'Take back Vermont'

In Vermont, there's a move afoot to repeal the domestic unions legislation that provided civil partnerships between people of the same sex. Some proponents have posted "Take Back Vermont" signs around the state.

Anil Dash says some inventive Vermonters have appended a .com to the signs, registered the domain name, and pointed it here.

Outrage of the day

In Tuesday's NY Times, from Paul Krugman: How the federal government slammed Californians (again) while bowing to the special interests and manipulating the media. Excerpt:

Most independent experts now believe that during 2000-2001, price manipulation by energy companies, mainly taking the form of "economic withholding" ó keeping capacity offline to drive up prices ó added billions of dollars to California's electricity bills. A March FERC report concluded that there had been extensive manipulation of prices in both the natural gas and electricity markets.

Using methods widely accepted among economists, the California Independent System Operator ó which operates the power grid ó estimated that withholding by electricity companies had cost the state $8.9 billion. This estimate doesn't include the continuing cost of long-term contracts the state signed, at inflated prices, to keep the lights on during the crisis.

Yet the charges energy companies agreed to added up to only a bit more than $1 million. That is, the average Californian was bilked of more than $250, but the state will receive compensation of about 3 cents. ...