Good Comments from Shakespeare
By Pete Behr

The Legislature has adjourned for the year, unless they are called back in July to try to override Governor Douglas’s veto of the silly "environmental" bill creating a new bureaucracy to tell Vermonters how to insulate their houses, and taxing Vermont Yankee $25 million or so to pay for it. This bill caps a legislative session which has been one of the least productive ever. A quote from the Bard seems an appropriate description of the efforts of Mr. Shumlin and Ms. Symington- and their local abettors Messrs. Campbell, McCormack, Chen et al, and Ms. Clarkson- "… full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Graduation Time: Leaving politics aside for a moment, and recognizing the young people completing their high school educations, including one of my grandchildren, I congratulate them and offer the following advice:

Don’t stop reading because it is no longer required for class work. In fact, broaden and increase your reading of all the great English and American authors, and good translations of the best from Europe’s great writers. (Better still, learn a foreign language and read the books in the original- but that’s a very big task.) It’s tempting to pass time watching television or playing games, but reading is far more rewarding in the long term. 

Stay out of debt, except for big-ticket items. Above all, don’t build up any credit card debt and pay 18% interest, which far too many Americans do. Foolish is too mild a word to describe people who carry credit card balances month after month. To quote Shakespeare again, here’s what Polonius told his son, Laertes, in Hamlet: "Neither a borrower or a lender be…" Good advice! You’ll enjoy having money in the bank.

Be self-reliant. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. In this day and age, particularly in America, we are encouraged to feel we are victims. Okay, it’s tough to make a living, but it always has been. The world doesn’t owe you anything. You have pay your own way, and hard work is the best formula. 

More good advice from Polonius "This above all, to thine ownself be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." Be honest to yourself and with others. 

Lastly, stay in good shape. Regular exercise is good for your health and for your brain. My theory is that healthy people think better. Walking and running are excellent exercises, and can be done anywhere, anytime. Get some good running shoes, shorts and a tee shirt and you’re in business. Do two or three miles three times a week, and keep track of your distances and times on a calendar. At the end of a year, you’ll be proud to add up the miles (Wow! I ran over 400 miles!) and see how much your times have improved.

Energy and the environment: It upsets me to hear most of our politicians blathering on about the environment without quantifying anything. For example, what is the return on

investment for the creation of a new "efficiency" utility with the $25 million they want to extort from Vermont Yankee? It is irresponsible to create a new bureaucracy, which will be an ongoing expense, without providing pay-out data, and providing for phasing out the bureaucracy once it has achieved the objective. Of course, the whole concept is wrong. Citizens should learn about energy-saving moves, like installing insulation, and do so on their own. What ever happened to old fashion Yankee ingenuity and self-reliance?

Recent op-ed pieces have recognized the need to develop our own untapped petroleum resources, notably those in Alaska and the outer continental shelf. In Alaska, for example, we should drill the exploratory wells to see how much oil and gas is there. We think there is a lot, but until the exploration is done, it is speculation. Exploration would allow us to know whether the value of the resource is $100 billion, $500 billion, a trillion- or nothing. Then we could decide whether to produce the oil and gas. Assuming projections are correct, Alaska oil would have a significant positive effect on jobs, taxes and balance of payments. Did you know we can hit a target the size of a tennis court nine miles away from the drilling rig, permitting development of oil and gas fields from a very small drilling pad. Technology used today was not available thirty years ago, when Prudhoe Bay was developed. Politicians and environmentalists talk about "energy independence" but ignore the most obvious way to reduce our dependence on imported oil, without endangering the environment. 

Pete Behr writes a regular column for the Vermont Standard