(I thought this diary would initiate a useful conversation on GMD. – promoted by Sue Prent)

     In this election I have heard a lot from the Republicans and Libertarians about the pressing need for tax reform.  My question is, what kind of tax reform are we talking about? Republican tax reform? When most Republicans start talking up their support of tax reform, they are actually talking about reducing taxes for corporations and the people intent on piling up more money than they can possibly take away. The fact is the Vermont Republican Party, once the Party of George Aiken, is now increasingly a shadow of the Tea Party. While there remain good principled Republican politicians (to name two: Senator Rich Westman, and former Senator Vince Illuzzi), these few are outliers in a Party increasingly dominated by the right wing.  Today there are more Darcy Johnsons than there are Bill Doyles (an unfortunate fact).

    Let’s face it. Tax reform in the contemporary Republican conversation means an effectual clear cutting of the social services that directly or indirectly affect every single Vermonter (from healthcare to highway crews). For the majority of Republican politicians, the goal is less about reform and more about rolling back the gains made by both the public as a whole, and working families in specific over the last six or sixty years.

    We do need tax reform, I agree.  But we all need the type of tax reform that directly benefits our entire community, and I think we all know what that means.  

    Vermonters are independent and self-sufficient, at least more so than the rest of the Nation. We cringe at the thought of a clear cut and many of us talk organic and sustainability.  So, why can’t we talk about these concepts politically as well as in reference to the Green Mountains beneath our own two feet?

    I agree with reforming taxes on a certain level but really, the political talk grows on thin soil. Perhaps it’s time to throw a nice sized portion of that dialogue onto a steaming political compost heap and start (re)thinking and talking about self-reliant revenue sources that cut the corporations and the filthy rich out of the equation altogether.

    Can’t we talk about generating money through sustainable logging and public power plants for renewable energy?   If Fountain Forestry & Green Mountain Power can do this for revenue, why not the public? And wouldn’t it be far more interesting to talk about publically run ski resorts and other such venues that would enrich our lives through recreation while also generating revenue for our communities than the year-after-year drone on tax reform.

    Unless we are plain and simple talking about lowering taxes on working people, and raising them on the rich, let’s just skip the tax reform debate. Instead, let’s have conversations that include a State Bank – a Vermont Bank – a sustainable source of our own monies that help to generate revenue to (re)invest in Vermont and Vermonters. Let’s have conversations that discard the word “fair” and build on the concept of resilience for everyone.

    These are not radical ideas, unless your notion of radical is North Dakota (who currently has a State Bank and the lowest unemployment rate in the Country). In short, these are common sense ideas.

    The vote is Tuesday and a candidate that has consistently worked toward a more sustainable Vermont for each and every person is the Progressive State Senator Anthony Pollina. Of course, we each vote for who we think will best serve our communities, but it is worth the time taken to look at Pollina’s record. Do we really want to keep having the same conversation about tax reform or can we engage in a progressive dialogue that changes the construct of the conversation all together? I leave that for you to decide. Hope to see you at the polls on November 4th.

I didn’t!  

Ipsos MORI, a market research company, measured the distance peoples’ perceptions stray from reality. Americans scored worst – that is, the scores of Americans showed the largest gap between reality and perception – in a survey of fourteen industrialized countries. Italians are at the bottom with the US. Swedes and Germans ranked highest, although the report says even these two countries’ participating citizens are consistently wrong on some things.

Immigration and teenage pregnancies are two areas where Americans’ perception doesn’t match reality.  

Levels of immigration – a hot-button topic in many developed countries – are overestimated everywhere, but the United States veers further from reality than most, with an average guess that 32 percent of the population are immigrants when the reality is 13 percent.  

[…]Americans think 24 percent of girls aged 15 to 19 give birth each year, when the real figure is just 3 percent, and even the sensible Swedes are badly out, believing the annual teenage pregnancy rate is 8 percent compared to the actual 0.7 percent.

As with all surveys and measures of this sort there are plenty of questions over interpreting the meaning of what is shown by the results. And Bobby Duffy, global director of the Ipsos Social Research Institute wonders if people may be sending a message about what is worrying them as much as trying to reply to the questions correctly. But he warns

"Cause and effect can run both ways, with our concern leading to our misperceptions as much as our misperceptions creating our concern,"

The Ipsos MORI Perils of Perception Quiz can be taken here.  Test your own perception depth.

