There’s been some discussion of what our top statewide office-holders get paid and whether or not they should continue to tighten their belts while the economy struggles.  It’s a legitimate conversation because these are folks who make a fairly decent,  if not necessarily extravagant, wage.

I’m going to go way out on a limb and say that I think state legislators should be paid more rather than less, especially in these challenging times.  I’m not talking big-bucks here, just the equivalent of what minimum wage would yield for fifty-two weeks of uninterrupted employment.  At $8.46 per hour X 40 hours X 52 weeks, that comes to $17,596.80.  Raise mileage reimbursements somewhat, and eliminate meal and room allowances; but pay them that minimum amount…and link the expectation of pay to compulsory attendance and compliance with rules, as would be the case for any private sector job.

Current compensation is such that few people can really afford to consider running for a seat unless they either have personal wealth to fall back on, a spouse with a nice income, or high hopes of turning their political influence into opportunity or cash at some time in the not-so-distant future.  That is the unvarnished reality.

How many job situations will tolerate a four month mid-winter absence every year?  And how many families can make ends meet without two incomes?

I’m not saying there is any realistic expectation that Vermont will ever find a way to make service in the legislature a job with a real income.  I’m just saying that we must be cognizant of the limitations this situation places on competent people’s ability to serve.

The reason this resonates particularly with me right now is because, in Franklin County, both of our sitting senators are stepping down this year.  With two open seats, the pickings are rather slim.

Like many others, I have been wracking my brain to come up with possible candidates.  The Republican contenders are predictably abysmal, but that won’t preclude them from winning if Democrats and/or Progressives can’t provide a viable slate of senatorial contestants of their own.  So far the only two who have come forward for the Dems are a very senior former senator, who perhaps should be allowed to remain in retirement; and a twenty-one-year-old who has never even run for local office.

It is not my intention to denigrate the only two willing Democratic candidates; but it would seem that we are not really optimizing our possibilities.

There are probably many intelligent, capable citizens in Franklin County who could bring fresh perspectives and new skill-sets to our citizen legislature.  Some are disqualified by virtue of government employment; but for many, the rigors of campaigning, coupled with loss of income from a year-round job, are simply more than their families can absorb.  So, we find ourselves having to choose not from amongst the best and brightest, but rather from those with the unusual set of circumstances or ambitions that make a run for office a viable option.

With the economy in trouble those constraints on service only become more pronounced.

And that is a real shame.

Anyone who knows me is aware that my number one gripe about process concerns conflicts of interest. They proliferate unchecked at all levels of officialdom, largely because there are insufficient definitions and next to no penalties for violators.

I therefore attach great signifcance to the efforts by Sen. Bernie Sanders and his Democratic co-sponsors (California Senator Barbara Boxer and Mark Begich of Alaska) to pass a law prohibiting industry executives from being directors of any of the twelve Federal Reserve banks.

A Government Accountability Office audit – conducted pursuant to a Sanders provision in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law – found that allowing members of the banking industry to both elect and serve on the Federal Reserve’s board of directors creates “an appearance of a conflict of interest” and poses “reputational risks” to the Federal Reserve System.

This might seem obvious to anyone who would think twice about hiring a real estate agent to inspect a house they were considering buying through that agent; but apparently the concept is difficult for many holders of public office to fully embrace.

“It is a blatant conflict of interest for Jamie Dimon, the CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, to serve on the New York Fed’s board of directors,” Sanders said. “If this is not a clear example of the fox guarding the henhouse, I don’t know what is.”

Let’s see this same push to eliminate conflicts of interest all over the place.

Since Fukushima, details of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s laissez-faire relationship with the nuclear industry have underwhelmed us with confidence; so it comes as less of a  surprise to learn that safety requirements have slackened rather than tightening in the wake of that catastrophic display of regulatory failure.

Without fanfare, the nation’s nuclear power regulators have overhauled community emergency planning for the first time in more than three decades, requiring fewer exercises for major accidents and recommending that fewer people be evacuated right away.

You well might ask the reason for this counterintuitive move.

For several years before the Fukushima accident, the NRC was in the process of reconfiguring some emergency response protocols to reflect what it believed would be an increased threat from terrorism.  

