Left In Lowell

Tonight the Lowell City Council Sub-Committee on Flood Issues (CCs R. Elliott, Chair; A. Kazanjian and R. Mercier); A. will meet at 7:30 p.m. (after Special School Committee meeting) in City Council Chambers. It will be broadcast live on Lowell Telecommunications Corporation (LTC), Channel 10 and streaming video on their web site.

This is the Sub-Committee’s third meeting this month. Here are the links to the LTC archived video for the March 3rd meeting and the March 11th meeting.

In today’s Sun Mike Lafleur has a timely and detailed article on the Merrimack’s flooding problems. It is a complicated issue. One may need to be an amateur engineer, hydrologist, and meteorologist to fully understand the specifics; and then there are the players involved: U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, Boot Hydropower and of course the City of Lowell. (more…)

This is how our executive branch supports our troops??

If you were watching Countdown tonight, you saw Keith Olbermann in his “Bushed” segment report that at least 12 service members have been electrocuted in Iraq due to faulty wiring at facilities maintained by Halliburton spinoff company KBR. As appalling as that is, the details are even worse.

The diarist quotes a Houston Chronicle article:

At least a dozen soldiers and Marines have been electrocuted in Iraq over the five years of the war, and investigators now are trying to learn what role improper grounding of electrical wires played in those deaths.

And Houston-based KBR — which builds bases and maintains housing for U.S. troops in Iraq — is at the center of the probe, with questions being raised about its responsibility to repair known wiring problems.

On the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, California Democrat Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a letter Wednesday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates seeking details about electrocutions of military and contract workers in Iraq and about KBR’s role in making electrical repairs.

KBR had been contracted to provide maintenance on the building in 2007, the memo said.

Maseth was killed, the memo said, when an electrical water pump shorted out after he had stepped into the shower and turned on the water.

An electrical current then passed through the water pipes to a metal shower hose in the shower.

This is just gut-wrenching. We have got to halt all contracts to this Halliburton subsidiary. Or any other Bush crony corporation which is war profiteering in Iraq or Afghanistan.

This could bring a whole new dimension to the wifi debate in Lowell:

Intel’s researchers have come up with a way to send Wi-Fi signals up to 60 miles (100km), while maintaining a usable throughput of up to 6.5Mbits/s.
[…]
The technology is innovative on a number of levels. It works using a point-to-point design, which automatically lowers cost to a quoted region of $500-$1,000 (£250-£500) for a single connection – way below rival systems such as cable broadband or satellite.

Once terminated at the remote location, the connectivity it provides could be distributed using off-the-shelf Wi-Fi hardware.

It is also low-power, using around five to six watts for a system with three radios in a link, making it possible to power it during the day from solar power or by battery during the night.

So, what say you, Bernie?

AMERICAblog explains. The very system McCain cobbled together (a somewhat toothless, leaking system) for campaign finance reform is now something he, himself, is in violation of. You see, he wasn’t raising a whole lotta cash last summer when his campaign was floundering, so he opted into the campaign finance system, and took out loans using future matching funds he would get under campaign finance law as collateral. Now, he’s claiming he used other collateral for that loan, but the FEC has already told him he can’t opt out right now, they would have to gather for a ruling. One would think a Bush FEC would give McCain a pass (don’t they always help their buddies?), but the FEC doesn’t have a quorum anymore, so they can’t review a ruling, so McCain, who raised and spent in February more than the cap he agreed to, is in violation of the campaign finance laws.

There are big fines and up to five years in prison for violating these laws. Let’s see if anyone in the Bush-molded Justice Department actually investigates.

No, it’s not a command on my part (though, if you do, you should). Just an alert about a new program in Lowell that I’ve been meaning to post about all week but kept not getting to. This pilot program will offer residents looking to kick the habit with two weeks of free nicotine patches. If you are a smoker, or care for someone who is, you can come to the kickoff event next Monday in support of it! Click on the link to read more details. (more…)

It seems that the Governor and other pro-casino folks are willing to put more political capital on casinos. What a waste. Let’s move on to more substantive, better initiatives (and I’ll be the first to lambaste DiMasi for standing in the way). And no, Class III gambling via the Bureau of Indian Affairs federal route is not inevitable so-we-might-as-well-get-something-from-them, as proponents argued (I listened to some of the casino debate online yesterday). It’s not inevitable because courts have ruled against this same situation in Texas. In fact, the legislature could easily ban the potential loophole that’s in our laws, and get rid of “charitable casino nights” all together. Maybe we should see that law proposed next.

