A bit on the grungy side this morning in beautiful Burlington, eh?

Miss that sunshine, but, you know what?

Nothing we can do about it.

Democratic House Speaker Gaye Symington (left, dare we say in the midst of the biggest political fight of her career?) is at this moment at the Royal Diner in Springfield on her post-Legislature, pre-veto override “Listening Tour!”

Madame Speaker will be at the Brattleboro Savings Bank over the noon hour. If you’re in the neighborhood, check her out, will ya?

Send me a picture! Report on turnout?

As everybody knows, Republican Gov. Jim Douglas will veto H. 520, the Democrats’ Fight-Global-Warming Bill as soon as he gets his hot little hands on it. As a warm-up, Gov. Scissorhands vetoed the new campaign finance reform bill yesterday.

Take that, you damn reformers!

The Legislature returns on July 11. This letter-to-the-editor in today’s Burlington Free Press from Democratic State Rep. Tony Klein of East Montpeculiar (pictured below right) makes the point most citizens are not aware of....yet. That’s because our Gov. Douglas and anti-Democrat bomb-thrower John McClaughry have done a marvelous job of defining the global warming legislation their way - over, and over and over.

Facts?

But they get in the way!

Wind will be taxed like nuclear power

J ohn McClaughry's recent diatribe against the Legislature was full of whoppers, starting with his assertion that the all-fuels efficiency created by the Legislature would cost $25 million per year if signed into law by Gov. Jim Douglas. The real number is $4.5 million to $5 million per year, starting in 2009 and ending in 2012.

McClaughry then goes on to endorse the sweetheart deal that Vermont Yankee is getting at the expense of property taxpayers. Apparently McClaughry, like Gov. Douglas, thinks it's fair to single out Yankee's Louisiana-based owner, Entergy, for a freeze on property taxes. Entergy, after adding a multimillion-dollar addition to Yankee's production capacity, paid less last year into the education fund than it did in 2002. While every other Vermont resident and business sees property taxes go up, Entergy's property taxes go down. It's unclear how McClaughry, or Douglas, for that matter, can defend that inequity as fair.

But the clincher is McClaughry's assertion that wind developers are "corporate welfare" recipients when, in fact, the climate-change bill levies the same tax on wind as it does on Entergy.

Let's just get this straight: According to McClaughry, if you tax wind producers at one amount, they are corporate welfare recipients. If you tax nuclear power plants at the exact same rate, they are victims of an anti-business legislature.

REP. TONY KLEIN
East Montpelier