Take two thick slices of Noonie's day old bread, smear Honey Cup honey mustard
liberally over both. Cover both slices with green leaf lettuce. Then on one slice only lay smoked turkey on the lettuce,
a tomato slice on the turkey and sprinkle it with shredded carrot. Then on the lay a slice of provolone cheese over the
carrot then a green pepper ring on top of the cheese. Sprikle with sprouts. Cover with the other slice, lettuce side down.
The letuce should be stuck to the bread with honey mustard so it doesn't fall off when you turn it upside down to cover the
sandwich. Slice sandwich in half with a knife. Wrap in tightly in plastic wrap. Use too much wrap. Tape on label. Tadaaa!
Weighs one pound. Costs Four Bucks.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your
teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed,
to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and
no warrants shall issue,
but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Ethan Allen Tower
"During the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton
sometimes spoke of a 'twofer' (two for the price of one) presidency,
implying that Hillary would play an important role in his
administration."
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Duis ligula lorem,
consequat eget, tristique nec, auctor quis, purus. Vivamus ut sem. Fusce aliquam nunc vitae purus.
Whatever things
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Duis ligula lorem,
consequat eget, tristique nec, auctor quis, purus. Vivamus ut sem. Fusce aliquam nunc vitae purus.
Rockaway Memories
Monday, November 30, 2009
It's more than an hour to go from Manhattan to the last stop on the A train at Beach 116th Street, but Far Rockaway is still part of New York City.
I have been fortunate to travel to this little peninsula at the edge of Queens many times to visit my friend John whose father Dean Georges is featured is this wonderful new website RockawayMemories.com.
One of the most relaxing night's sleep I've ever had was at Dean's place on Rockaway Beach dreaming away to the lullaby of the rolling ocean. Once while standing outside Dean's house I saw the Concord heading east after leaving JFK airport nearby. It looked like science fiction.
Here's to all my own good memories of Far Rockaway- of all the riding around with John in Dean's floral delivery vans and jumping in the Ocean in January- to that song by the Ramones, to the conception of George Carlin- and the old distant view of the World Trade Center beyond Brooklyn across Jamaica bay.
Windsor Country Assistant Judge William Boardman still refuses to take me off his spam list. I keep getting his crappy spam emails about Vermont courts or whatever. I don't even read them. I've asked him several times to stop sending them to me, but he just refuses. The first time I asked he hinted that because I run a blog I can't refuse his spam. Another time he played cute and asked me what email address he shouldn't keep writing to. All by email mind you. This guy is harrassing me and he's a judge. Tyranny. Even local blog owners with dozens of readers have a right to privacy. That's why I have now blocked Boardman's email address. You're blocked, your honor. Get some manners.
It's been almost seventeen years since the posts on Church Street went from green to black.
The mall sucks. Woolworth's is gone. You can't buy a hammer downtown. The economy of our urban core seems more and more to be premised on the idea that everybody has a trust fund or a government job.
I wish we could put a K-Mart or a Target in what used to be Porteus on Bank Street. Why has that part of the mall been closed for years? Why has McDonald's been closed for years? Nobody wants to run a McDonald's or a Taco Bell right in the center of downtown Burlington?
Maybe our downtown would reverse its decline if it invited back regular people. Wouldn't it be nice to go downtown with twenty bucks, buy a flannel shirt and some socks, get a coffee and still leave with two bucks?
The Internet is a kaleidoscopic time machine. Look at this old page from this blog. Or how about this one? Weird. And how does iburlington still exist? I started a section called "link graveyard" somewhere on this blog a long time ago, but like everything else I start...
That's usually all I do is start it. It's a Potemkin blog people. The one thing I've sort of stuck with is changing the tag line all the time. Fleshing out most of the other features like Blasts from the Past, Link Graveyard or Koko's Photo blog take a lot of work and more time than I have. I need an intern.
One of the things I've wanted forever is... In the mayor's office there are pictures of every Burlington Mayor on the wall. I'd like to somehow reproduce that on my blog. That would be rad.
