DMinVT

We live in a strange place where conservatives act liberal and liberals act conservative.

I don't know what else I would expect, however. This is, after all, the state that has three Congress Critters in Washington and two of them are Independents: Congressman Bernie Sanders and Senator Jim Jeffords.

But a recent controversy involving Vermont's Gov. James Douglas and N.Y. Sen. Hillary Clinton had me shaking my head and wondering what the political world is coming to.

Clinton is, of course, a liberal politician, while Douglas is a Republican. But Clinton has recently taken the side of big business in supporting a test tire burn at International Paper in Ticonderoga, N.Y.

Douglas, meanwhile, is opposing the tire burn as an environmental problem because it would send its smoke plume into Vermont across Lake Champlain.

What's going on in the world when a Democrat supports a big business plan that is bad for the environment and it takes a Republican to call her on it.

Here's some of what Douglas had to say in a press release after Clinton wrote a letter of support to the EPA:

"Your letter seems to downplay the environmental concerns of states in New
England should tire derived fuel be allowed on an on-going basis," the
Governor wrote.  "While International Paper's financial health is of concern
to residents on both sides of our lake, the environmental consequences of
this proposal fall disproportionately upon Vermonters, and other states to
our east. Prevailing winds carry pollutants across our lake and deposit them
upon the farms, communities and people of Vermont and elsewhere."

 

This is a strange place, I'm telling you.

This new site is much more difficult to use, but allows more to be done to this blog. The other place didn't allow photos unless you ponied up with the cash, which I'm not going to do for something that is a hobby at best. This one, however, allows photos, although they're not in the blog itself, they are in a photo album.

So look to the left in the sidebar, and check out the one photo I have posted under the link "My Photos."

It's a shot taken in the town where I work last October. Have I mentioned this is a beautiful place to live?

I've been doing this from another site and now looking to move this effort here. We'll see if it works out.

We took a little walk today. The weather hasn't been too great lately with showers and cool temperatures keeping us in the house. Plus, with plenty of other things keeping us busy, we just haven't gotten out much late. So late in the day, we headed out and walked for a couple of hours. Our little one walked nearly the entire way by herself and rode on daddy's shoulders when she got tired. We saw the ducks at the Beaver Pond and listened as some sort of frog or something ripped the silence around a bog. We watched a chipmonk that didn't seem to mind if we watched as it played within 20 feet of us. This wasn't even a campground where they're accustomed to people. After walking away from home on roads, we picked up a snowmobile/ATV trail and took us right back home. It was a much nicer walk as the birds sang the whole way and even stopped to look at some sort of a little red-colored salamander crossing the trail. By the time we got back, the wind had picked up and it had become cold. We were glad to get back to the house.

A guy I work with is one of those die-hard Red Sox fans who throws things when everything is not perfect. He mumbles to himself and paces, etc. He also goes to a dozen games a year or more if he can get tickets. Well today he ordered us up a pair of May 11 against the Oakland A's. So I don't have to wait until August to see the Sox, it will be in less than three weeks. I'm pumped. I'll update more as I find out, but right now, it looks like the scheduled starter for Boston is David Wells. The crafty old lefty has been pitching well the last couple of starts since not looking so hot right out of the gate. May 11 in Boston!

One of the things I looked forward to about coming to Vermont was getting to know about the great outdoors. I've not had the time to really explore, but in Vermont, you don't have to go looking for it. Today, on my way home from work, I drove past a couple of moose, lazily feeding in a bog along the road on which I drive home. I turned around and went back for another look (it was dark) and they were still there. As they were when I went back by for a third time. This isn't my first experience with moose. Over the winter, I saw several moose, usually, however, much too close for comfort. One time I came around a corner and there were two (cow/calf? bull/cow?) standing right in the middle of the road. One was much larger than the other, leading me to believe it was a cow and her calf. Or maybe it was a bull and a cow. Dunno, but they were freakin huge. Fortunately, I was going uphill and so was able to slow down in plenty of time to let them scamper off the road. Several other close calls came as moose flashed by in the edge of my headlights in the middle of a blinding snowstorm or fog. In all cases, I really only got fleeting glimpses of them. There's also plenty of turkey around here as well. I've seen more flocks of turkey in the last eight months then I ever knew existed. Sometimes it will be a lone bird, like the one that ran across the road in front of me on my way home a few days ago. Other times, I've seen flocks of 20 birds. Most of the time they are feeding in the early morning hours, or late evening in cut cornfields near heavy woods. A few times they've been right along the highway. I tried to slow to get a photo one time, but as soon as I hit the breaks, they hit the gas, scampering away from the road and up a hill before I could get a decent shot. Interestingly, for all the white-tailed deer the East is supposed to have, Vermont's herd is struggling and this was one of the worst hunting seasons anyone can remember. They say there simply aren't any deer. I'll write more on this another time, but I know that I've seen only one deer in my eight months here and I nearly killed her with the car. Poor thing was flustered after nearly being hit by a car going the other direction, she ran right at us as I locked it up. She came within a a whisker of dribbling snot on my front bumper before she jumped over the guard rail and disappeared into the night.

 

Here's more on this mercury situation in an article I wrote about six years ago. For some strange reason, this newspaper picked the article up off the AP wire and it's still available on their Web site.

A lot of this data is likely out of date, and it's kind of angled toward New Mexico and the Four Corners, but you'll get the picture. Besides, I doubt it is any better now than it was six years ago.

If you want to read the whole thing, it can be found here: http://www.news-star.com/stories/022199/spo_angle.shtml

If you don't, here are a few highlights:

 

Mercury-laced fish reality for anglers

At greatest risk of health problems caused by mercury are children and pregnant women.

...

