that they haven’t, nor that they won’t do so increasingly in the highly competitive future.

The struggle over Walmart locating on prime agricultural soil at the perimeter of St. Albans is an excellent example of how the long-term best interests of Franklin County have been subverted to the impulse for “growth at any cost” and jobs of any quality.

When presented with the Walmart project, the Northwest Regional Planning Commission at least attempted initially to discharge its mission through the normal channels, voting in its Project Review Committee not to support the project for a number of reasons.  

When external pressure was exerted by a powerblock representing the Town of St. Albans, the Commission ultimately caved and created an “ad-hoc” committee to overturn the Project Review Committee’s decision.

This was a failure of mission on the part of the NRPC;  which coupled with failures of process in ACT 250 to allow a project that violates nearly every principle of that environmental law to go forward, nonetheless.

Had the Northwest Regional Planning Commission and the Franklin County Office of Economic Development been operating as a single entity, the arguments against the project would most likely never have been made.

Have a look at the “Services” provided by the CVEDC to businesses:

•We maintain an inventory of industrial sites, buildings and land available for development.  

•We provide new and existing businesses with information or resources needed for decision-making, problem-solving, site location or business expansion.

• We help new and existing businesses obtain financing through the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), conventional banks or through alternative lending programs.

•We provide liaison for businesses with the State and Federal governments for permits, grants, lobbying and environmental issues.

To put it more simply, one of the key purposes of the Economic Development Commission is to aid businesses in moving their projects through the permit system.  This is an advocacy role which is in direct conflict with the role of a planning commission.

To join them in a single harness assumes that they can simultaneously represent the interests of the local community and of a business seeking to locate in that community.

That is a recipe for undermining the sustainable living model that Vermont has uniquely been trying to build.

If all that matters is short-term economic growth, we might as well get used to the idea of the small remainder of prime agricultural soils in Vermont being permanently erased of their productive potential, just so that they can be developed into a series of short-lived retail models, rising up only to be abandoned as fashion favors a newer retail alternative.

If money is the only driver of our planning decisions, we might as well sell our local water systems ( and with them, the bottling rights to our own aquifers) to the Coca-Cola corporation so that they can fulfill their professed ambition to own most of the water of the world.

Think about it.  We have a lot to lose on behalf of future generations of Vermonters.

News that the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission (CVRPC) and Central Vermont Economic Development Commission (CVEDC) are considering a merger sailed into my mailbox this morning with a note from a friend.

“Terrible idea,” was all he wrote.  That was all he needed to write, because I know exactly what he means.

While planning commissions and economic development commissions must find ways to work together for the greater good of the communites they serve; each should be aware of its distinct mission.

The mission of an economic development commission is to pursue opportunities for economic growth in order to grow the tax base and bring new jobs to the community.

The mission of a planning commission is to ensure that growth occurs only in the places where infrastructure exists to support it, where the community believes it will best fit into their long-term needs, and to protect the community’s greater quality of life for future generations.  

Sometimes doing the right thing for the long-term best interests of a community means a planning commission should recommend against a project that has potential to grow the tax base and even create some jobs in the short-run, but will negatively impact the quality of life for residents, in the long-run.

Just because these conflicting interests  seem to rarely assert themselves in Vermont doesn’t mean that they haven’t, nor that they won’t do so increasingly in the highly competitive future.

The struggle over Walmart locating on prime agricultural soil at the perimeter of St. Albans is an excellent example of how the long-term best interests of Franklin County have been subverted to the impulse for “growth at any cost” and jobs of any quality.

When presented with the Walmart project, the Northwest Regional Planning Commission at least attempted initially to discharge its mission through the normal channels, voting in its Project Review Committee not to support the project for a number of reasons.  

When external pressure was exerted by a powerblock representing the Town of St. Albans, the Commission ultimately caved and created an “ad-hoc” committee to overturn the Project Review Committee’s decision.

This was a failure of mission on the part of the NRPC;  which coupled with failures of process in ACT 250 to allow a project that violates nearly every principle of that environmental law to go forward, nonetheless.

Had the Northwest Regional Planning Commission and the Franklin County Office of Economic Development been operating as a single entity, the arguments against the project would most likely never have been made.

Have a look at the “Services” provided by the CVEDC to businesses:

•We maintain an inventory of industrial sites, buildings and land available for development.  

•We provide new and existing businesses with information or resources needed for decision-making, problem-solving, site location or business expansion.

