This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on May 20, 2010.
Nuclear: The Life-Saving Alternative?
You may or may not have ever heard of Adam Carolla — he's a radio personality who also hosted The Man Show on cable's Comedy Central and co-hosted Loveline, a sex and relationship advice show, with Dr. Drew Pinsky. Recently, tech website Gizmodo.com asked Carolla his opinions on a topic I've written about here before: nuclear power.
Normally, I would not use someone like Carolla as entree into a column topic, but what he had to say, in just a few minutes, was spot-on (though crude — if you look for Carolla's video at Gizmodo, be sure to watch once the kids are in bed).
The interview was posted days after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and a month after the Massey coal mine disaster in West Virginia. Regarding nuclear power, Carolla asks this pointed question: after 11 people died drilling for oil and nearly 30 died digging for coal in just the last month, exactly how many people have died producing nuclear power in the United States in the past month, or year, or decade?
His answer is zero. If we were to choose a way to produce power solely on the safety of the workers behind that power, nuclear is the clear choice.
Now, Carolla was riffing, and didn't stop to think that uranium is also mined (albeit by non-Americans). There are dangers to uranium mining, not the least of which is exposure to radioactive dust and radon gas. But these are risks that can (and should) be mitigated. Coal miners, though, are never quite sure if they will emerge from the mine when the make their way in.
Environmentally, the threat posed by offshore oil drilling is no longer just a threat — it is about as real as it can get. So real, in fact, that President Obama is having second thoughts about his plans to allow more such drilling, as is California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Coal mining is no friend of the environment either, especially when the mountaintop removal method is used. Just think about that — removal of a mountaintop so we can burn the coal that the mountain is made of.
There are dangers, to be sure, in nuclear power. The last two years of news out of Vermont Yankee show that mistakes can and will be made; this is not to mention Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. These lessons cannot be fogotten.
These are, however, extreme examples. Given what we have learned since the last nuclear power plant in the United States came on line in 1996, and what other countries have learned, we know we can build safe, effective plants that can not only produce massive amounts of power in a relatively small space, but which can also reuse their own fuel, recycling it instead of sending if off for permanent storage.
Our power needs are growing and will continue to grow. Just imagine if electricity was clean, bountiful, and cheap. Just imagine quantum-leap discoveries in battery technology that would make the electric car ubiquitous. Just imagine if we no longer need fossil fuels to produce electricity nor run our cars.
If we redouble our efforts to bolster our reliance on renewables, continuing to improve solar cell efficiency and continuing to build wind farms in the right places, that will help. But what will also help is for we, as a nation, to decide that nuclear power must be a part of that future, too.
------------
I want to take this opportunity to bid farewell, on these pages, to Mike Benevento. I have had the pleasure of writing opposite him for a year. Our point and counterpoint columns have reaffirmed to me that it not only possible to have civil discussions about matters we disagree on, it is absolutely essential.
In the end, we share a love for this country and its democracy. We both know that there are a few things that are essential to our freedoms: a free press, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, and a system of government that allows for the peaceful and orderly transfer of power. Most likely, you reading this also share these values.
I look forward to debating the finer points of politics and the world with someone new. But be warned - you do have some large shoes to fill.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
The F-35 and the Cost of Safety
This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on May 6, 2010.
The F-35 and the Cost of Safety
Back in October of 1988, I wrote a story for the Vermont Cynic about the Atlas nuclear missile sites in northern Vermont, including one in Alburgh. This story was close to my heart, because for years I'd driven by the Alburgh site, as it was at the end of a back road between my family's camp in Alburgh Springs and Alburgh Town.
When I went to interview a neighboring property owner in 1988, a time of relative fear of nuclear holocaust, I asked how he felt when the government put the missile in place. Surely they were scared to death about having such a powerful weapon buried just a few feet under the ground.
The owner's response was, "Well, I guess it's scary if you think about it now, but back then, all we knew was that missile was there to keep us safe."