There are other things I have wanted to do with this blog. I'd love an 24/7 Chat Room open only to city councilors. Identities verified of course. I guess Twitter has kind of come along and filled the void a little there- but it would be cool to have a room dedicated to just them. That kind of thing would change the way we do government in the city.
BT as a city department would have had the credibility to host something like that and make it official. An official online 24/7 city council chat. If only they had shown a little imagination with all that bandwidth instead of sucking and destroying themselves. Sad.
"You don't just walk away from a thirty-three million dollar debt." -Jonathan Leopold
The city of Burlington has always owned the risk for Burlington Telecom. The notion that taxpayer money was never at risk was patently false. Big D or small d department, BT belongs to the City and always has.
Now it owes fifty million and is worth perhaps fifteen. If it died today the taxpayers would have to make up the difference.
So what do we do? Cut our losses or keep rolling the dice and hope it improves?
Here's a poll for Burlington Taxpayers only. If you don't pay property tax to Burlington, please don't vote in the poll:
"A Russian court has effectively outlawed the death penalty in the country, ruling that a moratorium on capital punishment due to expire in January must remain in force."
I was wondering just the other day if Russia had the death penalty. This action by the Russian court is very positive. The death penalty is wrong and immoral in all cases and in all forms.
I would like to follow-up on Karen Paul's letter of the other day and Joan Shannon's letter of today. We have, over a period of time, been asking as individual Councilors for many of the documents that were requested of the Administration at the Council's November 16, 2009 meeting. Some of these requests have been for weeks, some for months and in some instances years. The information contained in these documents will likely range from the mundane to the esoteric. Many of us will need help interpreting and understanding them to do our jobs. In addition, the audit and its off-shoots will require money.
Bob, my understanding is that the Administration will soon be requesting a budget amendment to rectify an "overpayment" of PILOT monies made to the City by BT. The overpayment amount is in the 100s of thousands of dollars. My understanding is that most of this payback will come from the DPW for this fiscal year. I am requesting that since you were able to come up with these monies out of the budget of another Department, that you look hard, and that on or before November 25, 2009, you find another $250,000.00 to be put into a special account, to be distributed by a majority of the Council in obtaining independent and expert review of the many working parts that BT contains.
Bob, without getting all of the documentation that we have requested and without having a third party expert interpret this information for us, I will simply not be able to vote to continue the enterprise of Burlington Telecom in its current construction. If this condition is not met, I will also do my very best to convince others to do the same.
Bob, at the Ad Hoc Committee on Governance for Burlington Telecom, Joe McNeil said that if after asking we were not getting the information that we needed as Councilors from the Administration to make decisions, then we needed to demand that information.
Based on that advice Bob, I am demanding that you provide us with the information requested and that you provide us with the moneys to obtain the resources necessary to make that information relevant.
The City and the people that populate it deserve no less from their elected officials.
Heading in to the Thanksgiving holiday, I am thankful for the fact that although we vehemently disagree on how to proceed in this instance, I know that we are all trying to do what we think is best for the City. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. For now, I remain,
It looks like the city council is tired of getting pushed around. Here's a letter Councilor Joan Shannon just sent to Mayor Kiss...
***** Dear Mayor Kiss,
On November 11, 2009 the Ad Hoc Committee on BT Governance requested certain information in order to better understand the current operations of BT and its governance and oversight structure. Among the requested information is the Shanahan report and Business Plan. Chris Burns explained that it is really the Pro Formas that currently serve as a business plan.
Ken Schatz has informed me that BT management and the administration are willing to share this information in Executive Session and then collect all materials at the end of the Executive session. This is not acceptable to the Committee. The Committee does not want to spend our valuable meeting time getting familiar with these items. The Committee would like to receive copies of the Shanahan report for their review in preparation for the meeting. I fully understand the confidentiality is of the utmost importance to the operations of BT. If the administration and BT management would like Committee members to sign Non Disclosure Agreements I am amenable to that stipulation so long as the Agreement is reasonable and appropriate in scope.
