I wonder how many had the same thought when they read about the lead content that VPIRG has discovered in decorative paint on VPR pledge-drive mugs issued between 2002 and 2011?

Were these mugs manufactured in China?

This would not be surprising since China has become the primary manufacturer of similar goods over the past decade or longer.  Over that same period we’ve grown almost accustomed to news of Chinese products contaminated with toxins turning up in pet food, infant formula, childrens toys etc.

If not  China, there is still a strong likelihood that the mugs were produced anywhere but in the U.S.  

Judging from the consistent findings over those years, one would hazard a guess that they were all sourced from the same supplier or manufacturer, who either got religion with regard to lead paint or was dropped in 2012.

This story begs a second chapter, perhaps written by VPR itself, accounting for the source of the tainted tumblers and pointing to where else we might look for this hazard in our kitchen crockery.

Oh dear. Darcie “Hack” Johnston is not happy. Indeed, if she got any madder, her eyes and skin would turn green and her muscles would burst through her clothes. HACK SMASH!

I think the real cause of her anger is the fact that Vermont Health Connect is off to an acceptable start. She has to know, as do Randy Brock and all those nutbar Tea Party Congresscritters, that if health care reform is successful, their little game is over. So, a glitchy but non-disastrous Day One is a bad omen for the Hack and her friends.

That, I suspect, is the cause. But the trigger was a news release from the totalitarian hordes at VPIRG.

Well, “totalitarian” and “hordes” are her words, but who am I to doubt the discernment of Darcie Johnston?

Deets after the jump.  

It all started with Darcie squandering some money on anti-Shummycare robocalls, which warned that VERMONTERS MIGHT LOSE THEIR INSURANCE!!!!! and urged people to contact the Governor seeking a delay in VHC’s implementation.

VPIRG’s response? A news release pointing out that VHC will bring health coverage to thousands of Vermonters who can’t currently afford it, and urging people to contact Darcie’s advocacy group, Vermonters for Health Care Freedom, and complain about the misleading robocalls. (Do robocalls still work, anyway? Does Darcie think it’s still 1985?)

Well, by “contact,” I mean “send Darcie an e-mail.” Because it’s her e-mail that’s listed on the VHCF website.

And that’s where the totalitarian hordes come in, as unleashed by the suspiciously-Aryan-sounding VPIRG operative Falko Schilling. In Darcie’s overheated words:

What he did was mobilize his hordes to try to silence our message, not by calling the governor’s office and voicing their contrary opinions, but by flooding my email account.

VPIRG’s attack on my email account is completely consistent with its advocacy of a totalitarian health care system…

Now VPIRG has resorted to the methods favored by totalitarians everywhere – to suppress any dissent from their gospel of the all-powerful state.”

This, after Falko’s “hordes” “flooded” Darcie’s e-mail account with roughly 200 messages.

Two Hundred.

That’s a mighty small horde.

Which can be defeated in short order by your handy-dandy “DELETE” button.

200 unwanted e-mails is a minor annoyance, not a totalitarian suppression of dissent. But of course Darcie, like all the teabaggers, has a remarkably thin skin when it comes to political blowback.

Now, it might be argued that Falko went too far in using Darcie’s own e-mail address. But she left that door open by posting it on the VHCF website as the “Contact” option. So, no sympathy for the Hack from this precinct.

I hope she can find a harmless outlet for all this pent-up anger. I suggest the Bozo Bop Bag, available for a mere $19.95 from the good folks at the Vermont Country Store.  

Big day today. First day of the Vermont Health Connect website.

And yes, there were some glitches. Slow logons, failures to connect.

But quite a few people actually got on board. There was no cataclysmic crash, no utter failure to launch. Which, if there’s any justice in the world, ought to drive the final nail in the coffin of Randy Brock’s political career.

Because, in a much-publicized opinion piece on VTDigger last weekend he said, and I quote, “The system doesn’t work.”

Yeah, you wish.  

It’s too bad that Brock is reduced to hoping for the complete collapse of health care reform. (And Darcie “Hack” Johnston is reduced to running ads seeking a delay in VHC’s launch, since she has no hope of defeating it.) But it’s the only card in his deck. The only chance for him, or any other Republican, to run a competitive race against Governor Shumlin in 2014 is if VHC goes bust.

On Day One, that seems highly unlikely.

As for the glitches, they are to be expected. This is a huge, complicated transition. Made necessary, lest we forget, by the real failure of the current health care system to (a) provide coverage to all Americans, or even get close, and (b) bring costs under control. You wanna talk glitches, just take a close look at that hot mess.  

Imagine health care as a cracked-up, pothole-ridden highway littered with hubcaps and other automotive detritus. The period up to October 1 was the reconstruction of the highway. And while the new route reopened on time, the work isn’t quite done. A few bumps, lines not yet painted, rumble strips and guardrails still being installed. That’s where we’re at today.

