Exclusive ! A Sneigwhblog Halloween Costume Preview

President Obama and Vice President Biden happily show off their costumes for the cameras.Early Friday the White House released images of Obama and Biden in their light hearted Halloween garb.

image courtesy of The Hyper Kitchen
Admiralty Collection

Grid smarts in Vermont smart grid

Ready or not it looks like the way electricity is delivered to Vermont homes is about to go through some big changes.
The U S Department of Energy has just awarded Vermont utility companies $69 million in funds to be matched by the utilities for the speedy upgrade for smart grid technology .The total investment including the industries funds will be $138 million.

In Vermont and nationwide smart grid changes will shape the industry in ways that even insiders are struggling to get ahead of. Smart grids start with smart meters to pass information about usage to and from power users and suppliers. This flow of information will increase coordination between the suppliers and the supplied.Said Vermont’s Chief Recovery Officer Tom Evslin. “This grant makes it possible for Vermont utilities to do in three years what would have taken at least eight without the federal funding. Vermonters will get the cost and environmental benefits of a Smart Grid five years before we would have otherwise.”

Real time for best results
Consumers will access in real time (see ditching “batch processing” now)information about when power may cost less (off peak) and which of their appliances use more or less energy. The power supplier becomes more aware of consumer demand habits and needs. This monitoring system when connected to the internet will generate information about consumers and their energy based needs. The state of Vermont says one of three areas of the funding focus will be customer systems, such as in-home displays that provide real-time feedback and information about home energy usage and pricing will be deployed within Vermont to fundamentally change how customers manage their electricity

In a pilot project in Rutland in 2011, CVPS will offer some customers sophisticated in-home displays showing their power use and the demand on the grid. Others will see a light indicating load is heavy. Some might receive text messages or e-mails about peak demand.

It also opens up the potential for entirely new services or improvements on existing ones, such as fire monitoring and alarms that can shut off power, make phone calls to emergency services and etc.

One home energy monitoring service industry executive says

“The underlying premise of the smart grid is that it not only delivers power, but information. And, once this information becomes available, it has unlimited potential to enrich utility and consumer experience. We envision a world where goods, services, and incentives can be offered directly to the consumer based on their very individual needs."

Experts worry more control for large and small consumers ,lower demand may squeeze profits at time when costly improvements are underway.Some in the industry compare the uncertain future to the telecom upheaval of the past 10 years.

There’s another similarity between the two industries: their business models are under threat. Wireless companies, for example, are seeing a huge influx in data use that requires expensive network buildouts, but are still figuring out how to get people to pay more per megabyte to support those network buildouts and existing profit margins.

A clean energy summit in Texas debated the potential paths the smart grid might take debating whether the industry should focus on

…value-added services on top of the power network (like phone companies have rushed to do on their data networks) or if utilities should remain content to provide the basic energy pipes…………….

Along with the positive reduction in energy usage come uncertainties of an expanded information capacity for the power companies and how to design this capacity into an existing industry manage it and profit from it smoothly.

Wingnut Fall tableau in Vermont

This Fall scenery might shatter the lefty Vermont stereotype for leaf-peepers as they pass by on Interstate 91 near Vt. Rt. 25 in the Eastern part of the state.
Someone expresses fear of healthcare, communism, economics and all things Obama with a large hand made sign on a derelict forage wagon.

Vt. declares emergency over bridge closing,Gov. Douglas leaves country

A lame duck takes flight series

As the costs of budget cuts and deferred maintenance on local infrastructure are driven home by the emergency closure of the Champlain Bridge between New york and Vermont , Vermont Gov. Douglas,other state officials and executives from Vermont businesses left the country (as far as we know).
As part of a previously planned trip they have flown to Asia in an effort to attract foreign business investors to the state. How will the news of the areas crumbling infrastructure impress potential foreign investors?
While the governor is gone state officials from New York and Vermont are left to deal with the declared emergency surrounding the Champlain Bridge closure
The Champlain Bridge was known to be in bad repair, studies were in progress and the bridge had been shut down to one lane within the last year .It seems though that few contingency plans had been made about what to do about 4,000 people that pass over the bridge daily if the bridge needed to shut down completely as is now the case. Business owners and workers on both sides of the lake are worried about the financial effect of the closure. One local hospital has patients and employees on both sides of the lake in need of transportation.
Before leaving Governor Douglas took the time to share his expert reading of the situation “Detours are time consuming and costly. This is not just about convenience; this is an economic burden as well as a safety issue,”

Extra ferries have been added and are running longer hours but winter is swooping in quickly. Hopes for a temporary bridge were put to rest by the VT Agency of Transportation spokesman John Zicconi who said

What the state isn't likely to do, he said, is put in a temporary bridge. He said the lake is an international waterway and such a bridge would block it, something the federal government is unlikely to approve. He also said there were safety concerns with such bridges on the lake.