In order for the Committee to have time to review this information prior to our next meeting on Tuesday November 24, they need to have this information in their possession before the weekend. Please let me and the other Committee members know when this information will be available for us to pick up at City Hall by the end of today. I know that this may seem like short notice, but really we have been asking for this since November 11 and can no longer wait.
In addition, the Council, as the ultimate governing body is entitled to any information we request in order to make fully informed decisions. The Council also needs all the above information in order to either approve or disapprove of the concept of borrowing $60 million dollars. We also need the ability to consult with independent experts who can advise us on these issues. Certainly anyone who receives this information should be willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement and I would not object to that requirement. I do object to the administration holding information hostage.
Again, I ask that you please respond to this email by the end of the day so that we can move forward in getting the information that we need.
Sincerely,
Joan Shannon City Councilor Ad Hoc Committee on Governance, Chair
"Had I been there I would have voted against splitting the question, and against the postponment of the letter of intent."-Me from the last post
A prominent local attorney wrote to me yesterday to express his belief that Monday's resolution was more binding than I thought. Why a resolution authorizing the pursuit of funding from a lender, with whom a tentative agreement had clearly already been pursued?
Good point.
The bottom line though- can BT possibly repay one-hundred million dollars in twenty years on its own merits? Based on its current track record, a reasonable person could conclude- no. They could not become cash flow positive after spending fifty million dollars and there is no proof they ever can.
Let's look at the facts, OK? BT has 4,500 subscribers (maybe). Comcast has twenty-five million. That's five thousand times as many. What makes the city interested in competing with that? It feels like we're trying to cross the ocean in a row boat with this thing. For what? We might just want to turn back while we can still see the shore. In another year or two Burlington Taxpayers might only be able to dream of owing just seventeen million dollars.
This re-fi makes the city liable to repay 6o million in principle and 40 more million in interest. Sure the city may repay the money with BT proceeds if it wishes, and if they're sufficient to do so, but as far as Piper Jaffrey is concerned repayment is "fungible." That means they don't give a shit where the money comes from as long as we pay them.
No creditor ever gives a shit where the money that pays them back comes from.
And when BT revenues aren't enough- the money will come from the taxpayers.
At this point it's hard to imagine Chris Burns and Jonathon Leopold can slap together a convincing business plan to show how BT becomes profitable. I mean for heaven's sake- they start their customer service reps out at seventeen dollars per hour. Seventeen dollars per hour! That is so much money! They aren't worth it. Richard Donnelly alone took home nearly 70K in FY08. Somebody could have done whatever the hell he did for BT for half of that I'm sure.
Most of the network is already built in Burlington. Wiring the city with fiber was forward thinking, but who really cares who runs the network? And the value of fiber could easily drop with more and more wi-fi available.
The thing is BT is a totally non-essential city service. It could disappear tomorrow and Bob Kiss could still be remembered as a good mayor for creating a rainy-day fund and paving the roads. Who care about BT? Judge Judy is Judge Judy regardless of the cable carrier. So who cares?
"Um is not an answer, sir!"
Is it worth the risk of owning a 100 million dollar dinosaur that eats? I urge my city councilors Paul and Vince in particular to consider that question carefully, since they are the swing votes.
Well that was one of the more entertaining council meetings I've seen in recent years. In the end Bill Keogh couldn't quite keep up with his officiating duties and posed the motion to postpone in such a way as to be unintelligible by all present except city attorney Ken Schatz, and perhaps Jonathon Leopold. The council didn't really understand that they had just voted to kick the can down the road to December 7, but they did.
The administration wanted the council to give its collective signature to a letter of intent with Piper Jaffrey to start working on the 61 million dollar financing deal. The resolution on the table had two parts. Part one said the BT would come into compliance with condition 60 by repaying pooled cash within sixty days. Part two was the letter of intent.
