Fun fact: According to the Center for Disease Control, as of 2005, Texas had the highest  percentage of uninsured residents of any state. That ranking hadn’t changed as of March 2013, when the Texas Legislative Study Group laid out a lot of pretty disturbing statistics about the state.  It’s definitely worth a read.

Ebola couldn’t have found a more accommodating host for its accidental introduction to the U.S.



_____________________________________________________________

For anyone who has ever wondered out loud why we even need a federal government, the current Ebola scare provides a mighty compelling answer.

When all we have to worry about is our financial security, the Feds are “them,” who pick our pockets to finance programs that only benefit other people.   Industries should “self-regulate,” and federal mandates only serve to inhibit growth and prosperity.

The Federal government ought to keep its nose out of everyone’s business.

Then a bridge collapses or a tornado scours Oklahoma and the whole complexion of our relationship with federal government changes.

When things go wrong…when things go very, very wrong…Americans automatically expect protection from on high.

Then, when the dust clears, they assume total amnesia and march obediently to the polls to reelect the blockheads who brought us sequestration and promise that trickle-down economics will somehow miraculously elevate the underprivileged after decades of non-delivery.

It is perhaps the cruel hand of poetic justice that brought the first Ebola patient to be diagnosed in the U.S. to Texas, the most deliberately under-regulated state in the union.

Due to inadequate protocols, not only was he sent home with a 103-degree fever; even after he was finally diagnosed several days later, his family was confined in close quarters with his contaminated linens for four more days!

Now we learn that, again due to protocol failures, one of the patient’s care-givers has been infected.

And how is that “market economy” doing with the job of providing drug treatment for Ebola victims?

Suddenly, the idea of a well-funded and federally coordinated response to the threat of this terrifying disease doesn’t sound like such a bad idea after all.

Suddenly, we want “our” government very much involved in our healthcare.

 Over-classification of government information may be becoming a major problem. How big a problem? Well it seems that information is classified. A congressionally mandated intelligence agency report about it, completed earlier this year, has been classified and will not be released to the public.  

Now continuing in true Alice in Wonderland fashion the National Security Agency is preventing release of a report on authorized disclosures of classified intelligence to the media.  

A report to Congress on authorized disclosures of classified intelligence to the media — not unauthorized disclosures — is classified and is exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, the National Security Agency said.

The notion of an authorized disclosure of classified information is close to being a contradiction in terms. If something is classified, how can its disclosure be authorized (without declassification)? And if something is disclosed by an official who is authorized to do so, how can it still be classified? And yet, it seems that there is such a thing.

You read that right. Information about authorized disclosures of classified intelligence has been classified. So a disclosure of classified intelligence can be authorized, then any information about the authorized disclosure is classified. A kind of retro secret, forget where you heard this. The NSA is trying to put their toothpaste back in the tube. And if this ploy is successful the public will know even less about how the intelligence community manages authorized ‘leaks’ of intelligence information to the media.

And this stuff is costing money-according to a 2013 report from the National Archives and Records Administration the government classifies 80 million documents each year at a cost of $11 billion. This in turn boosts the number of expensive security clearances needed by federal employees and contractors to access and handle the information. A bill attempting to rein in this expensive overdose of secrecy was presented to congress this July. One goal is to limit classified information by ten percent in five years.

Maybe in the years to come this bill will pass and it will become law. The goal to limit the classification of government documents by ten percent in five years may even be met. But how will anybody know? Chances are it will be classified.  

The Hill: “Leahy Demands Senate Action On NSA Reform” —

http://thehill.com/policy/tech…

(On Leahy’s USA FREEDOM Act) — Leahy Again Pushes For Senate Vote In Post-Election Session On Bill To End NSA’s Dragnet Collection Of Americans’ E-Communications:

Comment Of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.),

Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee,

On Senate Consideration of the USA FREEDOM Act

October 10, 2014

“This week, leading technology executives stated unequivocally that meaningful surveillance reform is needed to prevent further damage to the American economy, and a diverse group of civil libertarians also called for real oversight of domestic surveillance authorities.  These calls for action are loud and clear and cannot be ignored.  When the Senate returns next month, it must swiftly take up and pass the USA FREEDOM Act.  There is no excuse for inaction, as the important reforms in this bipartisan bill are strongly supported by the technology industry, the privacy and civil liberties community, and national security professionals in the intelligence community.  The public has made clear where it stands on this issue, and it is time for Senators to do the same.”

# # # # #

But it could have been an oil industry oil incident too.

Off the coast of Scotland, a fire aboard a ship carrying radioactive waste resulted in the evacuation of 52 workers from an oil platform near Cromarty Firth (harbor). The ship, MV Parida, designed to carry dangerous shipments, caught fire and began drifting. The fire was extinguished and the ship was taken in tow. But not before workers were evacuated from one of the oil platforms-as a precaution. The MV Parida is now anchored for repairs. The Cromarty Firth is designated by the EU as Special Protection Area for wildlife conservation purposes.

