Vermont
updated
9:23 p.m.
Topics> Governance , Energy Nuclear power is a rigged game that lets the federal government preempt state and local governments on most issues, according to Karl Grossman, professor at the State University of New York and author of a book on the subject, Power Crazy: Is LILCO Turning Shoreham Into Ameri...
Vermont Commons - 10:09 a.m. - 7 clicks 
Topics> Environment It's all really quite straightforward. There is very little you need to know. The starting point in studying climate, obviously, is to study the actual record of temperatures. Duh. When we look at that record, from a variety of sources such as ice-cores, we see strikingly regular wave patterns. Little waves wit...
Vermont Commons - 6:44 a.m.
STATE OF VERMONT DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY VERMONT STATE POLICE PRESS RELEASE VSP Door Decals Inappropriately Modified Major William Sheets, Support Services Commander, Vermont State Police – Headquarters, 802-244-8727 Waterbury, VT – 02/02/12 – Yesterday, on February 1, a member of the Vermont State Police (VSP) brought to the attention of VSP Fleet Services that some of the VSP cruis...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Thu 9:43 p.m. - 11 clicks
Topics> Film Who would possibly want to make a movie about a rogue journalist-turned-murder investigator and a bad-ass goth chick/computer hacker/rape victim who extracts revenge on her assailant by carving epithets into his chest? If the movie was to be based on Stieg Larsson's wildly popular global smash novel "The Girl With T...
Vermont Commons - Thu 3:22 p.m.
Topics> Activism , OWS , Politics I love the Occupy Movement’s “1% vs. 99%” frame. It speaks clearly and directly to the major problem holding back social progress in a wide range of areas: the control of obscene wealth and political and economic power by a tiny minority at t...
Vermont Commons - Thu 8:08 a.m.
Topics> Finance , Governance , Politics The tidal wave of home foreclosures is still rolling across the United States, devastating families and entire communities. By most reports, there are over a half-million homes sitting vacant, and more on the way. A blog site that cou...
Vermont Commons - Thu 6:21 a.m.
Topics> Finance , Business , Politics On November 3, 2011, Alan Minsky interviewed me on KPFK’s program, “Building a Powerful Movement in the United States” in preparation for an Occupy L.A. teach-in. Listen to the interview . To clarify my points I have edited and expanded ...
Vermont Commons - Wed 8:08 a.m.
Topics> Military , Politics It seems that Leon Panetta's plan to "save" money by making the F-35 more expensive (by delaying and stretching out production) didn't exactly impress Chuck Spinney, who has written about the problems in America's combat aviation for years and years. He's seen it all before, ...
Vermont Commons - Wed 6:08 a.m.
Topics> Politics Well, he had to get up there and say something. In this particular winter of our discontent, the wispiest nostrums and baldest lies will do. America is not interested in reality. America is a nine-hundred pound man imprisoned in a fetid trailer bedroom begging for one more case of Little Debbie Cocoa Cremes before...
Vermont Commons - Tue 8:09 a.m.
Topics> Foreign Policy , Military , Politics The recent strikes protesting the government’s abrupt elimination of gasoline and other fuel subsidies, that brought Nigeria briefly to a standstill, came as a surprise to most in the country. Months earlier President Jonathan had ...
Vermont Commons - Tue 5:27 a.m.
Topics> Commerce , Business , Trade In the more than two centuries since the beginning of radical transformation of economic life that accompanied the rise of industrial capitalism, one of the most interesting trends has been the changing nature of the forms through which peo...
Vermont Commons - Mon 11:01 a.m.
From remarks by Ivan Illich at the "Asahi Symposium Science and Man - The Computer-Managed Society," Tokyo, Japan, March 21, 1982: On the same boat on which I arrived in 1926, the first loudspeaker was landed on the island. Few people there had ever heard of such a thing. Up to that day, all men and women had spoken with more or less equally powerful voices. Henceforth this would change. Henc...
Kirby Mountain - Sat 5:07 p.m.
ISO New England: Seasonal Claimed Capability (SCC), Jan 2012 report Total New England Claimed Capability (MW) Winter (March): 34407.889; 125.964 (0.366%) from WIND Summer (August): 31766.431; 50.735 (0.160%) from WIND The SCC of Intermittent Power Resources generator assets are determined using the median of net output from the most recently completed Summer Capab...
Kirby Mountain - Jan 21
Not only did Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy vote to further codify the USA's march to military dictatorship in the form of the NDAA, he is also the sponsor of PIPA , the Senate version of SOPA, adding censorship of the internet to his acquiescence to fascism. tags: human rights , Vermont ...
Kirby Mountain - Jan 18 - 9 clicks
First, on Friday Jonathan Turley wrote " 10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free ": Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for und...