On a motion from Ed Adrian, the council voted to split parts one and two. He and Joan Shannon had attempted to split the "whereas" clauses, as well as the operative clauses in the resolution, but Ken Schatz and Sharon Bushor correctly pointed out that for Shannon to have assigned her notion of which whereas clauses fit which "resolved" clauses, would have in fact created two new resolutions.
C'mon people. Really? Split the "whereas" clauses? You got to be kidding me.
The council passed part one, but then postponed funding it with part two pending more info.
What info? Mainly like a business plan for Burlington Telecom. Apparently the one they've got is two years old. In other words no planning since Nulty left. Nice. Here's an idea to save BT some money. Besides start their CSRs at $2 less per hour- just eliminate Chris Burns. Does he do anything except fill the space between Leopold and the rest of BT?
Anyway. At one point Sharon Bushor was very vexed, red-faced and at a complete loss of words, quite obviously because of Adrian. You could almost hear her wishing Kurt Wright were there to call the cops on him. That was kind of funny to see.
The meeting started sizzling around 11:30 when words started to fly. Some quotes-
"I won't be scolded!" -Nancy Kaplan
"I won't be boxed in by this council!" -Sharon Bushor
"I am appalled!" -Marrisa Caldwell
"You are voting to destroy Burlington Telecom for the sole purpose of embarassing this administration!" -Jonathon Leopold
"I would appreciate Mr. Leopold it if you would not speak to me in a condeceing way!"-Mary Kehoe
"I screwed up the queue." -Bill Keogh
"How is that doing what's right for the city?"- Marrisa Caldwell
"I really don't like be accused of not having the city's best interest in mind." -Joan Shannon
My wife Poosie is all into Peter Shumlin for governor. She likes his appearance, she likes his voice and she likes what he stands for- fiscally conservative and environmentally liberal she says. She loves his nose.
I think p-p-p puttin' on the 'witz has a lock, but I also thought Hinda Miller had lock on mayor of Burlington and that Hillary Clinton had lock on president. Women rarely become chief executives. Markowitz just seems like the best candidate to me right now. But it's early.
Poopsie is definitely not into Racine. She always likes to brag about voting for Douglas over him in 2002. I never had the guts to go all the way and vote for Douglas. I voted for Racine in 2002, Clavelle in 2004, Benjamin Clark in 2006 and Tony O'Connor in 2008. These four votes were made with both increasing enthusiasm and increasing apathy. That's right. Enthusiasm and apathy are not mutually exclusive, as nihilistic as that may sound. Not when it comes to the last three gubernatorial elections in which there was never any question who would win.
I like Jim Douglas. I never voted for him, but I've always liked him. Next year we will elect new governor of Vermont. The first repubic in North America. The fourteenth state in the USA.
Cheif administrative officer Jonathon Leopold keeps pushing the limits of the public's credulity. Take a look at this recent email between Leopold and city councilor Marissa Caldwell in which Leopold tries to defend calling Burlington Telecom a "department" in a recent Free Press Op-ed.
From: Jonathan Leopold To: Marrisa Caldwell Hello Marrisa-
Thank you for forwarding this email to me.
The remark that I have incorrectly or inappropriately referred to BT as a "Department", is not correct. If Mr. Feeney read the article carefully, I did not call BT a "Department".
In fact what the article asked in one question was "is BT the only city department to use pooled cash. By inference one would conclude that I called BT a “department”. The use of a small letter "d" for "department" instead of the capital "D" for Department was intentional since BT is not a formal "Department". I used the term "department" in lieu of more complicated, but technically correct terminology such as "enterprise fund accounting entity" or simply “enterprise fund”. However, then the question would have been phrased "are there any other "accounting funds or other entities" which have used pooled cash. The technically correct language would have been confusing to the public and would have made an already lengthy article even more so. As it was even with extensive editing, the article was more than 50% longer than the normal limit for the BFP. Thus, I used the term "department" as a more meaningful term for the public to understand the use of pooled cash by all of the various entities of the City, including Departments, Divisions, Special Projects, Capital Projects, Enterprise Funds, Special Revenue Funds and Trust Funds, etc.