Apparently, they didn’t want to burden  the industry with more requirements without relieving them of some existing ones.   One of the ways in which this was made possible was by assuming in emergency scenarios that no radiation would be released!  No kidding.

At least four years in the works, the changes appear to clash with more recent lessons of last year’s reactor crisis in Japan. A mandate that local responders always run practice exercises for a radiation release has been eliminated – a move viewed as downright bizarre by some emergency planners.

The new U.S. program has kept the 10- and 50-mile planning zones in place, as well as the requirement for one full exercise for a 10-mile evacuation every two years. However, required 50-mile planning exercises will now be held less often: every eight years, instead of every six years.

Incredibly,  following the Japanese disaster, rather than reassessing the new protocols in light of lessons from Fukushima, the NRC decided to go right ahead with instituting their new protocols as planned.  

The new rules went into effect in December of 2011, but it was so stealthy a release that nuclear watchdog groups only became aware of the changes over the past week.

The U.S. government recommended that Americans stay at least 50 miles from the Japanese plant. Government officials said the same kind of action could be taken domestically in a similar accident, but advance planning for U.S. evacuations is, in fact, restricted to 10 miles.

The logistical reasoning behind this policy is pretty alarming:  it is simply unworkable to evacuate the huge populations that are now located within fifty miles of most U.S. nuclear plants.

the AP reported that populations within 10 miles of U.S. nuclear sites have ballooned by as much as 4 1/2 times since 1980. Nuclear sites were originally picked in less populated areas to minimize the impact of accidents. Now, about 120 million Americans – almost 40 percent – live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant, according to the AP’s analysis of 2010 Census data. The Indian Point plant in Buchanan, N.Y., is at the center of the largest such zone, with 17.3 million people, including almost all of New York City.

“They’re saying, `If there’s no way to evacuate, then we won’t,'” Phillip Musegaas, a lawyer with the environmental group Riverkeeper, said of the stronger emphasis on taking shelter at home. The group is challenging relicensing of Indian Point.

So, in order to make it convenient for the industry to continue operating a fleet of reactors that have passed their designed life-expectancy, the NRC has effectively reduced the number of safeguards for affected populations and turned a blind eye to any likelihood of a radiation release similar to what occurred at Fukushima.  

The fall-back position of the NRC on safety now appears to rely on a very different lesson from Japan: see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.

It looks like the time to comment on F-35 deployment in Burlington has been extended to June 20.  

2) The F-35 fighter program is not without its detractors, quite apart from nuisance noise and ethical considerations.

____________________________________________________________________

Opponents of the proposed F-35 fighter jet deployment in South Burlington have only until June 1 to make their concerns known to the Air Force. Public opportunities have already been held in Vermont, New York and New Hampshire, reflecting the broad spectrum of affected communities.

The results of the Air Command’s “Center for Sustainable Installations”  environmental study on deployment of the jets are available for the public to read, should they be so inclined; but most people will probably just resort to the talking points in order to frame their opinions because the actual study takes eons even to download.

GMD looked at this issue, much earlier in the process,  without drawing a conclusion.

The economic benefits are significant, but so is the risk of environmental degradation.  Then there are the ancillary arguments: “patriotism” vs. a community with a strong peace ethic; development vs. maintenance of sustainable living environments.  It’s never easy to turn down what is seen to be a huge economic windfall, even when your ears may be under daily assault.

The point is that no amount of analysis or conjecture on the part of an interested party such as the Air Command… or opponents of the project… is any substitute for an actual experience of take-off and fly-over sound.  If this is not physically possible until after the area around the airport has been leveled, removing any opportunity for a claw-back, I guess the good folks of South Burlington are truly between a rock and a hard place.

For what it’s worth, I want to urge everyone who has any perspective to contribute, to weigh-in on this community changing decision.  I didn’t find an easy e-mail link in my reading, but here is the mailing address for written comments:

Written comments can be submitted… via U.S. Postal Service to HQ ACC/A7PS, 129 Andrews Street, Suite 337, Langley Air Force Base, Virginia 23665-2769, ATTN: Mr. Nick Germanos.

Vermont has just one shot to get this right.  You don’t want to find yourself on the other side of the decision, holding your ears and wondering why you didn’t speak up.

On Tuesday, the Governor came to St. Albans to sign the Working Landscapes Bill.  