Kirby Mountain - Jan 17
Gary Peters writes at Our Finite World: Historically people have shifted their belief systems in various ways. The Greeks and Romans believed in numerous gods and goddesses and attributed all kinds of powers to them. Then the great monotheistic religions came along and people began to believe in just one god, though they honored him under different names. Recently, beliefs have shifted again, ...
Kirby Mountain - Jan 16
A crash course on the truth about the struggle for Palestinian human rights: The Veritas Papers Download: 1. Occupation from Scratch — Confused? Have no idea what this is all about? Find out here! 2. Myths vs. Reality — Don't believe everything you’re told about the occupation of Palestine 3. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine — The “Nakba” of 1948 and continuous policy...
Kirby Mountain - Jan 13
Military expeditures 2010 (in billion 2009 USD, as % of 2009 GDP, and per capita) according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute: Worldwide total: 1,604b, 2.5%, $229 Non-USA total: 917b, 1.9%, $137 USA: 687b, 4.7%, $2,196 China: 114b, 2.2%, $85 France: 61b, 2.5%, $938 UK: 57b, ...
Kirby Mountain - Jan 12
Ron Paul certainly deserves criticism on many issues . So does Obama. That has been Glenn Greenwald's point . You can't avoid criticism of Obama by changing the subject. A more interesting article would have been "Obama's useful idiots on the left", since, as Greenwald notes, Obama has relentlessly attacked civil rights, entrenched executive secrecy and authoritarianism, and used war to further ...
Kirby Mountain - Jan 8
Steve Nelson, "Sensibilities", Valley News (White River Junction, Vt.), Jan. 8, 2012: It is nearly the eve of the New Hampshire primary and, despite the surprising Iowa results for Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney appears to be the man to beat. I suppose this is no great surprise, as Romney is a known quantity and seems relatively sensible despite his opportunistic lurch to the right during this cam...
Kirby Mountain - Jan 8
Editorial, Valley News, White River Junction, Vt., Jan. 8, 2012: As Mitt Romney tells it, the 2012 presidential campaign will be a titanic struggle for the very soul of America, in which the Republican hero (played by … Mitt Romney) seeks not only to unseat President Obama but also to rout the incumbent’s dark vision of transforming America into “an Entitlement Society.” By contrast, the shin...
Kirby Mountain - Jan 8
If you are against industrial-scale wind power, than what alternative do you support? That question is in fact a means of changing the subject. The alternative to erecting industrial wind turbines is obviously to not erect industrial wind turbines. The burden is on the developers and proponents to answer whether the benefits outweigh the costs — and not in theory, but in actual practice. Th...
Kirby Mountain - Jan 5
The existing 6-MW wind energy facility in Searsburg, Vt., generates an average of 11,000 MWh per year. Its proposed 30-MW expansion into the Green Mountain National Forest in Readsboro is projected to generate 92,506 MWh per year. This figure has been blindly accepted by both the state Public Service Board and the USDA Forest Service, both of which have approved the project . (Spain's Iberdrola...
Kirby Mountain - Jan 5
House (283-136): http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2011-932 Senate (86-13): http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s2011-230 More information: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:H.R.1540: tags: Vermont , anarchism ...
Kirby Mountain - Jan 4
Glenn Greenwald has written an excellent piece on the discomfort of progressives with having Ron Paul saying what they should be screaming from the rooftops in opposition to Obama (excerpt below, click here for complete essay — well worth it): The fallacy in this reasoning is glaring. The candidate supported by progressives — President Obama — himself holds heinous views on a slew...
Kirby Mountain - Dec 31
[ New York Times, Dec. 30, 2011 ] To the Editor: In “Hunting Deer With My Flintlock” ( Op-Ed, Dec. 26 ), Seamus McGraw says he has a responsibility to kill deer because there are too many. He has volunteered to kill a deer cruelly, ineptly and with an outdated weapon that causes additional suffering to the deer. I assume that the use of the flintlock is to enhance his self-image as a master of...
Kirby Mountain - Dec 31
Suzanne Goldenberg writes in today's Guardian about how green the U.S. Navy's base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is and the Navy's overall plans to be very green. Thus the lives destroyed by imperialist aggression, exploitation, and fear are offset by the lives to be saved in reducing carbon emissions! Guantánamo Bay epitomizes Good! (Also noted in the article is the rare follow-up of re...
