Freyne Land

Another new look for House Speaker Gaye Symington! Her second haircut in two weeks - what's up?

Does look gubernatorial doesn't it?

Let's face it - the Vermont Democratic Party has an opening for a 2008 gubernatorial candidate. Symington does have more of a CEO pedigree and style. An M.B.A., too.

Speaker Gaye says H. 520  - the global warming/climate change bill - that includes the $35 million tax over five years on Entergy Vermont Yankee Nuclear is a "must pass." So's the Broadband Bill that will get Vermonters like State Sen. Dick McCormack off the old-fashioned 56K Internet connection.

McCormack would not deny today that he's "thinking about running for governor." In past times, Ol' Dick was considered "too left," but maybe that's what the Ds need, eh? A "lefty" who brings out the "righty" in Gov. Scissorhands?

Speaking of hair - couldn't resist this 18-year-old redhead on Upper King Street earlier this evening. Her name's Heather Marshall.

She's not thinking about running for governor...yet.

Speaking about graffiti- our Progressive Mayor Bob Kiss is cracking down!  This from City Hall this week:

An ordinance change proposed by the City of Burlington will change the way the City deals with graffiti offenders.  The ordinance change was developed by the “Graffiti Removal Team” and has the support of Burlington Mayor Bob Kiss, Police Chief Thomas Tremblay and other City departments.

Graffiti “tagging” is the act of spray-painting a moniker on public or private property.  The City of Burlington’s “Graffiti Removal Team” (GRT) has been distributing free clean-up kits and leading groups of volunteers on clean-ups of tagging in Burlington since 2001, but these actions alone haven’t solved the problem alone.  The GRT formed an Action Committee with community members, business owners and police officers this past January to start discussing new solutions.  Many diverse perspectives resulted in a multi-faceted action proposal, including providing artistic alternatives for youth, increasing numbers of clean-up volunteers, educating about how vandalism hurts our neighborhoods and giving offenders stiffer penalties.

As things stand now, a tagger who is charged usually waits 2 to 3 months before going to a Reparative Justice Panel or to trial.  In the meantime there is nothing to prevent additional tagging, and in the end, experience has demonstrated, a light sentence is often imposed.  The committee drafted a City Ordinance that would impose a $500 fine on anyone caught defacing property.

And here's a shot Producer Joe Merone snapped before this afternoon's taping of "Vermont This Week" out at Vermont Public Television. That's Dan Barlow (left), the new guy at the Rutland Herald/Times Argus Statehouse bureau and John McCright, news editor at the Addison Independent.

Had a good time and was fairly lucid despite the "chemo fog" inside the skull from Wednesday.

Dan's 28 years of age. The new generation.  I was telling him before the show how I first worked at Vermont Public Television 28 years ago as a janitor!

It was during the annual auction when the joint was jumping with people performing and volunteering and, of course, the one and only Jack Barry as master of ceremonies. Made my first appearance on the "Vermont This Week" panel back in 1983 representing the Vanguard Press.

Remember the late, great Vanguard?

Aging gracefully am I.

How about you?

Heading down to Montpeculiar to catch the Republican governor of Vermont plant a tree for Arbor Day!

And catch the Democratic speaker of the house hold her bag-less Friday "Brown-Bagger" with the press around noon.

Then back to Fort Ethan Allen for a panelist seat on the afternoon taping of "Vermont This Week" on Vermont Public TV. (Still a little foggy after the big Wednesday chemo but hanging in there.)

Do check out the response from Matt Cota to our "Truth the First Casualty" post.  Nice guy, Matt. Used to be a TV News reporter over at CH. 5. Now he represents the Vermont Fuel Dealers as his point of view clearly indicates.

But, Matt, why were those wonderful, hardworking Vermonters told H. 520 contains "a tax on heating oil and propane" when that's an outright LIE?

It's a tax on Entergy's Vermont Yankee Nuclear's through-the-roof, record  profits off Vermont Yankee. Entergy takes the buckaroos back to Louisiana and leaves their high-level radioactive waste behind in Vermont.

Good deal, eh?

Last week, it was the "IMPEACH BUSH" crowd that filled the Statehouse. Thursday afternoon this well-organized bunch of regular Joes popped in to lobby their legislators, they told me, to "vote no on H. 520."

Which one's H. 520?  That not the Global Warming Bill that just came out of the Senate, is it?

"It's the tax on fuel oil and propane," they told me. In fact, these guys, about two-dozen,  were mostly  guys who bring it - fuel oil and propane - to your house. Hired-gun Lobbyist Shawn Banfield of William Shouldice Associates was having them fill out slips of paper to have delivered to their individual representative, urging them to "Vote no on H. 520."