And I’ll gladly accept a bumpy transition if the result is a smooth, broad Health Care Highway that can provide care for a lot more people at a reasonable cost.

And, as Governor Shumlin keeps promising, that will be a temporary measure on the way to single-payer health care. On Day One, glitches notwithstanding, I’d say we are well on our way.  

In Saudi Arabia,

Sheiks feast on

children. Something

you can do if you have

enough money.

Capitalism makes slavery

a profit-maker.

War kills. But it is not

the dead, but the living

who can be products.

Children, women,

the disappeared

and forgotten.

Just basic economics.

Soon we may say

the disappeared

create jobs.

Hand over more children

to Saudi Sheiks.

Keep them happy, they

are our allies.

Where is my cell phone?

My credit card?

My gadget?

Where did my child go?

Here a minute ago?

But gone in a flash,

like the thought

I put out of my mind

because it made me

feel so bad.

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, VT.

Afterword:

It’s not War,

it’s Guns.

It’s not Injustice,

it’s Guns.

Guns make War

and Injustice.

Guns make the world

get warmer.

It’s not Capitalism,

it’s Guns

It’s not Sexism,

it’s Guns.

It’s not the Pig

who takes away

your money, your job,

your kid, and your life.

It’s fucking Guns.

Let’s get rid of them.

No more War.

No more Global Warming.

No more people starving

and dying and outraged

about their lives,

their fingers on a trigger.

Let us all come together

and abolish the right

that makes so much trouble,

that takes so much of our time.

That says no matter what,

people will still be able

to fight back, even if they lose.

Fuck the People,

It’s Guns.

Well, well. Great Britain’s largest bird conservation group, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, is building a 100-meter-tall wind turbine at its headquarters in Bedfordshire. Well, technically, it’s being built by the British green-energy firm Ecotricity, but you get my drift.  

Shocking, I know. Those good-hearted folks at the RSPB have succumbed to “climate change” bushwah, and they’re gonna build themselves an “icon to worship,” in the immortal words of Rob Roper. And soon, if the Windies are to be believed, there’ll be a large and growing pile of avian corpses at the RSPB’s doorstep.

Er, maybe not.

Both Ecotricity and the RSPB say they have undertaken thorough environmental assessments of the site, and they are confident that there will not be a significant impact on either local wildlife or the surrounding community.

The RSPB does call for care in siting wind farms; you don’t want turbines in prime raptor habitat, or in places that rare species call home. But…

…the charity insists that cutting carbon emissions has to be an urgent priority for any organization concerned about the survival of wildlife.

RSPB director Paul Forecast notes that “We can already see the impact that climate change is having on our countryside with salt marsh and mudflats declining at a rate of 100 hectares per year in England.” Which is the point I’ve tried to make in previous diaries on this blog: if we don’t make a strong commitment to renewable energy, then our environment is going to change drastically. If we try to preserve Vermont exactly as it is, it’ll change in dramatic and unpredictable ways. I’d rather have some sensibly-sited ridgeline wind farms, myself.

But I’ll give Paul Forecast the last word:

“We hope that by installing a wind turbine at our UK headquarters, we will demonstrate to others that, with a thorough environmental assessment, the correct planning and location, renewable energy and a healthy, thriving environment can go hand in hand.”

I think we can all agree on that.  

There was a rally yesterday in Montpelier (Mitchell Family Paywall Alert) — one of ten around the country — drawing attention to massive hikes in flood insurance premiums for many Americans living in flood-prone areas, as defined by our good friends at FEMA. The local rally was organized by one Chris Winters of Berlin, who owns a home near the Dog River, and who faces a sticker-shock-inducing $8,000-per-year flood insurance premium.

The cause: The Biggert-Waters Act of 2012, which reformed the federal flood insurance subsidy program.

And while I sympathize with Winters, I have to say that the feds’ flood insurance program was sorely in need of reform. In effect, We The People have been subsidizing the cost of flood insurance for a whole lot of folks with expensive lakefront or beachfront real estate. Not to mention encouraging unwise development of flood-prone lands.

Winters is  a sympathetic figure in all of this; he doesn’t have deep pockets and would have great difficulty paying the premiums. As it happens, his home did not flood during Tropical Storm Irene; but when FEMA updated its flood-zone maps, his home was listed in the danger zone.

From his point of view, Biggert-Waters is “trying to balance the budget for FEMA, and they’re doing it on the backs of the policyholders.” I’d put it another way: Biggert-Waters was an attempt to eliminate one of the biggest boondoggles in the system, and make policyholders pay the true cost of insuring their properties.

There’s room for some creative thinking on ways to ease the burden on people like Winters (some sort of means test?), but I’d hate to see Biggert-Waters completely undermined. I’d especially hate for shorefront developers to latch onto cases like Winters’ in an effort to roll back the reform.

As for Vermont’s Congressional delegation, they’d like to see a postponement in the new insurance requirements until an affordability study (called for in Biggert-Waters) can be completed.

