All posts by Jack McCullough

While Douglas was down in Washington pleading for stimulus payments from the federal government, activists across Vermont were rallying to protest Douglas's proposed cuts in public benefits and programs. From one end of the state to the other, hundreds of people turned out to challenge Douglas's plans. Here are some reports from across the state:

Activities got rolling at noon. 65 people turned out in Middlebury, with coverage from WPTZ, Channel 5 news.

In Randolph therre were 40 people, representing the local bookshop owner, senior center director, human services, youth, and disability rights advocates, six VSEA guys from the state garage, doctors from Gifford Hospital, members of the local peace coalition, Vermont Law School staff, one of the Randolph reps (Patsy French).

At the 5:00 rallies, there were some notable apperances. For instance, at the Northfield rally Republican Representative Anne Donahue joined 25 hardy souls, saying that all options, including increased revenues, must be on the table.

About 125 people turned up at the Burlington rally, 120 in Montpelier, 100+ in Brattleboro, and about 70 in Rutland. Smaller, but still significant, crowds assembled in Bennington, St. Johnsbury, and St. Albans.

Were you there? Do you have rally experiences to share? Please post a comment and share your experiences.

UVM is a National Embarrassment

January 31, 2009UncategorizedJack McCullough

Well, Groovy UV (in honor of Peter Freyne) has made national headlines this week, only not in a good way.

PZ has a post about their boneheaded choice of commencement speaker. Have you heard already? It's Nixon chum and creationism apologist Ben Stein.

As PZ says, picture being a biology professor and sitting there while ths quizmaster and right-wing Republican gives the big sendoff to the graduates of Vermont's flagship institution of higher learning.

What are they failing to see? Wasn't anyone from the Flat Earth Society available?

What’s in the hopper?

January 30, 2009UncategorizedJack McCullough

The Legislature's been back in town for a couple of weeks, which means that they've had time to start introducing bills. I thought this might be a good time to take a look at what's been introduced, and give GMD's readers a chance to take a look at them.

One point to be aware of is that nothing happens to most bills. They get introduced, read on the floor, assigned to a committee, and that's where they stay: on the wall, on an index card. This happens to bills that we really want, and also to bills that we're really worried about. It's a long session; in fact, even bills that don't pass this year are fair game to keep moving through the process and pass in the adjourned session, which will start next January.

At this point, though, we don't know which bills will have legs, and which will just expire on the wall, so it's important to keep checking and see what might be coming. Here's a quick view of some bills I noticed as I went through the newly introduced bills tonight.

H. 10. AN ACT RELATING TO INTERNET PUBLICATION OF STATE AGENCY RULES

Sounds like a real snoozer, right? Maybe not. In addition to legislation, a lot of the way we are governed is through regulations promulgated by the administrative agencies. This bill, sponsored by Willem Jewett, would require all state agencies to post their proposed rules on the Internet. I don't know if this is going anywhere, but if this passes it will make it easier for ordinary citizens to find out what their administrative agencies are doing, and maybe do something about it.

H. 29. AN ACT RELATING TO THE REQUIREMENT OF MANDATORY BINDING ARBITRATION; THE ELIMINATION OF STRIKES AND IMPOSED CONTRACTS IN CONNECTION WITH THE EMPLOYMENT OF TEACHERS AND ADMINISTRATORS; AND VOTER APPROVAL OF SOME CONTRACTS

Union busting, anyone? It outlaws teacher strikes (how often do we have them, anyway), requires binding arbitration that considers, among other things, prior salary and benefit increases and comparable contracts in other communities, and otherwise imposes a whole list of measures that will depress teacher compensation. This is bad news if it ever gets any play, but I'm hoping that it doesn't.

H.37 AN ACT RELATING TO THE REPEAL OF THE REQUIREMENT THAT SCHOOL BUDGETS IN EXCESS OF THE MAXIMUM INFLATION AMOUNT BE PRESENTED TO THE VOTERS AS A DIVIDED QUESTION

I'd like to see this pass. It's got a lot of sponsors and it would repeal the two vote requirement for school budgets that Douglas rammed through.

H.80 AN ACT RELATING TO THE USE OF CHLORAMINE AS A DISINFECTANT IN PUBLIC WATER SYSTEMS

Chloramine is a highly toxic additive used in public water systems. This bill would prohibit its use in publc water systems until 2012 unless the prohibition is later extended.