This story just gets more and more entertaining.  It seems that, in attempting to prove that he actually does something in his part-time job,  Lt. Governor Phil Scott, claims ownership of security at Monday’s protest.

“Command center?”  “Gone South?”  He may not have gotten the Chicken Little memo, but he’s down with the lingo.

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On Monday Governor Shumlin had an up-close and personal visit from some pretty unhappy constituents.

According to the Freeps, roughly eighty pipeline protesters, representing 350.org, the Vermont Workers’ Center, Rising Tide Vermont and Just Power, entered the Pavillion Building in Montpelier, making their way to the Governor’s office on the fifth floor where they peacefully conducted a sit-in for several hours.  At 8PM the remaining 64 protesters were cited by the police and then released.

It was all very civilized and companionable.  This is Vermont, after all.  There was music, storytelling; even pizza, courtesy of Administration staffers.  The peaceful invasion appears to have taken no one particularly by surprise.

These were, in fact, many of the same people from the environmental activist community whose hard work won back the Governor’s seat for the Democrats and Governor Shumlin four short years ago.  

Disappointed and annoyed with the Governor, as they may be for his failure to fully uphold the commitments he made to  Climate Change initiatives before the election, these are not folks who represent any kind of a physical threat to his person.

But, in the spirit of Team Chicken Little, questions are now being raised as to how the heck all those people made it to the fifth floor without interference.

The lackadaisical roll-out of this question has to make you smile.  

Vermont is a marvel in many ways.  The most liberal state in the Union, it has no gun control whatsoever.

First-time visitors to the State House are often shocked to discover that they can walk right in through one of the main entrances; then wander freely all the way upstairs, in and out of nearly every room in the place, without question or interception.

I once stood behind then-Governor Madeline Kunin in a line-up of weary air travelers.  We were all waiting endlessly for the agent to deal with each of us in turn after our flight had been bumped.  She had the same slightly disheveled, footsore look as we did.  

The Governor waited her turn like the rest of us, happy to chat with a couple of kids from home.  No flashy clothes, no entourage, no VIP line-jumping.

That’s our brand.

So is environmental responsibility.  

All that those folks in Monday’s demonstration were doing was reminding the Governor of his obligation to uphold that brand by standing with them against a pipeline that would undermine his own stated commitment to clean energy.

I rather think whomever was responsible for the “security breach” at the Pavillion was operating under Part Three of the Vermont brand: Simple Common Sense.

Have you noticed Keurig Green Mountain’s new logo?  It looks to me like a green mountain with a black cloud hanging over it.  But alas, they’ve put together a video to illustrate how they arrived at the black-cloud-over-green-mountain logo:

http://www.keuriggreenmountain…

(under two minutes long)

Cheery music bounces along while they talk about “personal beverage systems” and

“technological disruption”  

BTW, there is more chatter this week about a possible big gulp:  CocaCola swallowing the rest of the company…Burp!

By now you've undoubtedly heard of the guy from Rutland who has recently returned from West Africa and promptly landed in what is being called voluntary quarantine. You know, just so Vermont doesn't miss out on the Ebola panic.

 “I want to emphasize this is a voluntary arrangement, and that this individual does not have an elevated temperature, has no signs or symptoms of illness and is not a health risk to anyone at this time,” the governor said..

 If you're like me, the story might have set you wondering about a fundamental question: who are they to tell me that I have to go into “voluntary” quarantine? What if I say no?

VPR reports that the administration has an answer to that:

 Shumlin stated that if the individual presents symptoms and the Vermont Department of Health deems involuntary quarantine of the individual necessary, he is “ready, willing, and able” to act.

It turns out that Vermont statutes make provision for just such an eventuality. 18 V.S.A. § 1004a says that “The commissioner of health shall have the power to quarantine a person diagnosed or suspected of having a disease dangerous to the public health.”

Given that every public statement the government has made emphasizes that this person has had no symptoms, and there is no reason to think he has been infected, one wonders what a court would do if faced with a habeas challenge to his detention. 

Seems like it’s about time we check in on Vermont Yankee again.  Entergy is reporting that VY is ramping down for it’s final curtain at the start of 2015, but at 90% of capacity, it’s still working considerably harder than it was designed to do.

Remember, as nuclear economics began to go south, it wasn’t long ago that Entergy asked for and received permission to exceed that designed-for capacity.

These are the same guys who have once more appealed to the NRC for relief from some required emergency planning soon after the reactor shuts down.  This time the NRC is not being quite so accommodating, calling attention to misrepresentationsin Entergy’s filing.

The NRC staff said Entergy was “inaccurate” when it claimed that there were no accidents “that would result in dose consequences that are large enough to require off-site emergency planning.”

And the staff also said Entergy “inaccurately” stated the analysis of the potential radiological impact of an accident once the plant’s fuel is removed from the reactor core, or “defueled.”

Of course, it all comes down to dollars and cents and Entergy could save a bundle if excused from this responsibility,  but as critics have pointed out time and again, breach of the spent fuel pool though unlikely to occur, is far from impossible.

The NRC appears ready to acknowledge that, if the worst were to happen, there could be a release of radioactive material necessitating emergency response, possibly including evacuation of the affected region.

There is more than one way for an emergency situation to be triggered at the dormant site.  The NRC has already approved a “certified fuel handler program” for VY, so that a second storage pad can be built and fuel moved from the spent fuel pool into dry cask storage.

There are attendant risks even to that move, as the dry casks, when fully loaded weigh as much as 40 tons. They must be lifted, lowered by crane into the spent fuel pool in order to be filled and sealed; then raised again.

This is a complex operation and any failure of mechanical and human coordination might drop all that weight onto the fuel assemblies, damaging them in the spent fuel pool and triggering disaster.

Entergy’s cost cutting initiatives elsewhere are being criticized, as well.  Lax security has raised concern at Pilgrim in Massachusetts; and failure to replace an aging cooling system condenser at the FitzPatrick plant in Scribna, NY may have exposed workers to excess radiation.

We all remember the collapsing cooling tower and tritium leaks from “non-existent” pipes that punctuated VY’s latter years, so we are not strangers to Entergy’s safety fictions.

The NRC says it is “reviewing the petitions” of concern groups about safety issues surrounding the three Entergy facilities, but if it’s past record is anything to go by, we must expect that the agency will bend over backwards to accommodate corporate interest.

Meanwhile, Entergy’s unsurprising choice of “SAFSTOR” for Vermont Yankee means that clean-up of the site could take as much as 60 years.  By then, the cost of clean-up, now estimated at $1.24 billion could rise considerably and it seems highly unlikely that Entergy will pony up more than a fraction of that amount no matter how fortunate the investment landscape might remain in the interim.  

Even after sixty years, if (as seems increasingly likely) no permanent national storage site has been agreed upon and constructed, those two pads stacked with dry casks could stick around for much, much longer.  So long, in fact, that the need to move the fuel assemblies into new casks may become necessary, a task for which no protocols have yet been considered.

Think about that while you eat your morning cornflakes and look at your children and grandchildren across the table.  

All that, just to keep the lights burning and the air-conditioning on high for a mere forty years.

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As always, even though I am pleased to be involved with Fairewinds Energy Education in a non-technical capacity, my diaries on GMD reflect my own personal views and not those of Fairewinds.

I just caught the story on ‘Digger of Lynn Monty’s layoff from the Freeps.

For anyone who isn’t aware, in a particularly ham-handed management move, the Gannett News controlled Burlington Free Press is making most of its veteran editorial staff re-interview for their own jobs.

Sam Hemingway conveniently retired in time to miss out on this new low, but Ms. Monty, a six year veteran, simply refused to interview so they showed her the door.

It leaves me wondering what else the ethically challenged media giant can do to further alienate its increasingly disenchanted readership.

They had already pared down their local talent so far that Ms. Monty reports having to serve as a jack-of-all-trades on Saturdays when, all alone, she manned the newsroom:

For the past two years, she said, she was the only reporter in the newsroom on Saturdays. As such, she simultaneously served as web editor, social media manager and editor that day of the week.

Even that demonstration of loyal service didn’t excuse her from the humiliation of a re-interview!

As almost anyone who publishes in the blogosphere rather than in print media can tell you, it’s gotten more and more difficult to earn a living as a writer of non-entertainment material.  It would seem that Gannett takes this development as a license to abuse both its paid staff and its sad readership.

Instead of the locally diverse and relevant paper we alternately wrestled with and took for granted over the decades, today’s Burlington Free Press is a sorry repackaging of U.S.A. Today, a paper most of us won’t even pick-up for free during a plane delay.  Local content is very limited and treated as a “feature;” kind of like parsley on a mountain of mashed potatoes.

Ms. Lyn was wise to take her leave now.  These interviews can only mean that more local staff “edits” are about to take place.  It won’t be long before every day looks like Saturday in the newsroom.

Don’t forget to turn the lights out and shut the door when you leave.

Cue closing scene from of The Last Picture Show.

“Americans will vote against their own best interests.”

These days, we hear that often enough.  It has certainly been true in recent elections as Republicans cornered the House and now seem poised to close on the Senate.

Statistics tell a different story, however.  In 2008, only 64% of eligible voters cast ballots.  Almost one in four eligible individuals is not even registered to vote, and these are overwhelmingly represented by minorities and the poor.

Gerrymandering and voter restrictions seem the only means by which Republicans can maintain their relevance in national office, but the impact of this false majority is destined to be overwhelmed by the forces of attrition.  

Demographics are rapidly shifting in the U.S., turning ethnic minorities into what will comprise the actual majority of the future.  

Sooner or later short-sighted Republicans will regret their callous disinterest in that looming majority.  With income inequality at an all-time high for us, American tolerance for crushing capitalism and gross injustice is wearing thin.

The Occupy movement  was one sign that we are reaching that tipping point.  The rise of populist Independent Bernie Sanders to national prominence is another.

Last night in St. Albans, at a rally for his Democratic allies, the man most people feel comfortable addressing simply as “Bernie” demonstrated once again the electricity he is capable of generating even in a long familiar crowd.

It never ceases to amaze me that his delivery is pitch perfect and his message evergreen.  

Despite years now passed amid the gridlock of Congress, Bernie has somehow held on to his passion.  His outrage still sounds genuine, lacking the dog whistle tin which damages so many politicians when they enter the arena of skeptics.

He is a man speaking directly to the demographics of tomorrow, reminding them of what “America” once was and could be once again.

If, as now seems more and more likely, the junior senator from Vermont acquiesces to the urging of his widely spread admirers and runs for President, he will be a force with which to reckon.  

His presence in the mix will demand attention to issues like climate change, income inequity and social injustice, which barely caught a glance in the 2012 election cycle.

I’m predicting right now that cartoonists will render him as a burly Don Quixote with a razor sharp lance.

It will be most fitting.

     As a resident of Moretown, this election I am voting Anthony Pollina for Washington County Senate.  I have known Anthony for over a decade, and during that time I am yet to meet a Vermonter more dedicated to addressing the needs of working people and our family farms.  Before he was elected to the State Senate in 2010, Anthony was an organizer with the Northeast Organic Farming Association, he founded Rural Vermont & the Dairy Farmers of Vermont, and even received the endorsement of the Gun Owners of Vermont & the Abenaki Nation when he ran for Governor in 2008. In this election he has been endorsed by the Vermont AFL-CIO, the Vermont State Employees’ Association, and the Vermont Sierra Club.

    Since we elected him to the State Senate in 2010 Anthony has passionately advocated for affordable public healthcare, livable wage jobs, earned sick days for all workers, the right to form a labor union, support for our farmers, and progressive taxation (making the rich pay more and working people pay less).  Anthony’s values in the Senate are reflected in the passing of healthcare reform (a commitment to single payer in 2017), the creation of the best minimum wage in the country, expansion of the right to form a labor union to 10,000 new Vermonters (home health & childcare workers), and passage of the GMO labeling bill.  While these are strong accomplishments, the work is not done. Anthony therefore continues to support legislation that would create a State Bank.  Creating a State Bank would allow us to reinvest our tax revenue in local projects aimed at the public good, as opposed to a means for big bankers to profit off our hard-earned money.  