• We help new and existing businesses obtain financing through the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), conventional banks or through alternative lending programs.

•We provide liaison for businesses with the State and Federal governments for permits, grants, lobbying and environmental issues.

To put it more simply, one of the key purposes of the Economic Development Commission is to aid businesses in moving their projects through the permit system.  This is an advocacy role which is in direct conflict with the role of a planning commission.

To join them in a single harness assumes that they can simultaneously represent the interests of the local community and of a business seeking to locate in that community.

That is a recipe for undermining the sustainable living model that Vermont has uniquely been trying to build.

If all that matters is short-term economic growth, we might as well get used to the idea of the small remainder of prime agricultural soils in Vermont being permanently erased of their productive potential, just so that they can be developed into a series of short-lived retail models, rising up only to be abandoned as fashion favors a newer retail alternative.

If money is the only driver of our planning decisions, we might as well sell our local water systems ( and with them, the bottling rights to our own aquifers) to the Coca-Cola corporation so that they can fulfill their professed ambition to own most of the water of the world.

Think about it.  We have a lot to lose on behalf of future generations of Vermonters.

As a downtown resident of St. Albans, I welcome today’s announcement that TIF districts will be subject to increased oversight by the Auditor’s office.

The City of St. Albans recently nabbed a coveted TIF designation, which will aid in ongoing downtown revitalization efforts.  Those efforts, it is hoped, will offset the impact of big box retail development on the City’s perimeter.

Optimism is running high in my neighborhood, even as massive sewer and sidewalk projects disrupt foot traffic on Main St.

St. Albans voters have given a ringing endorsement to the City’s early plans for TIF-enabled improvements and have had little patience with those who would hamstring those efforts.

TIF, “Tax Increment Financing,” is a powerful tool made available by the Legislature to a limited number of municipalites.  It involves temporary redirection of tax dollars that normally would go to the state.

Those tax dollars go instead into public projects intended to grow the TIF holder’s tax base. The idea is that this ultimately benefits both the municipality and the state…but TIF fever has been known to carry-away other administrations, who lost sight of their long-term obligations as they pursued exciting short-term goals.  

Winooski’s 1.5-million shortfall springs most readily to mind.

Senate bill 37, passed at the end of the 2013 session, reforms the process and specifically establishes penalties for failure to comply.

It also ends the practice of awarding new TIF districts to other municipalities.  Whether that provision will be revisited once the impact of reforms on existing TIF districts can be assessed, remains to be seen.

Vermont Auditor Doug Hoffer is determined to provide the ongoing oversight that has previously been lacking with regard to TIF management, so that the benefitting municipalities don’t get in over their heads.

According to Hoffer, “S. 37 establishes much needed clarity in the statutes, provides a mechanism for resolving future disputes, and requires payments by the towns for monies mistakenly withheld from the Education Fund.” It also establishes a process for future performance audits of TIF’s by the Auditor’s office.

Poised near the beginning of its own TIF “boom,” St. Albans will certainly benefit from the guidance offered by S. 37 and the certain knowledge that the Auditor’s office will be expecting accountability.

5/17/13

I have just learned that Mr. Pomerleau and Mr. Winters have, today, reached a mutually acceptable agreement, and Mr. Pomerleau is now REALLY dropping the appeal.

………………………………………………………………………………………………….

It’s been more than a month since real estate mogul Ernie Pomerleau took out a full-page ad in the Messenger, ‘excusefying’ for his impulse to challenge the permit of local ACE Hardware retailer, Gordon Winters, and announcing his intention to withdraw his appeal.  

The ad followed several days of indignant letters and comment by community members, who assembled in large numbers at a City Council meeting to demonstrate their support for Mr. Winters’ project.

Now, Pomerleau Real Estate has reneged on that very public position and continues to pursue the appeal.  

According to Michelle Monroe of the Messenger, who attempted to contact Mr. Pomerleau earlier in the week, his office said he was out of the country but checking his messages.  No comment was forthcoming from Mr. Pomerleau by the time the story of the ongoing appeal was filed on Friday, so we can only speculate on his rationale for the about-face.

According to Mr. Winters, after the splashy announcement that the appeal would be withdrawn, he was asked to sign a release; presumably, quid-pro-quo for Pomerleau dropping his appeal.  That release represented a blanket commitment by Mr. Winters not to challenge anything that Pomerleau Real Estate might in future seek a permit to do to their St. Albans properties.  Unsurprisingly, Mr. Winters refused and his attorney suggested a much more limited release that would proscribe him from frivolously appealing minor alterations to the adjacent Pommerleau property.

