The rules according to Kennedy - Big Big Forums

Jolie Rouge · 05-09-2006, 01:05 PM

The rules according to Kennedy
by Jeff Jacoby

If there is one thing that Senator Edward Kennedy is adamant about, it is that government officials play by the rules.

"The vast majority of Americans share our commitment to basic fairness," he lectured his fellow senators last May, when Republicans were threatening to trigger the "nuclear option" -- to change the Senate's rules to prevent judicial nominations from being filibustered. "They agree that there must be fair rules, that we should not unilaterally abandon or break those rules in the middle of the game."

There was nothing clandestine about that no-filibuster threat. Senate Republicans had been discussing it publicly for more than two years. Nevertheless, the senator from Massachusetts blasted the idea as egregious and underhanded. "Every child," he thundered, "knows that you don't change the rules in the middle of the game."

But Kennedy's antipathy to furtive rules changes and back-room power plays, it turns out, stops at the water's edge -- specifically, the edge of Nantucket Sound, which separates Cape Cod (where the Kennedy family has an ocean-front compound in Hyannis Port) from the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. A shoal in the center of the Sound is where Boston-based Cape Wind Associates hopes to build the nation's first offshore wind farm -- an array of 130 wind turbines capable of generating enough electricity to meet 75 percent of the Cape and Islands' energy needs, without burning any oil or emitting any pollution. The turbines would be miles from any coastal property, barely visible on the horizon. In fact, Cape Wind says they would be farther away from the nearest home than any other electricity generation project in Massachusetts.

But like a lot of well-to-do Cape and Islands landowners and sailing enthusiasts, Kennedy doesn't want to share his Atlantic playground with an energy facility, no matter how clean, green, and nearly unseen. Last month he secretly arranged for a poison-pill amendment, never debated in either house of Congress, to be slipped into an unrelated Coast Guard funding bill. It would give the governor of Massachusetts, who just happens to be a wind farm opponent, unilateral authority to veto the Cape Wind project.

When word of the amendment leaked out, environmentalists were appalled. The wind farm proposal is supported by the leading environmental organizations, and they never expected to be sandbagged by one of their legislative heroes. Even if Kennedy would prefer to see Cape Wind plant its windmills in somebody else's sailing grounds, he has always claimed to support the development of wind power

Quote:

"I strongly support renewable energy, including wind energy, as a means of reducing our dependence on foreign oil and protecting the environment"
-- Cape Cod Times, Aug. 8, 2003.

And what happened to all those righteous words about not throwing out the rulebook in the middle of the game?

If ever a project and its promoters have "played by the rules," Cape Wind has, and in spades. Its plans have undergone more than four years of scrutiny by federal, state, and regional regulators, with another year or more of evaluations, hearings, and studies to come. At least 18 government bodies -- from the Army Corps of Engineers to the Environmental Protection Agency to the Massachusetts Coastal Zone Management Office -- have been involved in reviewing the wind farm proposal. Cape Wind has had to surmount an astonishing variety of regulatory and due diligence hurdles. So far it has successfully met every one.

The list of permits, approvals, licenses, and reports that regulators are requiring Cape Wind to file or obtain would overload a library. First and foremost, there is the exhaustive environmental impact statement required under federal and state law, the first draft of which, 3,800 pages long, was released in November 2004. Then there is also the Approval to Construct Jurisdictional Facilities from the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board. And the Chapter 91 Waterways License from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. And the General Stormwater Permit from the US Environmental Protection Agency. And many more, too numerous to list here.

Cape Wind has invested millions of dollars in this project, and no small part of that cost has gone to dotting every legal "i" and crossing every regulatory "t." But if Kennedy gets his way, all of Cape Wind's time, money, and effort will have been for naught -- crushed in a naked abuse of political power. And when that happens, it isn't only a Nantucket wind farm that will be dead, but another piece of the public's dwindling faith that the men and women it elects to office can be trusted to do the right thing.

"Every child knows that you don't change the rules in the middle of the game," Kennedy says. Indeed. Grown senators are supposed to know it too.

Copyright © 2006 Boston Globe

Jolie Rouge · 05-28-2006, 06:51 PM

New England wind projects raise small town issues
Posted 5/26/2006 7:35 PM ET
By Beverley Wang, Associated Press Writer

LEMPSTER, N.H. — When Kevin and Debra Onnela moved to their 1,500-acre mountaintop spread 27 years ago, a homemade windmill provided all the electricity they needed — and more. "The batteries would just be hissing," Debra Onnela said recently outside her house. "We'd go in, turn on a vacuum cleaner, dishwasher, just to get rid of the power."

