Kudos to my favorite cartoonist, Jeff Danziger for applying some down-home humor and killer logic to snatching New Hampshire’s golden goose right out from under her nose.

“Live free or pie!”

declares Danziger in his delightful Washington Post op-ed, which was picked-up by Seven Days.

Danziger reasons that, since the Granite State has writ into law that New Hampshire shall hold its primary before that of any other state, the best way to outfox them and grab some attention for us, their infinitely more deserving neighbors next door, Vermont’s legislature has only to make it a rule that our primary will be held concurrent with the New Hampshire primary, no matter on what day that might fall.

In the spirit of generosity so characteristic of Vermont, Danziger suggests that it would be even better if Maine and Massachusetts followed suit with Vermont and held their primaries the same day.  A regional primary would make all of New England much more relevant in the early days that shape campaign messaging.

After all, our old timers can be just as crusty and colorful for the national media as those of New Hampshire and we could sure use the extra commerce at our diners and truck stops.

Who knows? Deprived of their lucrative singularity in the primary department, maybe New Hampshire would rethink the whole “Live Free” thing and start trying to raise some revenue through…oh, I don’t know…taxes?

Probably not, but we can dream.

It would be nice to not have our governor looking wistfully eastward all the time.

Kuerig Green Mountain (formerly Green Mountain Coffee Roasters) got a nice big primetime shout-out from Shumlin in his inauguration speech at the state house. The K-cup giant has promised to donate $5 million over five years in kick off funds to the new Vermont Clean Water Fund.

Shumlin’s boosterism couldn’t be more timely, coming right now, with coffee maker recalls and pressure increasing from environmental groups to make all K-cups recyclable.  

VPR reports that a Canadian media company has produced short video depicting an urban landscape engulfed in a K-cup apocalypse.

[…] a massive, Godzilla-like monster made entirely of K-Cups belching a high volume of K-Cups down onto the unnamed city; a photographer being crushed by a car-sized K-Cup; a woman being stomped on by the aforementioned K-Cup monster

It has been estimated that the 8.3 billion K-cups produced by Kuerig in 2013 are enough to wrap around the equator 10.5 times. And if that isn’t enough, it is overpriced! The cost of the coffee at 8 grams per capsule is roughly $50.00 per pound.

The pod maker’s Chief Sustainability Officer did respond to VPR regarding the Canadian video at length.She noted at length their growing efforts to recycle the plastic cups ,and says it is a priority.

“It’s a difficult challenge, but we’ve been working hard to find a solution.”

It's hard, they whine, after all the tax breaks Vermont has handed to Kuerig (formerly Green Mountain Coffee Roasters) over the years, including a half-million-dollar yearly tax break on the K-cup packaging machine. So why wouldn’t the hugely profitable corporation “give back” a bit in the form of a public well-timed gift to the state.

Now $5 million over five years is certainly a thoughtful gift, but it sure looks like an affordable pre-packaged PR cuppa of Kuerig –- this one full of greenwash.

I'm sure you don't recognize this guy, because, after all, you don't live in Idaho.

If you did you might recognize him as Barry McHugh, the prosecuting attorney for Kootenai County, Idaho.

Old Barry's hit the news, and maybe not for something he'd want to be in the news for. You see, Barry has issued a warrant for the arrest of a nine-year-old boy for stealing gum.

I don't know, maybe the kid's a repeat offender. Maybe he stole a cookie when he was six and got away with it, so now he's headed down the road to a life of crime. A cookie here, gum there, and there's no telling where it will end.

I'm sure Barry has his reasons, because, you see, he has prosecutorial discretion. He gets to decide who he will prosecute and who he won't prosecute, and there's pretty much nothing that anybody else can do about it. So the nine-year-old gets sent off the the Little Big House to learn the error of his ways.

But you know, practicing law can be hard work, especially with all that exercising prosecutorial discretion. You mouth sure can get dry from all that discretioning, especially up in Idaho.

So wouldn't it be a kind gesture, a way to let him know how much we appreciate his efforts to keep Kootenai safe, to send him a piece of gum?

I know that's what I'm going to do, and if you're inclined to do the same, here's the address:

Barry McHugh, Prosecuting Atty

P: (208) 446-1800

Physical Address:

501 Government Way

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83814

Oh, one other thing: I went and got some legal advice and I'm told that if you are inclined to send ol' Barry some gum you should make sure not to send him anything with a liquid center or a powdery residue. There are people who send dangerous stuff through the mail, but a little gum never hurt anybody.

Leading to last weeks General Assembly vote to re-elect Governor Shumlin, legislators (and many media outlets) reminded us that members of the General Assembly have a special privilege.

Specifically, members of the General Assembly are specially entitled to exercise the choice of whether to cast their gubernatorial ballot in secrecy.