When I was in the National Guard, my home armory was in the middle of a neighborhood in Swanton. We kept our jeeps, trucks, and M60A3 tank in the motor pool, separated from the neighbors by just a chain link fence. The armory, like Williston's today, was used for community purposes as well as for the military - a preschool used our classrooms during the school year.
But come training days, when we had to start up those vehicles, we did so knowing that we were disturbing the peace. The engine of an M60A3 is anything but quiet, and after a few months sitting idle, it could throw off thick, black exhaust that would blanket the neighborhood. Once, so I'm told, someone hit the switch on the tank's smoke generator. Having experienced the thick, white smoke on training battlefields, I could only imagine what the neighborhood looked like.
I'm certain that on training days, our neighbors watched us warily, so they could be prepared for the billowing exhaust, the roar of the engine, and the loud squeak of the tracks as we maneuvered the nearly 50-ton monster around our grounds. Perhaps those neighbors also had the feeling that despite the inconvenience, we were there to help keep them safe.
When my family and I moved to Williston, we lived on North Brownell Road. We quickly found that our home, like the Lamplight Acres neighborhood across the street from us, was on the landing path of some flights flown by the Vermont Air National Guard. The first few fly-overs were a surprise to us, as we had quickly learned that civilian planes rarely ever flew overhead.
By the next summer, the loud whine of the jets' engines were just background noise, and it was actually exciting to see the jets fly so low over our house that you could see the pilots and hear the hydraulics whine as the pilot worked the controls.
When the kids asked what the loud noise was, the sentiment expressed by that Alburgh property owner always came to mind. That plane, that noise, was telling us that someone was up there to keep us safe.
Having experienced living on the landing path of F-16s hardly compares to those who live closer to the airport and will have to deal with increased noise from the proposed F-35. I can only imagine the noise when one of these advanced fighters engages its engines and afterburners to move 15 tons of metal from a standstill to take-off speed.
However, just as we cannot reasonably pull the F-16s out of the airport and maintain the same security in our skies, we cannot fail to innovate. The F-35 is the latest innovation, and the Vermont Air Guard is right to feel honored to be one of only a handful of bases where the F-35 is being considered for deployment over the next half-decade.
That honor is probably little consolation to the airport's neighbors, just as it is little consolation that some tests done so far show the F-35 is only slightly louder than the F-16. Tell that to a child woken by afterburners roaring for night missions.
However, our service men and women need to be using the latest equipment possible, in order to help secure our freedom and safety. This is less a liberal or conservative issue than it is a community one.
My suggestion is that we, as a community, work with the Guard to be sure that when Vermont is chosen as a site, we can make the situation the best possible, rather than work against even bringing the new planes here.
The F-35 and the Cost of Safety
Back in October of 1988, I wrote a story for the Vermont Cynic about the Atlas nuclear missile sites in northern Vermont, including one in Alburgh. This story was close to my heart, because for years I'd driven by the Alburgh site, as it was at the end of a back road between my family's camp in Alburgh Springs and Alburgh Town.
When I went to interview a neighboring property owner in 1988, a time of relative fear of nuclear holocaust, I asked how he felt when the government put the missile in place. Surely they were scared to death about having such a powerful weapon buried just a few feet under the ground.
The owner's response was, "Well, I guess it's scary if you think about it now, but back then, all we knew was that missile was there to keep us safe."
When I was in the National Guard, my home armory was in the middle of a neighborhood in Swanton. We kept our jeeps, trucks, and M60A3 tank in the motor pool, separated from the neighbors by just a chain link fence. The armory, like Williston's today, was used for community purposes as well as for the military - a preschool used our classrooms during the school year.
But come training days, when we had to start up those vehicles, we did so knowing that we were disturbing the peace. The engine of an M60A3 is anything but quiet, and after a few months sitting idle, it could throw off thick, black exhaust that would blanket the neighborhood. Once, so I'm told, someone hit the switch on the tank's smoke generator. Having experienced the thick, white smoke on training battlefields, I could only imagine what the neighborhood looked like.