Kirby Mountain - Dec 29
After years of reading Kos and staying in the background, the $100 lifetime subscription and the gentle prodding of the Kos community convinced me to stop lurking and start posting. I've been in print, broadcast and online journalism around New England for more than 30 years. For the past two decades, I've been in southern Vermont -- Brattleboro to be precise. Vermont is a great place to be ...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Dec 29
From Orion Magazine, Jan/Feb 2012, by Paul Kingsnorth [excerpt]: ... I became an “environmentalist” because of a strong emotional reaction to wild places and the other-than-human world: to beech trees and hedgerows and pounding waterfalls, to songbirds and sunsets, to the flying fish in the Java Sea and the canopy of the rainforest at dusk when the gibbons come to the waterside to feed. From ...
Kirby Mountain - Dec 28
Vermont's minimum-wage workers get a 31-cent raise While the federal minimum wage remains at $7.25—$2.60 an hour less (after adjusting for inflation) than it was in 1968—some states have instituted a higher minimum, or even indexed the minimum wage to inflation. In eight of those states—Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington—the minimum wage will go up a...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Dec 27
An Interview with Kirkpatrick Sale by David Kupfer Culture Change , Summer 1996 Kirkpatrick Sale has written a book on the Luddites titled Rebels Against the Future , released in paper-back in 1996 by Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., U.S. $13; 320 pp. DK: From where was your desire to write this historical interpretation of the Luddites born? KS: If you locate the problem as being the...
Kirby Mountain - Dec 27
Although disputed , Gandhi has been widely quoted as saying "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Whether Gandhi actually said this or not, the point remains that there are many supposed Christians who do not actually follow the teachings of Christ. Being Jewish, I'm no expert on these teachings, but as far as I understand them, Jesus ...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Dec 25
My idea is to see what congressional districts looked like if they were done strictly by population. How it would be done would be that there would be 432 districts in the contiguous u.s. and the population would be divided by 432. In 2000, that nets us around 645,000 people. What happens then is each state would still be allowed to have the legislature do redistricting, but there would be "inte...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Dec 16
Rocky Anderson , humans right advocate and former mayor of Salt Lake City, has announced that he is running for the Presidency of the United States under the banner of the newly formed Justice Party . ...
Kirby Mountain - Dec 16
The Constitution of this country has served us well, but when the Supreme Court says that attempts by the federal government and states to impose reasonable restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, our democracy is in grave danger. That is why I have introduced a resolution in the Senate calling for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I did not do this lightly. In fact, I had neve...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Dec 11
Michael Hudson writes at Counterpunch, " Europe’s Deadly Transition from Social Democracy to Oligarchy ": What banks want is for the economic surplus to be paid out as interest, not used for rising living standards, public social spending or even for new capital investment. Research and development takes too long. Finance lives in the short run. This short-termism is self-defeating, yet it is p...
Kirby Mountain - Dec 9
So, first of all, I was screwed up on my math for Doubling the House. In my last diary , I did a theoretical diary with New Mexico's delegation under Doubling, with 5 districts. But my math was wrong, I only had 5, it should have 6. So I'll get that out of the way and then get to the new states, Delaware and Vermont. ...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Dec 9 - 4 clicks
"El socialismo puede llegar solo en bicicleta." (Socialism can arrive only by bicycle) —José Antonio Viera-Gallo, Assistant Secretary of Justice in the government of Salvador Allende A low-energy policy allows for a wide choice of life-styles and cultures. If, on the other hand, a society opts for high energy consumption, its social relations must be dictated by technocracy and will be equally...
Kirby Mountain - Dec 8
While gathering information about the wind turbine at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, one finds a detailed record of the first 3 years of its operation . The turbine became operational on Sept. 19, 2006. Over the 1st 3 years, its average production was 22.9% of capacity (not a little short of the 41.5% projected ). The calculated electricity savings over the 1st 3 years was $210,132....
Kirby Mountain - Dec 7
There are a couple of excellent history articles at Counterpunch this weekend: Debt Slavery – Why It Destroyed Rome, Why It Will Destroy Us Unless It’s Stopped by MICHAEL HUDSON Wall Street’s Failed 1934 Coup by MICHAEL DONNELLY ...
Kirby Mountain - Dec 2
From "A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality" by Chad Stone, Hannah Shaw, Danilo Trisi, and Arloc Sherman, November 28, 2011, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: The broad facts of income inequality over the past six decades are easily summarized: The years from the end of World War II into the 1970s were ones of substantial economic growth and broadly shared pr...
