Culture Vulture

We can understand the reluctance of the Select Board to get drawn into a thornbush about harnessing commercial wind energy on Mount Equinox. Endless Energy, the Maine-based wind company that wanted to and evidently still does have designs on installing five or more large wind turbines atop little Equinox, seemed to lead only towards Endless Argument.
Given the tortured history of the failed effort by that company to get the town to go along with their proposal more than two-and-a-half years ago, it’s not surprising that the select board sought a safe, neutral course between opposing and supporting a much different and vastly more benign request to install an 80-foot tower for two small Vermont-based alternative energy start-up companies to test some of their equipment.
We would have preferred to see the board adopt the position articulated by the one dissenting Select Board member instead. Wayne Bell argued that the latest proposal was a completely seperate issue from the proposal townspeople rejected at the 2006 Town Meeting, when a war chest of $150,000 to use if push came to shove at the state’s Public Service Board, which ultimately issues or denies such permits. That directive from the town applied to the large five-turbine proposal, not a minor project such as a solitary 80-foot tower, on a site that has already seen several towers built and where a taller one is already present. This new concept is different, and it merited the select board’s support, if we are serious about actually doing something to move the region and the state towards greater reliance on renewable, alternative energy and away from fossil fuel-based energy — you know, the stuff that comes from often unfriendly nations overseas and allegedly contributes to global warming. Mr. Bell, you nailed it. At least, the position the Board ended up with has the merit of not doing any harm, we hope.
As it turned out, Endless Energy never made a formal application to build the five wind turbines, and the issue vanished — until now.
What really, of course, has nerves rattled among those opposed to ever seeing any kind of wind-related activity on the top of Equinox is the notion that the smallish test tower is but a precursor of the much larger project voters thought they turned thumbs down on in 2006. It’s worth remembering though, that the decision to set aside the $150,000 and direct the Select board to oppose the wind project came after an extended debate and many votes and amendments to the original article. That said, the town is on record as not in favor of such a project, and the select board is right to bear that in mind, but only if the discussion were about a comparable project — which it’s not, in this case.
There are plenty of reasons to oppose a five turbine or larger wind project on Equinox. By no means are we sold on the idea that Equinox is a good location. A much better one would have been the abandoned Air Force radar station in Sheffield, Vt., but that didn’t pass muster with the Public Service Board either. Too many hikers would have had their walk in the woods blighted by having to see four large wind turbines, one can only assume.
There are downsides to wind power on Equinox. There’s the aesthetic factor, first and foremost. Mother Nature did some nice work up there when the retreating glaciers from the Ice Age carved out the valley we know today a few millenia ago. There’s the question of direct benefit to the town and the area in the form of lowered electric bills — how much would that be, really? There’s the question of who pays for dismantling the towers if ultimately they prove not to be commercially viable. There’s the impact on migrating birds, bats, and the (potential) noise issue.
But on the other hand, Vermonters talk a green streak about environmental values but when push comes to shove really haven’t shown a willingness, on a commercial scale big enough to actually make an impact, to adapt to changing times or make sacrifices. Plenty of people have made smallbore lifestyle changes to live more lightly on the world and that is all to the good, but that’s a far cry from what is needed if some of the ambituous carbon reduction goals set forth in the Kyoto Treaty and other fine-sounding international agreements are actually to be achieved. Some complain endlessly about Vermont Yankee as a health hazard, but are blind to what would happen if the nuclear plant was mothballed and suddenly we had to find one-third of our electric power from somewhere else. We find reasons to oppose commercial wind projects at every turn. It’s not like wind is the end-all and be-all of the alternative energy scene, but as has often been said, it’s a piece of the puzzle.
In the wake of the volitility of the energy markets over the past two-plus years since the 2006 Town Meeting, it’s not a stretch to say that should a new proposal for wind towers on Equinox come forward, it would behoove the town to greet it with an open mind and explore the pluses and minuses. The forums the town sponsored prior to the town meeting vote that year were terrific exercises in civic engagement. Whether we’d need to go through that all over again is debatable, but hopefully, there are enough sincere environmentalists among us to treat a fresh proposal with fresh eyes, and not simply point to a nearly three year-old vote and say that vote settled the question now and forevermore.

