I grew up reading the Chicago Tribune, which my Dad picked-up every evening at the corner store.  He didn’t particularly like the politics of the paper; but so long as that remained on the editorial page, the Tribune was our window on the world beyond Morse Avenue.

Like most big American papers, the Trib has fallen victim to the depreciating effects of media consolidation, but the latest bit of news really hurts.  

I don’t need to tell GMD readers how nefariously powerful the Koch brothers are.  Taking a page from Rupert Murdoch, the Kochs are now making a bid not just to influence the news, but to own it outright.  

Vermont’s  Senator Bernie Sanders and Democracy for America are working in tandem to raise public awareness of  the rumored attempt by the Koch Bros to buy the Tribune Company. They are asking concerned citizens to join them in signing a  a petition to protest that sale.

Addressed to Peter Ligouri, CEO of the Tribune Company, the petition highlights the potential impact that such a sale might have, given the scope of Tribune’s media conglomerate:

Given your large readership (The Los Angeles Times, fourth-largest circulation in the country; The Chicago Tribune, ninth-largest circulation; Hoy, second-largest Spanish-language daily newspaper in the country), it concerns us that one of the potential buyers, Koch Industries, is interested in the purchase of your print media outlets

…As the owners of a major fossil fuel company, they have also been leaders in providing substantial funding for organizations that spread misinformation about the reality of global warming — a growing crisis which threatens our entire planet.

…We remain deeply concerned that one extremely wealthy family, because of an absurd Supreme Court decision, is able to have enormous influence over our political life and elections.  We are unalterably opposed to that same family expanding its power by controlling the news and information that millions of Americans receive.

If ever our access to a free and impartial press was threatened, it is now. Sign the petition and make your voice heard.

I don’t know if anyone caught the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library; but it was a revisionist love-feast with all the living ex-prezes and their spouses lined up on the podium next to the Obamas.

Everyone took great pains to compliment one another, and you just knew they all shared the secret password; maybe even matched launch-codes for a door prize.

The universal subtext was: “If we knew then, what we do now…(wink-wink.)”

Yeah, if only…

Not yet uploaded on the ‘St. Albans Messenger’ website is Michelle Monroe’s great piece on the ‘Vermonters First’ attack mailings.  She went right to the horses mouth(?) by e-mailing a list of questions to which Mr. Brooks responded.

It is an excellent, detailed and balanced article that gives both parties ample opportunity to explain themselves. The end result is that McCarthy comes off looking great, while Brooks shows himself to be the opportunistic shill we know so well.

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‘Looks like the elusive queen of money politics in Vermont, Lenore Broughton, is lobbing poison apples once again.

Thursday’s mail delivery in St. Albans brought a brand new attack circular against Democratic Rep. Mike McCarthy, replete with the usual gaudy graphics and poor design value that “Paid for by Vermonters First” has come to signify.

This one was labelled “Official Citizen’s Petition,” and comes with a tear-off card addressed to Mr. McCarthy at a St. Albans address on Lake Street (?)  

“Official,” is it? Maybe I’d have been more impressed if it came with a decoder ring.

The mailer is predictably laced with hyperbolic fantasy about how Mike’s rather mainstream votes mean the end of life as we know it in Vermont:

Mike McCarthy’s taxing spree will mean another pay-cut for you and your family…You’ll have less money to pay college tuition, you’ll have to work longer until you can retire, and you’ll have less to spend on vacation.

Wow!  That’s a lot for one guy to have done in barely three months at the State House.

It’s obviously an ill-fitting generic product that “Vermonters First” has re-purposed as an extremely early ice-breaker for the 2014 election; but it wasn’t  well-received by  one City resident, who posted an irritated query on Front Porch Forum asking ‘why now?’…and whose money is behind Vermonters First?

The writer guessed correctly that it was not local money.  

As a Front Porch Forum participant myself, I was only too happy to provide some background.

