Category Archives: National

Why does he get away with this stuff?

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Donald Trump wants freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omer to resign over a single objectionable tweet?  Congresswoman Omer has apologized and accepted responsibility.

Decades older and holding the highest office in the land, Donald Trump, on the other hand,  has made countless far more offensive comments . He has never apologized for any of them, so we must assume that he stands by those comments, violating social norms in so many directions.

He has called for Hillary Clinton to be “locked-up,” but after lengthy investigation by the Republican Congress and the FBI, it was concluded that she was not guilty of any crime.  

Donald Trump, on the other hand behaves like a racketeer.  He has packed his campaign and his administration with a  cast of shady characters who might easily populate a spy or crime novel; has displayed a conspicuous bias toward Putin while disparaging US intelligence bodies; has shared sensitive information about Israel with a Russian official in the oval office; and has boasted to the Russian that he fired James Comey in order to relieve himself of the collusion investigation.  

He has lied at an ever accelerating rate, about everything from the trivial to the monumental, throughout the first two years of his administration, so that the number of lies is now over 8,000 and counting. 

Corruption in the Trump administration exceeds that of any administration in living memory.  Apart from that, aspects of his businesses, his administration, his campaign  and his personal finance  are under investigation by at least three different bodies, which have already resulted in multiple inditements of individuals acting on his behalf.

And that’s just the short list.

If we are pressuring elected officials to resign for racial insensitivity, the racial insensitivity and all-out race-baiting  of Donald Trump is certainly equal to if not greater than that of any of the others.  If we are demanding resignations from elected officials for past allegations of sexual assault, there are even more unresolved allegations against Donald Trump, whose credibility is reinforced by the witness of his own words on the “Access Hollywood” tape.

How can we hold anyone else accountable for these misdeeds unless the President himself, our chief executive, is held accountable in the same way?

Never mind impeachment, if the Republican Party re-nominates Donald Trump for a second term, Democrats should demand that every one of their congressional members resign.

While we are on the subject of enabling, let’s not forget the role the mainstream media (most especially CNN) played in electing Donald Trump in the first place.

CNN seems guilty of short-term memory loss.  They’re doing a fine job now of fact-checking Trump; but throughout the campaign, they gave him unlimited airtime to propagate mistruths with only the weakest attempts to reign him in. 

There is one thing the mainstream media can now do to address Donald Trump’s worsening habit of demonizing them: don’t cover his rallies.

Having a corral of press, ringside at these carnivals of self-indulgence, only provides Trump with a handy target and foil for his vitriol.  He LOVES press coverage and will become apoplectic if he is denied their attention.

If the mainstream media doesn’t show up, he will be left with the likes of Fox News and Breitbart, outlets that receive little respect and credibility beyond the base that already attends his rallies in dwindling numbers.  

Once having moved freely between the Democratic and Republican parties as a “harmless” business buffoon, Trump now finds himself, on the whole, socially isolated.  Still, he continues to crave and court approval (from his dead father?) and, to that end, seeks every opportunity to make a spectacle of himself.

Like a child starved for attention, the 73-year old refuses to do his homework, lies prodigiously, and is devoid of any strategy other than bullying.   “Look at me!” he seems to be saying, “Ain’t I something?!”

It’s not as if we learn anything new about Trump from analysis of his rally footage.  It’s always the same appalling intolerance, misogyny and misinformation.  

If nothing he has said or done so far has provoked the GOP to reject him in defense of their constitutional obligations, there is no earthly excuse for providing his lies with a mainstream media platform.

It diminishes us as a nation to indulge his appetite for sensation; and, as the attack on the BBC cameraman clearly illustrates, it is building to a dangerous place.

 

Big Pharma drug money & big museums

Business, local/regional, National,

Did you know Vermont went to “war” last September? “We’re going to war with Big Pharma” said Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo along with Attorney General TJ Donovan at a press event to announce that Vermont had joined 23 other states suing the manufacturer of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma. “The basis of our lawsuit is this: Purdue Pharma lied, they misrepresented, they fabricated, they deceived, and they spread falsehoods, and they made billions off of it and they created a path of destruction that the state of Vermont is still reeling from,” Donovan said.

