I just got a robocall from the white supremacist American National Super PAC urging me to be proud of the white race and vote for Trump.
I only got the tail end of it, and their phone number.
“Donald Trump is not a racist, but Donald Trump is not afraid. Don’t vote for a cuban, vote for Donald Trump.”
As Sue Prent’s headline below says, “It takes an extremist to endorse an extremist.”
A couple of days ago BP said, “The top one percent captured between half and all income growth between 2009 and 2011.”
That is, the 6000 most wealthy people in Vermont got almost every cent of whatever bounce-back there was from the GOP crash on 2007-2008. We, The People, got what, a slight reduction in the unemployment rate? Oh, yay.
But Shumlin, being a Republican, doesn’t believe that the Vermonters that got all the money should pay one thin dime toward the state’s fiscal woes. He believes that everyone else – except those 6000 – to pay a much, much larger value of their income to fix the problem.
Our Republican governor says that re-opening ratified contracts and taking away cost-of-living increases from those Vermonters that actually work for a living is the only choice. Even just thinking that those 6000 Vermonters who got ALL the money from the economic recovery owe society even a penny are ‘in La-La Land,’ says our Republican Governor.
Anyone that has been through Plainfield in the last decade will remember the Red Store, a nice country store that had cheap gas.
Around the corner was Tim’s, newer and shinier.
Today, the Red Store is no more, and Skip Vallee bought Tim’s and remade it in His image. But Skip bought the Red Store, too. He was trying to rent it out to anyone that promised to NOT start a convenience/gas store – because Republicans HATE competition.
Well, just today I heard that Skip Vallee is eager to sell or lease the Red Store property to Vermont’s latest invasive species, Dollar General!
Dollar General is (OK, OK, ‘might be’) coming to Plainfield!
Boy, am I thankful I pay Union-busting Fairpoint $50 a month for a landline phone; Rasmussen polls just called about Milne versus Shummy.
And as always with polls I listen very carefully to the questions to determine bias or push-polling. The Rasmussen poll was fairly unbiased. The only real bias was that for poll answers, “Republican” and “Scott Milne” were always, “1”, and “Democrat” and “Shumlin” were always “2”.
Back to my opening statement, though. I don’t know if everyone is aware of this but Fairpoint is actively busting the lineman’s union right now, as we speak. Their contract ended on August 31 and Fairpoint has pretty much ignored the union’s attempts to negotiate a new one. Fairpoint wants to end retirement/pensions, cut pay to below Middle Class levels, and hire “Independent Contractors” (who work for crap-wages, have no pensions, and can’t bargain for a middle-class wage).
Today Fairpoint announced that they are simply going to do what they want and to hell with the union. They are going to stop all payments to the union’s pension funds and hire “Independent Contractors” to replace their seasoned and efficient linemen.
And who’s going to stop them?
WGOP’s comment section on this news was filled with typical Conservative/Republicans that HATE people that work for a living, saying no one deserves to be paid for their work and no one should ever be allowed to retire – except the CEOs, of course!
Conservatives / Republicans HATE the middle class with a white-hot passion, and Scott Milne does, too. A vote for Milne is a vote to impoverish the few remaining Middle Class jobs and crush them into welfare-dependent poverty.
(Thanks to CR, who spared us having to listen to this ourselves! – promoted by Sue Prent)
Did anyone hear yesterday’s VPR debate between the three amigos running in the primary for a chance to lose to Rep. Welch? Hilarious!
It’s like they were trying to out-crackpot – while simultaneously agreeing with – each other.
Highlights: None of them have any clue about the position they are running for, the southerner even was proud he’d never held any public office.
Flat tax! Poor pay more and the rich less. Each of them had a variation on the theme, but the overall goal is to make sure rich people pay as little as possible while the poor pay more.
End all tax deductions! Oh, except homeowner’s mortgage insurance, of course. Only homeowners should be allowed to have a deduction, poor people need to be screwed more because they clearly aren’t poor enough!
Obamacare = EVIL! All of them agree that Obamacare is evil socialism, a government takeover of the entire health insurance industry. Except Medicaid, of course, that’s not going to be touched.
Gay Marriage, ugh! Of course all three are against gay people having equal rights under the law. Because some Americans are more equal than others.
It went on and on in that vein. Basically they are completely opposed to every single thing that they themselves don’t need.
Typical arch-Conservatives: completely clueless and unaware of the consequences of their stated goals.
