Editor's Note: Lendman's article is particularly timely, in light of UVM researcher Gary Flomenhoft's "Message In A Bottle" COMMONS feature on the current status of Vermont's groundwater, found in the current MUD SEASON issue of the news journal. 

Vermont's Groundwater: Pure'ly Private?

With the help of Glenn Scherer at Blue Ridge Press, I turned the state Senate vote on Vermont Yankee into an op-ed on states' rights to regulate nuclear power plant. Blue Ridge Press sends out op-eds to newspapers around the country, and Glenn hoped the states' rights slant would appeal to newspapers in some conservative states.

We'll see how that strategy works. So far, it's been picked up by The Epoch Times in New York City.

Editor's Note: We profiled our favorite Vermont-based social network - Michael Wood Lewis' Front Porch Forum out of Burlington in a recent issue of Vermont Commons - looks like they just got a big plug in Yankee magazine by Ripton writer Bill McKibben. Check it out.

While bank bailouts fatten Wall Street, states continue to battle the credit crisis. In the search for innovative solutions, some political candidates are proposing that states generate their own credit by setting up their own banks.

We've written quite extensively about local currencies here over the past five years, and will continued to do so in the weeks ahead. As the U.S. Empire's imminent bankruptcy begins to catch up to us all, forward-thinking towns are taking financial matters into their own hands.

More below the fold.

Most interesting, perhaps, is this line:

In evaluating the resources comprising the “Commonwealth” of Vermont,
we made a disturbing discovery: Most of the valuable resources in
Vermont, including minerals, groundwater, surface water, hydro sites,
airwaves, etc., are owned by out-of state corporations.  Vermont is a
banana republic without the bananas...Gary Flomenhoft teaches energy technology and policy at the University of Vermont.

It is realistic to think that the generating capacity
of Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee (ENVY) can be economically,
environmentally and cost-effectively replaced in the near term by a
diversified strategy of conservation, market purchases, and local
renewable resources here...John (Sucosh) Norton is the Chief Operating Officer
for NRG Systems, a global leader in the manufacture of wind-
measurement equipment, based in Hinesburg.  John serves on the Climate
Change Oversight Committee for the State of Vermont and has worked in

The question remaining is whether it will be any different if the
physicians and mental health experts are paid, instead, by a
profit-taking corporation...Anne Galloway is the editor of vtDigger.org, a nonprofit web-based news journal reporting in-depth on Vermont issues and events.

Good design is design for change. Good design is structurally diverse
and not dependent on any single element for its overall success...Ben Falk grows food and fuel in the lower Mad River Valley, and develops post-petroleum human habitats with Whole Systems Design, LLC.

Editor's Note: RSS up to Russell Longcore's DumpDC blog for more.

You may have seen Edwin Vieira’s three-part series at DumpDC.com,
which was a dissenting opinion about secession. I think that his
analysis is wrong in all but one point. After all he is a Yankee and
educated at Harvard (Just kidding, Ed…kind of…mostly). But there is one
point he makes that is unarguable. That is the absolute requirement of
a seceding state to wield the Power Of The Purse.