I'm certain that on training days, our neighbors watched us warily, so they could be prepared for the billowing exhaust, the roar of the engine, and the loud squeak of the tracks as we maneuvered the nearly 50-ton monster around our grounds. Perhaps those neighbors also had the feeling that despite the inconvenience, we were there to help keep them safe.
When my family and I moved to Williston, we lived on North Brownell Road. We quickly found that our home, like the Lamplight Acres neighborhood across the street from us, was on the landing path of some flights flown by the Vermont Air National Guard. The first few fly-overs were a surprise to us, as we had quickly learned that civilian planes rarely ever flew overhead.
By the next summer, the loud whine of the jets' engines were just background noise, and it was actually exciting to see the jets fly so low over our house that you could see the pilots and hear the hydraulics whine as the pilot worked the controls.
When the kids asked what the loud noise was, the sentiment expressed by that Alburgh property owner always came to mind. That plane, that noise, was telling us that someone was up there to keep us safe.
Having experienced living on the landing path of F-16s hardly compares to those who live closer to the airport and will have to deal with increased noise from the proposed F-35. I can only imagine the noise when one of these advanced fighters engages its engines and afterburners to move 15 tons of metal from a standstill to take-off speed.
However, just as we cannot reasonably pull the F-16s out of the airport and maintain the same security in our skies, we cannot fail to innovate. The F-35 is the latest innovation, and the Vermont Air Guard is right to feel honored to be one of only a handful of bases where the F-35 is being considered for deployment over the next half-decade.
That honor is probably little consolation to the airport's neighbors, just as it is little consolation that some tests done so far show the F-35 is only slightly louder than the F-16. Tell that to a child woken by afterburners roaring for night missions.
However, our service men and women need to be using the latest equipment possible, in order to help secure our freedom and safety. This is less a liberal or conservative issue than it is a community one.
My suggestion is that we, as a community, work with the Guard to be sure that when Vermont is chosen as a site, we can make the situation the best possible, rather than work against even bringing the new planes here.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Advice for the Tea Party
This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on April 22, 2010.
Advice for the Tea Party
The Tea Party movement has been active for about a year now, and with the movement's rise comes a lot of questions. Despite the fact that I don't agree with most of the Tea Party's message, they are a continuation of the great American spirit of dissent and protest.
The common use of the Gadsden Flag by Partiers, with its yellow field, coiled rattlesnake, and "Don't Tread on Me" message, is the group's own attempt to link back to our revolutionary heritage.
The Doonesbury cartoon series has noticed, too: When perpetual hippie Zonker attended a Tea Party rally, he heard Partiers chanting "Down with the Tyrants!" Zonker noted they had the same "outasight" message his generation had. Zonker also found common cause with a Partier who was out to "stick it to the man."
The Tea Party, though, has image problems it needs to deal with. I'm sure you've heard these stories:
At a January rally in New Mexico, news reports said that "many" of the Partiers showed up with loaded semi-automatic weapons and holstered pistols. All perfectly legal, but the image this sort of thing projects to the average American, who supports gun rights but is wary of guns, is one of aggression and conflict.
Charges of racism in the Tea Party have also come up again and again. Many examples I cannot repeat here, but this is one: Calling the health care act "white slavery" senselessly and callously belittles the actual slavery the ancestors of some of our black citizens had to endure.
Finally, a common scene depicted at some rallies has the face of President Barack Obama placed over the image of Adolph Hitler. Aside from the fact that nothing Obama's administration has done approaches Nazism, there is Godwin's Law, which states that if you start comparing people to Hitler, the discussion has, by default, gone on too long.
Has the discussion gone on too long?
Last month, my colleague on the right-hand page, Mike Benevento, noted that the Tea Party movement was fragile. The movement, he wrote, "risks fizzling out." Mike noted that the movement had to not only grow from the grass-roots, but it also had to unify nationally. Otherwise, it risked being just a local phenomenon, with no national influence.