No safety concerns were cited about possible problems with increased ferry traffic.

At a public hearing in Addison on Oct. 8, residents had ridiculed the idea of substituting ferry service for the ailing bridge. Vermont Transportation Secretary David Dill made no suggestion that ferries would be anything but a short-term alternative to people driving 100 miles to work in another state.

The initial estimate was that a new ferry would require a round-trip ticket price of $131, Dill said. But it might be possible to get a federal subsidy for the additional ferry route, thus reducing that price, he said — but not compensating affected individuals or companies directly for their expenses during the declared transportation emergency, he said.
Also posted at Green Mountain Daily

A theory of 'inattentional blindness' to clowns & unicycles

I don’t own a cell phone because Vermont service is spotty to non-existent in many parts of the state. This despite Governor Douglas’ much vaunted but yet to be realized E-State Initiative. But I digress. ……anyway I can’t comment from personal experience regarding cell phones.
I would like to think though that I’d notice a clown on a unicycle more often than not even if speaking on a cell phone. One thing that speaks well of this study is that they actually found a way to employ clowns on unicycles in a scientific endeavor.
The study(excerpted here )documented real-world examples of people who were so distracted by their cell phone use that they failed to see the bizarre occurrence of a unicycling clown passing them on the street. The journal, Applied Cognitive Psychology published the results of studying effects of divided attention during walking .They claim to have proven what may be obvious to anyone, namely cell phone use can be distracting. Various types of distractions were tested on individuals walking including MP3 players, talking on cell phone, walking without electronics and walking alone.

In the first study, it was found that cell phone users walked more slowly, changed directions more frequently, and were less likely to acknowledge other people than individuals in the other conditions. In the second study cell phone users were less likely to notice an unusual activity along their walking route (a unicycling clown). Cell phone usage may cause inattentional blindness even during a simple activity that should require few cognitive resources.
Compared with individuals walking alone, in pairs, or listening to their ipod, cell phone users were the group most prone to oblivious behavior: only twenty-five percent of them noticed the unicycling clown. The walkers not using a cell phone noticed the clown over fifty-percent of the time.
Dr Ira E. Hyman, Jr. at Western Washington University, head researcher of the study, says, 'If people experience so much difficulty performing the task of walking when on a cell phone just think of what this means when put into the context of driving safety.

Cat blogging with Chevy panel truck

Some Mondays are strangely more suited than others for a white cat and a Chevy panel truck. Today is one such day. For those who need more here is an observation on contemporary America from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders

"The top 1 percent owns more wealth then the bottom 90 percent. CEOs of large corporations earn 400 times what their workers make. That is not what America is supposed to be about."

Senator Sanders Unfiltered

Maldives under water for cabinet meeting

There may be no Maldives at all if climate change is not addressed.The UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change prediction of rising sea level of 58 centimeters(almost two feet) by 2100 would put the Maldives in underwater jeopardy.

The Republic of Maldives, in the Indian Ocean consists of a double chain of twenty six atolls. So being one of the most vulnerable places on earth the Maldives held an underwater cabinet meeting to publicize their plight.
Mohamed Nasheed, Maldives President and fellow cabinet members were holding the world's first underwater cabinet meeting in the shallow seas surrounding the Maldives Islands. They conducted the meeting in full scuba gear using hand signals and slates.
They signed an SOS message at their underwater desks to let the rest of the world know just how precarious their and other low lying countries' situations are.

Mohamed Nasheed, Maldives President:

"We are actually trying to send out a message. Let the world know what is happening. And what might, what will happen to the Maldives if climate change is not checked. This is a challenging situation. And we want to see that everyone else is also occupied as much as we are. And would like to see that people actually do something about it."

And he said it wasn't just the Maldives that the world needed to worry about.

Dole Foods drops “Bananas” suit

Good news for a Swedish film maker whose documentary about a crusading lawyer and his attempts to represent Nicaraguan plantation workers.
According to the Guardian UK the original case around which the film documentary was made revolved around the spraying of DBCP, or dibromochloropropane, a worm-killing pesticide, on banana plantations in five Central American countries in the 1970s. Laborers say it damaged their health and, in the case of men, left them sterile. Dole denied causing any harm.
After initial victories for the workers in Nicaraguan and American courts US courts overturned part of the verdicts opening the doors for the dole suit for defamation. In their lawsuit Dole Foods had requested that the movie be banned and that Gertten the filmmaker be prohibited from commenting on the company.

