From our good friends at CERN, who brought us the Large Hadron Collider, and thereby a glimpse at the origins of the Universe, comes some very exciting news.

Researchers at the esteemed facility have succeeded in confirming the existence of the hitherto mythical “Force.”

Yes…that “Force.”

“The Force is what gives a particle physicist his powers,” said CERN theorist Ben Kenobi of the University of Mos Eisley, Tatooine. “It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us; and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”

But, as has been true with all consensus-shattering breakthroughs, this one was not without its fair share of politics and controversy:

Kenobi’s seminal paper “May the Force be with EU” – a strong argument that his experiment should be built in Europe – persuaded the CERN Council to finance the installation of dozens of new R2 units for the CERN data centre.

As if this thumb in the eye of North American and Asian research facilities was not enough to cast a shadow over the discovery,  ominous rumblings from rival projects threaten trouble ahead.

But the research community is divided over the discovery. Dark-matter researcher Dave Vader was unimpressed, breathing heavily in disgust throughout the press conference announcing the results, and dismissing the cosmological implications of the Force with the quip “Asteroids do not concern me”.

Details of the discovery and of what it might mean for the future of science as we know it, are far beyond my simple technical comprehension; so I invite my informed readers to visit Cern’s website and learn more about it from the researchers’ own words.

http://home.web.cern.ch/about/…

NSA files leaked to GMD prove that everyone has been right about everything all along.

Secret world government authorities have been distributing airborne vaccines with thimeserol through chemtrails. These chemtrails are carefully plotted in relation to ridgeline wind turbines for maximum spread. The purpose, according to whistleblowers, is to infect Americans with adult-onset autism, which will allow the pharma-wind-military industrial complex to send black helicopters to confiscate all the guns, thereby creating an opening for President Obama to lead the armies of ISIS and Kenya through the unprotected Mexican border to seize the country.

Climate change was conceived as an elaborate hoax to distract the world (or at least, those few left not involved in the conspiracy – it is a pretty big one, after all) from this developing plot.

More details are forthcoming about the details of the plot and precisely who is involved, but the picture below was leaked by the whistleblower and authenticated.

Breaking News…Just now…I mean, really…No shit…

According to a Facebook post, two New York City policemen with guns drawn confronted Bill Cosby who was dressed up as a woman about to enter a Manhattan lesbian bar.  Police did not shoot him.  Once he showed his ID, the two policemen asked for his autograph, and, according to the Facebook post, said things like:  “Love ya, Cos.” and “You’re The Man.”  and  “Yeah, get in there and straighten them dykes out, Cos.”

Also, according to Facebook, it is reported that young black males have been swamping costume stores and going on line looking for Cosby masks and Cosby outfits.  And that the Ferguson, Missouri PD has already issued a BOLO on this.

We will monitor Facebook for more on this developing story, which we will call:  “Are They All Rapists Or Are They Just Trying To Stay Alive?”

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.  

During the current legislative session, budgetary constraints have proven very challenging to representatives of all political persuasions, as each has struggled to reaffirm a commitment to the shared goal of lake clean-up without betraying key constituents.

One Republican legislator (who has requested to remain anonymous) thinks he/she may have hit upon the perfect solution that no one can afford to refuse.  That individual is apparently moving swiftly behind the scenes to “make it so.”

Even our Democratic governor has balked at raising revenue the old fashioned way, and you won’t see any Republicans arguing with him on that score.

Where then does a large, renewable pool of money exist that has not already been committed to essential services, and is simply wasted as it is currently dedicated?

When put this way, even I guessed the answer…campaign contributions!

Yes, “Legislator X” proposes that his colleagues agree to apply a “voluntary levy” to all campaign contributions made in support of state office seekers.  The office seeker him/herself would serve as ‘gatekeeper,’ and the levy would be calculated and paid into a public fund, based on the total value of campaign contributions, at the conclusion of the election cycle.

Republicans have already made noises about campaign finance reform that might drive a wedge between them and the national party, were it even aware that Republicans exist in Vermont.   What better way for the perennial underdog to assert its independence?

Proceeds from these voluntary tithings would go into a dedicated fund; now for lake clean-up; later, perhaps, for some other purpose ordained by the legislature.

The incentive to honor even a voluntary commitment to such a fund would be tremendous.  No one would want to be the asshole who refused to chip in to clean-up the lake, especially since, for all intents and purposes, affordability would have been removed from the conversation.

The exact details of how this would work and the legal mechanisms involved still have to be considered, but our source is confident that consensus on principle is near.  

A colleague from the Progressive camp is urging that the recommended contribution be established on a sliding scale, so that the more financial support a candidate receives from contributors, the larger his “gift” to the Clean Water Fund should be.

Under such a model, Governor Shumlin could expect to give the lion’s share, should he seek reelection.