I agree with Mike, but his advice must be only part of the movement's long-term survival plan. If it continues to appeal to the fringes of the right wing, the ones who insist on screaming "baby killers!" and "socialists!" and even "Nazis!" at every turn, they will lose any hope of wide appeal.
I've seen this sort of thing happen before, up-close, and on the left. When I was a student at UVM, because of my work on the Vermont Cynic, I was asked by a far-left campus group to help produce their own alternative newspaper. It was called ?The Gadfly, and it contained a fair number of good stories about students working with organizations in Burlington to help the city's poor and down-trodden.
These stories had a real shot of getting more students involved in social action. However, the stories were buried between reprints from Granma International (an English-language newspaper from Cuba, which extolled the virtues of Castro and his Revolution) and the People's World (a communist weekly from New York City). The Gadfly was largely ignored.
The lesson is that a good, positive message of change can easily be derailed by being connected too closely to extreme messages that the common man has no interest in hearing.
The Tea Party's raison d'etre now is to be against the health care law. If that's all it has to hang its hat on, then I don't think the Party has much life left in it. They may help Republicans pick up a few seats in November, but I also think that for every negative message about the law the Republicans and the Tea Party have to offer, there are (at least) two positive stories about how the law will make the average American's health better and more secure.
The movement's other major issue, the raging deficit, is a big concern; but the only way to stop that now would be to leave our troops in a lurch or to allow the bottom to drop out of the economy. Obama has plans to bring our troops home and hopes with the rest of us that the economy is rebounding, bringing us back to the surpluses of the Clinton years.
The Tea Party might be a force for change over the next few years; they just need to be sure what they want to change is worth changing, and that they do it with rational arguments and tempered words.
Advice for the Tea Party
The Tea Party movement has been active for about a year now, and with the movement's rise comes a lot of questions. Despite the fact that I don't agree with most of the Tea Party's message, they are a continuation of the great American spirit of dissent and protest.
The common use of the Gadsden Flag by Partiers, with its yellow field, coiled rattlesnake, and "Don't Tread on Me" message, is the group's own attempt to link back to our revolutionary heritage.
The Doonesbury cartoon series has noticed, too: When perpetual hippie Zonker attended a Tea Party rally, he heard Partiers chanting "Down with the Tyrants!" Zonker noted they had the same "outasight" message his generation had. Zonker also found common cause with a Partier who was out to "stick it to the man."
The Tea Party, though, has image problems it needs to deal with. I'm sure you've heard these stories:
At a January rally in New Mexico, news reports said that "many" of the Partiers showed up with loaded semi-automatic weapons and holstered pistols. All perfectly legal, but the image this sort of thing projects to the average American, who supports gun rights but is wary of guns, is one of aggression and conflict.
Charges of racism in the Tea Party have also come up again and again. Many examples I cannot repeat here, but this is one: Calling the health care act "white slavery" senselessly and callously belittles the actual slavery the ancestors of some of our black citizens had to endure.
Finally, a common scene depicted at some rallies has the face of President Barack Obama placed over the image of Adolph Hitler. Aside from the fact that nothing Obama's administration has done approaches Nazism, there is Godwin's Law, which states that if you start comparing people to Hitler, the discussion has, by default, gone on too long.
Has the discussion gone on too long?
Last month, my colleague on the right-hand page, Mike Benevento, noted that the Tea Party movement was fragile. The movement, he wrote, "risks fizzling out." Mike noted that the movement had to not only grow from the grass-roots, but it also had to unify nationally. Otherwise, it risked being just a local phenomenon, with no national influence.
I agree with Mike, but his advice must be only part of the movement's long-term survival plan. If it continues to appeal to the fringes of the right wing, the ones who insist on screaming "baby killers!" and "socialists!" and even "Nazis!" at every turn, they will lose any hope of wide appeal.