The International Federation of Journalists had condemned the legal action as “unforgivable censorship” but little was made of this in the major US media.

“Hometown support” Swedish MP’s had signed a petition in support of the movie maker and free speech .Also Swedish grocers demanded talks regarding the suit and a large Swedish restaurant chain had started a boycott of Dole products .
Boycott and pressure worked .The Dole Foods announcement dropping the suit said Dole believed it had a strong case; it chose to dismiss the suit because of “the free speech concerns being expressed in Sweden”.

Maybe it was a good time to get out from under some bad PR at a key moment?
The dropping of the lawsuit comes in the midst the company’s launch of their initial public stock offering .Which is expected to raise $500 million to pay down Dole’s debt.

Not taxing their cleverness

Did the Vermont Public Service board just propose eliminating the sales tax on the sale of 4,310 appliances?

“Funds for fridges”
The State of Vermont has submitted for US Department of Energy approval a plan which would offer rebates on the purchase of new energy efficient appliances including washers refrigerators, air conditioners and also certain gas furnaces and water heaters .Documentation that the old appliance was properly recycled would need to be provided.
The Burlington Free Press reports ,

The proposal calls for rebates, ranging from $75 to $150, on efficient clothes washers, refrigerators and air conditioners. ……The state's plan allows for 4,310 such appliances to be sold through the rebate plan.

So far so good .Trade up to an energy efficient appliance with the aid of a government run program. However they hope to piggyback the program on Vermont state's one day sales tax holiday. Perhaps cleverly generating publicity but also losing any revenue the state might have garnered from the increased sales of new efficient appliances over the course of the program.

If approved by the Energy Department the rebates would be offered in a one-day event on Vermont's next "sales tax holiday," slated for March 10, piggybacking on the attention paid to the day free of sales taxes, the filing says. Efficiency Vermont would develop lists of the eligible products Jan. 1, the documents state

Also posted at Green Mountain Daily

Chamber of Commerce climate of pressure(updates below)

The US Chamber of Commerce is rated the top spending lobbying group in the country according to watchdog group Open Secrets. Almost double the spending of the second place AMA.Their website ‘take action’ page urges opposition to proposed Congressional climate change policies, a Financial Protection Agency a shareholder bill of rights and the Employment Free choice Act (EFCA).
Chamber in the past?
The chambers ‘about us’ web-page may lagging or just feeling nostalgic for friendlier days when they even today state “Over the past year, the chamber hosted more than 2,500 programs, meetings, seminars, and forums with various participants, including President George W. Bush and his Cabinet, members of Congress, and dozens of international leaders.”
All is not unity for the members with the position on pending climate change legislation. Rep. Markey of Massachusetts says of the chamber’s attitude "Unfortunately, while the chamber says they are for everything the Waxman-Markey bill addresses, they are just not for the bill itself; the chamber should listen to the companies who would rather leave the group than wait for it to back up their talk with action."
Five major companies have left the organization over its opposition to aspects of climate change efforts .Excelon corp. PNM Resources Inc.,PG&E Corp. ,Apple Inc. and Nike Inc. One business observer noted that the divide did not fall along traditional players versus technology players but was across the board suggesting a deeper rift. US Energy Secretary Chu and Greenpeace have praised the companies that took the leap from the chamber. This is on the heels of an earlier call by one chamber official for a new "Scopes Monkey Trial" to examine the EPA's role and look at whether human activities are actually causing global warming and the damage attributed to them.
Recently Obama has restated his desire to move on climate legislation after he and Sen. Majority Leader Reid warned that it would most likely not happen until next year and certainly not before the Copenhagen conference. Some shakeup of position in the chamber crowd may help save this legislation from the delay that health care has suffered from but it is only a glimmer in a long battle.
Whoever owns the shoe
October 14 the chamber will launch the Campaign for Free Enterprise a $100 million dollar effort in what is being called a war on Democrats. When Chairman Thomas Donahue was asked about this said “First of all, it's not a declaration of war against anyone. The issue is very, very clear. This is going to be very positive program”
Shortly after accentuating the positive this telling exchange took place

Q)Much of it does seem to focused on wanting to limit regulation, limit government, limit taxation at a time when there is obviously a lot of discussion in Washington about whether more reforms or regulations are needed to prevent many of the excesses we've seen in the last year.

A)“Well, if the shoe fits, whoever owns the shoe ought to wear it.”