After three years of playing catch-up with surplus power, the Onnelas dismantled their windmill and got a generator. Now the Onnelas want to bring wind power back to their land, but not for themselves.

In 2003, the couple signed a lease option giving Pennsylvania-based Community Energy Inc. permission to plant a dozen 400-foot turbines with 285-foot blades along three miles of Lempster Mountain's ridgeline. Earlier this month, Community Energy was purchased for $30 million by Spain-based Iberdrola, the world's largest wind-power producer.

The Lempster project would be the state's first corporate wind farm. Operating at about 37% capacity, Community Energy calculates the 24-megawatt project would support 10,000 homes a year. And Debra Onnela can't wait for construction to start.

"I think they're beautiful," she said of the turbines.

Others aren't quite so enchanted. Some Lempster residents worry the turbines will create noise or environmental problems. Even wind power supporters worry the town of just 1,050 people lacks the resources to properly manage a $40 million utility project.

That has caused hard feelings between the Onnelas and some neighbors.

"I've probably lost a quarter of my friends," said Kevin Onnela.

But Jeff Keeler, project manager with Community Energy, calls it a win-win for the community — it sends tax dollars to the town, without putting children in the schools or pollutants in the environment.

For the Onnelas, the project gives them retirement income while preserving the land from development. Keeler won't say how much Community Energy is paying the couple — the town's largest landowners — but notes the amount falls within industry standards. Landowners typically earn between $2,000 and $5,000 per megawatt on a lease, said Tom Gray, a spokesman for the American Wind Energy Association, an industry group.

The Onnelas say their yearly property tax bill is about $23,000.

"We bought a lot of land to preserve Lempster," said Kevin Onnela.

Right now it's uncertain what will happen.

About 100 residents, along with the selectmen in Lempster and neighboring Washington, want the state to scrutinize the project. The residents' petition says the community "has no mechanism to ensure that this significant energy facility will not have unreasonable adverse effects on the health, safety and welfare of the community."

If the state agrees to look at the project, it could cause a delay of a year or more. And that worries the Onnelas, who think a delay could jeopardize the project. "We thought we were doing something good," Kevin Onnela said.

The New Hampshire Site Evaluation Committee, which includes heads of agencies for the environment, transportation, health and economic development, meets next month to discuss whether to review the project — it has the power to endorse or kill the wind farm.

"A little town like this can't afford to hire an attorney if something comes up," said 80-year-old Selectman Harold Whiting Sr. "I don't care if the wind farm goes in, I don't care if the wind farm don't — as long as it's done right. And if it's done right, I don't have a problem."

By national standards, the Lempster project is small. Sites in California and Texas, the most heavily developed states, can have up to 1,000 turbines. But in New England, where open space is scarce and the best wind often is found above wooded mountain peaks, much of the debate over wind energy has centered on wildlife and land conservation.

"People's major objections are largely aesthetic, the way they look and the way they sound," Keeler said. "I think a lot of people who oppose the project don't really know the state's already pretty heavily involved." He points out that even without a site review, the company must seek state wetlands and transportation permits.

Wind farms have received a mixed response elsewhere in northern New England.

Vermont's Public Service Board is expected to decide this summer whether to approve a plan for four turbines on East Mountain in East Haven. A hearing officer has recommended against the project because it sits at the edge of a conservation area.

But in Maine, one wind power project is under construction and at least five more are being explored, including a proposal by a Canadian company to erect turbines on mountains north of the Sugarloaf USA ski area.

And earlier this year, Berlin officials welcomed three 160-foot turbines erected near Jericho Lake.

But in Lempster, the Onnelas' leasing of the ridgeline has sparked a war of words, fractured friendships and deepened the rift between full-time and part-time residents.

"We were tricked," reads a letter from residents asking to remove their names from the site evaluation petition, saying they didn't understand that seeking a review could delay the project.

Kevin Onnela blames part-time residents for fanning opposition to the project.

Jeff Dwyer is one of those residents. He says the wind farm will create noise, ruin the landscape and harm wildlife, and all without producing much power. "Should we jeopardize the rapidly diminishing wilderness experience for future generations by allowing tax motivated minimally productive power plants to visually pollute our New Hampshire landscape?" he asks in a letter to the state. Dwyer also worries the wind farm eventually will grow beyond Lempster.

Keeler says Community Energy has no plans to expand beyond 12 turbines.

Lisa Linowes, a resident of Lyman, about 90 miles away, and member of National Wind Watch, a watchdog group, is working with Dwyer to organize opposition in Lempster.