Other dangers include kidney damage, learning deficits and lowered IQ. Some doctors are studying the potential link between mercury contamination and a generation of children being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and children with similar symptoms.

How much mercury it takes to create a health risk is being debated. Public Interest Research Group, a national watchdog group, said governments in general aren't doing enough to educate people of the dangers.

...

According to PIRG, citing EPA estimates, some 1,300 coal and oil-fired power plants emit some 50 tons of mercury per year. The group said it takes only a fraction of a teaspoon per year to contaminate an entire lake to the point of where the fish are unsafe to eat.

Freakin' George Bush.

The worst environmental president in history just keeps it coming.

He's already trying to gut the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and drill everything not already poked and prodded. Now he's trying to make it easier for the big coal-burning power plants to better polute the environment by loosening the restrictions on emissions.

Folks, mercury is bad stuff. As it is, there's too much mercury being emitted from these coal-burning electricity factories. Ask the fish. The bioaccumulation of methyl-mercury in larger fish make them unfit for human consumption.

Perhaps that's Bush's strategy. Maybe he's just being a conservationist and encouraging catch-and-release angling.

VERMONT'S U.S. SENATORS CONDEMN
BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S MERCURY POLICY

WITNESSES TELL SENATORS MERCURY POLLUTION
WILL INCREASE UNDER BUSH PLAN

WASHINGTON (Tuesday, April 19) - Vermont's U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy and
Jim Jeffords today led a hearing to examine the Bush Administration's
rule on mercury emissions from power plants.  In March, the Bush
Administration issued the rule to delay deep reductions in mercury
pollution, as called for under the Clean Air Act, and to allow power
plants to continue emitting the dangerous neuro-toxin.

The Bush Administration plan would cut mercury emissions by 29 percent
by 2010, and by 70 percent by 2025 or later.  Legislation authored by
Jeffords and Leahy would reduce mercury emissions by 90 percent by 2008.

The nation's 1,100 coal-burning power plants emit about 48 tons of
mercury each year, the largest unregulated U.S. source.  Witnesses,
including state officials, parents groups and public health experts,
testified that the Administration rule will allow for more mercury
pollution than current law and will leave pregnant women, infants and
children at risk.

Jeffords, the Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works
Committee said, "This rule is weak and illegal, and was largely written
by and for industry lobbyists.  This rule will likely increase the
number of children who are exposed, prenatally, to mercury in some
states.  This exposure will lead to reductions in IQ and harm our
society and our economy.  That is not public health protection.  That is
public health sabotage, for the sake of polluters' profits."

"Despite ten years of EPA analysis showing the need for prompt and
effective action, the Bush Administration has sided with big polluters
against the health interests of the American people," said Leahy.  "All
you have to do is look at a map of mercury pollution to see why
Vermonters know it's past time to curb the pollution from these upwind
power plants."

In February the EPA's inspector general issued a report, requested by
Jeffords and Leahy, charging  that the agency's senior management
instructed staff members to arrive at a predetermined conclusion
favoring industry when they prepared the mercury rule last year to
reduce the amount of mercury emitted from coal-fired power plants

In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control found that one in 12 women of
childbearing age has mercury levels above EPA's safe health threshold -
due primarily to consumption of poisoned fish.  This totals almost five
million women, and nearly 300,000 newborns facing increased risk of
nervous system damage from exposure in the womb.

Witnesses at today's hearing included: Kathleen McGinty, Secretary of
the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection; Jane Browning,
Executive Director of the Learning Disabilities Association of America;
Leonardo Trasande, MD, MPP, Assistant Director of the Center for
Children's Health and Environment at Mount Sinai School of Medicine;
Praveen Amar, Science and Policy Director for the Northeast States
Center for Coordinated Air Use Management; George Meyer, Executive
Director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation; and Susan Marmagas,
Director of the Environment and Health Program for Physicians for Social
Responsibility.

OK, I'm not a die-hard, but I guess I'm officially part of the "Red Sox Nation." When I found out I had a job and we had a plan for getting to Vermont, one of the first things I did is go buy a Boston Red Sox baseball hat. I'm still a Dodger fan, as I have been all my life. As I told everybody, as a Dodger fan, I have a long history of hating the Yankees, so rooting for the Sox will come naturally for me. I also believe I brought them a little luck, since they won the title last year. You don't believe me? It had to be me because before I arrived there was 86 years of misery and some alleged curse that true Sox fans don't believe in. I show up and, boom, the Sox win the World Series and the Patriots repeat in the Super Bowl. But the big news here is I have a ticket to my first Major League baseball game. The Texas Rangers will be in town to face my (now) beloved Sox and I'll be there (somewhere) rooting them on. It will be my first big-league game unless you count a couple of spring training games I saw in Arizona back in 1986. Been to some minor league games too, but never to a big league ballpark. Can't wait.

Ciao, America! : An Italian Discovers the U.S.

Beppe Severgnini

This is one of the funniest books I've read even though it is the United States, our customs, actions and goofiness that is in the target of Severgnini's arrows. Don't worry, this isn't a bash on America. Severgnini takes aim at his country's shortcomings as well, and at himself as he tries to figure out this strange land we call home.

Severgnini is one of the most popular, if not the single most popular, journalists in Italy. This book is an account of a year he and his wife spent living in Washington, D.C. He writes about the differences, where the U.S. excels and where it falls short. Sometimes, he writes about these differences to expose the complete lunacy we Americans exhibit on a regular basis, or the reasons he has fallen in love with this country.

Take the American chip off your shoulder and open your mind to the hilarity of our life in this country and laugh out loud as I did. Of course, I have a reason to be interested in Italy and Italians, but I think you, too, might enjoy this one.

Again, access to this book on Amazon is available at this link.

Amazon Link