As to race track slots, they pose the same risk that allowing Class III to be legal with state-sanctioned casinos - that tribes will use the federal process to get land recognized and then build casinos that pay nothing to the state. So while Patrick and others were arguing that Class III casinos are inevitable because of the charity loophole (they aren’t), they ignore the fact that truly legalizing Class III for race tracks or state-allowed casinos will have the same effect. Totally nuts.

But is the casino bill dead? It went into committee to be “studied” (by 108 to 46) which means it’s dead for this year. However, with Pangy looking to “go to the voters” with a nonbinding ballot initiative, and Patrick vowing to keep at it, I don’t think this fight is over.

Local pols, except for Pangy, Rep. Colleen Garry of Dracut (gee, surprise there), and Rep. William Greene of Billerica, voted for, basically, killing the bill.

I do take exception with one paragraph in the Globe’s account, however:

The defeat of Patrick’s legislation has significant consequences in the debate over next year’s state budget, which contains a shortfall estimated at $1.3 billion. The governor had proposed relying on $124 million of casino licensing revenues to help balance the budget.

When on Gotarra’s green earth is it a good idea to rely on revenues, that, even if they materialized, wouldn’t be actually in hand for at least a year or two after the bill passed? That was one of the big problems I had with Patrick sticking that Phantom Revenue in the budget in the first place. Besides being a cynical tactic to screw up the budgeting process to push your major proposal through, there’s no way that that money would have been there right away anyway, creating the same dilemma the Globe says we have because the proposal was defeated! In other words, we’d have had these “significant consequences” regardless of the casino bill’s defeat. Idiots.

Not as bad as the corporate-welfare-recipient HMOs wanted, but still, a 12.1% increase in premiums? A 45% increase in copays? Does anyone else see the problem with wages which barely keep up with inflation (if they do) and state government mandated private HMO premiums that far exceed it?

Is it any wonder that most industrialized nations who have universal health care cut out the greedy middle man (the HMOs) and save a lot of money per person for it? And how can we still be ignoring the need for cost controls in our reform? What are we really getting for our taxpayer funds, and what more are we getting for such drastic increases? I don’t see it. I just see deteriorating quality, worse coverage, bad behavior (denial of coverage), and increased costs.

If this bodes what is to come, can you imagine someone who is barely affording paying $200 per month in premiums paying an approximately $25/month increase ($300 more per year) every year (plus bigger copays)?

Hey Niki Tsongas, what say you to Massachusetts health care reform, now? You were so gung ho on it in the election.

Left in Lowell wishes a speedy recovery to Mayor Bud Caulfield on his upcoming surgery and hope for a full and healthy recovery.

i was traveling so I did not have a chance to comment on Tuesday’s night City Council meeting. But as you all may know, this past Tuesday, the City Council pretty much declared its desire to go into a permanent bi-weekly schedule. There will a formal procedure; that is a Sub-Committee meeting, the drafting of the new rule and then it will a fortnight for the City Council. Actually, they were ready to approve the motion on Tuesday but the City Solicitor reminded them that they are some formalities that must take place.

I was surprised that a majority 6 (CCs M. Lenzi, A. Kazanjian, A. Mercier, B. Caulfield, J. Milinazzo and B. Martin) -3 (CCs R. Mercier, K. Broderick and R. Elliott) was clearly in favor of CC Mike Lenzi inaugural motion. In a previous post, I had declared my support for this move. Upon further review, I am beginning to change my mind. I think the three opposing Councilors made some strong argument for us to maintain the current weekly meeting schedule. Those of us who read blogs and the Sun, and follow closely the CC meetings can live with a two-week schedule. However, the passive observer will find the set up it a bit difficult to follow (more…)

There will be an informational session in Lowell on Wednesday, March 19 about the proposed power plant in Billerica. The folks from billericapowerplant.org will be there to present their case against the power plant and to the answer questions of area residents. It will be held at 7PM at the Sacred Heart School, 122 Andrews Street, in south Lowell.