    In a word, Anthony gets it. He has always put Vermont above Wall Street, and that is why, once again, my family and I are voting for Anthony Pollina this November.   If you agree that Washington County needs a person in Montpelier who understands our struggles and is willing to fight for them, especially when it comes to healthcare, pay, housing, and progressive taxation, I invite you to also vote for Anthony Pollina for Washington County Senate on November 4th.  

The shoe is on the other foot in South Dakota, where his support for introduction of a state run EB-5 program has gotten Republican Senator Mike Rounds into hot water.  

His Democratic opponent, Rick Weiland, and two independent challengers are making it an issue in the current campaign for his Senate seat.

“I don’t think people appreciate that just because you’ve got the money, you can cut to the front of the (immigration) line,” Weiland said. “So I would vote to repeal the program.”

Like South Dakota, the progressive State of Vermont has embraced the EB-5 program as its own and with it come all of the ethical and practical dilemmas attendant on a strictly privileged immigration system.  

Here, by default, ownership goes to our Democratic majority, and most particularly Governor Shumlin who conspicuously trolled for investors overseas, thereby implicitly branding the enterprise with his personal endorsement.

The fact is that legal immigration has mostly been all about money and connections since long before EB-5 status was created.

As anyone who has navigated the troubled waters of U.S. entry through conventional immigration channels will confirm, we haven’t been welcoming the poor, the sick and the huddled masses since at least the1920’s. If you couldn’t claim to be a political refugee and didn’t have distinct economic potential in the way of money or highly desirable skills, you went to the back of the line.

All the EB-5 program added to the mix was the opportunity to target some of the already existing financial discrimination in such a way as to potentially create job opportunities where they were most needed.

I get that, and I understand why everyone was so excited when Bill Stenger announced his big plans to put the program to work for the Northeast Kingdom (and not incidentally, for his own personal enrichment.)

It was a “gift horse.”  

No one – not the good folks in the Northeast Kingdom, nor the would be line-cutters who offered their cash – no one was inclined to check its dental work.

Now come the tears and excuses.

News that Stenger and his partner, Ariel Quiros, had waited nine months after dissolving the partnership that held the Tram House Lodge at Jay Peak before notifying 35 EB-5 investors of the change was not well received; not by the state nor by the investors.

Now, there are allegations that Vermont Regional Center executive director Brent Raymond, charged by the state with oversight of the project, allowed his personal relationship with the developer to undermine his responsibility to the investors.

Developers are speculators, and like all speculators, their rosiest projections cannot always be relied upon. You would think that anyone with half-a-million dollars to invest must be savvy enough to realize that, but it turns out that some of Mr. Stenger’s  investors were not.

Some of those EB-5 “investors” were novices, gambling their entire nest egg without fully understanding the bargain they had made. Whatever the legal truth, an appearance of exploitation is never attractive.

Not only could the state’s investment credibility be damaged by blow-back from disappointed investors, the prestige of Stenger’s “friends in high places,” including Governor Shumlin, is also on the line.

The Governor’s reputation is tied even more closely to Stenger’s changing fortunes by the simple fact that Alexandra Mclean moved almost directly to Stenger’s employ after serving as a close Shumlin aide and campaign manager. In the wake of project reversals, she’s moved on again, but politics has a long memory.

The picture of a Northeast Kingdom renaissance painted by Stenger always sounded a little too good to be true. Even if it had come off without a hitch, it seemed clearly poised to price locals right out of the housing market.

Despite vague promises of retraining “opportunities,” current residents would most likely only qualify for low-paid service jobs while an influx of skilled labor and professionals would fill positions at high-tech businesses that were anticipated to locate there. What would represent a financial boon for the state, might not be so much so for the locals.

The whole thing started to publicly unravel when developer-to-developer relations with Tony Pomerleau soured. In May of this year, Pomerleau declared that he was through waiting to be paid by Stenger for some key waterfront property in Newport that was central to the whole enterprise.

“I’ve been waiting for four years, I can’t wait any longer,” Pomerleau said […] “I haven’t received one dime and we’re talking about a big deal, millions of dollars.”

I guess that’s developer justice for you.

The stakes are high and no one wants to be left holding the bag.

Anyway, as the “renaissance” plan begins more and more to resemble a late-stage game of Jenga, you have to believe the Governor is holding his breath and watching the clock.