Category Archives: Society

Turning Out the Lights

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My old friend “Swampy” has been visiting for a couple of weeks. Don Swamtek loves Spring skiing and, despite the above average temperatures here the past 45 days (we annihilated the record high, bumping it by 6̊  to 66̊ on Friday), there is 3 inches of new snow in the mountains. Jay Peak has a 26 – 40 inch base and Stowe has 32 – 56 inches.

“I really like this Global Weirding stuff,” he said after a run at Jay last week. He was wearing lederhosen at the time, although he also had on heavy wool socks.

In real life, Swampy is a nuclear engineer with one of the few remaining Fortune 500 manufacturers. He spends his days dreaming about building a new plant in his own country and his nights star gazing. I don’t know why so many of my friends are hooked on the night sky, but they all surely do like it dark.

“We haven’t built a new nuclear plant in the U.S. in more than 30 years,” Swampy said, “but nuclear power still creates almost a fifth of the electricity we use.” Output was 809 billion kWh in 2008. “It may provide only 20 percent of our nation’s electricity but that is 70 percent — more than two-thirds — of our carbon-free, pollution-free electricity.”

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and Polish power company Polska Grupa Energetyczna will collaborate to build Poland’s two new next-generation commercial nuclear power plants. Poland currently relies heavily on coal-fired production. That country needs the nukes to help diversify its energy production, especially since plants like the ones they plan would avoid annual emissions equivalent to approximately 1.3 million cars. Poland is surrounded by at least 26 nuclear reactors operating in its neighboring lands.

Meanwhile, South Korea has won contracts to design and build a nuclear research reactor in Jordan as well as at least four nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates. The South Korean team beat off France and an American-Japanese power consortium in the bidding competition.

Swampy surprises a lot of people because he is an environmentalist. He cools his house with natural convection and fans instead of air conditioning. He heats it with wood. He hangs some of his clothes to dry and uses an Energy*Star appliance for the rest. He has a solar water heater. He and I designed an electric car in the 70s. More important, he haunts garage sales (on his bike) rather than buying new. He repairs and reuses everything, although he refuses to wash out and reuse freezer bags (yes, I do that).

On the other hand, he is improbably cheerful about his environmental message. “I’m not doom-and-gloom enough to get people to make me their Messiah.” That doesn’t stop him from reminding us of the truth.

“Doesn’t matter if you believe people cause global warming or even if there is global warming,” he said. “That argument is sort of irrelevant.

“Oil was $150 per barrel just last year and there’s no reason to think this administration — or the Far Green — will do anything but try to jack the price even more. Even if affordability doesn’t bother you, we’re not making any more dinosaurs. Making electricity we can afford to use right now. That has to be the focus for alternate energy policy. Everything else you say is a distraction.

“If we don’t fix this, we’re gonna turn out our lights. For good.”

So, I have to wonder. With all that brainpower, with all that education, with all that belief in conservation, why can’t I get him to turn out the lights when he leaves a room?

First Among Equals

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A bill in the Vermont House shows that “Vermont First” is not always a distinction.

Vermont is the pilot project for the nation. The U.S. Post Office printed its first stamp in Brattleboro in 1846. The Social Security Administration issued the first check, $22.54, to a Vermont widow in 1940. The first program to force universal health care came with a Vermont law that banned cherry picking in 1992. Now the Vermont Assembly would legislate our non-profit hospitals out of business.

An Act Relating to Health Care Cost Containment is now in the hands of the House Committee on Health Care.

Buried among the Medicaid information technology funds, task forces, hospital budget review programs, and certificate of need rules, this bill will require that insurers participate in the Blueprint for Health and will prohibit hospitals from paying for “marketing and advertising.” It also sets up the State to take over any hospital in financial jeopardy. Shades of General Motors. The experience we have had with the State Hospital at Waterbury shows how well Vermont runs health care in the real world.

That experience matters not. The Vermont House has 94 Democrats, 5 Progressives, 3 Independents, and 48 Republicans. The Vermont Senate has 22 Democrats, 1 Progressive, and 7 Republicans. Senate President Pro Tempore Peter Shumlin (D-Windham) is running for governor. House Speaker Shap Smith (D-Lamoille-Washington) has not announced.

The “Blueprint for Health” in the bill will become a new statewide infrastructure/prevention/care management bureaucracy. It includes “an integrated approach to patient self-management, community development, health care system and professional practice change, and information technology initiatives.” The Blueprint Bureaucracy has the carrot of withholding Medicare payments from “under performers” and the stick of taking over the hospitals. Vermont docs and other providers receive about 40 percent of their revenue from Medicare and Medicaid.