And later Governor Scott announced he wanted to support the effort too, although he accepted and will not return campaign donations from Purdue.drugmoney

The “war” against Purdue Pharma that Vermont joined is being fought on a second front, and the Sackler family — the owners — are beginning to feel heat. Thanks to OxyContin, their wealth rivals that of the Walton (WalMart) and Rockefeller families. The Sacklers are known for their (upscale) philanthropy, and accordingly have donated to and funded dozens of well known museums and universities around the world. Those institutions are now being targeted.

The Guardian.com reports on a recent demonstration: US art photographer and activist Nan Goldin brought the Guggenheim Museum in New York to a standstill on Saturday night as thousands of fake prescriptions were dropped into the atrium to protest against the institution’s acceptance of donations from the family who owns the maker of OxyContin – the prescription painkiller at the root of America’s opioids crisis.

Once addicted herself to OxyContin, Nan Goldin is quoted in January telling Art Forum magazine: “They have washed their blood money through the halls of museums and universities around the world,” she wrote. “We demand that the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma use their fortune to fund addiction treatment and education. There is no time to waste.”

In New York these institutions are recipients of Sackler family foundations:

Seventeen major arts and educational institutions in the UK are major recipients as well as others in France (The Louvre) and Germany.

And even right here in Vermont the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation gave 313 historical Ancient Near Eastern, Chinese, Korean, Byzantine, Islamic, and Pre-Columbian American  art objects to the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center in 2017 according to a press release.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey alleged in a recent 274 page Purdue suit memorandum that: “[…] the Sacklers flooded Massachusetts with sales reps, influenced state legislation, and financially backed medical facilities and universities so they could tout Purdue opioids.” If these charges are any indication of what is to come, that family’s name may not be what famous-image-minded international institutions want over their front entrance or on their donor list.

The Sacklers did what all upper echelon corporados do: privatize profit and socialize cost/consequences. Is there no PR advisor to these robber barons who might recommend they fund an addiction treatment center in every state instead of more art museums for the rich?

Leave Elizabeth Warren’s family myth alone.

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I truly wish that Democrats were a little less inclined to eat their young.

I don’t just identify with Elizabeth Warren because of her politics.  We are both midwest girls, born about six months apart, and raised in that economic grey zone that could only aspire to middle class.

Being something of a romantic in my adolescence, I longed to have a more compelling origin story.  I expect that is why I readily accepted the family myth that, through my great- grandmother whose surname was “James,” we could claim the legendary Jesse James as a distant cousin.  Even though, as years went by, I came to understand that the connection was purely apocryphal, the story remained so much a part of my personal fabric that when my son came along, I named him “Jesse” in fond tribute to the myth, if not the man.

I was finally told by my aunt that  it was nothing more than a tall family tale, constructed by an unreliable cousin; before then, if I had been required to complete some boring form and came across a question where I might write in answer that I was a distant cousin to Jesse James, I surely would have done so without hesitation.

We all want a little romance in our lives.  When we were very young and had no story of our own, we pestered our parents to tell us about our family history.  “Irish, English, Pennsylvania Dutch and Scottish,” we proudly repeated to our far more interesting friends.  “Pennsylvania Dutch” isn’t even a nationality, but that’s what we were told and that’s what we believed.  Jesse James was just the icing on the cake of our constructed identity.

I imagine Elizabeth Warren feels a little foolish about the whole thing; but now that the cat is out of the bag she will spend the rest of her public career apologizing and trying to change the subject.  

The only people who might have a right to an opinion on the matter are members of the Cherokee nation, and even they should recognize that what she did wasn’t exploitation.  It was tribute; the ultimate compliment.

If fancying herself Native American is the worst charge against her, she’s an authentic angel by Capitol Hill standards.

So I say to the braying mob, “Snap out of it!” We’ve got far bigger fish to fry!

Kakewalk of Shame?

local/regional, National, Uncategorized,

Who knew that the good people of  the Commonwealth of Virginia had so much blackface in their all too recent past? 

Before we northerners get to feeling all superior, maybe we ought to check our own closets.  I’ll bet more than a few contain yearbooks and programs from UVM that date back before 1969.

That’s the year in which the Green Mountain State’s most respected University ended its tradition of the “Kakewalk:” an annual event dating  from 1893, in which costumed students in blackface strutted and high-kicked their way through some semblance of a minstrel show.

Even though the offensive nature of the event was remarked upon in print as early as the 1950”s, it took that esteemed institution until the height of the Civil Rights movement (1969) to finally kill it dead.

I would guess that more than a few 70+ year old alumni who performed in the Kakewalk shows will feel an urgent need to burn rubbish this weekend.view

Condemn Ralph Northam for what he did, not for what he said.

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There is no question about it, Gov. Ralph Northam certainly has a lot to answer for in his insensitivity about blackface, but it is interesting how inartfully Donald Trump avoids condemning him for that and chooses instead to focus on remarks the pediatric neurosurgeon has made with regard to life-and death decisions concerning non-viable fetuses.

As I understand it, the remarks that Republicans have chosen to seize upon in embracing the call for Northam’s resignation are the following:

“[Third trimester abortions are] done in cases where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that’s nonviable. So in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen,” Northam, a pediatric neurosurgeon, told Washington radio station WTOP. “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

What Northam was saying essentially, is that, if a baby comes into the world either braindead or afflicted with a birth defect so severe that it could not survive and would potentially suffer if life were extended artificially, the parents and the doctors have to make a decision of conscience about whether or not to resuscitate.

This is true of end of life decisions for braindead patients and the last hours of the terminally ill.

I think you will find that the majority of Americans agree that these decisions appropriately belong to loved ones, informed by clergy and doctors of their choice.

In this instance, Dr. Northam was just stating the painful truth.  As a pediatric neurosurgeon he would probably be the first to argue for extreme surgical intervention if there was even a chance it could succeed.

This is a stupid issue on which to prosecute the governor’s fitness for office.  

In elevating this argument so that they can make a case to demand Democrat Northam’s resignation, the GOP faithful demonstrate their utter insensitivity to the real issues of racism at the center of the controversy.

Why am I not surprised?

Vermont Yankee enjoying “hot” retirement

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Dismantling a nuclear plant  isn’t exactly retirement but what once seemed like a constant barrage of safety issues at Entergy’s Vermont Yankee has quieted since the plant stopped operating. That said, North Star Services (the new plant owners approved to do the decommissioning) don’t deserve to be completely out of the news.

Editorially the Keene Sentinel in nearby New Hamphire pondered the recent transfer: The sale is good news in that NorthStar plans to fast-track the decommissioning, while Entergy had indicated it might put the site into safe storage (“SAFSTOR”) for decades before starting to dismantle it. The reason, no doubt, is financial: NorthStar is betting it can do the job for less than the $500 million or so that’s in the decommissioning fund.

That raises an obvious issue: If doing the job cheaply is the company’s incentive, will it be done right?

Susan Smallheer of The Brattleboro Reformer reports a little bit of a problem was discovered in 2018 with the Holtec® storage casks used to bottle up and store 42 years worth of radioactive waste sitting along the banks of the Connecticut River at Vermont Yankee. The design of the casks manufactured by Holtec International had been modified in violation of NRC rules. “[…] last year [2018] Entergy Nuclear halted the transfer of fuel using the canisters to inspect the Holtec canisters it had. No problems were discovered in the canisters at Vermont Yankee, but the already loaded canisters could not be easily inspected.

Michael Layton, division director of spent fuel management for the NRC, who led the NRC inspection team, said it was possible the NRC would require additional canister inspections. Although Layton said he did not believe the Holtec design problems represented an “imminent safety threat” he added “[…] it may warrant additional inspections.”  That, to be sure, is a bit of classic, worn-thin NRC boiler-plate-speak.

