New Year Eve and the last Friday cat blogging of 2010

New Year's Eve Friday cat blogging

Also some lyrics for no special reason at all.

To hear that old soul stirrer slamming through the night
Tombstone train cuts its own daylight

Ain't gonna ride no more

Though my leathers worn and my cuffs in tatters
My hearts on straight and that's all that matters
If I lose a few moves it aint no loss
Cause there's only one border left for me to cross

King of El Paso
or listen here

Hey, who owns this nuclear dump?

It may come to pass that Vermont Yankee’s nuclear waste will ultimately end up on the Texas-New Mexico border in a privately owned 1,338 acre waste site.
Vermont’s partner in Texas is Waste Control Specialists, a nuclear waste disposal site owned by Texas billionaire Harold Simmons. A Texas news magazine calls
Simmons the “King of Superfund Sites,” and notes an example of his genius:

[Simmons] has figured out a way to clean up a radioactive mess one of his companies made in Ohio by—according to some experts—creating another radioactive mess in West Texas. The best part: he’s gotten the folks in West Texas to support the plan and the federal government to pay for it.

Harold Simmons “King of the Superfund” may also benefit from two of Vermont Gov. Douglas’ appointed officials that voted against what some see as the state’s interest. In NovemberVermont state nuclear engineer Uldis Vanags and Steven Wark director of consumer affairs and public information for the Vermont Department of Public Service as members of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission voted preliminary approval to allow the Texas nuclear waste site to accept waste from other states.

Vtdigger.com reports that:

In audio testimony, Vanags and Wark voted against amendments to the proposed rules that would have given Compact members first dibs to the landfill and also that would have delayed action and allowed the Texas and Vermont legislatures an opportunity to weigh in on the matter

This will end Vermont’s exclusive deal with Simmons’ Waste Control Specialties and expand its potential profit base. Wark and Vanags rationale was that this would lower costs for Vermont. Governor elect Peter Shumlin immediately raised concerns that opening up the site might limit space and thus the access needed for VY’s waste. “It’s a race for space,” Shumlin told The New York Times. “When push comes to shove, the first waste that arrives is the waste that gets in.” The waste compact will meet on January 4 to make the decision on how much low level waste can be processed.

Earlier legislative changes in Texas and national reclassification of nuclear waste types made Simmons’ private nuclear waste site possible. In a 2006 interview he explained

“It took us six years to get legislation on this passed in Austin, but now we’ve got it all passed. We first had to change the law to where a private company can own a license [to handle radioactive waste], and we did that. Then we got another law passed that said they can only issue one license. Of course, we were the only ones that applied.”

Among Harold Simmons’ many civic minded philanthropies he also donates heavily to conservative republican causes. He is one of Texas governor Rick Perry’s biggest contributors, partly funded Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads against John Kerry and anti-Obama ads.

“Does this fit with the way Save the Children works?”

A person could be agnostic about a soda tax and this might still raise more than a few questions about conflicting motives. Save the Children has dropped its previously active support for a tax on soft drinks. The group had been a leader in the effort as way to fight childhood obesity in campaigns in Mississippi, New Mexico, Washington State, Philadelphia and the District of Columbia.
What changed? Save the Children’s chief operating officer claims there is no connection between the discussions they are having regarding grants from Coca Cola or a $5 million dollar grant already received from PepsiCo.

“We looked at it [support of the soft drink tax] and said, ‘Is this something we should be out there doing and does this fit with the way that Save the Children works?’ ” said Carolyn Miles, chief operating officer. “And the answer was no.”

Call it partnering
Nice li’l non-profit you have there. Sure could use a coat of fresh paint though.

Alternative: Nice soft drink you have there? It’d be a shame if it was taxed.

Similar questions about conflicting interests were raised in 2009 when the doctor’s organization American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) received a six figure grant from Coca Cola to develop consumer education content on beverages and sweeteners for FamilyDoctor.org, a consumer health Web site

Tearing up Republicans

John Boehner just ups and cries lately. Why is he crying, are they just crocodile tears? Like TPM’s Josh Marshall I am also: Having a hard time reconciling the teary John Boehner of late with the cold, hard, nicotine-stained pol we've all known for the last 20 years. No doubt it’s complex.

Long ago on a flatbed railroad car in New Hampshire what might have been snow flakes but what was believed to be public crying (over come with emotion!) rapidly ended the 1972 presidential primary bid of Maine’s Democratic Sen. Ed Muskie. Times have changed and public displays of emotion are more accepted. They also help ratings. We all now know that Glenn Beck uses Vick’s Vapo-rub under his eyes to bring on the tears for his followers.

The American Dream may be the cause. On CBS’s 60 Minutes when asked about his crying he said “Making sure these kids have a shot at the American Dream like I did is very important” and choked up and cried. One of Boehner’s fellow congressmen explains that he is "one of the more sensitive people" in Congress and that he often gets touched enough to cry.

Hunter S. Thompson famously blamed the exotic drug Ibogaine for Ed Muskie’s tears but I wouldn’t go so far in this situation. Maybe the simplest explanation could be true here. Unlikely as it may seem, maybe Boehner is just a sensitive guy.

However the NY Times Opinionator blog’s Timothy Eagan notes the future Speaker of the House’s record, is a genuine crying shame for the middle class.

But a look at Boehner’s record during his two decades in Congress shows a man who has voted against nearly every boost for the working stiff. There’s no empathy for those with the longest shots at the American Dream in his voting pattern. Instead, we see a politician who is hard-hearted in his legislative treatment of the people now coping with the kind of economic conditions in which the Boehner family grew up.

Bush v. Gore, It seems ages ago

On December 9th 2000 the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in a decision that effectively ended the Florida presidential vote recount. This gave the victory to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in their quest for the presidency and vice presidency.

Wrote Justice Stephen Breyer in his dissent of the ruling:

"We do risk a self-inflicted wound - a wound that may harm not just the court, but the nation."

"Do you think I don't know the difference between an internal fault and an external influence! No, no, no, there's something going on here. Some dirty work they won't touch with their lily white hands!"

Dr.Who (Tom Baker,the Fourth Doctor in The Brian of Morbius)

Obama:A taxing compromise

“Right now, Democrats and Republicans in Congress are working through some differences to try to get this done,” Mr. Obama said. “And there are some serious debates that are still taking place. Republicans want to make permanent the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. I have argued that we can’t afford it right now. But what I’ve also said is we’ve got to find consensus here, because a middle-class tax hike would be very tough not only on working families. It would also be a drag on our economy at this moment.”

Caved? Or just an ugly compromise?
The deal
• Extends unemployment insurance for 13 months. Two million workers in December, and 7 million over the next year, would have lost benefits otherwise.
• Provides a one-year, 2 percentage point reduction in employees' Social Security payroll taxes, lowering the rate from 6.2% to 4.2%, at a cost of $120 billion.
• Keeps the Earned Income Tax Credit and American Opportunity Tax Credit increases from last year's economic stimulus law, for another $40 billion in tax cuts for families and students.
• Allows business to write off 100% of their capital purchases next year.
• Sets the estate tax at 35% for two years, with a $5 million exemption on assets that's higher than last year's $3.5 million. The rate came down under Bush's policy from 55% before 2001 to 45% in 2009 before expiring this year. It was set to return at 55% next year.

And, a little about the Democrats and the Bush tax cuts issue Digby sez:
Setting Up The Battle On Their Turf

I also think the Democrats are idiots not to have dispensed with this issue early on. But I'm guessing they too think this issue isn't a winner for them so they are always just planned to punt. But that raises the question again about the viability of the party. If they cannot even make a winning argument out of cutting taxes for 98% of the people then I'm not sure what they're good for.

And Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders from the other day spells it all out clearly

In an impassioned Senate floor speech last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said that there is a war being waged on America's "disappearing and shrinking middle class."
"We talk about a lot of things on the floor of the Senate, but somehow we forget to talk about the reality of who is winning in this economy, and who is losing," he said. "And it is very clear to anyone who spends two minutes studying the issue that the people on top are doing extraordinarily well, at the same time as the middle class is collapsing and poverty is increasing."

TRIHT'-ee-um

These two things I know are true; water flows down hill and Friday afternoon is when the health department and Vermont Yankee release troublesome news. This past Friday afternoon, reports from the Vt. Health Dept. leached slowly into the weekend news flow that two monitoring wells(one near a former drinking water well )showed elevated levels of radioactive tritium.

A Vermont Yankee spokesman saw this as good news because he claimed it showed the tritiated water was moving away from the area of the water well and toward the Connecticut River.

The state Health Department, reporting the test results late Friday afternoon, was less positive, calling them “of particular concern” because it meant tritium was again found in the area of a former drinking well. The detection of tritium in that well in October raised concerns because it was deeper than previous findings, suggesting that the radioactive isotope could be headed into aquifers that reach the public water supply.

In mid-November Vermont Yankee shut down it’s voluntary contaminated water extraction effort after shipping out, by truck to Tennessee 300,000 gallons of water for disposal processing. Monitoring will continue and an NRC report on the ground water extraction is due out sometime in January. The NRC held a non-public exit meeting[?] in November no findings where released

The NRC’s Sheehan said, however, that there were higher concentrations closer to the Connecticut River as the plume has moved, which was expected.

Check for more updates any Friday afternoon.