This is as it should be, to crown departing Democratic Senator Sara Kittell’s years of dedicated toil on the Agriculture Committee with a final significant achievement.

For me, though, the St. Albans signing was filled with irony.  Had this recognition of the tremendous importance of agriculture to our economic future come somewhat sooner to Franklin County, we might not now be looking at what could well be the end of farming in a significant area of prime agricultural soils adjacent to Exit 20 of I-89.

This summer, City and Town residents wait expectantly for work to begin on the first big box retail store in the county.  With retail space totaling roughly 160,000-square ft., this Walmart will be the biggest one in Vermont.  If it is the first, it will certainly not be the last.

Despite the developer’s PR to the contrary, casual conversation reveals that support for the project is probably almost evenly divided.  Some will find it convenient, but dread the traffic; others recognize this to be just another nail in the coffin of our local economy.

For me, it signals the beginning of the end of the very working landscapes S.246 is meant to support.  Without strengthening their weight in the Act 250 permit process, the effect of this bill is largely a moot point here in St. Albans, as “development pressures” always seem to close the deal.

One of the failings of the permit process is that it allows developers to trade-off on working landscapes through a mitigation scheme which, while intended to protect  environmentally sensitive areas and ag soils, is often exploited in the permit process in order to get around a preservation requirement.

So, while we celebrate the spirit of the Working Landscapes Bill, let’s not forget a moment of silence for the working farms and ag soils that will continue to disappear from Franklin County in the relentless push for development at all costs.

I couldn’t just let this one slip by, without a brief visit on GMD.

Between 1978 and 2006, Kodak, the company that brought us the Brownie then held a near monopoly on photography through most of the twentieth century, secretly had a nuclear reactor tucked away in the basement.  

Though unbeknownst to the good people of Rochester, New York going about their daily lives all around it, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission assures us that they knew all about it.

Matt Pearce of the LaTimes made this wry observation:

A spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told the Los Angeles Times that the company had enriched 1,582 grams of uranium-235 up to 93.4%, a level considered weapons-grade. Good thing Kodak isn’t in Iran; that’s the kind of thing Israel’s been threatening to go to war over.

The company, which is now in bankcruptcy proceedings

ditched the uranium in 2007 with the coordination of the U.S. government, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Great.  One has to wonder what exactly has become of the waste, and how provision for decommissioning will be built into the bankruptcy.   Is it going to be stockholders first and the people of the State of New York only second?

Neil Sheehan, a commission spokesman, told The Times that he doesn’t know how many private companies have weapons-grade uranium but that Kodak’s situation was rare. “This was a unique type of device they were using at Kodak,” he said.

I’m sure the folks in Rochester New York might now agree that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should not be trusted as the sole decider when it comes to nuclear safety.  

With Democratic Senator Sara Kittell announcing that she will not run again this year; and Randy Brock already out of the picture, Franklin County’s senate race is wide open.  Former Democratic Senator Don Collins has already thrown his hat in the ring, and now Caroline Bright of Fletcher has announced as well for the Democratic party.

The 21-year old graduated yesterday from St. Mike’s and, fulfilling a long-standing ambition, announced her candidacy on the same day.   A sorority alum who favors pearls and polished nails, Bright’s style appears a departure from the usual for young Vermont Democrats.

Republicans are fielding two candidates for the Senate as well:  Norm McAllister of Highgate, a ten-year veteran of the House,  and Joe Sinagra of St. Albans Town, a former housing industry lobbyist who now owns a bounce-house rental business. (How’s that for irony?)  

Mr. McAllister is a goat farmer who distinguished himself this past session as the only member of the House Agriculture Committee to oppose labelling of genetically engineered food.  He himself grows a GMO crop of corn, so it’s not surprising that he voted contrary to the majority opinion in Vermont.

Franklin County politics is definitely becoming a youth movement.   Dynamic Franklin County Democratic Chair, Mike McCarthy is just 28 years old, and the St. Albans City Council now boasts a 25-year old Alderman from Ward 5, Ryan Doyle.

Of course the long-term commitment that comes with election to office must outlive the glamour of a brief campaign.  There are persistent rumors about another of Franklin County’s  “young turks,” Republican Rep. Dustin Degree of St. Albans City, who has just finished his first term and is looking for a second.  It is said that he is not very good at showing up for committee meetings on which he is expected to serve.  One has to wonder if, at twenty-five, he really was mature enough to make that commitment.