  • “Marketing and advertising” means promotion, or any activity that is intended to be used or is used to influence individuals seeking health care services to use a specific hospital to attain those services.
  • Individual hospital budgets established under this section shall: … include a finding that the analysis provided in subdivision (b)(9) of this section is a reasonable methodology for reflecting a reduction in net revenues for non-Medicaid payers; and not include spending on marketing and advertising.
  • The term hospital shall also include all corporate or other entities affiliated with the licensed hospital…

I’m glad the Legislature has finally noticed that the skyrocketing cost of health care is a wee bit of a problem. That’s why House Health Care Committee Chair Steve Maier (D-Middlebury) says he included a provision to prohibit hospital from spending money for advertising and marketing. “It’s not producing health care,” he told the Burlington Free Press.

When I read about the bill, I thought this was a First Amendment issue. After all, even Vermont Law School constitutional law scholar Cheryl Hanna told the Burlington Free Press the legislation raised significant constitutional questions.

That’s a red herring.

The bill is another land grab, perpetrated by a legislature determined to gobble up all segments of health care from patient’s the first tiny down payment to the last visit to the morgue.

Here’s how that works. Hospitals get squeezed by shrinking Medicare payments, swelling Medicare patient loads, new budget caps mandated by the Blueprint for Health bureaucracy, and fleeing traditional payments. Hospital owners leave the state when confronted by a power grab at their books. Hospitals fail. Hospitals get taken over by the Blueprint for Health bureaucracy.

I would be werry werry afwaid if I were a hospital owner or administrator in any state in the union. After all, as Vermont goes, so goes the nation.

Did We the OverTaxed People sit out the last couple of election cycles? If we can’t learn from the Vermont experience, we could learn from the Sunni Arabs who sat out Iraqi elections in 2005. The need to protect their own interests brought Sunni Arabs out in droves on Sunday.

Guilty!

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“I don’t know what to do,” Kay Ace said. “I just heard our basketball coach is under investigation for sex crimes.” Ms. Ace is a county coordinator for the Vermont Teen Indoor Sports Association. “I think we have to replace him.”

We the People have gone from a presumption of innocence to the presumption of guilt.

Let’s look at three recent cases:

(1) Dean Kingston, 23, met Lorraine Seymour, also 23, at a play and later talked over the Internet and phone. The budding relationship quickly soured. Ms. Seymour complained to police that Mr. Kingston had harassed her. Police confronted Mr. Kingston, who agreed to stop contacting her. The police found evidence that Mr. Kingston continued to email and contact Ms. Seymour. At least one email threatened “im coming to get you and theres nothing you can do.”

What do you think? Is Mr. Kingston a stalker or did Ms. Seymour make up her tale?

(2) Vermont Yankee is a nuclear reactor power plant constructed in Vernon, Vermont, in 1972. The plant has applied for relicensure to continue operations past its planned 40-year shut-down date in 2012.

One cell of its three story cooling tower collapsed and led to a reactor scram in 2007. A recent report of an truck allowed inside the fence without any inspection has the state questioning security. Tritium is currently leaking into the ground from an unknown source at the plant. Vermont Yankee owner Entergy has been called irresponsible. Executives lied in recent testimony about the Tritium leaks. It is not the first time Entergy has been caught in devious doings. The Safe and Green Campaign wants Vermont Yankee shut down.

What do you think? Is Vermont Yankee the next Three Mile Island or should its license be renewed?

(3) Vermont corrections officer Ralph Witter, 40, has been accused of having inappropriate sexual activities with three female inmates. The investigation began a year ago when the first unnamed inmate alleged Mr. Witter had inappropriate contact with her. There was insufficient evidence to prosecute at that time. Two more female unnamed inmates have now reported similar incidents had occurred in the past month.

What do you think? Is Mr. Witter a predator or did the inmates make up their tales?

On the face of it, these all look like slam dunks, don’t they?

(1) Although worried about the evidence, prosecutors charged Mr. Kingston with stalking and disturbing the peace over the phone. Ms. Seymour testified that she had received the emails from Kingston and he was bound over for trial. He spent 92 days in jail awaiting trial.

(2) Although John White, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials who briefed legislators last week, said the Vernon reactor problems haven’t approached any regulatory threshold that would require the plant to be shut down, famed nuclear engineer (and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont) joined Vermont legislators in a call for the plant to shut down.