(This probably should have made it to the front page sooner; but there’s been a lot going on here; and better late than never. – promoted by Sue Prent)
UPDATE: Today on VPR was an amazingly frank interview with “Beau Kilmer, a senior policy researcher at the Rand Corporation.” While quite brief it was refreshing to hear actual facts being discussed, not hyperbole and blatant falsehoods. After 30 years of Just Say No propaganda and outright lies about Cannabis I have come to NOT expect such truth through any media…
http://digital.vpr.net/post/ra…
A little late to the pot party, Vermont finally does something to legitimize the second biggest cash crop in Vermont. Shumlin announced that Vermont is handing $20,000 over to the Rand Corporation (with an unspecified amount coming from an unnamed foundation) for them to study all aspects of legalizing pot, including a report of Colorado and Washington state’s rollout. They say the report will be on legislator’s desks next January.
Jeb Spaulding was interviewed by Bob Kinzel from VPR and his report on Wednesday, Spaulding mentions some aspects of the study. But what I think is the most important part was not mentioned: the savings to be found in the criminal justice budget by not prosecuting and jailing pot offenses. I certainly hope that’s going to be addressed, one would think that would be a ‘no brainer’…
(Nice to hear what’s up in the northeast corner of the state! – promoted by Sue Prent)
As promised, Kristina Michelsen is not running again for the house representing the CALEDONIA-2 district. Some Men In Suits were seen in front of the Centennial Building shortly before new Select Board Members Larry Hamill announced he was running as a Republican for the seat.
I had previously posted here that the Dems were beating the bushes to try to find somebody, anybody, to run against the Republican Party. They got some guy named Chip Something-Or-Other…
Well, on Saturday, I was standing outside glaring at the teen drivers speeding down the otherwise calm and quiet residential street when this grizzled greybeard came up and introduced himself. He was the famous Chip Not-The-Republican!
There’s more in a rare split diary from the Disillusioned Comrade:
He was making the rounds gathering signatures to get on the ballot. I was eager to sign.
He is Chip Troiano from Stannard, he’s been working for Legal Aid representing the poor and homeless for several years. He’s older than me, having been in the infantry in Viet-Nam, finishing his time there as a door-gunner on the famous Hueys…
We had an interesting talk, he asked great questions, starting with, “What’s your biggest concern in the legislature?”
We spoke about how Vermont is way behind the times regarding Cannabis policy (thanks for nothing, Shap!), the crazy ways that our schools are funded where the cap on per-pupil spending doesn’t take into account special needs students so that three special needs kids and their caretakers almost put the tiny burg of Woodbury into the same class as Stowe: A ‘Sending’ Town, and the way that the Vermont welfare system is still stuck in full-time work thus not understanding the Brave New Republican world where no one has full time jobs anymore, no one get’s paid the same month to month and everyone has to have three jobs just to pay the gas to get to those jobs.
Nice guy. I’ll vote for him…
I have a report from Bristol that for the last three weeks at least, Fox 44 has turned off their RF transmitter during the air time of the new Cosmos TV show. The person giving that report doesn’t have cable or Dish, and uses the proper HD antenna and receiver. He says he gets Fox 44 all day Saturday and most of the day Sunday, but the signal goes to static by the time Cosmos is supposed to come on.
Any body else on here receive TV by old-fashioned RF?
I’ll press my contact for more details…
UPDATE:
44 was on this morning and past few days, but it is not on now when Cosmos is about to come on.
I dont know about every weekend. I havent tuned it in regularly. This morning it is weak with a blocky picture. Probably strong by this afternoon.
On Saturday it was clear and nice. Today it was no signal. Doesnt seem like just suddenly bad reception.
I sure would like a second source for confirmation. Anybody else have RF reception for TV?
Despite Conservative’s best efforts at promulgating lies, Connecticut has shown that in Real Life, paid sick leave does NOT hurt business.
Using data drawn from a survey of Connecticut employers and on-site interviews, the authors analyzed the impact of the state’s pathbreaking new law. Though lobbyists and some employers in the state expressed concern that the law would negatively affect employers, the report demonstrates that these fears were unfounded. In fact, in several of the sectors most directly affected by the legislation – such as hospitality and health services – employment actually rose.
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/…
The full report is a PDF link on that site.
An interesting show on VPR’s Vermont Edition today. Talking about how great snowmobiling is and how terrible that we have way less snow now than we used back in the good old days of yore.
Finally, a caller made the point that the reason there’s less snow today is because of exhaust from vehicles, such as snowmobiles, causing the climate to change, and instead of inculcating or children to waste gas on snow machines and kill off their future, maybe we should teach them to preserve their lives instead?
The guest from VAST had no response, obviously.