Radio archives are here! Use the controls on our radio archive page to listen to past shows of note (archived shows are available for a limited time only). True North airs daily between 11:00 am - 12:00 noon on Radio Vermont's WDEV, AM 550 & FM 96.1, and on WTWK, 1070 AM (Burlington).

The Pitfalls of Municipally Owned Broadband
By Robert Maynard

In this week’s elsewhere section there is a Burlington Free Press article that covers the efforts to bring municipally owned broadband services to about 22 towns of Central Vermont. The project is known as the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network. Some watchers of this program have raised a red flag in noting that the person behind this project, Tim Nulty, is the same person behind the ill-fated Burlington Telecom project. By now most of our readers should be familiar with the problems associated with BT that left taxpayers on the hook for $17 million and counting. There is an argument over whether the problem of mismanagement should be left at the feet of Nulty or his successor. A question that has not been considered is whether municipally owned broadband services is a good idea to begin with. Perhaps we should be re-examining the concept itself, rather than trying to determine who to blame for mismanagement.

Toward that end, I would like to refer our readers to a study done in 2004 by the Heartland Institute entitled "Municipally Owned Broadband Networks: A Critical Evaluation". There was an update to the report which concluded: "This analysis, revised and updated to reflect national and local changes during the past two years, finds the case for municipal ownership of broadband networks is even weaker than it was then."

Here is a brief summary of the nine points expressed in the study...

Who Profits from Racism, Conservatives or Liberals?
By Rob Roper

No, what is truly disturbing are the tactics these so-called "mainstream" media types were willing to stoop to in order to fulfill their agenda. Specifically, the call by JournoList member Spencer Ackerman to, "take one of them [any conservative Obama critic] — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists," in order to distract attention away from negative stories about their preferred candidate.

There it is in black and white (no pun intended): the left playing the race card and consciously lying about it with no moral inhibitions whatsoever. Nice people, huh. At least the light of truth and transparency is now shining brightly on this practice and its perpetrators.

Beau Geste or Mal Geste?
By Martin Harris

Or maybe it simply proves the Progressives’ basic point of self-identification: that they are smarter than the rest of us, are therefore our natural-born leaders, and that we should be grateful for whatever they do even when we can’t comprehend why they’re doing it. If so, what I have mistakenly interpreted as a pair of "mal gestes" or political gotchas, should be accepted with suitable humility, each as a "beau geste" of noble intent, executed by a pair of noble institutions each acting as pater familias for us, their political children in constant need of adult supervision.
 

True North Radio Special
Listen to our recent program on Education with special guest Retta Dunlap. 

"Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty." -- Samuel Adams

The Campaign to Nowhere
From Vermont Tiger, July 31, 2010

These are times when voters and the people they elect actually will be confronting those famous "tough choices" we hear so much about.  In Vermont, the new governor and legislature will be faced with a budget deficit that is estimated to be more than $120 million.  For the last two years, the state has managed to balance its budget through a combination of modest spending cuts and massive doses of federal "stimulus" money.  The presumption was that fiscal reforms and economic recovery would put the state back on its feet so that it wouldn’t need additional handouts from Uncle Sugar.

Didn’t happen.

So now we are where we are and wondering what to do about it.

Nobody seems to know.  Or, anyone who does, isn’t talking.

Pilot program to bring high-speed internet to rural Vermont
By John Briggs, The Burlington free Press, July 27, 2010

Project Director Tim Nulty said the pilot would "prove our concept" of creating a high-speed Internet network for rural Vermonters, at no risk to taxpayers. Nulty has projected profitability for the network in its fifth year of operation, if 49 percent of the households in the 22 towns subscribe.

Nulty was general manager of Burlington Telecom from 2001 until November 2007. Burlington Chief Administrative Officer Jonathan Leopold has said BT was in serious financial difficulties by late 2007. A Blue Ribbon Commission said earlier this year that BT spent "far too much" on the construction of its network. BT's promise of self-sufficiency has never been met.

What Price Culturally Irreversible Sentimentality?
Caledonia Record Editorial, July 28, 2010

We were disappointed to hear that Brian Dubie, Republican candidate for governor, has climbed aboard Sens. Leahy and Sanders' latest plan to save Vermont's family dairy farms. We are disappointed because it won't work, and only a cynic in an election year would propose it.

Leahy and Sanders are pushing a plan to subsidize Vermont dairy farmers for not producing milk. As old timers say, if you wait long enough, what went around will go around again. This is one of those times. Way back in the 1950s, the federal government paid farmers not to grow wheat because we had mountains of surplus wheat throughout the mid-west and prairie states. Whatever went wrong, as long as the subsidies for not growing wheat continued, the mountains of surplus grew higher.

Vermont Candidate for U.S. Senate Hits Trails to Campaign
From Fox 44 News, July 22 2010

The campaign trail can lead candidates to all sorts of places, including actual trails.

"I'm here today to go up and take a look at things, and to talk about the environment to family, friends and supporters, and whoever we meet along the trail," said Len Britton.

Britton is the Republican challenging Senator Patrick Leahy for his seat this November.  He chose the Burrows trail up Camels Hump for the backdrop to announce his vision for policies on energy and the environment.

Dumping at Salvation Army Wasting Precious Dollars
From Fox News 44, July 26, 2010

I bet you never thought you could do harm by dropping off things at the Salvation Army, but sadly that's the reality the group is dealing with.