(3) Although inmates have charged more than half of all corrections officers with a laundry list of offenses, the Corrections Department suspended Mr. Witter a year ago while the state reviewed the case for criminal prosecution; he was eventually reinstated last month when the State had insufficient evidence to prosecute at that time. When the additional two unnamed inmates came forward within a month, Mr. Witter was immediately suspended again. He has also lost his volunteer position with the Vermont Teen Indoor Sports Association.

Despite the results, there are only three facts we do know about these three cases:

You have no idea whether Dean Kingston stalked anyone.
You have no idea whether Vermont Yankee is dangerous.
You have no idea whether Ralph Witter diddled anyone.

And neither do I.

Short of a confession by Mr. Kingston or a retraction by Ms. Seymour, the evidence presented here is insufficient to judge. The technical data about Vermont Yankee is not yet available so unless you, dear reader, are a nuclear engineer, neither you nor any serving legislator has the expertise to interpret it. And, short of a confession by Mr. Witter or a retraction by the unnamed inmates, the evidence presented here is insufficient to judge him.

Despite what we do not know, We the People have presumed guilt.

(1) Lorraine Seymour, convicted of fabricating evidence that put an innocent man in jail for three months, has served a prison sentence of her own. When police forensics determined that Mr. Kingston did not send the frightening emails, Ms. Seymour admitted to writing them herself. She was convicted, taken to the Northwest State Correctional Facility, and has paid Mr. Kingston $10,000 to settle his civil lawsuit.

(2) Vermont Yankee is a boiling water nuclear reactor that generates 620 megawatts of electricity, about three-quarters of the total generating capacity of the state. Senate president Peter Shumlin will hold a vote this week against any license renewal for Vermont Yankee. “I am very skeptical that you’ll ever see new nuclear power plants built in America let alone Vermont,” Mr. Shumlin told Vermont Public Radio. It is unknown if the legislature will order the power plant closed immediately. The final report on safety at Vermont Yankee is not due until next month, weeks after the scheduled vote.

[Editorial note: Vermont Greens are a little behind the times. No nukes unless Obama wants nukes! The Administration has proposed government loan guarantees for two new nuclear reactors to be built in Georgia by the Southern Company.]

(3) Vermont corrections officer Ralph Witter is now under arrest. He is now lodged at the Chittenden Correction Facility in lieu of $100,000 bail.

The words and people quoted in this piece are real. Only the names of everyone but the public figures have been changed to protect the dumbfounded.

Put the ‘A’ back in SCC

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I took some time off from worrying about the claim that women’s hot flashes are responsible for Global Warming to reminisce about the years I raced “pony cars” in sports car races in the 1970s.

It is very hot in a race car cockpit.

Many think that the pony cars started life when Ford launched the Mustang — the nearly eponymous name came from the ‘Stang — in 1964 but the real start of the breed was the popular and sporty Corvair Monza from Chevrolet. The cars were (and are again) compact, stylish, affordable, and sporty.

The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), first and foremost a sanctioning body for automobile racing, created amateur and professional racing classes for pony cars in 1966. Amateurs turned the cars out for trophies in “A-Sedan” while pros brought the same cars to the track for cash prizes in the fabled “Trans-Am” series. The rules were pretty simple then: tune the suspension, widen the steel body for a 64″ track, get really good brakes, install a roll cage, then jack up the Holley 4-barrel carburetor and pour a 5 Liter, 500 horsepower, engine under it. The cars looked like ones you could buy from the dealer down the street. Mostly.

The Trans-American Sedan Championship began as a manufacturers’ series for racing these pony cars. The original races were open to cars in SCCA’s A and B Sedan classes; The Over 2.0 Liter and Under 2.0 Liter cars ran in the same races. The original races that most fans remember included the AMC Javelin, Chevrolet Camaro, Dodge Challenger, Ford Mustang, Mercury Cougar, Plymouth Barracuda, and the Pontiac Firebird. Oldsmobile had no pony car. Mark Donohue won the championship in 1968 and 1969 driving Camaros for Roger Penske. He returned in 1971 to win in a Nash. As an aside, the Pontiac Trans Am was named after the series. The last time a Pontiac Trans Am won a Trans Am was in 1984; the model has won 7 of 446 events.

Back to me. I raced Camaros in the 1970s but SCCA “evolved” the classes out from under me.