They own the privilege (at their sole discretion) to be unaccountable.

They own the privilege (at their sole discretion) to be aloof.

They own the privilege (at their sole discretion) to be fearful and to operate furtively in a dark, dank and cavern of secrecy.

They own the privilege (at their sole discretion) to be dismissive, arrogant and haughty when acting on our behalf.

Similarly:

The members of the General Assembly are specially entitled to exercise the optional choice of casting their vote for Governor in secrecy. They own the privilege (at their sole discretion) to be unaccountable.

Look, there is a light on in the old Frankenstein house!  

On Saturday former Vice President Cheney’s $3.3 million 8,000 Square foot house on Chain Bridge Rd. in MacLean Virginia was the site of a protest demonstration. The Cheney house on Code Pink’s "Guantanamo Anniversary Weekend Torturers Tour." is reported to be a ten minute walk from CIA headquarters.  Two of the twenty demonstrators some clad in orange prison jumpsuits, walked up to the house and refused to leave after police asked them to.  

The protesters from the anti-war group Code Pink walked up to the house before police arrived and asked them to leave, said Fairfax County police spokesman Roger Henriquez. Two members who refused to go were arrested on trespassing charges, he said.

Another Code Pink group demonstrated without incident outside the home of CIA Director John Brennan, also in the Washington, D.C. suburb of McLean, as part of its “Guantanamo Anniversary Weekend Torturers Tour.”

A U.S. Senate report last month said the CIA misled the White House and public about its torture of detainees after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and acted more brutally and pervasively than it acknowledged.

Two protesters, Tighe Barry, 57, and Eve Tetaz, 83, both from Washington DC will face misdemeanor trespassing and disorderly conduct charges.Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba still holds 127 detainees.

Fourteen years after Guantanamo prison opened and after the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogation made public some of the horrific methods used, Cheney remains unapologetic about his role in US torture or harsh interrogation of terrorist suspects.  He appeared recently on Meet the Press and stated he would do it all again in a minute. “I’d do it again in a minute,” said Dick Cheney.

 No doubt he happily would, but there are  problems with the examples from history he uses to justify his actions.Here is just one of the six debunked central claims Cheney uses when defending the legality of water boarding 

Japanese soldiers were prosecuted “for a lot of stuff. Not for waterboarding,” Cheney said. “To draw some kind of moral equivalent between waterboarding judged by our Justice Department not to be torture and what the Japanese did with the Bataan Death March and the slaughter of thousands of Americans, with the rape of Nanking and all of the other crimes they committed, that’s an outrage. It’s a really cheap shot.”

In fact, at an international tribunal convened in 1946, Japanese soldiers were put on trial for water-torture techniques including waterboarding, with some defendants sentenced to hanging and others to long prison terms.[added emphasis]

 That’s an unimaginable outrage to the former Vice President; punishing someone responsible for waterboarding torture. To him it may be a kind of “quaint concept”, you know like Bush’s Justice Department said of the Geneva Convention.  

Lord knows there's no shortage of issues to get organized about, but I know what my number one advocacy issue would be for the coming year if I were living in Boston right now.

It's the Olympics.

Sure, it's supposedly a point of national pride when your country is selected to hold the Olympics, and within the country it's supposedly a point of pride, of preeminence, a sign that you've made it if your city is selected, but what's the benefit of being selected for the equivalent of a flood, an earthquake, or a major hurricane? Yet that's exactly what the U.S. Olympic Committee wants the people of Boston to do.

Friday Nate Scott posted a column in USA Today laying out some of the practical problems with trying to shoehorn an extra half million people into a medium-sized, already congested city with already inadequate transportation and housing infrastructure. Boston's already been through one massive, disastrous public works program in recent years, and the congestion, delays, and cost overruns of the Big Dig will be dwarfed by the spending and construction needed to build the Olympics.

In addition to the problems with this plan that Scott enunciates, anyone in Boston or anywhere in Massachusetts who thinks that there are already misguided priorities in the city and state budgets will be shocked by what can only be a massive diversion of funding from human needs to this plaything for the international rich.

But it's not just the money. Just last year Norway decided to pass on a bid for the Winter Olympics because of the arrogant demands of the International Olympic Committee to be treated like royalty throughout their say at the competition. Here are some of their demands:

*A meeting and cocktail party with King Harald before and after the opening ceremony, with the royal family or Norwegian Olympic committee picking up the tab.

*A full bar for IOC pooh-bahs at the stadium during the opening and closing ceremonies.

*IOC members must be greeted with a smile upon arriving at their hotels.

*Hotels for IOC members must be pre-cleaned “particularly well,” and hotel management should be prepared to correct the slightest problem posthaste.

*All meeting rooms must be kept at 68 degrees.