I've seen this sort of thing happen before, up-close, and on the left. When I was a student at UVM, because of my work on the Vermont Cynic, I was asked by a far-left campus group to help produce their own alternative newspaper. It was called ?The Gadfly, and it contained a fair number of good stories about students working with organizations in Burlington to help the city's poor and down-trodden.
These stories had a real shot of getting more students involved in social action. However, the stories were buried between reprints from Granma International (an English-language newspaper from Cuba, which extolled the virtues of Castro and his Revolution) and the People's World (a communist weekly from New York City). The Gadfly was largely ignored.
The lesson is that a good, positive message of change can easily be derailed by being connected too closely to extreme messages that the common man has no interest in hearing.
The Tea Party's raison d'etre now is to be against the health care law. If that's all it has to hang its hat on, then I don't think the Party has much life left in it. They may help Republicans pick up a few seats in November, but I also think that for every negative message about the law the Republicans and the Tea Party have to offer, there are (at least) two positive stories about how the law will make the average American's health better and more secure.
The movement's other major issue, the raging deficit, is a big concern; but the only way to stop that now would be to leave our troops in a lurch or to allow the bottom to drop out of the economy. Obama has plans to bring our troops home and hopes with the rest of us that the economy is rebounding, bringing us back to the surpluses of the Clinton years.
The Tea Party might be a force for change over the next few years; they just need to be sure what they want to change is worth changing, and that they do it with rational arguments and tempered words.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Correcting health care misinformation
This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on April 8, 2010.
Correcting health care misinformation
My task this week is to write about the new health care law, and you might think that I would be full of praise for the new law and its provisions. But I have something more important to write about — don't get me wrong, I am excited the bill made it through the congressional gauntlet and the President was able to sign it, but I've heard a lot of misinformation about the law that I think has to be addressed, lest that misinformation become "common knowledge".
First, the response of many Republicans to the new law was to launch a campaign to "repeal and replace" the law. Obviously, the minority party does not have the votes to do either yet, but the plan was to get enough votes in Congress in the next election.
I'm not going to say it is outside the realm of possibility, but I think the voter anger that the Republicans will have to tap into to get sufficient numbers, a whopping two-thirds of both houses of Congress, simply won't be there in November — at least not at the level needed to put this plan in motion. I think as people hear more about the law, they will come to agree with its provisions and look forward to them coming into effect.
Republican leaders, initially so keen on "repeal and replace" that it was reported as a new campaign mantra, seem to have already begun to back away from the notion. That's a bit of good news.
Another common misperception, willingly hoisted upon the public by conservative pundits and politicians, is that the law creates "socialized medicine." Socialism is a big dirty word in Washington, and is bandied about with abandon. What the law provides, however, has no resemblance to socialism.
Socialists believe in government take-over of industry. The health care law is no government take-over. Health insurance, for most, is still provided by insurance companies. Doctors are not government employees. Drugs are not produced by government factories. Under the law, the private sector is still a vital part of the health care system.
Anyone who is decrying the law as a socialist take-over is either not aware of what the word means or is deliberately using inflammatory language to scare the public.
Another tidbit playing on peoples' fear is that the law creates a new IRS army, and that one of 16,500 armed agents will be knocking on your doors to see proof that you are properly insured. There will be penalties, eventually, if individuals remain uninsured, and these will likely be assessed at tax time. The personal mandate is necessary for the system to work, to spread the liability. But the law is also quite specific — the IRS may not confiscate assets or property, nor impose jail time, for failure to have insurance.
Simply put, armed agents will not be knocking on your door for failure to comply with the law.
Also in the news of late is word that over a dozen Attorneys General have filed or plan to file suit against the federal government, alleging that the new law is an unconstitutional power grab. Other Attorneys General, with a bit more common sense and legal precedent on their side, have refused to sign on to the effort.
The Supreme Court, in its prior rulings, has said that insurance regulation is an interstate commerce issue that Congress can regulate. Even conservative stalwarts like Justice Antonin Scalia have agreed, if reluctantly, that such regulation is constitutional.