That apparently was unsatisfactory to Mr. Pomerleau, whose attorney proceeded with his appeal and requested mediation; but it remains unclear what issues the mediator would be attempting to resolve.

The appeal suggests that Mr. Pomerleau’s property will be harmed in some way by storm water runoff from the ACE Hardware siting; but that property is situated upstream from the proposed new store.  In fact, the ACE development is actually decreasing impervious surface on that site, and further improving the wastewater profile with catch basins that will represent a net reduction of run-off from the parking area.

The appeal also complains that pedestrian walkways that will make ACE Hardware easily accessible to downtown foot traffic will harm the Pomerleau parking lot; and that the retailer’s signage, which has not yet even been determined in the ACE plan (and in any case will only be visible from the rear of the extreme south end of the St. Albans Shopping Center) will harm his business.

Mr. Pomerleau’s appeal may delay the project, thereby harming the interests not only of Mr. Winters, but also of the taxpayers of St. Albans.  However, it seems unlikely to  succeed, and will give the appearance of extreme frivolity on the appellant’s part…an impression that a developer who routinely engages in the permit process should be reluctant to give.

Furthermore, those taxpayers have already demonstrated their hostility to Mr. Pomerleau’s tactics and he is unlikely to win friends and influence the good people of St. Albans in this manner.   It is therefore very difficult to understand why Mr. Pomerleau, an otherwise savvy businessman, would choose this course.

I have heard rumblings of discontent with the City for a lack of transparency in the TIF distribution process from some business owners and private citizens; and I get the impression that Mr. Pomerleau’s influence is exacerbating already existing discontent with the process.

It therefore seems likely that Mr. Winter’s ACE project is falling victim to political issues having more to do with ham-handed management of delicate relationships on the part of  city manager Dominic Cloud  than  with the project itself.  As the site currently is underutilized, over-paved and rather unattractive, it seems reasonable to assume that the well-planned and architecturally appropriate ACE building would only serve to enhance the value of Mr. Pomerleau’s holdings.

Though undeniably very talented and a great asset to the City;  Mr. Cloud has a habit of acting and speaking impulsively, which has more than once gotten the City into hot water, even while technically being able to claim the high-ground.

This has certainly contributed to worsening the already dysfunctional relationship with the Town; and just recently raised the unnecessary specter of property seizure by right of ’eminent domain’ in a dispute over the planned City parking lot.  

All of which is no excuse for Mr. Pomerleau’s performance vis-a-vis ACE Hardware, but it would be unfair to say that the City is above reproach here.

While we recognize that time is of the essence when it comes to TIF opportunity, and that a certain amount of discretion is required to pursue real estate deals serving the public interest without creating a TIF feeding frenzy;  there are a few loyal and long-serving downtown merchants who may feel disenfranchised by the process and it is crucial to the success of downtown revitalization that all the stakeholders feel valued and have ample opportunity to contribute the wisdom of their experience to that process.  

Mr. Cloud would be well-advised to open up the process a little bit and work toward a culture of trust and empowerment.  Most of all, he might honor the wisdom of the old carpenter’s rule: “Measure twice.  Cut once.”

…And, as for Ernie Pomerleau?  Come on, Mr. Pommerleau – get over it!  You know full-well that you’ve enjoyed the upside of the sweet deal far more frequently than the other guy!  It suits you ill to be mean-spirited and petty over a public project that you know will benefit the downtown as a whole.

Perfect it is not; but people who are suffering right now will see relief from the Senate End of Life Choice bill; and that is worth a lot.

The compromise agreement that will ultimately allow “death with dignity”  to become a legal option in Vermont is a short-term solution, sunsetting the Oregon-style comprehensive Choice language in 2016 and replacing it with language that will do no more than indemnify physicians who assist patients when they choose to end their own lives.

That doesn’t seem like much of a victory for lawmakers who fought long and hard to allow Vermonters to control their own destiny when all hope is well-past and all they have in their short future is pain and suffering before inevitable death.  But it means everything to those who will face the unthinkable in the immediate future; and there is every reason to hope that, once reluctant legislators have an opportunity to see the Oregon-style law in effect, they will gain the confidence to extend that comprehensive language indefinitely.

Thank you for that, Senators.