It turns out that in 2016 the Holtec company changed the design and failed to alert the NRC — a violation of safety procedures. In the bureaucratic parlance of the NRC, the “pre-decisional enforcement conference” centered on whether Holtec should have alerted the federal agency before making changes to the design of aluminum shims that help center the highly radioactive nuclear fuel in a “fuel basket” inside the canisters.

The New Jersey-based company in 2016 redesigned the canisters by threading stainless steel pins about 4 inches long and a half-inch thick into the shims to improve circulation of helium inside the canister to keep the spent fuel cool.

Two years later The San Diego Union-Tribune reports Holtec became aware of a problem with lose holding pins found on spent fuel canisters being moved at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in southern California. The transfer of loaded casks was halted, and inspections followed.vycasks The investigations, in turn, led the NRC to discover that Holtec had changed the designs of the casks. At San Onofre Holtec has stopped using canisters with the newer design. All subsequent canisters at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) will revert to the original design that does not use pins.

I should mention here that Holtec International is not only a manufacturer but also is in the business of buying and decommissioning old nukes-fast tracking to avoid placing the plants in 60 year SAFSTOR. Much larger and more diverse than VY’s new owner North Star Services, Holtec is not only decommissioning San Onofre but may soon do the same — they say at an accelerated pace — to Oyster Creek in New Jersey, the Pilgrim Nuclear plant in Massachusetts and the infamous Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

Soon Holtec will have the franchise on decommissioning several old nukes in southern New England, despite the casual attitude of Holtec’s founder, president and CEO over the NRC violation. On the 9th of January this year, during an official NRC public “pre-decisional enforcement conference” podcast, Holtec CEO Kris Singh took the stage and dramatically complained  “This inspection, if you were to quote Shakespeare, is much ado about nothing,” Singh said while delivering a 37-page PowerPoint presentation as part of a public NRC webcast. “At least that is our perspective.”

Well sure, Mr. Singh, you say, “much ado about nothing.” But, “what is past is prologue” is it not? And you know this  is about nuclear waste storage in casks for 12+ years. So your unauthorized, uninspected design changes should warrant inspections.

And then again, still quoting the Bard of Avon, “The Devil may quote Scripture for his own purpose.”

Baddies at the border: US

International, National,

If you aren’t overwhelmed by the wide range and daily barrage of lies, security leaks, and corruption out of the Trump administration and want a little dark humor, I’m thinking this video relates well to some recent news about U.S. border enforcement. It is from a years-old Mitchell and Webb BBC comedy skit in which one SS officer asks a fellow officer “Hans, are we the baddies?” It has been popular again online since Donald Trump took office.

Govexec.com reports  that the DHS not only separates immigrant children from their parents detained along the U.S. border but have been at it longer than they first admitted. And worse yet the original recording “systems” used to track children-needed to reunite them with parents or guardians is proving to have been … “inadequate.”

The Health and Human Services HHS Office of Inspector General published a report Thursday finding that the current tally—2,737 children—applies only to children in the department’s custody as of a June 2018 federal court order requiring the data’s release. But the statistic does not include thousands of children who were separated from their parents and detained beginning in the summer of 2017 and released before the ruling was issued.

And for officials currently trying to sort out the mess, tracking what became of these children is proving more than problematic. It seems, early on, headquarters-level record keeping at DHS was an “informal” Excel spreadsheet method later upgraded to include information gathered from the field.  This ad hoc tracking system inspectors now find is not conducive to “retrospective reporting.”

The Trump administration’s record keeping may not be up the standards of historical “baddies” but considering the suffering inflicted on all those detained we better take a close look in the mirror pretty damn quick.

Complaint Filed Against Vermont Guard

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What’s up with basing the military’s newest and most controversial fighter jet, the F-35  under operational control by a National Guard force that is, itself,  under scrutiny for corrupt behaviors?