Kirby Mountain - Nov 29
Vermont towns vote to arrest Bush and Cheney http://www.reuters.com/... (Reuters) - Voters in two Vermont towns on Tuesday approved a measure that would instruct police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for "crimes against our Constitution," local media reported. The nonbinding, symbolic measure, passed in Brattleboro and Marlboro in a state known for ta...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Nov 28
Per the Burlington Free Press : At the center of the campaign, Reggy explains, is Chick-fil-A's intellectual property, the phrase "EAT MOR CHIKIN." The company has used the phrase since at least 1995, Reggy writes, and owns numerous U.S. and international trademark and copyright registrations for both EAT MOR CHIKIN and for cows holding sandwich-boards reading EAT MOR CHIKIN. Now to the crux...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Nov 24
(crossposted at five before chaos ) I’ve met our congressman, Peter Welch, several times, having the pleasure of interviewing him once a few years ago. He’s a nice guy, and a rather wonky, intelligent guy, too. I had this in mind as I was screaming at the radio in the car last Friday, when Welch was the guest on Vermont Edition (you can listen to the podcast here ). ...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Nov 21 - 3 clicks
As noted and discussed previously by arodb, Paul V. Kane has proposed in the NY Times that the US drop its support for Taiwan in return for $1.14 trillion in debt cancellation by the PRC. Now, Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy, in a supportive spirit, has suggested also selling "a Dakota or two" to Canada for the bargain price of $90 billion. Personally, it seems to me tha...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Nov 16
His name was Josh. He was 35 years old. His fellow occupiers have described him as a proud veteran, and a good soul. Around 2:00 PM today, Josh shot himself at the Occupy Burlington encampment. He was taken to the local hospital, and was confirmed dead by a hospital spokesperson at 5:30, Eastern Standard Time. Police recovered a firearm inside of Josh's tent. Occupiers have been told that th...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Nov 10
On October 23, the Campaign for a Healthy California sponsored a presentation in Fresno about single payer healthcare for California. James Haslam, of the Vermont Workers Center, and Donna Smith, featured in Sicko , were two of the five panelists who impressed on us the importance of single payer universal health care and the grassroots effort necessary to obtain and sustain it. The Progressive...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Oct 24
Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin at noon today announced that he is nominating Beth Robinson to join the five member State Supreme Court. Burlington Free Press: Beth Robinson chosen by Shumlin for Vermont Supreme Court Robinson, a respected Vermont attorney, was one of the leading strategists for the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force, the group that spearheaded the drive for marriage equal...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Oct 18
Who doesn't love a cute dog photo to start off a post? Greed is defined as an intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth or power. Greed can be such a dangerous thing and it's a problem in this country and around the globe. ...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Oct 17
This is my first time writing on here - although I think I'm more of a photographer than a writer. I took on a project to photograph Occupy Vermont and the experience has been great. Now I'm trying to get out to New York and other rallies around the States as well. ...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Oct 17
One of the things that I really appreciate about the liberty movement is that, despite the wide diversity of opinions and positions that its supporters take, it seems to have fostered a culture in which its advocates can usually address … Continue reading → ...
American Socialism for the Rich - Oct 14
I wish I had been amongst the congregation that Sunday morning in 1775, when the Reverend Jedediah Dewey gave thanks to the Lord for the capture of the British stronghold of Fort Ticonderoga. It was a tpical Calvinist service, filled with fire and brimestone, until Dewey's fervernt prayers were interupted by a towering figure rising from the congregation and bellowing him into silence. The six f...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Oct 9
Last week, Daily Kos asked Governor Brian Schweitzer about his plan to pursue a single payer health system for the state, modeled on the system pioneered by Saskatchewan Province in Canada. "Montana has a population of 990,000 people," he explains. "Saskatchewan has a population of 1,050,000. Their average age is about the same average age of Montana. They're about 10 percent Indian, we'...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Oct 5
Having been intensively involved with liberty activism for the past few years, I believe that the emergence of the #OccupyWallStreet movement is a source of enormous promise. The political clout of well connected financial institutions was the reason the bailouts … Continue reading → ...
American Socialism for the Rich - Oct 4
Join us every Monday evening for drinks at the Daily Kos community political poetry club. Drop by and speak your mind in rhyme or blank verse. Poetry is always welcome in the comments. Let’s use language to scream our passion to the world. Bongos, berets and turtle neck sweaters are optional. The keypad is mightier than the sword. Epic. We do indeed live in interesting times. ...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Oct 3
When most people think of the “Back to the Land” movement, the image that generally comes to mind is of hippies retreating to rural communes in the early 1970s. However, in her new book entitled Back to the Land: The … Continue reading → ...
American Socialism for the Rich - Sep 26 - 10 clicks
I am sick of hearing about how some money-counting gnomes with their margins and their hedging are somehow responsible for the construction of the vast wealth of this nation. Not a single investment banker ever drove a nail, roofed house, picked lettuce, repaired a train, nursed a patient, or taught a child, and without those things, the vast stock casino is utterly worthless. Can...
DailyKos (Vermont) - Sep 24