I see that Mike posted his own reply to the querying neighbor, which was gracefully expressed and appropriately focussed on the facts relevant to his votes.  He invited his constituents to contact him directly to discuss anything that might concern them.

Nicely handled, Mike!

Ms. Broughton’s unseasonable interest in St. Albans provides for entertaining speculation.  

Since Tayt Brooks is still presumably wielding her checkbook, perhaps his buddy, Republican Casey Toof, who lost to Mike in 2012,  thinks that if he gets a headstart on attack ads more than a year in advance, he might still see the inside of the State House.  Or maybe Mr. Brooks has aspirations of his own?

Somehow, I think voters here in St. Albans will not appreciate being harassed with unsolicited mailers almost a year out from the election.

Perhaps Vermonters First ought to try a few robo-calls just to get the ball rolling.

It’s really telling when former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner, Gregory Jackzo, goes so far as to say that all U.S. nuclear facilities ought to be”phased out” because regulators aren’t doing their job.

“The next accident is going to be something that no one

predicted. At a certain point you have to review the fundamental

problem…that evaluation tells you you can’t rule out a severe accident.”

And he is isn’t alone in that belief, which is echoed by another former commissioner, Victor Gilinsky, who cites the NRC’s recent decisions not to immediately and fully implement the recommendations of ASME, (The American Society of Mechanical Engineers) for reforms in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

Such a vote of non-confidence from people with the inside track should raise general alarm, at least amongst those Americans who live within fifty miles of a nuclear power plant…and that is  a considerable number of folks.

Fifty miles is the currently accepted immediate evacuation radius in the event of a nuclear emergency; but that radius doesn’t even begin to cover the longer-term impacts should it not be possible to bring the emergency under full control in a timely manner.  

That such a thing can happen is no longer just speculation, as the untenable situation at Fukushima attests.  

Contamination continues to flow, only partially checked, from the crippled facilities and no one honestly knows when or how it will be brought under control.

Compounding all of this regulatory recklessness, and perhaps even encouraging it (since the NRC is historically captive to the industry) is the fact that, thanks to the Price-Anderson Act,  owners of American nuclear power plants enjoy relatively little real liability in the event of disaster.

Enacted in the late 1950’s to facilitate development of  a fledgling peacetime use for nuclear power, Price-Anderson has long been the invisible financial prop that allowed the industry to claim its product as “affordable.”

This is simple corporate welfare of the most egregious kind, since it plays with public safety and does so on the grandest scale.

Surely, the very least lesson the U.S. should have learned from Fukushima is that Price-Anderson must be repealed and the nuclear industry required to secure full liability for even the worst-case scenario.  Were that to happen, there is no question that the entire fleet would be retired in short order, because no insurer would take on such a liability.

Mr. Pomerleau has a full page ad in the ‘Weekend Messenger’ that says he is withdrawing the appeal and that his motives have been misunderstood.  He insists he was only looking out for the best interests of the City

You can still make lemonade out of those lemons by looking afresh at how your own property can be improved, “in a responsible manner,” to compliment the downtown restoration so as to benefit the entire community of St. Albans…and I am sure that the City can still find ways in which to assist you with that good deed.

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Nothing does greater disservice to the legitimate cause of responsible land use and citizen access to that process, than when one business targets another through permit appeals, solely to settle a score or disable competition.

That is the kind of abuse that gives anti-regulatory lawmakers ammunition with which to attack an otherwise valuable citizen interface.

In St. Albans, development giant Pomerleau Real Estate is doing just that in its attempt to punish a small local retailer for having given notice that it will vacate Pomerleau’s ill-conceived strip-mall this summer in order to participate in the City’s long anticipated downtown redevelopment plans.

Now we are learning just how shallow are Pomerleau’s claims that the new ACE Hardware store project will “harm” this ugly little strip mall in the center of the City.

When permit appeals are filed, it is required that the appellant produce a list of “questions” which hone-in on the reason for the appeal.  This list typically cites specific passages of local statutes which the appellant believes are being violated by the permitted project; or, so it is intended to do.