Vermont Digger was recently taken to the woodshed for daring to investigate the Vermont National Guard with regard to systemic issues of sexual harassment, discrimination, corruption and substance abuse; but they are a prestigious regional news source and we are just a lowly blog site with no pretensions of influence; so we have have little to fear, and, arguably, an obligation to speak truth to power.

If anyone has paid attention to our postings, they will know that a number of GMD scribes have taken issue with the F-35 siting at Burlington airport.

Our questions were mainly about the safety of the densely populated urban area left at least statistically vulnerable to a disasterous crash by a minimally tested, nuclear-equipped war plane. More subtle issues of public safety, like health impacts from audio disturbance and unknown stress for aerial wildlife also concerned us. Then there was the extremely puzzling choice of Burlington over much more suitable (and willing) locations.

It appears that nothing will stop the fledgling war-dragons from descending on Burlington Airport now.  What the Guard wants, the Guard gets, and on this there simply is no political will for pushback.

With the recent scandal investigated in a series of articles by Digger’s Jasper Craven, there is even more reason to question the wisdom of the F-35 siting.  How is it prudent to hand over control of such a sensitive weapons system to a unit that has failed so recently and so conspicuously in the areas of discipline, honor and simple common sense?

Being a civilian, the conventional wisdom is that I am too ignorant even to raise questions; and I probably haven’t gotten the technical picture even half-right, from that point of view.  But if there is even a kernel of validity in the concerns that have been raised over the past few years about the siting and the process, we civilians have a right to be very worried by disciplinary failures in the Guard.

This is a rather long-winded way to segue into a complaint filed on January 4, 2019 by South Burlington attorney James Marc Leas with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).  I will allow excerpts from Mr. Leas’ press release to take it from here, and will add the full text of Mr. Leas’ press release, the full complaint and links to Jasper Craven’s articles in the comments section below.

“The heavy drinking culture and severe alcohol-impairment is inseparable from the intermingling of the military jets with a densely populated civilian neighborhood,” said Leas. “Pilots cannot be expected to blast children with thousands of F-16 afterburner takeoffs each year, impairing their learning and permanently damaging their hearing, as described by the US Air Force in its 2013 Environmental Impact Statement, without negative impact on themselves,” he said. “What was revealed by VTDigger are state agency commanders and pilots awash in alcohol and operating dangerous equipment amidst the densely populated Chamberlin School neighborhood of South Burlington. A recipe for imperiling health, safety, learning, hearing, and honor.”

…Far from putting a stop to the misuse of alcohol, VTDigger reports that under the redesign of facilities for the F-35, commanders are doubling the size of the “Afterburner Club” room for alcohol abuse. Commanders and pilots appear to understand that as they increase harm to civilians, more space for alcohol abuse is needed.

Nor is the corruption limited to Guard commanders and pilots. The abuse originated in political and military leaders who pushed for routine use of the F-16 afterburner in 2008, “just in time to vastly boost ‘baseline’ noise levels to facilitate selection of the Vermont Air Guard for the F-35 in the scoping process that began in 2009,” said Leas.

The complaint notes that the culture of falsifying records mentioned in the VTDigger series is intimately related to the F-35 basing. The fourth in the VTDigger series of articles disclosed a “longstanding policy” in which Guard commanders did “a very deliberate cooking of the books.” In the VPR interview, Jasper Craven explained to VPR’s Mitch Wertlieb, “Senior officers of the Vermont Guard are also alleged to have cooked the books around their personnel numbers ‘to project an operational readiness, a sort of strength to the National Bureau, in order show that the Guard deserves continued support and the F-35.’”

…said Leas, “None of the VTDigger articles suggested wrongdoing by the enlisted women and men of the Guard–the bad apples are all at the top of the tree: the commanders, the pilots, the congressional delegation, the Burlington mayor, and the governor himself. All the bad apples must be removed and composted. The enlisted women and men in our Vermont National Guard, and the public, deserve a leadership and a culture devoted strictly to serving the people of Vermont, free of alcohol abuse, where sexual abuse, retaliation, and falsifying records has no part, and where impairing learning of children and damaging hearing are not permitted.”