Posted by Andrew McKeever at 3:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The votes are in and the people have spoken. While the early returns indicate that the Republican Party across the nation took one on the chin, further analysis may reveal the supposed carnage was not quite as awful as first reports indicated.
It’s certainly not as bad as the defeat suffered in 1964, when the youth vote of the time, buttressed by grief over the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, seemed to presage a generation of Democratic Party domination. Instead, the opposite happened; since then Republicans have captured the White House in all but four of the 11 presidential elections, including this year’s. And if the Democrats can recover from the total drubbing they suffered in 1984, when Ronald Reagan led the party to victory in 49 out of 50 states, then anything is possible.
However, things have certainly changed, and this week’s election may well mark a turning point where some of the cultural issues Republicans have successfully exploited — abortion, patriotism, family values, gay rights and, to a degree, in certain quarters at least, let’s be honest, racism — may have finally run their course. And thank God if they finally have. Those sorts of issues may have played well in parts of the sunbelt states but they gain the GOP little traction here. It’s important that the party not lose whatever toehold it has left in the Northeast and Midwest, because if the party is to have any future it needs to find a way to balance its pre-eminent social conservative voice with a more, and traditional Republican, moderate one.
It used to be that the party represented small town values of thriftiness, hard work, self-reliance, free enterprise, Main street businesses, along with big corporate interests. It needs to find a way back to that, and push the evangelical wing back into the corner they came out of. Not that Evangelicals and Christian fundamentalists shouldn’t have a voice in a “big tent” GOP, but it’s not a winning electoral formula to make that your base. And many would quibble with the exclusivity aura that emanates from a political party that draws its inspiration largely from an overly literal interpretation of Biblical tracts that may be great literature and offer important moral lessons, but don’t fit easily into 21st century realities.
Rather, there is ample space waiting to be occupied by some kind of political party that articulates the socially liberal, economically conservative mix that both Democrats and Republicans seem to continually fumble. Why is this so hard? The broad middle of American politics is moderate and pragmatic. It’s a philosophy that doesn’t look for excess government intrusion in private lives or the marketplace, but does see a role for government in providing for national defense, infrastructure, education and health insurance. There are things and services the private sector is inherently not well situated to provide. The rest should be left to ambitious, entrepreneurial individuals.
When it comes to social policy, the government ought to stay out of people’s personal business and intervene only when they are threats to themselves or others.
Why it’s so hard for both political parties to get this is surprising, but it would seem to offer Republicans a way out of the political wilderness. This year, a perfect storm of an extraordinarily gifted politician, Barack Obama, a severe economic downturn, lingering dissatisfaction with a poorly-thought through war of our own making, a deeply unpopular incumbent president undermined by mistakes both foreign and domestic, made for an uphill struggle for John McCain, the Republican nominee. That struggle was not made any easier by his poor choice of a running mate, Sarah Palin, whom we will probably — unfortunately — hear from again, coupled with an incredibly hamfisted campaign left the voice many expected to hear muted, until his magnificent concession speech, which reminded many people of why they liked the guy in the first place. Too late. And maybe, at 72, John McCain was just too old.
But times will change again. If there’s one thing a few decades of following politics will teach you, it’s that whatever you expect will happen, won’t happen. The world will always surprise you. The sands will shift, and even if Obama successfully negotiates the extraordinary array of difficulties that await his presidency — and let’s hope as Americans that he does — the mixture could look very different in four or eight years.
Meanwhile, Republicans have an opening if they want to recast themselves as defenders of the political center, but it’s more likely internecine warfare will break out and the neoconservative, social conservative alliance that has led the party to disaster in 2008 will continue to bicker and fumble its way deeper into an out-of-step, out -of-date vision of where American society should head and what our role should be in the global community. Whatever vigor that vision had when Ronald Reagan ushered in the modern Republican party in 1980 has long dissipated. As the poet and philosopher George Santayana once said, those who cannot recall the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them. Little of the above should be seen as applying to the Vermont Republicans, who by and large have a much clearer sense of where their party should head. But the mistakes of the national Republican Party need to be remembered, if they want to regain electoral and political relevance on a national scale. Otherwise the comparisons with 2008 being the new 1932, and Obama the new Roosevelt, could really take hold.

Posted by Andrew McKeever at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Political lawn signs have on occasion been sources of minor flash points locally. It’s useful to remember that they are indeed minor — they appear a few months before an election and go away fairly quickly afterwards. Occasionally they linger for a week or two after an election, but sooner or later they all go away.
To some people they may be an irritating eyesore, but for political candidates they are vital ways of building name recognition and buttressing the apparent strength of a candidacy. The more lawn signs, the more the likelihood that a candidate is working seriously to get a message out and that message is resonating. It’s also, perhaps even more importantly, a freedom of speech issue.
Most of them are harmless and hardly interfere with traffic safety. The rules governing their use are spelled out on the Secretary of State’s Web site, and most are reasonable. The one that gets a little too close to overkill in our view is the rule that states they have to be about 25 feet from the centerline of the road. That means many are going to be more than 10 feet off of the edge of the road, and hard to see.
Many, therefore, get placed closer. The rule should be changed to acknowledge this reality, since the signs themselves are hardly harmful. What is truly astonishing, however, given the financial straits of the state, is the apparent eagerness that the Agency of Transportation takes in yanking up offending lawn signs in the final weekend before an election.
That’s what happened last week, the last one before election Day. Hello. What is that supposed to accomplish? Five days before election day the state thinks it’s okay to send would-be citizen legislators scrambling off to some hard-to-find garage to retrieve lawn signs from the transportation agency’s garage there? Most of them don’t have that kind of time.
Running for office is tough and stressful. It’s unfortunate the state chooses to make it more so. The rules on positioning lawn signs should be relaxed and the AOT should lighten up. Certainly their timing needs an attitude adjustment. Pulling up lawn signs without any warning in the waning days of often hotly contested political campaigns when there’s a lot at stake is ridiculous.
Change the rule, or at least notify candidates ahead of time when a “sweep” is coming through. We didn’t realize the AOT had so much time and money on their hands, particularly when the condition of the state’s roads and bridges has been such an issue recently.

Posted by Andrew McKeever at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)