We’ve been thinking all week about Kim Prangley of Stanstead, Quebec, who when she tried to walk across the border to go dancing in Derby Line was told to line up with the cars on the street and wait her turn.
Besides being unsafe and unhealthy, standing behind the exhaust pipe of one impatiently idling car and in front of the bumper of another would just feel weird.
Sort of like those dreams in which you show up at work with no clothes on. You’re standing there in line, look around you and say “Oh darn, I forgot my car.”
The people who control our border with Canada clearly believe that, even at a crossing between two small villages, walking across the line is a weird thing to do. So they pretend pedestrians are cars.
Hurricane Irene hit the Northeast Kingdom hard. We were not hit as hard as the southern part of the state, but it still caused a lot of damage. Do you have a flood or storm story you would be willing to share here or a photo? Do you think Vermont's emergency workers and media did a good job or were there gaps in the system? Do you have a neighbor or friend who went above and beyond to help people in this mess? Post a comment in the box here or send us your thoughts or story at:
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On Monday evening, I had the opportunity to talk with residents of Irasburg about the proposed Kingdom Community Wind project. There were many questions about a report written by Dr. Holland and I wanted to take this opportunity to set the record straight with your readers who may not have been able to attend the Irasburg select board meeting the other night.
Overall, Dr. Holland’s message regarding the effectiveness of national and state policies to reduce our carbon footprint is a good one. He based his presentation on a report from the National Energy Policy Institute released in November, 2010 that shows things like the carbon tax, and carbon cap and trade, are better ways to reduce carbon than mandates. However, this does not make an effective argument against the Kingdom Community Wind project, as this project has the lowest carbon footprint of electric generation sources. It is being constructed to meet the will of the Legislature, which requires electric utilities to have 20 percent of their supply from new renewable resources by 2017. Dr. Holland also mistakenly identifies Kingdom Community Wind as having a carbon cost that is 12 times higher than other renewable projects. Wind energy actually has one of the lowest carbon footprints of all energy sources when you count the life-cycle carbon cost, including manufacturing and mining costs. It is lower than nuclear and solar.
One of the earliest victims of deceitful policy is clear language. Of particular note in the case of the Lowell Wind Project:
Every professional policy analyst would state under oath that before a policy could be called "cost-effective" that it must first be "effective."
In the current policy context which includes every wind project that has ever been built in the world, the net emission of CO2 increases. For every ton avoided by emission free energy, there are 7 tons added by expansion of fossil fuels (Energy Information Administration).
Here's the Chronicle's editorial this week. We are hoping to hear your thoughts on the Safe Choices series, this judge's decision, the newspaper, the web site, the weather, a story you think we should be doing, what we have done well or screwed up lately or basically anything else that comes to mind. Please post your comments at the bottom of this editorial! THANKS! Please visit often and tell all your friends.
Almost two years ago, when we thought the story of George St. Francis had finally reached its conclusion — at least journalistically — we needed to explain what we thought we were up to. We wrote a cover letter for our submission of the series to an investigative journalism contest run by the New England Newspaper & Press Association. (It won first place.) We dug that letter up, dusted it off a bit, and offer it here as an explanation of what we think we’ve been up to.
In October 2008, in a plain brown envelope with no return address, we received a document from Orleans County Probate Court — the one, of all the courts we cover, that generates the least news.
The document was a protective order in which the judge, in strong and direct language, ordered the state and its agents not to do a long list of unpleasant things to a man named George St. Francis who, on the state’s authority, was in a program called Safe Choices.
We had heard complaints about the program before, but had never found a way into the story. Mr. St. Francis, like everyone in Safe Choices, had not only been found to be mentally retarded as a legal matter, but was also suspected of being sexually dangerous.
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