Nothing wrong with that. But the problem with the notion of “affordability” is that previous federal policy made a lot of flood-prone real estate artificially affordable, and Biggert-Waters seeks to correct that. Generally speaking, I hope it stands.  

Think “road rage” is a phenomena exclusive to big cities like LA?  Think again.

Yesterday, St. Albans experienced a fatal shooting, between apparent strangers, that preliminary reports say was due to that old black magic, “road rage.”

The victim, Anna Alger of Highgate, made the mistake of following a car that ran a red light and cut her off at an intersection; then getting out of her car to confront the driver.  The driver, who reportedly had multiple guns in his vehicle, exited and shot her not once, but six times.  

Ms. Alger later died at Northwestern Medical Center.

The shooter, Matthew Webster of Swanton, is being held on a charge of second degree murder.

The police say they aren’t blaming the victim but suggest that she should have gone to the police rather than following the dangerous driver and confronting him.

No kidding.

A witness to the shooting was Webster’s wife, who apparently followed Webster in another car after some sort of domestic dispute.

WCAX reports that Webster pled “not guilty” this morning in court.  I can’t wait to hear his defense.

The news from Japan isn’t good.  There is a contamination disaster unfolding at Fukushima that even the best efforts at spin can’t disguise.

They may have secured the 2020 Summer Olympics for Tokyo, but even that bit of good news may fall under a shadow if resolution to the radiation leaks does not soon come about.

Now, seventeen international experts have come together as signators of a  letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that pleads with him to intercede on behalf of the world so as to remove TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Country) from control of the Fukushima site.   TEPCO has proven hopelessly inadequate for the job of remediating the worst industrial accident in history.

According to Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer of Fairewinds Associates:

TEPCO…has no expertise in engineering and dismantlement.  The wrong skills are being used by the wrong people to attempt the present Fukushima cleanup.  In order for true progress to be made, TEPCO must be replaced and the Japanese people must be informed that their national liability from the accident exceeds a half a trillion US dollars.

The letter goes on to cite the wholly inadequate and fundamentally flawed guidelines that are currently in use regarding “safe” levels of radiation.  The false assumptions in those guidelines  mean that  women and children in particular are at risk.

Tuesday night, the community will gather outside the school in vigil. That vigil begins at 7 p.m. School officials are asking folks to gather at the outside classroom by the North Champlain Street entrance. Representatives from local religious organizations, domestic violence advocates and city officials will also be in attendance.

[Friends say she’s also a mom, with a kindergartner and second-grader at Burlington’s Sustainability Academy.]

http://www.wcax.com/story/2351…

(This deserves front page real estate.  Not everyone may agree with all aspects of Rosemarie’s diary, but most will appreciate that this is symptomatic of a greater problem in Vermont that arises out of the very quality that most of us love about the state: it’s extreme intimacy.  Unfortunately, that intimacy has a dark side in the form of cronyism, conflicts of interest and plain bad manners toward those who create ripples in the local pond. – promoted by Sue Prent)

Pulling the Plug on the First Amendment

During the September 23 meeting of the Bennington Select Board an order was given to pull the plug. Given the order, CAT-TV immediately obeyed.  Video and audio of the live broadcast suddenly disappeared from thousands of television screens. This occurred during an enthusiastic discussion between a citizen and a member of the Select Board.

In complete disclosure, I am a fan of CAT-TV.   Community television is one of Bennington’s most important assets. CAT-TV is the stronghold of the First Amendment in Bennington.  This is especially important in a State where the First Amendment has been quietly under attack for years. CAT-TV should never be silenced – not even for a few minutes.

 

Evidence of the erosion of free speech is often seen during election time. Photos of Dennis Steele being arrested are available on the Internet. Steele was a candidate for governor. He was arrested because he wanted to participate in a political debate. Another candidate, Peter Diamondstone, was arrested at the Vermont Law School. He also wanted to participate in a debate.

When a book is banned by a library, or when a candidate is not allowed to participate in a debate it is often ‘under the radar’. Citizens are never told. Libraries do not post lists of books they ban.  People do not know, what they don’t know. These are the unknown unknowns.  If more citizens knew that their Constitutional rights have been compromised, they would react.

Newspapers and other privately owned companies have the legal right to publish or not publish anything they want. Public tax supported schools and libraries have a higher obligation to honor free speech – especially political speech.

The banning of political books by a public tax supported library is a violation of the First Amendment.  Legal experts and Constitutional lawyers can game the system by arguing that the Amendment only restricts the federal government.  That can be debated, but the spirit of the First Amendment is very clear. It should be honored.

Instead of pulling the plug on CAT-TV, the plug should be pulled on the funding of any organization or library that suppresses free speech or prohibits the right to read.  The chipping away at the First Amendment has a chilling effect on the democratic process and discourages citizen participation.

How ironic, this most recent attack on the First Amendment occurred during Banned Book Week.

Rosemarie Jackowski