Limited experience isn’t necessarily a liability and can provide all of the advantages of an open and inquiring mind. What is essential is intelligence, curiosity, some humility…and excellent mentors.

I was pleased to read in Ms. Bright’s bio that, even though she did not grow up on a farm,  she is particularly interested in agricultural issues and favors “diversification.”  Let’s hope that she’ll avail herself of Sara Kittell’s vast reserve of experience in this area.  If she does her homework well, perhaps Ms. Bright can make short work of Mr. McAllister.

According to her official bio,  Ms. Bright has an impressive record of service over her brief career; and the public nature of some of her endeavors means that she has most certainly gained poise and political skills that will no doubt serve her well.  

The temptation to underestimate her simply because she is a beauty queen will not be so great for her Republican challengers as it might have been had Sara Palin not stunned us all with her meteoric rise.

I have to admit, though, that my concern is more with her politics than her youth.

It is a little hard to avoid stereotypical assumptions about the strength of Ms. Bright’s progressive politics; but she apparently has some Democratic chops and I think we have to hope that, win or lose, as she finds her stride, she won’t be co-opted by the Blue Dogs of Franklin County.

It appears that my sister in Portland, Oregon can relax a bit; but friends in Japan, not so much.

Fairewinds Associates have an intriguing new video uploaded on their site, in which Arnie and Maggie Gundersen discuss the nature of “hot particles” and radiation with Marco Kaltofen, founder of Boston Chemical Data Corporation.

Boston Chemical Data has been analyzing automobile filters and childrens shoes collected from Japan in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster.

In the new video, Mr. Kaltofen explains the nature of “hot particles” and radiation, and the manner in which they have been distributed to human beings following the accident.  He tells us that the size and nature of the radioactive particles affect their potential for damage, and describes a complex topography of radioactivity that was produced at Fukushima.

Mr. Kaltofen also debunks the tired old truism that dismisses concerns over the effects of radiation on human health by suggesting that so-called “background radiation” is harmless.  Take the time to watch the video and you will understand finally why YesVY’s tiresome banana analogy is an absurd proxy for arguing that the potential hazards to human health from nuclear radiation are insignificant.

It appears that automobile filters collected in Fukushima City, Tokyo, and Seattle in April 2011, have revealed that radioactive “hot particles” were heavily distributed to Fukushima City, just 65-kl from the accident site; much less heavily distributed over Tokyo; and almost not at all to Seattle.  

The distribution in Japan of these potentially destructive particles was widespread.  Mr. Kaltofen speculates that it was the smallest, and potentially most invasive, particles that travelled the furthest.  

His findings corroborate those of the test samples Arnie Gundersen collected at locations in Tokyo, including a previously decontaminated playground.  “Decontamination” has been demonstrated to be an imperfect solution that must be repeated in order to remain effective, as dirt and dust becomes disturbed over time, redistributing new contamination to the surface where children play and adults labor.

Where to begin with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?

Other than to describe it as a can of worms, there is no way to do it justice.

So here, if you missed the individual items, is a brief rundown of some recent developments.

Closest to home, it appears that Vermont’s Public Service Board is prepared to challenge the NRC’s rather hasty relicensing approval for Vermont Yankee, on the grounds that the plant was not in possession of a valid Water Quality Certificate at the time of approval.

“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission violated Clean Water Act (Section) 401 when it granted (an Entergy Corp. subsidiary) a new federal license to operate Vermont Yankee without first obtaining the requisite Vermont-issued ‘401 Certification’ from (the company),” say legal papers filed by the state at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

The primary counter argument by the NRC and Entergy is pretty incredible:

New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. and the NRC argue that the state and the NEC did not push hard enough during NRC hearings leading up the new license for the agency to force Vermont Yankee to get a new water quality permit. Entergy maintains that it got a water quality certificate in 1970 and that it remains in effect.

So I guess my driver’s license from 1972 ought to still be valid too?

…Especially so, since I haven’t been leaking tritium or elevating the temperature of the Connecticut River in the inervening years?

