More on the Un-Bottle Bill

My post yesterday on the un-bottle bill has now generated more public comment than the General Assembly heard in considering HB 201. Surely the repeal of such an important program deserves more than a perfunctory discussion.
Several commenters raised questions about diversion rates, handling and who keeps the nickel. All these are worthwhile questions that should be more fully considered—consideration they were not given by the General Assembly. No analysis was presented as to the effect on recycling rates if the bill were passed, though one or two legislators did offer the unsubstantiated opinion that recycling would increase if the bottle bill were rescinded.
As far as I'm concerned the burden of proof is on the supporters of HB 201 to show that it would not adversely affect recycling in Delaware. They have not met that burden.
If you agree that such a significant change in policy deserves more through discussion and analysis, please contact Governor Markell today and ask him to veto HB 201.

Ask Jack Markell to Veto the Un-Bottle Bill

House Bill 201, the bill to repeal Delaware's original bottle bill, passed the Senate in the early morning of July 1, when most environmental advocates had already gone home. Now advocates are organizing to ask Jack Markell to veto this regressive and short sighted measure.
Pat Todd of the Delaware League of Women Voters writes, "Delaware’s Bottle Bill Law needs to be strengthened to include aluminum cans and 2-liter plastic bottles, not repealed." DNREC secretary Collin O’Mara spoke against HB 201 before the House Natural Resources Committee, saying "mend it, don’t end it."
My view is that if the current system is flawed, it should not be repealed, but included as part of a larger effort to improve recycling in Delaware. As I wrote three years ago, recycling has enormous economic benefits. Financial analysis can quantify the value of postponing the construction of a new landfill in northern Delaware, a reality Markell recognized in a speech back in April:

Expanding recycling: despite the short-term economics of recycled materials, it will be much more cost-effective in the long-term to prioritize recycling instead of the purchase of another landfill site (assuming we could even identify one).

We should be going forward on recycling, not backward. If you agree, please contact Governor Markell today and ask him to veto HB 201. Even though the session ended 12 days ago, the bill may not yet have reached his desk, so there is still time to weigh in on this issue. Tell him TommyWonk sent you.

The Tour de France Heads into the Pyrenees

The Tour de France heads into the Pyrenees today after the most exciting first week in memory. Unlike previous Tours, we've had several events to sort out the contenders early on. Fabian Cancellera is stilling wearing the yellow jersey, though many expect him to lose it by the end of the stage.The next four riders in the general classification are from the Astana team: Lance Armstrong, Alberto Contador, Andreas Kloden and Levi Leipheimer. All are strong climbers, all have finished on the podium, and all are within 31 seconds, with Lance just 22/100 seconds off the lead.
Today's stage is the first of eight in the mountains. I expect Astana to ride together to sort out their rivals. Carlos Sastre, the defending champion, Cadel Evans, a two-time runner-up, and Andy Schleck will be looking for opportunities to attack and make up the time they've lost in the first week. Another contender, Denis Menchov, is already down nearly five minutes.
Astana will be able use its strength at the top of the GC to great tactical advantage. Rivals looking to claw their way into contention will have four riders to watch. Armstrong and Contador don't have to attack, but if Kloden or Leipheimer mount a charge, any rider looking to move up will have to respond.
The return of Lance Armstrong has galvanized the Tour. The peloton hasn't had a patron or boss since his departure, and he is back with the toughest posse in town. As the riders head up the slopes of the Pyrenees, Astana will be dictating the action. It's hard to imagine that Astana will let anyone else wear yellow from here on out, but we still have 16 days to go and two mountain ranges to cross.
Photo: Joel Saget / AFP / Getty Images

Lance Armstrong Nearly in Yellow

Lance Armstrong, age 37, is within 22/100 seconds of wearing yellow after Astana won the team time trial in the Tour de France. But, as the New York Times reports, he didn't sound too downhearted:

"It’s a little bit of a disappointment,” Armstrong said, sounding particularly upbeat after his Astana team won the stage. “But I have seven yellow jerseys at home."