*The usual car and driver at the beck and call of IOC members.

When I was growing up I always enjoyed watching the Olympics, and the exploits of athletes like Michael Johnson and Usain Bolt remind us all that we can count on greatness from the competitors. Nevertheless, as time goes on, the excess of the ceremonies, the celebrity and personality focus of the coverage, and the sheer bloat of the entire event has led me to conclude that I don't really care if they have another Olympics ever.

At a minimum, I would expect the people of Boston to be saying “Not here”.

(For the benefit of all the frustrated Fairpoint customers and workers in Vermont, I am promoting this letter diary to our Front Page. – promoted by Sue Prent)

An open letter to: Unvalued Sunu,

As a Vermonter, I have read of the dissatisfaction with your services in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, the letter to you from my Senators Leahy and Sanders and Representative Welsh and your reply to Vermont Governor Shumlin. The last letter is irrelevant to your failure to provide communications services to the people of Vermont. You are fundamentally failing to provide the public communications services expected of a public utility. Your firm is failing to maintain your distribution lines, to provide adequate server capacity to service the DSL system you installed, to provide backup to the E911 system and to adequately communicate with your “Dear Valued Customers.”  Since the public of the unserved states has no say concerning your internal problems, whether they be management, financial or labor issues, the public can end your services.

Locally, my neighbors who work for Fairpoint will be supported rather than you.

Fairpoint Communication has responsibility to provide the services regardless of the mentioned internal problems. It is obvious that you are attempting to hold the people of Vermont hostage for your corporate benefit. Vermonters are not for sale.

The tree that was leaning on my telephone line because of wet snow was beneath no electric cables. It is now over four weeks since that tree stretched the line such that only the old rotary phone in my house will ring. There is now so much noise on the line that conversations are nearly impossible. I have made one cell telephone call and sent three emails to your residential repair.

Your condescending, computer generated responses to “Dear Valued Customer” are unsatisfactory, scam responses to my lack of service.

A lack of redundance in a E911 system (E is for emergency), is inexcusable. There should have been two redundant servers in an emergency system, one of which could have been serviced while the other was on line. You did not properly supervise whoever was performing the repairs/upgrade and/or you did not have adequate available backup. The behavior of my Internet connection causes me to believe that your server capacity is insufficient to serve your customer base. I have read nothing that you desire to make any amends, whatsoever, to those who were harmed by their lack of ability to obtain assistance when in need. I don’t understand how anyone who thinks as you can act in the name of public service.

Have you ever climbed a telephone pole. Do you know how to splice a telephone cable. Do you have the foggiest idea of what facilities are required for installation of an electronic telephone switch. Do you know anything other than the words of the above activities. Can you repair your telephone? As an engineer, I once directed the installation of a nine hundred phone system in a General Electric Silicones  plant; new lines on the poles, the room for the digital switch, buried connection to the off-site telephone system and safety of the workers installing the system. I am retired and have never been one of your employees. Do you know which end of a screw driver is the handle?

New Hampshire is putting the brakes on a decision on a $13 million contract with FairPoint Communications to provide state government with telephone and Internet service. According to the AP, that FairPoint contract may be taken up in January or that state’s council could choose to reopen the bidding process. Based on what I have read, the bidding should be reopened.

Based on what I have read, the Vermont Public Service Board should immediately undertake determination on how to replace Fairpoint Communications in Vermont. If our only alternative is to create a communications department within our state organization to replace private enterprise, I would support that solution. Banking, health, communications, etc. should all be dedicated public services.

Before you get excited about getting your idea of your infrastructure investment back, let me state that my experience as a town property lister taught me that utilities understate their miles of line and the depreciated value of their facilities. It is my belief that those facilities of yours are worth less than the value on which you have paid taxes.

As an eighty-two year old, who has independently worked as a project engineer for national and international managements, most of which could effectively manage their reasons for existence, I want you out of business in Vermont. Your business is endangering the public welfare. The states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont should file suit against your business; a suit of sufficient magnitude to bankrupt your corporate divisions in those states for failing to provide adequate public services. Furthermore, those states and their citizens should cease paying their bills until all repair and service issues are resolved and adequate communications restored to OUR satisfaction.

Enough of your excuses! You’re a pathetic loser who cannot do the job! Your head is too big!!

Perry Cooper

ps: Wachovia ripped off a trust account of mine by substituting REITs for valuable stocks. Fairpoint is now billing me for unsatisfactory service. If I can avoid them, I will no longer do business with persons of any kind operating from North Carolina.

cc:

Senator Leahy

Senator Sanders

Representative Welsh

Governor Shumlin

Maine Public Utilities Commission

New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission

Vermont Utilities Commission

Federal Communications Commission

More or less as a public service, this is just a quick reminder that The NRC is accepting public comment on Entergy’s decommissioning plans, for a limited time only.