Taken as narrowly as possible, it is an easy job for the appellant to provide this list, as the questions may simply restate the purpose of the individual statute and ask if that requirement has been met by the project, without representing any reason to doubt that it has.  

In order to respond to these questions however, the applicant must be prepared to represent how his/her project is in compliance with each individual statute, placing a burden of evidence and disclosure on the applicant that far outweighs that of the appellant, even at this early stage in the appeal.

So the list of questions, provided by the attorney for Pomerleau’s  St. Albans Shopping Center, is barely ten sentences long while Gordon Winters’ Motion to Dismiss, which addresses each of the ten statutory references cited in the appellant’s “questions,” runs to thirteen pages.

Nowhere has the Pomerleau company suggested how its interests will be harmed in any way by Mr. Winters new ACE Hardware emporium, which will locate on the property next door and represent a significant facelift to that blighted corner.

It is somewhat ironic that Pomerleau will most likely harm its own reputation with this appeal, by drawing attention to the singularly inappropriate land use the St. Albans Shopping Center represents for our historic downtown.  That Shopping Center would never pass muster and receive a permit under the rigorous criteria that Pomerleau seeks to invoke against the ACE Hardware project.

Mr. Winters project has been shaped in such intimate collaboration with the City that both entities have bent over backwards to ensure that environmental and aesthetic concerns have been rigourously observed in the site plan and architecture.

This is the way the benign intentions of regulatory law can be made the cats-paw of unscrupulous powerbrokers who have plenty of money to “lawyer-up” and bleed the other guy dry, even when no issue exists whatsoever.

This case should cause everyone in the state who is concerned about responsible land use and environmental regulation to sit up and take notice; because, if Mr. Pomerleau succeeds in exploiting the law in order to impose costly and debilitating delays on the City of St. Albans in its effort to do the responsible thing to revitalize the downtown, there will ultimately be a price to pay for us all.

It is shameful that a powerful man like Ernie Pomerleau, scion of the Pomerleau Real Estate empire in Vermont, who numbers among his friends Governor Shumlin and Senator Leahy; who prides himself in a reputation for philanthropy and wraps himself in the green of his native Vermont, would stoop so low as to take a swipe at a local independent retailer and the best efforts of the people of St. Albans.  

Is this the same man who gave the following quote to the Free Press just two years ago?

“I learned to use the empirical side and the theoretical side of my brain. Vision without action is just a dream. Action without vision is just running in place. Vision with action will change the world.

Mr. Pomerleau, exactly which side of your brain is telling you to behave in this way now?

Entergy’s “reliability” continues to come into question in rather spectacular ways this year.

This time, poor old Arkansas once again was the site of an energy related disaster, when things went horribly wrong during a “planned upgrade” operation at Entergy’s Arkansas Nuclear One, killing one man and injuring seven more.

Thanks to GMD contributor ed for providing a link to the story as reported, with pictures, on local media.

From Enformable we get a closer view of the technical situation:

Around 07:50 on Easter Sunday morning, an accident at the Arkansas Nuclear Power Plant not only killed one worker and injured others it also left the Unit 1 reactor without offsite power.  Workers were using the Unit 1 turbine temporary lift device to move the Main Turbine Generator Stator, which weighs over 500 tons, out of the turbine building when it fell.  The lift crane failed, dropping the load, which resulted in a crash which was heard by local residents miles from the site, and tripped the Unit 2 reactor.

Entergy is naturally eager to put the incident behind them, but we who are audience to their frequent protestations of “reliability” in the legal sense, must note that such spectacular failures as occurred at the Superdome before millions of viewers, and now at AR Nuclear One certainly strain the credibility of that argument.

Both were costly accidents (this latest with loss of life), which lead one to suspect that Entergy’s recent financial troubles have impacted the ability of the company to maintain adequate staffing and equipment oversight; perhaps even eroding their commitment to best practices in the long term.