A few weeks ago, the Burlington organization closed their storage warehouse, but people are still using it as a drop off.

"Most of the things people are leaving there are not items we can sell, so we have to pay to have them disposed of," said Chuck Bongiorno, development director at the Burlington Salvation Army.

He's asking people to stop because it's costing them up to $100 each month. Money that could be used somewhere else.

Not So Fine
By Art Woolf, The Vermont Tiger, July 29, 2010

A major organization in Vermont, with hundreds of well-paid employees, is fined $420,000 by the federal government for allowing its employees to be exposed to deadly hazards. Another example of an organization that should be shut down for safety reasons?

Not unless you don't want to receive your mail any more.  The fine wasn't levied on Vermont Yankee.  It was levied on the U.S. Postal Service's White River Junction processing facility.

From Elsewhere

Poison Pill: The New Senate Energy Bill
By Brian Sussman, American Thinker, August 2, 2010

The latest Senate energy bill, quietly unveiled last week, looks like sweet compromise on radical measures like cap and trade, but buried within is a bitter poison pill that will could be swallowed in a vote that may come this week.

Lutheran World Federation Misses the Mark on Work and Wealth
By Jordan Ballor, Acton Institute for Religion and Liberty, July 28, 2010

The problem with the social witness of the LWF and the broader ecumenical movement is not simply that it addresses problems like hunger or poverty. It is, instead, the way in which it has done so, as typified in the recent Stuttgart meeting. Here we saw statements decrying "illegitimate debt," the privileging of "profits over people," and in the words of LWF general secretary Rev. Dr. Ishmael Noko, "the gap between those who do not have enough to eat and those who have far more than they need." But beyond this kind of activist jingoism, or pietistic bewailing, there was precious little in terms of helpful analysis of the complex realities of a globalized world.

Rather than engage in the difficult work of providing a coherent and normative basis for responsible social proclamation, the LWF preferred instead -- as is so often the case in the deliberations of mainline ecumenical groups -- to point to "neoliberal globalization" as the structural injustice causing extreme poverty in the world. The missing element in the LWF’s poverty discussions, most recently at the General Assembly, has been a nuanced and comprehensive valuation of the role of creative work and entrepreneurship in the creation of material wealth. The social witness of ecumenical groups like the LWF have, for the better part of the past 50 years, consistently undermined work and labor as God’s order of blessings to provide material sustenance for humankind.

Paul Ryan says he’s trying to provide leadership for "decentralized" GOP
By Jon Ward, The Daily Caller, July 27, 2010

Rep. Paul Ryan, the fast-talking, number-crunching Republican from Wisconsin, caused a stir last week when he called out his own party for not offering Americans a substantive alternative to Democrats in this fall’s elections.

"They’re talking to their pollsters and their pollsters are saying, ‘Stay away from this. We’re going to win an election,’" Ryan said, speaking at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution.

Ryan, in the second of back-to-back high profile speeches touting his "Road Map" plan that proposes to make long-term entitlement spending solvent, lumped Republicans in with Democrats as having failed to talk seriously about the nation’s debt and deficit problem.

Minimize It, Don’t Supersize It
The voters want supersized government put on a crash diet.
By Michael Barone, National Review, August 2, 2010

Let’s put government on a diet. That’s what voters seem to be saying in response to the Barack Obama Democrats’ vast expansion of the size and scope of government.??

Evidence comes from pollster Scott Rasmussen. He asked likely voters — his usual sample, which tilts more Republican than all adults — whether increased government spending is good or bad for the economy.

The results were unambiguous. Good for the country? Twenty-eight percent. Bad for the country? Fifty-two percent.

A New War Between the States
By Joel Kotkin Forbes Magazine, July 27, 2010

Nearly a century and half since the United States last divided, a new "irrepressible conflict" is brewing between the states. It revolves around the expansion of federal power at the expense of state and local prerogatives. It also reflects a growing economic divide, arguably more important than the much discussed ideological one, between very different regional economies.

This conflict could grow in the coming years, particularly as the Obama administration seeks to impose a singular federal will against a generally more conservative set of state governments. The likely election of a more center-right Congress will exacerbate the problem. We may enter a golden age of critical court decisions over the true extent of federal or executive power.

Some states are already challenging the constitutionality of the Obama health care program. Indiana, North Dakota, Mississippi, Nevada and Arizona joined a suit on March 23 by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum to overturn the law. And Arizona's right to make its own pre-immigration regulations has gained support from nine other states: Texas, Alabama, Florida, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Michigan and Virginia.

The Cure for Political Dejection
By Quin Hillyer, The American Spectator, July 29, 2010

What are you going to do about all this? What do you want to see happen? How much do you care about your country and your community?

If you are reading this, the answer to the questions in the last sentence is probably "one heck of a lot." You care. You have aspirations for communities of freedom and comity. You want to stop all of these political horrors, and you want to stop cultural horrors not even touched upon here but that could take pages and pages of exposition. You want to believe in America. And, dare we say it without sounding too pie-in-the-sky, you want to do what Ronald Reagan said all good Americans want to do: "to dream heroic dreams." And to work to make them reality.

So get to it. Keep up your activism. Talk to your neighbors. Volunteer at campaign headquarters. Contribute financially to candidates. Make phone calls. Go to rallies. Write thoughtful and concise letters to the editor. Help register like-minded voters. Drive elderly or infirm like-minded voters to the polls in November.