Bellows Free Academy (BFA) in St. Albans recently discovered it had a problem; and the Champlain Valley office of Voices Against Violence,  has been brought on board to facilitate an ongoing conversation about that problem.

In February of this year, a sexting ring at St. Albans’s hometown high school briefly fluttered the news before slipping away from public attention.

States Attorney, Jim Hughes didn’t press charges and no disciplinary action appears to have been taken by the school.

According to multiple sources familiar with the investigation, the young men involved distributed roughly 150 photos of more than 20 of their female peers in various states of undress. Although the total number of recipients might never be known, three of the young men were responsible for organizing the photo exchange.

Someone at least had the good sense to recognize the need for intervention.

The message carried by Voices educators to BFA students has focussed on the meaning of “consent,” and how the principle of consent was violated when those photos were distributed, just as surely as it is in an actual rape.

AndVoices is taking this opportunity to remind students that consent does not ever exist when the subject is impaired by alcohol or drugs.

Voices educator Amanda Rohdenburg observed that

“Boys and girls take these pictures at the same rate,” she said, “and then the pictures of the girls go viral.”

At least one BFA student had an explanation for the difference.

“She was really clear boys felt entitled and could share these like baseball cards,” said Rohdenburg. She explained that in the student’s analysis the boys saw the girls’ bodies as their property, as something they could trade like commodities.

Quite apart from the violation of privacy committed by the male students is the under reaction of  BFA officials and law enforcement, which suggests that this behavior falls within their expectations of “boys being boys.”

According to Michelle Monroe of the Messenger, Hughes felt there was no evidence of coercion.

Vermont’s teen sexting law allows teens caught with photos of an underage romantic or sexual partner to be sent to a court diversion program. However, as assistant state’s attorney Diane Wheeler acknowledged, the law was not intended to cover situations in which those recipients forward the photos to others without the consent of the person in the photo.

How far removed really is this exploitive behavior from that which resulted in the recent suicides of girls in Nova Scotia and California?  And what does this say about the culture of our community?

I can’t believe that after all the decades of struggle to eradicate it, this kind of gross sexual objectification and humiliation of women is still treated like a harmless prank.

In not unrelated news, we learn that sexual assaults in the U.S. military have been increasing at an alarming rate, and now average 70 per day!

This announcement followed quickly on the heels of the Sunday arrest of Lt. Col Jeffrey Krusinski, head of the Air Force SAPRO program…the guy in charge of preventing sexual assault… for himself committing a sexual assault.

Proof enough for me that it is the culture of command that makes the military an unsafe place for women.

In the category of “How naive can you get?” Vermont Yankee supporter, Howard Shaffer certainly wins the prize.

Many in the Vermont legislature would like to see imposition of a $40-million reserve fund to restore the Vermont Yankee site to a “greenfield” condition, post-decommissioning, as was promised to the state by Entergy when it purchased the aging facility.  But Mr. Shaffer sees absolutely no problem in getting Entergy to pay-up:

“The issue of will there be enough money is a serious one, but I also think it will be found that the federal government laws override state laws that allow somebody to go bankrupt and run away from their responsibility,” he said. “That’s Congress’ intent. And they’re going to find the original owners and make them pay.”

Arnie Gundersen of Fairwinds Associates is far less certain:

Gundersen said Entergy Corporation, Yankee’s owner, is looking at major expenses in the future. These include a $200 million bill to replace its condenser and potentially another $40 million in modifications that could be required as a result of the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan…at the end of the day when the fund is depleted there may not be funds to get to greenfield.

Gundersen supports the bill under consideration by Vermont’s House Natural Resource and Energy Committee that would codify Entergy’s obligation to return the site to a “greenfield” state.

Considering it’s record of insincerity and looking around at the declining fortunes of nuclear plants in other places does not make one optimistic that Entergy will live up to its promises, post-VY, without enhanced inducement.

Declining gas prices and growing regulatory concerns are both moving the American energy market away from nuclear and its fleet of outdated reactors.  Dominion Resources just announced that it will close the Kewaunee plant in Wisconsin even though it is licensed to operate for another twenty years.  It is expected that many nuclear plants in the northeast will soon follow suit.

The worldwide industry’s number one bad boy,TEPCO is refusing to fork over the small portion (10.5 billion yen; or roughly $106-million) of the decontamination costs for Fukushima, which the Japanese government is asking the company to contribute.  The total costs are expected to reach into the trillions of yen.

It kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?