The first week of the Tour de France is supposed to be flat and boring. Yes we get a few moments of excitement when the sprinters make their headlong dash for the finishing line. But the Tour generally doesn't start to sort out the contenders until the peloton heads into the mountains.
Not this year: Strong cross winds split the peloton on Monday, allowing a group of riders including leader Fabian Cancellera and Armstrong to make time on some other contenders.
This set up yesterday's time trial, which moved Armstrong and his teammates up in the standings, and further hurt some of the contenders from the weaker teams:

Carlos Sastre, the defending champion, was in 29th, 2:44 back. Cadel Evans, a two-time Tour runner-up, was 35th, 2:59 back. Denis Menchov, the 2009 Giro d’Italia champion, was 72nd after crashing during his Rabobank team’s run. He was 3:52 out of first.

It's still early, but race for yellow is looking more and more like an intrasquad event. Cancellera is expected to lose time in the mountains, and the next four riders in the general classification are from Astana: Armstrong, Alberto Contador, Andreas Kloden and Levi Leipheimer—all within 31 seconds of the lead.
Photo: Pascal Pavani/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Which Christianity?

Those who talk about the United States as a Christian nation fail to answer one essential question: Which form of Christianity?
As David Hackett Fischer describes in his exhaustively documented Albion's Seed, four major strains of Christianity took root the colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries: Puritans in New England, Anglicans in Virginia and Maryland, Quakers in Pennsylvania and borderland Protestants in the Appalachian highlands.
Each came because of religious and civil conflicts in England, and brought those conflicts with them. The Puritans and Anglicans, who migrated following the English Civil War, had very different ideas of how church and society should be organized. Both shunned the Quakers. The Protestants from the borderlands between England and Scotland, endured centuries or war and disorder, and brought with them a deep distrust of authority.
The religious conflicts that drove them all to America shaped their views of church and state. The only way they could agree on a single government was to limit the role of religion in civil life. These people fought each other in England and in the new world, and recognized that their new government could not be used to impose one version of Christianity on another.
When we sing, "Give me that old time religion," we aren't clear as to which old time religion. There were many of course, which we tend to forget in our yearning for a purer, simpler version of faith. But history shows us that religion in America at the founding of the United States was neither pure nor simple.

When in the Course of Human Events

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
The unaminous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
[New Hampshire] Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
[Massachusetts] John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
[Rhode Island] Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
[Connecticut] Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
[New York] William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
[New Jersey] Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
[Pennsylvania] Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
[Delaware] Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
[Maryland] Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
[Virginia] George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
[North Carolina] William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
[South Carolina] Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
[Georgia] Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

The Tour de France 2009

The Tour de France, the world's most demanding sporting contest, starts tomorrow. This year the riders will cover 3,500 kilometers over two mountain ranges in 21 stages. The favorite is Alberto Contador of the Astana team. Contador has won each of the grand tours he's entered over the last two years. Lance Armstrong, who will be riding with Contador, sums up his place on his team in the New York Times:

“The trick is trying to be a responsible teammate and co-leader and understand that Alberto could not just be stronger, but could be a lot stronger,” Armstrong said of Contador, who won the 2007 Tour as well as last year’s Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España.

I don't recall Armstrong ever admitting that another rider, even a teammate, is stronger. You could call this year's Astana team the New York Yankees of cycling.
The team has four riders who have finished on the podium in the Tour de France: Armstrong, Contador, Andreas Kloden and Levi Leipheimer. These guys will be intimidating in the mountains.
Johann Bruyneel's instructions to the team will be to deliver Contador to another victory, and if anyone else makes the podium, so much the better. Bruyneel's team (then Discovery Channel) was able to do just that in 2007, when Leipheimer came in third while riding in support of Contador.
Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) has been runner up in the Tour two years running, and wore the yellow jersey for much of the second week. He lost the jersey on Alp d'Huez to Carlos Sastre, who rode it all the way to Paris. But because Contador didn't ride last year, Sastre (Cervelo) isn't even the favorite. Neither rider has as strong a team to keep them safe in the peleton and escort them up the mountains. If Armstrong doesn't win, he has another motivation for riding. His return to the peleton has brought more attention to his foundation:

In 2008, before Armstrong’s return, $7,675,000 in donations came in during those quarters. In 2009, with Armstrong back, $8,056,000 came in.
More yellow rubber LiveStrong bracelets have been sold, too: 1,987,000 from January to May in 2009, up from 1,298,000 during the same period in 2008.

The sprinters will get their week of glory before the Tour heads into the Pyrenees next Friday. From there, the riders will have to pull themselves through seven more mountain stages before heading into Paris on July 21.
Photo: AFP