The New England Governors’ Conference, meeting in Newport, R.I., May 11-13, has made energy its top agenda item.

As well it might.

Even before post-Katrina price spikes, New England’s six states were energy orphans at the end of the pipelines, obliged to import virtually all their oil, natural gas or coal. They’re second only to Hawaii in vulnerability to import cutoffs or electric grid breakdowns. Fast inflating heating costs provide a severe new burden. New Englanders pay electric utility bills 36 percent above the national average. Escalating energy costs threaten the region’s competitiveness and make it increasingly unaffordable for young people.

Once every decade or so there is a major transportation improvement project that serves to define a community or a region. For bicyclists on the Seacoast, the last major infrastructure project was the 1999 construction of the Rockingham Pedestrian/Bicycle Bridge that connected Portsmouth with Pease International Tradeport and finally provided a safe crossing of the Spaulding Turnpike for walkers and cyclists alike.

While President Bush hopes to use his State of the Union address on Jan. 31 to rally public opinion around his agenda for the coming year, the organizers of World Can’t Wait are calling for political demonstrations across the country and in Washington, D.C., to demand that Bush step down and take his programs with him. The hope is to reinvigorate the anti-war sentiment of 2003 to break the silence of assumed consent by symbolically drowning out his address. The group is also seeking permits for a rally and march around the White House the following Saturday, Feb. 4, at 11 a.m. Deborah Sweet, national coordinator of World Can’t Wait, was recently interviewed by Burt Cohen, host of “Portside” on Portsmouth Community Radio, WSCA-LP 106.1 FM. Excerpts are reprinted here.

The trial of Jim Tobin is playing out in federal court in Concord. At issue is Tobin’s alleged role in orchestrating hundreds of computer-generated hang-up calls that paralyzed Democratic get-out-the-vote phone calls on Election Day in 2002. That year, in a closely watched U.S. Senate race, Republican incumbent John Sununu defeated Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, 51-46 percent.
Regardless of the jury’s decision, the implications run deep for Republican Party politics. The Republican National Committee has already spent over $700,000 on Tobin’s defense.