And I keep worrying whether anyone is minding the decommissioning “piggy bank” for VY.

Following conclusively on a clandestine investigation of “Climategate” which was undertaken decades ago by a super secret UN commission, so-called “global warming” has been officially declared dead.

Apparently, the idea that man-made climate change is rapidly progressing, or, indeed occurring at all is just an elaborate fabrication by several extremely powerful global forces.

Of course Barack Hussein Obama and his forward-thinking parents had more than a little to do with providing cover to the unfolding hoax.  

Originators of the infamous Nigerian e-mail scam,  these clever entrepreneurs cut their teeth on shady abalone speculation that eventually included unidentified investors in the Hawaiian Islands who were only too happy to represent young Barry as their home boy in exchange for a “favor” that he would one day be asked to return.

The ongoing investigation is expected to reveal who those investors were, as well as a host of other powerful operatives, from Wall Street to K Street, who have worked tirelessly over the years to achieve a seamless backstory.  A multi-billion dollar industry grew-up, almost over-night, in response to the perceived need to reduce carbon emissions; and it was all thanks to very clever marketing and some shrewd sleight-of-hand.

The UN Commission did find, however, that the unmistakable imprint of one man’s hand could be plainly seen in the complex architecture of the scheme.

Bent billionaire, Lex Luthor, employing his usual flair for theatrics, as well as some of the best movie industry masters,  provided the technical illusions.  So persuasive were their inventions that even the experts were fooled!

His interest in perpetuating the myth?  Coastal real estate.

That’s right, it was all part of an elaborate land-grab scheme by Luthor to devalue oceanfront property through rising sea-level scares.

It has now been revealed that global sea-level is actually dropping slightly, adding inches , and in some places feet to coastlines everywhere.  

Mr. Luthor’s recent bargain-basement coastal acquisitions, including the entire island nation of Naru, have actually grown since he purcheased them and their value is poised to sky-rocket in the wake of this news.

Even as this story goes to press, Prius owners are flooding into Toyota dealerships demanding the return of their SUV’s.  Open coal fires light the New England hillsides as communities breakout in spontaneous celebration of the good news.

Al Gore could not be reached for comment.

How ironic is it that the Strip Mall Kings themselves,  Pomerleau Real Estate, would attempt to don the mantle of environmental stewardship and arbiter of responsible land use?

Perhaps taking a page from the Skip Vallee playbook, Pomerleau is challenging the new ACE Hardware project in St. Albans City on “environmental” grounds.  

They, who can think of no better way to occupy prime property on our city’s Main St. than with the St. Albans Shopping Plaza, should be the last to throw stones.  Said “plaza” consists of a sprawling parking lot, which fronts a sad little strip of single story retail and a uniquely under-serving JC Penney.

ACE Hardware’s new build, which will be accomplished as one of the TIF initiatives undertaken by the City, will replace an existing Midas Muffler shop, an isolated small box store and a whole lot of underused parking lot.  

The intention is to enhance the walkable and inviting environment of St. Alban’s traditional downtown.  The project will clean-up a brownfield and reduce impervious surface area on the property.  

The City currently owns the property.  By agreement, and after cleaning up the brownfield, The City will sell the new building to ACE Hardware franchise owner, Gordon Winters.

The rub for Pomerleau Real Estate? ACE Hardware is a current tenant of Pomerleau’s neighboring strip mall, occupying a narrow space between the post office and Rite-Aid.  Not surprisingly, ACE would like to enjoy the greater visibility and customer access that is possible in a location that is in line with other downtown retailers rather than set back behind an ugly parking lot.

Apparently vexed by the City’s collaboration with their tenant, Pomerleau Real Estate is hell-bent on making it as difficult as possible for them to complete the deal.  To that end, the Strip Mall Kings are trucking out a laundry list of siting issues with little or no substance.