This is what is so unique about our little state.

Where else besides Vermont would a Republican spearhead such a brilliant and…well…PROGRESSIVE strategy for raising new revenue?

Last Friday night’s usual Budget Bill debate took a dramatic turn when twenty-something Republican freshman Rep. Joey Conforth of Shriftsbury took the House Floor. His dramatic, impassioned speech rocked the body of older legislators and sent the Appropriations committee back upstairs to draft an entirely new budget.

“I just had no idea what we were doing to the young people of Vermont.” said House Appropriations Chair Rep. Mitzi Johnson.

The speech was a stirring vision of a tax-free utopia in which “not a single penny of state money would be spent on freebie, giveaway programs to help greedy seniors, farmers, poor people, or children” and businesses would be free to “harness the natural resources of our great state for the attainment of maximized profit”. It moved some on the House floor to tears.

“I’m really rethinking my priorities after that speech.” said Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morristown. “Maybe if we cut programs and taxes, the wealthiest Vermonters will have more money and will share it with the rest of us. It’s a powerful idea. This kid (Conforth) is gonna be the next Ronald Reagan.”

Appropriations committee members stopped by Conforth’s seat on their way back to committee to kneel down and beg forgiveness for their budget sins. The Speaker accepted a motion to recess so they could go back to the drawing board on the Budget.

Well, this will warm the hearts of Vermont’s big ski resort owners and perhaps mollify budget-cutting legislators. A deal is now under consideration by the Shumlin administration to “sell” state land which is currently under long-term lease to ski resorts. This potential deal was uncovered by the investigative team at the Burlington Free Press.

The FreeP reports that the plan is the brainchild of former Douglas administration official Mike Smith (current interim dean for land sales and divestment at Burlington College). The plan, as outlined by Smith for Governor Shumlin, would, they say, raise hundreds of millions of dollars (one-time only) for Vermont.

Earlier, Smith had meetings with Vermont Ski Area Association’s Vin Bogataj to gain input and ensure their enthusiastic “buy-in.” At the time Smith pitched his approach, the Governor had just received the State Auditor’s report on antiquated ski-resort leases of state-owned land.

Currently 8,500 acres of public land are under a variety of long-term leases to ski resorts. Payment arrangements are based on a percentage of lift ticket sales. In recent years other sources of income beside ticket sales have been added to the resorts and remain untapped by the state.

The feasibility of renegotiating the terms has been considered to take into account the increased worth of the state lands to the resorts. Revisiting the decades-old agreements as a new revenue source was roundly panned by the Vermont Ski Area Association (VSAA) and then quietly abandoned by the Shumlin administration as politically impractical. The abandoned health care initiative and his resulting popularity decline may have contibuted to the Governor's choice, or as some observers speculate, he may just always have been like this.

According to leaked terms of the new plan, Vermont will “sell” the state forest land for a fixed one-time cash payment and permanently void the old leases. The Pree Fress retorts:

A source in the Shumlin administration said the ski resort purchaser will ‘own’ the land as a kind of trust hybrid known as a Reverse Trust, similar to corporate legally non-binding contracts and common non-legal binding misunderstandings. Said the source “It’s a win, win, the state gets a onetime payment and the resorts get ownership of thousands of acres of public land to use as their own. It’s a common sense decision … the Vermont way.” [added emphasis]

State officials note tough limits on land uses will be part of the deal, and forest development will be strictly limited with eye on preservation. Restaurants, water parks, hotels/condominiums, casinos and road building (on a case by case basis) will be confined to areas less than 6,000 ft in elevation.

A Reverse Trust (ARGAL /BARGL): the Vermont Way. 

Significantly, Vermont will retain an element of legal involvement -ownership can revert back to the state. The provision included at the insistence of the VSAA is a complicated legal arrangement called a Reverse Trust.

The Reverse Trust procedure occurs in the event a calamitous event or catastrophic liability is suffered by a ski resort. It automatically triggers the land (and any associated liability) “reverting” through a buy-back mechanism the State of Vermont is responsible for. This buy back feature “fixes” a guaranteed return to the resorts of their initial investment plus 10 perecnt.If any event (natural or economic) significantly degrades or otherwise permanently debilitates the property’s worth then the “fix” kicks in.

This agreement is similar in structure to A Retained Guaranteed Agreement of Liability (ARGAL) and the more familiar Business Agreement on Retained Guaranteed Liability (BARGL)

The VSAA ‘s Vin Bogataj is very please by the plan

“The proposed state forest sale will not only provide a welcome level of certainty to the ski industry but, free up a portion of yearly lift ticket sales now paid to the state, which now acts as little more than an unnecessary tax burden. The resulting boost in revenue will help VSAA member resorts continue to provide the kind of seasonal minimum wage service jobs Vermonters expect from us.”[ italics added to attract eyes]

In addition one ski resort owner reported he received informal assurances from high level state office holders that a portion of the forest land sale money will be used to improve winter time highway plowing and expand overall road capacity to several remote mountain locations

A tenative target date for enacting this is currently agreed to be by April 1st 2016!