Digger has posted links to the report and provided the following information:

The full text of the report is available through the NRC website.

The NRC will host a public meeting on the report from 6-9pm on February 19 at the Quality Inn in Brattleboro.

In the meantime, the public can submit comments online through www.regulations.gov using Docket No. 50-271, or by mail to Cindy Bladey, Office of Administration, Mail Stop: 3WFN-06-A44M, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C., 20555.

Public comments will be accepted until March 23.

After a relatively brief interval of useful service, Vermont will live with Vermont Yankee’s radioactive legacy for (at minimum) many more decades; perhaps even centuries.  This is our best chance to weigh-in on how we think that legacy should be managed.

It was just over five years ago that we were writing about censorship at Yale. On that occasion Yale University decided to excise the Danish cartoons from a scholarly work examining freedom of expression and the cartoon controversy.

As we said at the time: So what does it say when one of our greatest universities lacks the courage of a small newspaper in Denmark?

Again it's a tiny publication in comparison to one of our great institutions of journalism, and again the terrorists and murderers have won.

Yes, the New York Times has decided that it won't publish the cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo that apparently led to the murders of twelve free people. The same is true of NBC News. And the Washington Post.

Here's one of them:

Pretty crude and juvenile, right? Muhammad is depicted as saying, “100 lashes if you don't die of laughter.”

The voices of “responsible” journalism have the usual things to say: they're not being intimidated, they're being sensitive; they are never in the business of being offensive just for the sake of being offensive; how can they justify putting their employees at risk?

The thing is, though, that freedom of speech is important to us here in America. We figured out a long time ago that we can't have a democratic, civilized society without it. If some people are offended, so be it.

And the other thing is that there's no limit. There's no way a writer, an editor, or a publication can say, “If I just give in to them on this one point it'll be okay.” There's never just one point. Once you let the terrorists decide what you can publish they'll be making that decision for you and your readers every day, and all of a sudden you're out of the journalism business and into–well, I don't know what you call it at that point.

Coincidentally, down in Maryland we just observed the case of an idiot politician threatening to sue a local newspaper any time they published his name. They didn't back down, and they made him a laughing stock. Rightly so. That was an easy one, though, because the entire world knew that he couldn't make it stick: his was a hollow threat.

The threat to kill journalists who publish pictures someone doesn't like has repeatedly been shown not to be a hollow threat at all. Still, the fundamentalists and terrorists don't get to win, because after they win one, what's to stop them from winning all of them?

It’s been a bad election year at the polls for most Democrats, but out in the home of Proposition 13, Jerry Brown managed to win his fourth term as California governor. How does he shine on so brightly while other bright lights have dimmed? California and Jerry Brown are both unique, but one thing worth copying err, emulating stands out. And there is a hint in the title of a recent article: How Jerry Brown Got Californians to Raise Their Taxes and Save Their State

Brown took an enormous risk in 2012: he bet that Californians were so tired of cuts and dysfunction that they would vote for a big tax increase. Brown bet right, securing overwhelming support for tax hikes on the rich—including a 29 percent increase for Californians with taxable income over $1 million – and a slight increase in the sales tax.

It took courage on Brown’s part and California’s legislative leaders. California experienced a rare moment when collective desperation pushes political self interest aside just enough for elected leaders to do the right thing.    

So it is fairly disheartening for us to consider what California accomplished in the same week that here in Vermont the Senate Minority Leader, Republican Joe Benning, made himself some headlines by shouting from the roof tops that due to budget shortfalls Vermont would need to raise taxes, acknowledging that the legislature cannot make enough cuts to fix the budget without inflicting real damage. Then, after hardly pausing for a breath, he ruled out voting for those increases, even though he sees no alternative solution. And soon enough, although he hasn’t ruled out a tax increase, a politically weakened Governor Shumlin (if Scott Milne isn’t elected!) seems likely to re-up his no-tax-increase-on-high-earners promise.  

The thing is, what Brown did in California also happened here in Vermont. Once upon a time Governor  Richard Snelling (R) enlisted the help of Democrats in the legislature, and with combined budget cuts and temporay revenue increases (taxes), helped the state out of a budget crisis. But that was 1991, and we all know that was long, long ago, so long in fact I think VPR’s Bob Kinzel spoke of it in almost  hushed, reverent tones in 2008:

Snelling did something that's become one of the most talked about events in modern legislative history. Unannounced, he walked over to the office of House Speaker Ralph Wright and requested a brief meeting to ask for Wright's help in drafting a package of budget cuts and tax increases to erase the deficit.

Hmmm, one of the most talked about events in modern legislative history? Well, not so much this week, so far at least.