For instance, they are raising run-off issues with the DRB that are really beyond that body’s scope; and besides which seem to be unsubstantiated, as the city itself has seen to it that runoff mitigation will be overbuilt for the size of the property.  That the project reduces impervious surface makes Pomerleau’s arguments appear all the more irrelevant.  But It seems to be Pomerleau’s intention to turn the laws with which they themselves must customarily grapple against this upstart collaboration.

Here’s a novel idea for you, Mr. Pomerleau: how about redirecting all that environmental zeal to your own property?  Reconfigure that inappropriate strip mall of yours so that it actually conforms to the guidelines to which you are so concerned that your new neighbors adhere.

Move the retail space nearer to the front of the property, make it two-stories high, and put the parking lot behind the stores.  Have a chat with your JC Penney tenant and see if, with a second floor, they might be willing to stock household goods like linens and towels so that City residents can shop centrally for those items.

Maybe if you take the same interest in your own property and its suitability for our downtown that you do in the property next door, you will find your tenants more willing to commit to staying. Then you wouldn’t have to waste time, money and community good-will on dog-in-the-manger fights you cannot win.

While there are many issues we can raise about the manner in which nuclear energy has been managed in this country, few are more concerning than the industry’s unwillingness to respond to lessons taught by the Fukushima disaster.  

Time and again, the same siting and engineering mistakes have been repeated in location after location, so that the viability of the entire industry depends on denying that any risks even exist.

Despite overwhelming evidence of the price for underestimating a plant’s vulnerability to water inundation, Duke Energy is playing what amounts to the same game of chicken with the Oconee Nuclear Power Station in South Carolina.

Only a seven-and-one-half-foot-high dam separates the Power Station from the furry of a flooding Lake Keowee, should it be hit with a catastrophic storm event, or the dam be otherwise breached.

but previous estimates showed that between nine and sixteen feet of increased water could be generated by flooding and threaten Oconee’s backup control system.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, perhaps realizing at last that it has been somewhat under-vigilant in matters of flooding, is getting nervous.   So Duke commissioned it’s own “study” which it recently submitted to the NRC:

The reports given by Duke Energy representatives showed that, while the licensee admits that it is not impossible, they do not consider the failure of the massive 385 foot upstream dam a “credible risk”.

Where have we heard that before?

Arnie Gundersen, chief engineer for Fairewinds, laments the very verbage used by Duke officials commenting, “Not credible, is that not the same thing that TEPCO once said about risks from 50 foot tsunami waves?”

If past history is an indicator, the NRC will probably just say, “Glad to hear everything’s fine.”

‘Anyone got plans for a radiation-shielded ark?

Well, TEPCO is pointing fingers at a rat as the likely cause of the power outage which has now been resolved.  

I remember Fairewinds Associates’ Arnie Gundersen describing exactly this scenario a couple of years ago at a UVM forum.

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What happens when you or I don’t pay our electrical bill?  After a certain grace period, we find ourselves standing in the dark.

What happens when a giant corporation fails to pay its electric bill?

There is a rumor circulating that TEPCO, owner-operators of the infamously troubled Fukushima Daiichi, facility may be finding that out right now.

On Monday evening, a brief power outtage at the command center  was followed by black-outs at three of the seven fuel storage pools, and in “other facilities.”

The latest published information I could find online could not predict when the problem would be resolved:

The source of the blackout has still not been discovered and until then, the utility will not restore power to the cooling systems. The nuclear fuel in the pools will remain safe for at least four days without fresh cooling water. The temperature should not exceed beyond 65 C to still be considered safe. They reported the temperature of the water at the Nos 1, 3 and 4 units between 13.7 C and 25 C by 4PM on Monday. The No 4 spent fuel pool stores 1,533 fuel assemblies while another cooling system at another pool in a different building has 6,377 fuel assemblies.

Small comfort…”will remain safe for at least four days without fresh cooling water.”

If the deadbeat rumor is true, it is just further confirmation that the Japanese nuclear industry’s culture of corruption and incompetence continues to menace that island nation, while officials deliberately mislead the public in order to save their own bacon.