Sources report that Vermont Health Connect’s prospects are again looking dire. The online health care marketplace, still beset with problems, has already seen costs skyrocket, and word is that the latest contractor has also failed to meet internal benchmarks.

In an effort to save money and rescue the ACA-mandated online marketplace, word is that the administration is now speaking to Comcast Cable. The Cable giant, which currently provides cable television, phone and internet services, will be bundling Vermont Health Connect plans with its other plans, offering a seamless transition that merges easily with bills many Vermonters are already paying.

A sneak peak of the types of offerings to be available on the Comcast website was briefly visible online, before the site was taken down for maintenance.

BREAKING NEWS – Word is that the Comcast deal mentioned in the previous diary fell through in the last possible minutes. Reportedly, the cable giant offered the Shumlin Administration a deal that was, in its view, quite reasonable for Vermont taxpayers. At the last minute, the Governor’s staff realized that the quoted rates were only good for the first year. Last minute attempts to include free HBO and Cinemax with Silver and Gold plans were reportedly not enough to save the deal.

Instead, GMD has learned, Vermont Health Connect will be managed at an even lower cost to taxpayers through the widely popular international community website Craigslist. Details are still forthcoming, but the beta version of the new site is online now, and pictured below.

I can’t let the month of March pass without mentioning that we just marked the fourth anniversary of the triple melt-down at Fukushima Daiichi, a crisis that is still unfolding as contaminated water continues to seep into the groundwater and flood into the ocean.

It is also the 36th anniversary of Three Mile Island, another nuclear melt-down made worse by a slow corporate response that prioritized “damage control” ahead of population safety.  A second reactor still operates on that Pennsylvania site, giving the operators an excuse to postpone decommissioning of the devastated unit until both reactors may be dealt with together, sometime after reactor 2 finally goes offline.

The news from Japan continues to be dismaying, as the Prime Minister presses for a return to nuclear dependance and TEPCO makes it clear that they are looking for a way to avoid paying the enormous cost of decommissioning their own crippled reactors at Fukushima.

Despite repeated assurances that, “from now on” there will be complete transparency, ugly surprises just keep cropping up.  Most recently a sea of collected water on the roof of one of the reactors was revealed to have radiation levels many times that of water that was being routinely collected for treatment.  The highly contaminated roof water had been draining directly into the ocean with TEPCO fully aware of it for over six months before finally acknowledging the existence of the problem.

Why would anyone believe that TEPCO can be trusted with such a preponderance of evidence to the contrary?

Of course, here we are in little old Vermont, contemplating a future in which our own “trusted” nuclear provider has issued veiled hints that it might simply cut and run from its own decommissioning obligation should it take longer than sixty years to complete.

Entergy fully intends to hire itself to do the decommissioning of Vermont Yankee, in any case; so no matter how things go down, Entergy intends to turn a nice profit.

I am obliged to add that I am a non-technical member of the Fairewinds Energy Education crew, but the opinions that I express on GMD are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Fairewinds.

Some of the biggest banks aren’t feeling all the respect from Democratic Senators they think they deserve — and maybe  they expect it after donating millions to canditates over the years.

The Too Big to Fail Mob of investment banks — Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America — are very upset that Senators Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren are leading efforts to stave off amendments and other agreements that would weaken parts of the Dodd-Frank banking laws.

And this from the same Wall Street investment banking industry where total bonuses for 2014 were $28.5 billion. That is more than double the annual pay of more than 1 million workers earning minimum wages.

So upset were the banks that representatives from the Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America mob got together to make a plan:

“…discuss ways to urge Democrats, including Warren and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, to soften their party's tone toward Wall Street” [added emphasis]

Following the bankers’ strategy meeting unconfirmed reports surfaced that the four banks may not make as many donations to Democratic candidates as usual. Whew, a nice way to “soften” the tone.

Well, Senator Warren will have none of it from big banks. “They have taken their shot, but it will not work.” She wrote in a letter to supporters And she continued:

I’m not going to stop talking about the unprecedented grasp that Citigroup has on our government’s economic policymaking apparatus,” she added. “I’m not going to stop talking about the settlement agreements that JPMorgan makes with our Justice Department that are so weak; the bank celebrates by giving their executives a raise. And I’m not going to pretend the work of financial reform is done, when the so-called 'too big to fail' banks are even bigger now than they were in 2008.”

 Pretty good tone, Senator, it reminded me of this:

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace –business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. [added emphasis]

 That’s President Franklin Roosevelt from his Second New Deal announcement during his 1936 re-election campaign. That's a pretty good tone too.