                                           

In other news, despite much urging not to do so, President Obama has nominated Kristine L. Svinicki for a new term on the NRC.  Ms. Svinicki, a Republican partisan, is a key figure in the power struggle currently underway within the NRC.

In December, she and other commission members told Congress that (Chairman) Jaczko had created a tense workplace and that women felt especially threatened.

Ms Scinicki is part of a power blok within the NRC, whose intimacy  with the nuclear industry has been an issue for some time now.  Originally a Bush appointee, she has actively advocated for the Yucca Mountain waste repository which Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada opposes.

As such, she has butted heads with Chairman Jaczko, a former Reid staffer; and among other things, urged an expedited relicensing of Vermont Yankee.

So it comes as no surprise that Ms. Scinicki’s re-appointment was opposed not only by Harry Reid, but also by Bernie Sanders, who explained his position thusly:

“The Commissioner has not supported full implementation of all post-Fukushima safety reforms recommended by an NRC task force, and has in fact voted to approve licenses for two new nuclear reactors without requiring them to implement these safety reforms.

                                        ………………………………………

Then, there is the Government Accountability Office study, commissioned by Democrat Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, which found that

“The N.R.C. appears to be inaccurately estimating the costs of decommissioning the nation’s nuclear power plants and inadequately ensuring that owners are financially planning for the eventual shutdown of these plants.”

Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates told the New York Times that costs for BWR reactors, like that at Vermont Yankee, may be especially underestimated:

Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer and frequent critic, evaluated the commission’s decommissioning estimate for Vermont Yankee, a nuclear plant on Vermont’s border with New Hampshire and Massachusetts. He found that the commission’s estimates were sometimes lower for boiling water reactors, a type that will have a larger volume of radioactive debris, than for pressurized water reactors, which keep the radioactive materials in a smaller area.

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

…And finally, one last stupefying demonstration of how the NRC has been systemically compromised by industry interests.  Enformable is carrying an internal NRC letter, stating that the results of radiation measurements collected by the NRC are the property of the plants and the regulatory agency is not at liberty to share them with the states or counties in question!  Here is just a snippet:

Grim.

First of all, full disclosure:  I identify myself primarily as a Progressive, although I do generally support most Democratic candidates for statewide office.



When I write about the Vermont Progressive Party on GMD, I am always prepared for some grief and recognize that I do so under tolerance; but I think it is in both parties’ best interest to remain connected and in constructive dialogue on as many levels as possible.

For that reason, I wanted to share what I think is a pretty valuable perspective on the VPP and its significance in the greater scheme of things, from national labor organizer Steve Early, writing for In These Times

Mr. Early speaks of the strong economic-populist message of the Vermont Progressive Party that helps it recruit voters even in some traditionally conservative counties, where the elderly, low-income and rural populations particularly feel the bite of cuts to social services, and of income inequity exacerbated by questionable tax policy.

“We have a homeopathic role in the Vermont body politic,” says Ellen David-Friedman, a former organizer for the Vermont-National Education Association (NEA) and longtime VPP activist. “We’ve managed to create enough of an electoral pole outside of the Democrats to constantly pull them to the left on policy issues, by dispensing an alternative brand of medicine that’s become increasingly popular.”

Without that powerful VPP incentive, one has to wonder whether progressive issues like universal healthcare would be faring any better in Vermont than they are in the rest of the country.

In coordination with a strong grassroots movement, Sanders and the VPP continued to make single-payer a central political issue, keeping the pressure on local Democrats (at a time when their counterparts in neighboring Massachusetts were opting for lesser reforms that provided the model for President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act).

Lacking a viable third party in other states, Mr. Early discusses an interesting alternative that has been tried to break the two party inertia on labor issues.

Elsewhere in the northeast, labor-financed Working Families Parties (WFP) were launched instead so “fusion voting” could be used, where permitted under state law, to reward the friends of union causes by giving cross-endorsed candidates an additional ballot line. Banned in most of the nation a century ago (as part of the corporate counter-attack against Populism), fusion allows major party candidates, in states like New York, to garner additional votes on each endorsing minor party’s separate ballot line.

In conclusion, Mr. Early is wistful for a national Progressive Party movement on the lines of the Vermont model

If there was more Left partying like this going in other states, at least one of our two major parties might feel greater pressure to better represent its own much-abused working class constituents.