Linowes says she supports clean energy, but doubts wind can put a dent in fossil fuel consumption. "If the facts on the ground showed that wind facility would bring down a coal plant ... I would have a very different opinion," she said.

Others say people have to make a choice: give up some ridgeline now to wind farms or lose them later to global warming.

"There are people who are concerned about the changing landscape and there are people who are concerned about, 'How are we going to deal with global warming and climate disruption?'" said David Hamilton, the Sierra Club's director of global warming and energy programs. "It is a tough question but the challenge of global warming is so monumental that we really need to be doing everything that we can do to address it."

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news...m_x.htm?csp=27

Jolie Rouge · 05-25-2007, 01:32 AM

May 24, 2007
ENVIRONMENTAL HYPOCRISY UPDATE

Okay, we've heard a lot about the greenhouse effect, etc., but I'm reading Wendy Williams and Robert Whitcomb's Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound and I'm beginning to doubt the political class's serious commitment to this cause. The book's a treasure trove, but here's a description of how what was supposed to be a wide-open democratic town meeting on the Nantucket Sound wind power project was taken over by the astroturf brigades of the project's well-heeled opponents:

Quote:

The evening's piece de resistance: the presence of the Honorable William Delahunt , the white-haired U.S. congressman whose district included the Cape, Marthas's Vineyard, and Nantucket, as well as towns and cities closer to Boston. . . . Delahunt hated the wind farm. Or, at least, he said he hated it. Delahunt was widely seen as Senator Edward M. Kennedy's man. What Ted Kennedy hated, Bill Delahunt hated. And Ted Kennedy loathed Cape Wind, with an unwavering ardor that curiously belied the environmental ideals he so often proclaimed from the floor of the U.S. Senate . . . .

Delahunt's control of the podium was unusual. Every other speaker had to use a floor microphone and was limited to three minutes. To maintain discipline, a very large traffic light turned first a warning yellow and then a time's-up red. Delahunt, however, assumed he was exempted from the burden laid upon the rest of the hearing's participants. Blindsided by the Congressman's performance, project supporters -- and there were plenty on Martha's Vineyard, despite the Alliance's efforts -- were miffed. How had this politico gained control of what they thought was to be a "public" -- as in, for the public --- hearing, and opportunity for thoughtful and informed people to add their insights to the discussion.

(In fact, [Delahunt's staffer Mark] Forest had forced Army Corps officials to bow to Delahunt's coup d'etat. Had the Corps refused, the congressman could have taken out his revenge when appropriation votes came up on Capitol Hill.)

And it gets worse from there. I'm finding the book quite interesting so far. And lest this passage give the impression that there were only Democrats acting hypocritically here, I should note that the alliance against the wind power project was bipartisan, with "Bush Pioneers" working happily alongside the Kennedys to block the project lest their oceanfront views be sullied by the sight of windmills five miles away. Here's more:

Quote:

Reporters had fun for a while that evening, but on reflection, some were saddened. The hearing was supposed to be an opportunity for public discourse and an expression of democracy at the local level. Instead, it had been hijacked and turned into a publicity stunt. While wrapping themselves in the mantle of democracy, the Nantucket Sound affluent were behaving as if they owned the government. . . .

When a democratic process could be sold like this to the highest bidder, and when a U.S. congressman was present to do the honors, what did this mean for the future of America? A few of those present that evening found the symbolism of the event frightening, given the dangerous realities of the new millennium. Energy prices were steadily rising. Regular people were having trouble paying their bills. Climate change seemed to be under way. Oil and gas were in short supply and developing nations were eager to have all that electricity could provide, from lightbulbs to computers.

Somehow, somehwere, sometime soon, these challenges were going to have to be addressed -- by someone willing to take the lead. . . . "Nero's fiddle," muttered a journalist watching the show.

As I say, it's interesting reading, and it certainly speaks poorly for the seriousness of the political class on these matters.

http://instapundit.com/archives2/005602.php

Jolie Rouge · 06-11-2008, 02:04 AM

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Jolie Rouge · 08-26-2008, 10:49 AM

America in 2008: What of the Kennedys?
By TED ANTHONY, AP National Writer
Tue Aug 26, 3:45 AM ET

DENVER - It wasn't subtle, but it was heart-tugging stagecraft at its best. With sailboats and choppy seas, passed torches and enduring dreams, clan Kennedy summoned the 1960s and showed that the flame — the one tended by America's most ardent Democrats, at least — burns still.