(UPDATE)Its,...more on the Chamber at
Digby's Hullabaloo
which has details(scroll down to post titled Gag)on the Chambers anti-government-run-heath care legislation efforts and at AlterNet Matt Stoller
has even more interesting stuff along these lines

The Chamber of Commerce, run by corrupt lobbyist Tom Donahue, has turned into a pay-to-play vehicle for right-wing causes and corporate dishonesty.

FairPoint Comminications a well oiled machine

FairPoint CEO David Hauser said recently that,a year from now FairPoint will be a "well-oiled machine."A year may be too a short time for the company to achieve well oiled machine status.
Locally the Burlington Vermont Free Press reports that a cell tower project was abruptly put on hold and a scheduled visit to the location by the PSB postponed .A dispute with the landowner over the original proposed height and the changed height of the tower is the issue .The landowner agreed to a 80 ft. tower and the plans now call for a 110ft. structure.
Last Thursday the company in the midst of restructuring its debt and on the brink of bankruptcy released a regulatory filing that confirmed it had missed interest payments on its loans and bonds. FairPoint stock traded at 41 cents per share down 88% year to date.

FairPoint warned earlier this week that the talks to restructure its debt could lead to a bankruptcy filing. It also earlier this week said lenders that collectively hold more than 50% of loans and commitment under the company's bank credit facility have agreed to wait until Oct. 30 before taking action such as accelerating maturity dates.
An analyst at KDP Investment Advisors said Thursday's news did not come as a surprise, "considering the company's weak liquidity and the disfunction of its billing and ordering systems."

A suitor in kind?
A rumor over the last few days says that Windstream Communications may be looking into bidding on the near bankrupt FairPoint. Headquartered in Little Rock, Ark., Windstream Communications according to their webpage offers phone, broadband and digital TV services, and has a long and proud history. In addition to their long and proud history they have 3 million access lines in 16 states, 1 million high-speed Internet customers, $3.2 billion in annual revenues and 7,300 employees.
How does the old joke go?........You can put to drunks together but they still can’t walk straight
Windstream Corp. last week said it would cut 350 jobs, or 5 percent of its work force, this year. Roughly 5% of their workforce (350 out of 7,100 jobs) in order to "offset revenue pressure in the residential voice business." In other words Windstream, like larger teleco Verizon is making cuts to help counter the continuing death of the copper landline.

Vermont prison health contractor fined substantially in 2006

Prison Health Service Inc. and two Vermont prisoner deaths

The Vermont Medical examiner found Wednesday that a 23 year old female prisoner held in Swanton last August died of a heart condition caused by anorexia and bulimia and because she was denied her medication to treat it. “Denial of access to medication” was a cause according to the Vermont medical examiner. An independent investigation by the state Defender General's Office found that a nurse ordered to give Ellis potassium for an eating disorder failed to do so.
An investigation is still underway but a state prison official has stated quite clearly The Department of Corrections' staff never dispenses medication — a task he said is carried out solely by Prison Health Services, the private contractor that gives medical service to the state's prisons.

A private for profit contractor provides health services to the Vermont State. Corrections Dept. Prison Health Services (PHS) a subsidiary of American Service Group a Tennessee based publicly traded company. They have provided services to Vermont for the last four years. In 2006 while renegotiating a money losing contract with state (a bid described at the time by a state officials as “possibly too aggressive”) in the face of a one million dollar loss they were faced with substantial fines and penalties for not meeting contract obligations. Replacing the required registered nurses on some shifts with licensed practical nurses was one area of concern.

A previous death in 2005
A care related prisoner wrongful death in 2005 preceded the PHS contract renegotiation with the State. But in 2007 Richard Hallworth CEO of Prison Health Service was able to comment on his relationship with the state in this manner "I want to thank the Vermont DOC for its confidence in PHS' people and capabilities to continue to render critical healthcare services in this challenging environment.”
Eight months later after the contract agreement with the state the pending 2005 health related wrongful prison death lawsuit against the State of Vermont and PHS was settled and court records sealed.

More recently PHS has defended itself regarding the Swanton death in state custody but will not seek to renew their contract. A PHS spokesman says of this “It’s a business decision” The Corrections Commissioner also states the obvious "I suspect they now know that in all likelihood they would not win the bid again,"

Prison Health Services CEO Richard Hallworth’s 2008 salaryand assorted performance bonuses and compensations were $709,391.00
America Service Group Inc. of Tennessee parent company of Prison Health Services, Inc and Correctional Health Services, LLC has a market cap of $150.1 million

Wagahai wa neko de aru

PINGIIMAYAA