Originally built in the 1950’s the Dounreay Fast Reactor (DFR) and the Prototype Fast Reactor(PFR), experimental reactors are being decommissioned. Huge storage vaults are now under construction to store radioactive material on the site which will remain restricted for 300 years.

The radioactive cargo was originally sent to Scotland in the 1990’s for reprocessing is now being shipped out due to the plant’s closing. The reprocessed liquid waste is mixed with cement and poured into drums for transporting. This was the 19th of 21 scheduled shipments.

Dounreay Site Restoration Limited has confirmed the waste was from Dounreay, an experimental nuclear power plant near Thurso which is being decommissioned.The material, which was sent to Dounreay from Belgium for reprocessing in the 1990s, was being shipped back to Belgium.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) said the Parida was carrying two containers called flasks, each holding three 500-litre drums of intermediate level waste.The NDA said the ship and its cargo had been categorised at the lowest level of safety concern.

It described Tuesday night's event as a "marine incident and not a nuclear incident".

Okay,call it a marine incident if you want- but a radioactive waste shipment adrift at sea, near oil platforms and a wildlife conservation area – it doesn’t take much imagination to see a potential for so much more than that.  

Wednesday's Burlington Free Press has the latest story in the rebranding, restructuring, or, if you prefer, dismantling of another local newspaper by the vultures at Gannett.

If you read the Free Press or Seven Days you'll see a story under the headline “Free Press newsroom resets for the future“, and it starts out with a self-congratulatory story about how they broke the IBM story this week. In fact, the top eight paragraphs are about how great they are that they spent all that time reporting the story, because of their online presence they weren't limited by space, and how they could respond to reader interest as demonstrated by the hits, shares, and time readers spend on the story.

 It's not until way down toward the bottom that you really learn what the so-called reset is all about.

 Part of this resetting is developing a new operational structure to enable us to focus more on the local content that deeply interests readers. With systemic changes in the media business in recent years including changes in approach, format and staff size, we are redefining journalism jobs for the future and our vibrant website, BurlingtonFreePress.com. During the next several weeks, the staff will apply for these jobs with new expectations. We expect time for adaption to the change in structure.

 The bolded language is the key. No matter how long you've been at the Freeps, or what you've done for them, if you want to keep your job you need to apply for it, and no telling what those “new expectations” will be.

Paul Heintz has a story about this at Seven Days, and he's all over the bosses on how much this stinks, including pointing out that the Free Press newsroom staff has only twelve reporters and five editors. If you've been wondering where the newspaper part of your daily newspaper went, maybe that answers your question. 

But remember, I said this is a story about why I'm glad I subscribe to the Free Press, and here's the reason. The story about the Free Press “reset” was on page 15A of Wednesday's paper. What was on14A, exactly opposite the “reset” story? The story about the retirement of Sam Hemingway. 

 Sam's a great reporter and writer, and he's been writing for the Free Press for thirty-seven years. He deserves all the honors he's gotten, and all the recognition he will receive on his retirement. One of the things that makes him so good, though, is thirty-seven years of working in this community and knowing what's going on. Especially in a small media market like Vermont the readers are lucky when a reporter grows roots in the community and has those roots and connections inform his or her writing. 

It's hard to picture someone getting a new job in today's click-driven, management-by-slogan world having the chance to develop and stay for thirty-seven years, isn't it?

 I wouldn't have seen the bizarre juxtaposition of these two stories if I hadn't been reading both stories at the breakfast table this morning, and that's what makes me glad for my daily subscription. I guess you could call that two-page spread “The good, the bad, and the ugly”.

For anyone with time to waste and who enjoys quizzes here, from a few days ago, is a twelve-question PEW Research test on current events.  

And afterward if you still have time to kill

…see how you did in comparison with 1,002 randomly sampled adults asked the same questions in a national survey conducted September 25-28 by the Pew Research Center.

Past results have shown that one in ten online quiz-takers gets a perfect score.  And as always "your mileage may vary." Mine did.

UPDATE: Tuesday the Ninth Circuit also ruled in favor of marriage equality.

Ted Cruz's reaction to the Supreme Court's decision not to take a case or make a decision: “Judicial activism at its worst.” 

We are used to the Supreme Court making decisions and releasing an explanation of the effect and reasoning of those decisions, so yesterday's decision rejecting challenges to marriage equality decisions is a bit opaque. I thought it might be useful to give a little review of what happened and what I think it might mean.

First off, although we are used to talking about “appealing” a case to the Supreme Court, virtually none of the cases the Court decides come from an appeal. They come from a petition for a writ of certiorari, a procedure whereby the losing party in a lower court asks the Court to review the lower court's decision. The Supreme Court has complete control over whether to accept the case, known as “granting cert”; every year they accept a tiny fraction of the cases that come to them, and they have almost complete control of what cases they will take.

 You've heard discussion of a split in the circuits. One of the reasons that the Court might grant certiorari is if the courts of appeals in different circuits have come to different conclusions about the same issue, particularly it is of constitutional dimension. Again, this is not a rule that they must take these cases, just a prudential principle for cases in which they might take them. 