On their convention's opening night Monday, Democrats waved Kennedy signs and welcomed their lion in winter, the ailing Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. And he delivered, using his political and cultural clout to etch a vivid connection between his family's mythology and Barack Obama's potential. "The dream," Ted Kennedy said, "lives on."

A partisan party is one thing, though; American culture at large is another. And as the senator edges toward stage left, the final brother of his extraordinary generation, a question presents itself: When he is gone, what becomes of the renowned Kennedy mystique, that alchemy of hope, charm, tragedy, controversy and just a whiff of royalty? "It's embedded in our history now. It's part of our DNA. You can't take that away," says Bobbi Baker Burrows, director of photography for Life magazine, whose intimate images helped craft the Kennedy mythology in the early 1960s.

Potent as a political dynasty, the Kennedys of Teddy's generation represent far more. Straddling the eras of Audrey Hepburn and Paris Hilton, they have embodied the better angels of the American nature, and their aura has endured tales of foibles and tragedies and missteps.

And, of course, they were the prototypes for a uniquely American hybrid of politics and celebrity — something that played well for JFK in 1960, RFK in 1968, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and, some would say, Obama in 2008.

It's more than that, though. It's about adaptability to the national mood, a Kennedy hallmark. Which is why, in a fragmented century attuned to sound bites and information overload that might have made even JFK dizzy, space remains in the modern American bandwidth for the Kennedy mystique. "They would be as successful today as they were in their own era because of their ability to adapt not only to their audiences but to the era they were playing in," says Gerald Shuster, a political communications expert at the University of Pittsburgh. "They had a very unique ability to integrate themselves into any audience demographic."

The Kennedys also used hope as clay, molding it into whatever shape was necessary for the moment. That encompassed not only the renowned oratory but the ability to convert the building blocks of personality into cultural capital.

Thus did a gorgeous American extended family, laughing and playing as if posing for a sporting-goods ad, become grist for a mythmaking machine that was far more self-aware than Americans of JFK's era ever realized. Cynical to some, it created bonds that made politics about far more than, well, politics. "It really helps from on high to have somebody that you revere, that you care about and want to hear what they're saying and doing and what they're wearing, everything," says Letitia Baldrige, who was Jackie Kennedy's social secretary and chief of staff during the Kennedy administration. "That's important for us, whether it's an apparition or not."

Despite Democrats' attempts to link them for the purposes of Campaign 2008, those who study the Kennedys largely reject comparisons between Robert and John Kennedy and Obama. But forces outside candidates' control can also evoke the Kennedy mystique in more subtle ways. "People are looking back now because we're in a very similar situation to '68 — an unpopular war, an unpopular president who's waging it, serious domestic problems," says Thurston Clarke, whose new book, "The Last Campaign," chronicles RFK's final days in 1968.

"People ached to feel noble in 1968, and they ache to feel noble again," he says. "People sense there's a similarity between the two periods, and it makes the Kennedys more interesting to them."

Nevertheless, a huge swath of American voters know John and Robert Kennedy only from their parents and their history texts. And the current crop of Kennedys, with such notable exceptions as Caroline Kennedy and Maria Shriver, have not achieved the top tier of renown populated by their parents. "I don't think the American people know them very well," JFK biographer Michael O'Brien says. "They do a lot of good humanitarian work, but if I was to have to name them, I think I would have a hard time."

Try telling that to the hard-core Democrats inside the Pepsi Center on Monday. They waved Kennedy signs at Teddy as he spoke, erupted into cheers at the nostalgic video of sailing and family gatherings and black-and-white footage of a time when much seemed possible. Some, standing in the aisles, even wept when the senator said, "It is time again for a new generation of leadership. It is time now for Barack Obama."

He also said this: "For me, this is a season of hope." The same Kennedy clay, yet another new sculpture.

Graying and aging and even retooled slightly, the Kennedy mystique endures — as political symbol and cultural touchstone. The torch has been passed. What the new generation of Americans do with it is, as always, up to them.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080826/...tq4sHkmXjCw5R4

Someone is living the fantasy ...

jbbarn · 08-26-2008, 12:39 PM

Good ol' Uncle Teddy!
Father of the big mouth and the big lie.
And they still love him!

speedygirl · 08-26-2008, 03:03 PM

I think most of them were weeping for the fact that he was standing up there with brain cancer. It's like the end of an era. He's our state senator and has done wonderful things here. I am not a fan by any means of what he has done in his personal life but as far as what he's done for MA, I can't complain.

jbbarn · 08-26-2008, 03:50 PM

Too bad he never gave a rip about the rest of the republic.

Jolie Rouge · 11-02-2009, 09:15 AM

See also : Wind Farm, NIMBY?

Tribes claim wind farm would destroy sacred ritual
By Jay Lindsay, Associated Press Writer
21 mins ago

MASHPEE, Mass. – From a blustery perch over a Cape Cod beach, Chuckie Green gestures toward a stretch of horizon where he says construction of the nation's first offshore wind farm would destroy his Indian tribe's religion.

The Wampanoag — the tribe that welcomed the Pilgrims in the 17th century and known as "The People of the First Light" — practice sacred rituals requiring an unblocked view of the sunrise. That view won't exist once 130 turbines, each over 400 feet tall, are built in Nantucket Sound, visible to Wampanoag in Mashpee and on Martha's Vineyard.

Tribal rituals, including dancing and chanting, take place at secret sacred sites around the sound at various times, such as the summer and winter solstices and when an elder passes.

The Wampanoag fight to preserve their ceremonies has become the latest obstacle — some say delay tactic — for a pioneering wind energy project that seemed at the cusp of final approval. "We, the Wampanoag people, who opened our arms and allowed people to come here for religious freedoms, are now being threatened with our religion being taken away for the profits of one single group of investors," Green said.

The Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag claim Nantucket Sound is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property. The tribes say the designation, which would come with new regulations for activity on the sound, is needed to preserve not only their pristine views but ancestors' remains buried on Horseshoe Shoal, where the turbines would be built.

Cape Wind supporters say the tribes' claim for a National Register listing for the sound is baseless and was sprung late, in league with the project's most vociferous opponents, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. "I think this is clearly a tactic for delay, for delay's sake," said Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for Cape Wind. "I think it's fair to say, looking at the past eight years, that opponents to Cape Wind have tried every conceivable strategy to slow down or stop the project."

Green bristles at the notion that the tribes, prodded by the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, are jumping in late just to gum up the works. Green and Audra Parker, the alliance's executive director, said the alliance supports the Wampanoags' claim, but didn't engineer it.

Cape Wind, proposed in 2001 and expected to cost $1 billion, aims to provide up to 75 percent of Cape Cod's power. Other offshore wind farm proposals are in earlier stages of development in several states, including Rhode Island, Delaware and Texas.

Cape Wind opponents say it would be a hazard to aviation, harm the environment — including fish and bird life — and mar historic vistas. The late Sen. Edward Kennedy, whose family compound would be in view of the project, fought the project until his death, saying it was a triumph of special interests over state interests.

A major decision on the Wampanoag claim is due within two weeks.

The U.S. Minerals Management Service, the lead agency reviewing the proposed wind farm, has recommended that the sound is not eligible for the National Register to Brona Simon, head of the Massachusetts Historical Commission.

Simon must decide by Nov. 12 if she disagrees. If so, the claim would be sent to the National Parks Service for a final ruling within 45 days.

A parks service decision that the sound should be listed a Traditional Cultural Property wouldn't kill Cape Wind, but it could add months to the approval process by forcing developers to comply with the designation's various standards.

Simon declined comment through a spokesman for the Massachusetts Secretary of State, which has jurisdiction over her office.

Earlier this year, in a letter to the minerals service, Simon criticized federal review of the project, saying it appeared to value Cape Wind's profitability and schedule over "effects to historic properties."

Barbara Hill of Clean Power Now, an advocacy group that supports Cape Wind, said the entire offshore wind industry would suffer if Simon decides more review of the tribal claim is needed. "If there is going to be an allowance to this type of viewshed issue, as far as the eyes can see, what are we going to build?" she said.

Cape Wind appeared close to final approval in January when the minerals service concluded the project posed no major environmental problems. If the tribes win their claim, say project supporters, there would be a host of unintended consequences.

Two Massachusetts environmental and economic development officials, Ian Bowles and Greg Bialecki, produced a list of commercial activities — from commercial fishing to sand mining — they said would be hurt by the ensuing new regulations. They also argued the Supreme Court has ruled that a vast, unenclosed body of water such as the 560-square mile Nantucket Sound isn't eligible as a Traditional Cultural Property. "It seems clear that this request for such a designation, coming at this time, is an attempt to block or further delay renewable energy development in Nantucket Sound," their letter said.

Green said the tribes have objected for years to the effect the project would have on their culture. Regulators, he said, have never met requirements to thoroughly address those concerns — including the pending claim about the sound — or to seriously consider an alternative site for the wind farm, which the tribes and the alliance favor. "I don't expect anything from this, except for due process," Green said. "And I have not received due process."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091102/...e_vs_wind_farm