One little problem: H. 520 does not include a tax on fuel oil and propane.

That was in the original version, but removed three months ago. It never made it out of committee. What Sen. Peter Shumlin finally replaced it with as a funding source was a 5-year $35 million surcharge to be imposed on the unanticipated whopping profits the Louisiana-based Entergy Corporation, owner of Vermont Yankee Nuclear in Vernon, all 650-megawatts, has been reaping of late.

That money will be used to bankroll a new energy efficiency utility to be designed by the PSB, that will do what has to be done - cut fossil fuel use. Time is running out. It's called global warming, and even in the best-case scenario, things are going to get worse before they show any inkling of improvement.

Gov. Jim Douglas, however, has shot to Entergy's defense, portraying it as a bad message to the business community.  Entergy could not have a better spokesman.

Coincidentally, while a certain segment of the Vermont business sector was shamelessly doing a brazen job of distorting the truth under Montpeculiar's golden dome, Dr. James Hansen (left), the star witness for Vermont in the big "Tale of the Tailpipe Trial" at federal court in Burlington, was on the stand. Hansen, 66, a physicist, is director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The major auto companies are suing Vermont to prevent our little Green Mountain State from enforcing California's auto emissions standards. They say they can't do it, it'll cost too much.

In December of 2005, Hansen forecast we have 10 years to turn this global warming thing around. Ten years to halt the the out-of-control increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Press: Are we going to make it?

HANSEN: Well, that depends. I hope the decision is such that it does force vehicle makers to go down a path of improved efficiency and in that case I think we still have a chance, but time is getting short.

PRESS: What will it take to impress on people just how short? That’s a tough thing to do.

HANSEN: Yeah. And this problem is different than the air pollution problem where you see the effects immediately both of the pollution and when you reduce it. But here the system has inertia and we’ve only obtained about half of the eventual response for the gases we’ve already put in the atmosphere. There’s more in the pipeline. It’s going to occur even if we stabilize atmospheric composition. So this problem is more difficult for people to understand. They don’t see much so far.

PRESS: What’s It going to take?

HANSEN: Ah, well,

PRESS: What’s it going to take? Something horrible, right?

HANSEN: Well, it’s going to take politicians who are willing to address long term problems not only the four-year problems.

Yes, indeed. Politicians with backbone.

And a lot of them.

Real soon.

Sitting all day in the same seat brought back a feeling of immobility, one I haven't experienced since I had a job for almost six months with the U.S. Census Bureau back in 1980.

Today, I spent almost seven hours sitting in the same seat up on Hospital Hill. This one was my chemotherapy seat with the IV in the fat vein on top of my left hand. Went well.

Memories?

I had only been in Burlap a few months. Census HQ was on lower Maple Street - an artsy ad agency in there now. Democrat Jimmy Carter was president. Ruth Poger, South Burlington Queen Bee, was the boss. Lots of Democrat Party-connected female managers. Friends of Patrick & Madeleine, aka. Patrick Leahy & Madeleine Kunin were they. Or rather Madeleine May Kunin as she's identified in her recent Lake Champlain op-ed in the Rutland Herald.

Plain and simple, the Census gals were short on boys and hired me on the spot. This Chicago cabbie with a Jesuit University degree appeared of interest. Over the next six months, I learned Vermont and Vermont politics in a whole lot more depth than the "normal" newcomer. And $150-a-week was a decent paycheck in 1980. The rent over on Marble Ave. was $125-a-month. And Jeannine, my Chicago sweetheart, was working behind the counter at La Patisserie on Main Street.

Nurse Pat, who took the photo of Peter Patient today, also shares a Chicago past. Grew up in "boring" Indianapolis. Went to St. Joe's in South Bend, the girls college, and spent much of those wild 1970s, like me, in Chicago!  Greatest big city in the world! We agreed on that.

After chemo, I went downtown to the coffee shop. Light crowd on the Marketplace, except for the bunch sounding the IMPEACH BUSH message up in front of the Unitarian Church. I took this photo after they'd broken up. Leahy, Sanders, Welch, Douglas and Bush himself may wish we've heard the last of the IMPEACH BUSH cries, but you know what?

We haven't.

I confess, I missed the CH. 3 Six O'Clock News. By the time they posted it, I had already gone through the email.  Surprised by the news judgment. Fanning the flames of the suicidal Virginia Tech psycho shooter???

Ol' WGOP must have gotten bad ratings? This led tonight's Vermont News: