After the relative love-fest that Peter Shumlin’s summer meeting with the Progs turned out to be, one would have thought there was little he could do to incite a full-on challenge in the 2012 election campaign.
‘Turns out, he found exactly the right way to push Progressive buttons, and at least raise the specter of insurrection at the ballot box.
It’s uncanny; in 2011, there’s nothing like a very public tussle with the state employees’ union (VSEA) to win Shumlin a solid with Republicans while distancing him from inconvenient old friends…old friends whom he clearly thinks he can still “handle.”
We shall see….
Just as the storm was breaking today on GMD over events at the Democratic State Committee Meeting Saturday in Barre, the November Progressive Newsletter announced that State Committee’s intention to take up a Resolution in Support of Labor at its November 19 meeting in Montpelier.
Resolution proposed for consideration at the 11/19/11 State Committee meeting:
WHEREAS; The Vermont Progressive Party appreciates the critical role that organized labor has played in advancing higher living standards, better working conditions and greater workplace democracy for all workers; and,
WHEREAS; The Vermont Progressive Party recognizes that the decline of organized labor in the United States has significantly contributed to the vastly increased income and wealth inequality deplored by the popular Occupy Wall Street Movement and by the Vermont Progressive Party; and,
WHEREAS; The Vermont Progressive Party affirms that the right to collective bargaining is a fundamental human right recognized in Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and,
WHEREAS; The Vermont Progressive Party believes that working people in Vermont have a right to seek redress of contractual grievances free of any public condemnation by public officials;
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED by the Vermont Progressive Party that:
(1) The Vermont Progressive Party supports recent and ongoing efforts by members of the Vermont State Employee Association to obtain a ruling from duly constituted authority and a clarification of the terms of its contract with the State of Vermont; and
(2) The Party urges elected and appointed public officials to desist from castigation of the efforts of working Vermonters to seek an adjudication of contractual grievances through proper and recognized means.
Game on, Governor.
I find this all embarrassing.
“Can any of you Democrats tell me where the Governor’s office is at? Mr. Drysdale over the Commerce Band sent me to deliver this big check. He said look for a guy with the biggest nose in Vermont and that’s the Governor. But there’s a lot of big noses in this here Montpelier town. Dang, there goes another one. Mr. Drysdale said the Governor would have a job for me too. On his re-election campaign. I’d be his own personal Double-Nought and get to spy on the Unions and the Progressive Party which Mr. Drysdale said wants to take all of Uncle Jed’s oil money and give it out to people on the street. Gosh, I tried doing that in 2008 and Granny whipped me. Dang.”