 

Poll: Vermonters still approve of Senators Sanders and Leahy and Phil Scott back in top ten Govs…again

local/regional, National, ,

Both of Vermont’s senators are at the top of a recent Morning Consult approval rankings list showing the top and bottom ten  approval rating for senators in the last quarter of 2018.

Bernie Sanders (I) tops the list for the 11th quarter in a row with 64 percent approval of Vermont voters and Senator Leahy (D) at close second with 62 percent.The top ten Senators includes four Democrats and two Independents that caucus with Senate Democrats.toptensens1

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell moved up one place to the 49th least popular. Morning Consult notes: The fourth quarter marks McConnell’s best showing since the second quarter of 2017 as he prepares for an expected re-election campaign in 2020. McConnell lost his last-place least-popular senator “honor” to newly retired Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona.

Morning Consult has good news for second-term Vermont Governor too. Phil Scott (R), had experienced a significant drop in approval last quarter subsequent to signing into law a bill that restricts gun ownership. But his winning re-election has put him back in the top ten most popular governors  — in fact he’s back in the top five at 59 percent approval.

Vermont driverless cars: Can they get here from there?

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The Vermont Agency of Transportation is doing some early planning for  driverless cars. And the agency’s director of planning and research says he’d like to see how the experimental vehicles test on road conditions here.

Fifty-two companies, including Apple, Waymo, Tesla, Ford, Honda, BMW, Nissan, Intel and Uber, are currently working on them. To test them out companies in California are issued permits by the motor vehicle department for testing on tracks and on state roads. For the earliest road excursions, they were required to have a safety driver, but current permits for streets and highways with speed limits of up to 65 miles per hour at any time of day, as well as during inclement weather, are now issued that don’t require a human being in the driver’s seat.

However in several areas where driverless car testing is taking place people are not reacting well. In both California and Arizona people are hassling and even attacking automated test vehicles.

Out of the six self-driving car collisions last year in California, two happened when people-driven cars intentionally rammed them. And in San Francisco a pedestrian crossed a street to shout at and then body slammed a test car at a traffic stop.

Attacks on test cars in Arizona, where a driverless Uber vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in March are notably more aggressive. In that state tires have been slashed, shots fired at vehicles and general harassment is occurring.

Some people have pelted Waymo [owned by Alphabet, the parent of Google] vans with rocks, according to police reports. Others have repeatedly tried to run the vehicles off the road. One woman screamed at one of the vans, telling it to get out of her suburban neighborhood. A man pulled up alongside a Waymo vehicle and threatened the employee riding inside with a piece of PVC pipe.

One man who was issued a warning by police for driving head-on at a test vehicle said: “They said they need real-world examples, but I don’t want to be their real-world mistake,” said Mr. O’Polka, who runs his own company providing information technology to small businesses. “They didn’t ask us if we wanted to be part of their beta test,” added his wife, who helps run the business.

Driverless cars may soon be coming to Vermont where the Agency of Transportation is doing some early planning for allowing testing of driverless cars here. Recently on VPR and in Vtdigger.com the agency’s director of planning and research, Joe Segale, said: “One of the reasons I’m interested in seeing these vehicles tested in Vermont is to see how they can handle driving on our back roads,”

He said he believes self-driving cars could have many benefits in a rural state like Vermont. For instance, Segale said, artificial intelligence technology could keep drivers safe in snowy or icy weather conditions, and create more efficient and affordable modes of transportation.

vtstrongdriverless

That last bit: “artificial intelligence technology could keep drivers safe in snowy or icy weather conditions” may be the toughest one as every Vermont driver knows. And notably the state transportation agency winter guidelines and radio PSAs for Vermont currently warns drivers to turnoff cruise control on snow and ice covered roads because of how rapidly conditions change.

For now the legislature, the AOT and the state police are working on issues such as registration, testing permits and of course, autonomous vehicle insurance liability. Who pays: manufacturer, owner, or operator? I’d be willing to bet this proves to be almost as problematic as getting self-driving technology to work safely on our back roads.