“Put the A back in SCC” first referred to a grass roots campaign within the SCCA when the club dropped the A Sedan category in favor of lumping all the A Sedans together with the top two roadster categories to form the new class called GT-1. Camaros were a second or two a lap slower than the “production-class” Corvettes at a track like Lime Rock so SCCA also changed the way we built the cars. Although designed for the big Detroit iron, today’s Trans Am and GT-1 cars are front engine, rear wheel drive, tube framed cars with body work cleverly made to look like a street car. (As an aside, most are very, very similar to the NASCAR Nationwide short track race cars.)

We Luddite A-Sedan and Trans Am drivers didn’t much like the change. We asked SCCA to put the A (Sedan) back in their line-up. They did not although in 1995 the club did start the amateur-level American Sedan class for cars which is cross between Showroom Stock and the old A-Sedan.

The Trans-American Sedan Championship died in 2006 but has come back. In 2009, Jaguar won the championship in a car that doesn’t look remotely American. Other competing marques include Audi, deTomaso, and Porsche. The 2010 series will race at New Jersey, Mosport, Miller Motorsports Park, Lime Rock, Toronto, Brainerd, and Virginia International Raceway.

And that’s exactly where this history lesson is going.

The Trans-American Sedan Championship began as a manufacturers’ championship for American-made sedans. I’ve been looking at and test driving that new breed of sedans and I guarantee that the 2010 Chevrolet Camaros, Dodge Chargers and Challengers, and Ford Mustangs are faster, better handling street cars on street tires than my 1969 or 1971 full race Camaros.

Not only that, those cars look like real Trans Am cars should look.

I think it’s time again to put the A back in SCC as well as in Trans Am. This time, though, let’s make it a series for American sporty cars. It is time to celebrate just how good American cars can be.

Salvo after Salvo

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A Florida writer celebrated on Friday: “It’s a cold, gray, drizzly New Year’s Day,” she wrote. “It can only get better from here, yes? Crossing fingers.”

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”

We started the decade with the biggest salvo yet fired in the least conventional World War ever fought.

Hundreds of Muslims have since blown themselves up to terrorize thousands of their neighbors, most of whom were also Muslims. (Somehow the MSM overlooked the hundreds of Christians who blew themselves up to terrorize thousands of their neighbors, many of whom would also be, well, Christians.)

On the other hand, explosive bolts hold the Space Shuttle to the launch pad. The Shuttle will be the final entry in the Cash for Clunkers program this year.

After a couple years of layoffs and firings and RIFs, about 12 more people have jobs in January, 2010, than did in January, 2000. They all work for the government; private-sector employment declined for the period for the first time on record. And, before you do the liberal happy dance, understand that we don’t have 12 more people in these United States than 10 years ago; we have 26 million and 12 more people in these United States than 10 years ago.

On the other hand, Bret Favre came out of retirement, retired, came out of retirement, retired, and got yet another new job with a different employer. And he did all that last year.

Adobe, like Microsoft, learned the real key to keeping customers happy: change the file format of your major product to force people to upgrade.

On the other hand, the Veteran’s Administration application for benefits is only 23 pages long.

Adjusted for inflation, my little house here in South Puffin is worth about the same as it was in 2000. Maybe a little less.

On the other hand, the new $1.5 billion Yankee Stadium replaced the house that Ruth built in 1923. The Yanks cut costs where they could, though, and the new space is only the second most expensive stadium in the world behind the $1.57 billion new Wembley Stadium in London.

Thanks to inflation and cutbacks, our family income has dropped every year since 2000. Part of that is the ever increasing cost of health “insurance” but the reality is Anne kept getting cut back and my business was flat for several years and is down now.

On the other hand, Wile E. Coyote has never gotten a raise nor filed an insurance claim.

And it doesn’t look as if we can retire unless Anne simply never finds another job and is forced to accept retirement as her full time gig. Our retirement accounts, like those of every other American, suffered from the bank meltdown and the government theft of General Motors. I had 1,000 shares of GM. Guess who owns it now? The market is wandering around above $10,000 now, but stocks like Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Metlife, Manulife, Morgan Stanley, and Toronto Dominion Bank will never come back.

On the other hand, Capital One founder and CEO Richard Fairbank received $73,182,560 in compensation in just one year of the decade.

It has been a decade that I hope we can skip repeating.

On the other hand George Santayana, father of the Law of Repetitive Consequences, was an optimist. Besides, I do have some good recipes for Soylent Green.

Happy New Year.

Actually, I’m also an optimist. We need to make this a better decade and we can do it. After we throw da bums out of all their lairs, all we need do is change the nature of crooks and politicians. But I repeat myself.