The other thing that you might not know is that although it generally takes five votes (out of nine) to win a case at the Supreme Court (and how you get to five can be tricky), it only takes the votes of four justices to grant certiorari.

In this case, advocates on both sides were urging the Court to grant cert, but they decided not to do that. This obviously leads to great celebration among marriage equality advocates not only in the states the cases came from, but in the other states in those circuits, because the decisions of those circuit courts will be binding on the federal and state courts in all of those states. (This is how we get to thirty marriage equality states after this decision is implemented.) On the other hand, people who were hoping for a definitive statement from the Supremes that marriage equality is required by the Constitution were disappointed.

It's rare for a justice to write publicly about why he or she voted to grant or deny cert, so we don't really know the reasons they did what they did. You can find law review articles and cases discussing the meaning and precedential authority of a denial of cert, but that's not my purpose here. If I were to speculate, however (which I am), I would guess that the extreme conservatives couldn't muster four votes to accept the cases as an opportunity to reverse them and stop the seemingly unstoppable wave of marriage equality.

If I'm right this isn't the same as a clear statement from the Court, but it's suggestive of what the future might hold. 

 Color me more than a little optimistic.

Well, folks, guess what: I’ve already voted in the 2014 election.

I expect I’ll be busy on election day, November 4, and there are few real contests among statewide office holders, so why not?

That said, the down-ticket contests could be crucial to local districts, which makes it important to get out and vote!

In Grand Isle, for example, the hottest contest is for State’s Attorney. In the primary, Doug DiSabito, who has not held public office before, captured both the Republican and Democratic nominations, defeating long-time incumbent David Miller. Miller is running a spirited (one local observer called both campaigns “aggressive”) write-in campaign. It is noteworthy that in the primary election, 23 percent of eligible voters in Grand Isle cast ballots, one of the highest rates in the state for this year’s mostly lackluster primary.

In Franklin County, the major contest is in St Albans City. Incumbent Democrat Mike McCarthy is facing a serious challenge from Republican Corey Parent. In 2012 McCathy eked out a 15-vote win in a recount over Republican Casey Toof.

In the Franklin County state Senate races, newcomer Dr. Bill Roberts, a pain management specialist who also works with opiate addicts, and former Senator Sara Brannon Kittell are running against incumbent GOP Senator Norm McAllister and former state Rep. Dustin Degree. In 2012, Degree lost his bid for a senate seat by 35 votes in a recount.

Yeah, Franklin County was recount central two years ago.

With contests as close as these, you gotta know that your vote counts, that it matters!

The basics on voting NOW:

1. Go to your town or city clerk’s office during regular office hours and request an early/absentee ballot. OR download a “Request for Early Absentee Voter Ballot” form. Fill it out, mail it in or give to your city/town clerk.

2. You can vote right then and there, or take your ballot home and either mail it back or drop it off. Make sure to sign and date it ONLY in the marked spaces.

3. Return your ballot in the envelope by mail or in person to your city/town clerk before November 4, 2014.

4. Remind your friends and family to vote. Email them, put something up on your Facebook page, tweet them, call them on the telephone – whatever it takes to get them to vote.

All politics is local, and this year it’s even local-er than usual.

Please vote. Now. This week. Next week. On Halloween if that tickles your fancy. Or for the sake of tradition, on November 4. Just vote. Do it. Please.

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

While I believe coffee pods/Kcups are anathema to coffee, to the environment and to our pocketbooks, it does my heart good to read this post at CBC yesterday morning:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/busines…

When Keurig’s CEO announced last fall that its next model would feature digital rights management that would render unlicensed pods useless, Pigott took note. He obtained a Keurig 2.0 model even before it was on store shelves and assembled a small team to examine the device and its K-cups to understand the technology.

“We figured it out in an afternoon,” he crows, noting that it took another two months for Club Coffee to develop its own workaround.  

This same battle hasn’t worked for Nespresso in France:

Meantime, Keurig has surely taken note of what happened to Nespresso in France. The government launched a probe into anti-competitive behaviour, and in April Nespresso agreed to stop trying to prevent rivals from making knockoff pods for its machines.

Over 700 comments on this article the first day…and I don’t think more than a couple were pro-Keurig. Methinks the goose that laid the golden egg that was (read ‘has been’) Green Mt Coffee Roasters has chosen that path that wonderboy CEO O’Neill brought with him to Vermont from CocaCola, which is:

more plastic crap,

less taste,

more burgeoning landfills.  

Thanks a lot, Brian.

See previously:

http://www.greenmountaindaily…. and previously,

http://www.greenmountaindaily….

Anyone that has been through Plainfield in the last decade will remember the Red Store, a nice country store that had cheap gas.

Around the corner was Tim’s, newer and shinier.

Today, the Red Store is no more, and Skip Vallee bought Tim’s and remade it in His image.  But Skip bought the Red Store, too. He was trying to rent it out to anyone that promised to NOT start a convenience/gas store – because Republicans HATE competition.

Well, just today I heard that Skip Vallee is eager to sell or lease the Red Store property to Vermont’s latest invasive species, Dollar General!

Dollar General is (OK, OK, ‘might be’) coming to Plainfield!