I won't say that all of these cases are political posturing, but some of them surely are; and they won't come cheap. Attorneys General in Kentucky and Arizona said they would be a waste of taxpayer money. Vermont's Attorney General has not even wasted space on his website to announce that he won't join in any such frivolous lawsuits.
The fact is that we now have a health care law in effect. It is not perfect — far from it — but it is a starting point. As its features are phased in over the next few months and the next few years, we will be able to see what's working and what's not and make changes to ensure that the economy can adapt to it. The public, in the meantime, can set its collective mind at ease by checking on what the politicians and pundits are saying, discarding the misinformation, and learning more about what the law actually does.
Correcting health care misinformation
My task this week is to write about the new health care law, and you might think that I would be full of praise for the new law and its provisions. But I have something more important to write about — don't get me wrong, I am excited the bill made it through the congressional gauntlet and the President was able to sign it, but I've heard a lot of misinformation about the law that I think has to be addressed, lest that misinformation become "common knowledge".
First, the response of many Republicans to the new law was to launch a campaign to "repeal and replace" the law. Obviously, the minority party does not have the votes to do either yet, but the plan was to get enough votes in Congress in the next election.
I'm not going to say it is outside the realm of possibility, but I think the voter anger that the Republicans will have to tap into to get sufficient numbers, a whopping two-thirds of both houses of Congress, simply won't be there in November — at least not at the level needed to put this plan in motion. I think as people hear more about the law, they will come to agree with its provisions and look forward to them coming into effect.
Republican leaders, initially so keen on "repeal and replace" that it was reported as a new campaign mantra, seem to have already begun to back away from the notion. That's a bit of good news.
Another common misperception, willingly hoisted upon the public by conservative pundits and politicians, is that the law creates "socialized medicine." Socialism is a big dirty word in Washington, and is bandied about with abandon. What the law provides, however, has no resemblance to socialism.
Socialists believe in government take-over of industry. The health care law is no government take-over. Health insurance, for most, is still provided by insurance companies. Doctors are not government employees. Drugs are not produced by government factories. Under the law, the private sector is still a vital part of the health care system.
Anyone who is decrying the law as a socialist take-over is either not aware of what the word means or is deliberately using inflammatory language to scare the public.
Another tidbit playing on peoples' fear is that the law creates a new IRS army, and that one of 16,500 armed agents will be knocking on your doors to see proof that you are properly insured. There will be penalties, eventually, if individuals remain uninsured, and these will likely be assessed at tax time. The personal mandate is necessary for the system to work, to spread the liability. But the law is also quite specific — the IRS may not confiscate assets or property, nor impose jail time, for failure to have insurance.
Simply put, armed agents will not be knocking on your door for failure to comply with the law.
Also in the news of late is word that over a dozen Attorneys General have filed or plan to file suit against the federal government, alleging that the new law is an unconstitutional power grab. Other Attorneys General, with a bit more common sense and legal precedent on their side, have refused to sign on to the effort.
The Supreme Court, in its prior rulings, has said that insurance regulation is an interstate commerce issue that Congress can regulate. Even conservative stalwarts like Justice Antonin Scalia have agreed, if reluctantly, that such regulation is constitutional.
I won't say that all of these cases are political posturing, but some of them surely are; and they won't come cheap. Attorneys General in Kentucky and Arizona said they would be a waste of taxpayer money. Vermont's Attorney General has not even wasted space on his website to announce that he won't join in any such frivolous lawsuits.
The fact is that we now have a health care law in effect. It is not perfect — far from it — but it is a starting point. As its features are phased in over the next few months and the next few years, we will be able to see what's working and what's not and make changes to ensure that the economy can adapt to it. The public, in the meantime, can set its collective mind at ease by checking on what the politicians and pundits are saying, discarding the misinformation, and learning more about what the law actually does.
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