Finally, Mr. Feeny's incorrectly states that because BT was not a "Department", "allocating funds from the city cash/pool/resources should never have occurred in the first place". Like much of the public "discussion" about BT, this statement is incorrect.
In fact many of the accounting entities participating in pooled cash are not "Departments". I have no idea what Mr. Feeny's alleged expertise is to make such a statement but he is incorrect
Please feel free to share this response with the people in the original email.
**** That's ridiculous! If he wanted to avoid causing confusion he should have used the technically correct language, not wrong, obviously misleading language.
I didn't care for the " alleged expertise" remark, either. What was the point of that?
The Mayor discusses the ongoing controversy surrounding Burlington Telecom at The Prog Blog.
Also, The Burlington Free Press obtained an unauthorized copy of the communications between Leopold and city lawyers. The documents won't officially become public until the resolution to release them, passed unanimously last night by the city council, gets the mayor's signature. The story will be here for a limited time.
Assistant Judge William Boardman from Woodstock will not stop spamming me. I have asked him more than once to kindly take me off of his email distribution list, and he simply refuses. This is not this man's first ethical breach.
I don't want your emails Mr. Boardman. What part of "unsubscribe" don't you understand?
I wonder what Barack and Michelle Obama use for birth control. Think he's snipped? It appears they made a conscious choice to stop at two kids. Kinda weird how the last three presidents have spawned only daughters. And the last president to spawn sons lived to see one of them also become president. Sasha and Malia. Those are ok names I guess. "Malia" is a little weird because of the prefix "mal." but it's also awfully close to my sister's name "Amalia" which I consider totally beautiful. Maybe Michelle is on the pill, or she's had her tubes tied. Why has the media never talked about this? Is it because of some latent, collective puritan ethic? Oh that again. Wikipedia says "Sasha is also the first White House resident born in the 21st century." Michelle is only 45. The NIH says "The average age of a woman having her last period, menopause, is 51." The president himself is 48 but as we all know men can reproduce forever. My father is over 100 years old and he could still get you pregnant. Here's an interesting discussion thread about marital disagreement over how many kids to have.
"equilibrium" 1.A condition in which all acting influences are canceled by others, resulting in a stable, balanced, or unchanging system." -Answers.com
I have said before on this blog that everything is defined by the absence of what it isn't. This pertains to all areas of life and of the universe, and in all dimensions of thought.
Space and Time are closed systems whether or not either expands. You believe in entropy and Newton's third law. You believe that matter cannot be created or destroyed. You know that for every birth there is a corresponding death, and you know that what goes up, must come down. Regression to the mean.
This is pretty basic stuff and I'm not telling you anything new.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of
the people peaceably to assemble,
and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Click Sticker to get one.
Yours free with Paypal donation of any amount.
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars,
the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury,
shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States,
than according to the rules of the common law.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your
teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed,
to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
-Emma Lazarus, 1883
--------------------------
Church Street Energy System
--------------------------
Powered by
"The Medium is the Message."
Whatever things
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Duis ligula lorem,
consequat eget, tristique nec, auctor quis, purus. Vivamus ut sem. Fusce aliquam nunc vitae purus.
Whatever things
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Duis ligula lorem,
consequat eget, tristique nec, auctor quis, purus. Vivamus ut sem. Fusce aliquam nunc vitae purus.
Junktique's New Site
Junktique's Old Site
Jessica Sklar
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyNJbNbmUUkmfGLaBuqicz0Zvqt-1zb2AzXdfm1qMXh8AfpmG9leXo0dm_wo-26BNSQz0sc5nzPl7NU4PdQjb1wqbgKf1-A7vG2K8EsV40igIcBQahcPJFPCUfHFy3aSWN2yi8qg/s1600/henry%2527s.jpg")