H.98 AN ACT RELATING TO LIBRARIES AND MINORS

Last year the Legislature protected our civil liberties by making library records confidential, but created an exception for parental access to the records of children under age 16; this bill would raise the age to 18, which means that parents would have access to their children's library records even if the kids are looking into information relating to sexuality, religion, politics, or other sensitive areas their parents may disapprove of. This seems to be a major attack on civil liberties. The bill is sponsored by three liberal Democrats from Windham County, which makes me think that there may be some local issue motivating it.

S.0014 AN ACT RELATING TO EXPANDING THE SCOPE OF THE BEVERAGE CONTAINER REDEMPTION LAW

When our bottle bill was passed the market for individual, portable beverage was basically soda and beer. Now we have bottled water, iced tea, and all kinds of noncarbonated beverages, none of which are subject to the bottle deposit. This bill would study the idea of expanding the deposit to noncarbonated beverages.

S.0018 AN ACT RELATING TO LIMITING THE POWER OF MUNICIPALITIES OR DEEDS TO PROHIBIT THE INSTALLATION OF SOLAR COLLECTORS, CLOTHESLINES, OR OTHER ENERGY DEVICES BASED ON RENEWABLE RESOURCES

Want a solar collector, wind generator, or clothesline? This bill says your town can't stop you.

S.0024 AN ACT RELATING TO THE REPEAL OF THE REQUIREMENT THAT SCHOOL BUDGETS IN EXCESS OF THE MAXIMUM INFLATION AMOUNT BE PRESENTED TO THE VOTERS AS A DIVIDED QUESTION

Same as H. 37–get rid of Douglas's two vote requirement for school budgets.

S.0048 AN ACT RELATING TO MARKETING OF PRESCRIBED PRODUCTS

Tired of wondering if your doctor is prescribing treatment because it's good for you, or because of the goodies he's getting from the drug company? This bill's for you.

So far we've seen 109 House bills and 53 Senate bills introduced. By the end of the session it will be up in the hundreds. If I get the chance I'll do more reviews, especially as we see that some bills of interest to GMD readers are moving forward.

How low can they sink? OR Open season on nonprofits

January 30, 2009UncategorizedJack McCullough

Actually, it's probably just a coincidence, right?

Last week a bunch of nonprofits advocates came out and criticized the Douglas Administration for proposing to kill off the VPharm program. This is a program that provides money to cover prescription drugs for people who can't afford them, even after their Medicare Part D benefits.

Douglas of course mouthed the platitudinous I'd rather not be making this cut but blah blah blah, and the advocates have been standing up to him.

And then today, the Douglas administration, hiding behind the Republican caucus, came out with a new proposal:

John Updike, 1932-2009

January 28, 2009UncategorizedJack McCullough

The image is of a man both curious and intelligent, yet with eyes that betray the sense of humor that was frequently present in his writing.

Sad news comes today, of the death of John Updike, perhaps the greatest American author of the second half of the twentieth century. A true man of letters, Updike's literary output includes not only short stories and novels, but also poetry, essays, criticism, and even sportswriting. He published his first story in the New Yorker in 1954, the year he graduated from Harvard, and published more than a hundred additional stories, essays, articles, and poems there in the next five years. News stories today typically referred to his output as “more than fifty” books: the actual count to date is sixty-one, but I think he has another coming out later this year. He did it the way one must: every day he went to the office and wrote, three pages a day.

I loved his writing. It was in reading Updike that I first saw how writing could be described as “lapidary”: he is second to none as a prose stylist, although in an interview with the Times last fall he said that he didn't think of himself as a stylish writer, just one who wanted to get everything right, so that the reader would see the people and the world he was writing about exactly as he saw it. He could also make you love the unlikable character: I know of at least one person who couldn't bring herself to read the final scene in Rabbit at Rest, in which his greatest character, whom we have known since he was a young, not very good, husband, dies.

I also loved the fact that in his books he included a note about the typeface, Janson, although in his later books, instead of saying that it was set on the Linotype, it was a digitized version.

We still have his writings, and it is part of the measure of his greatness that we can feel that a writer with two Pulitzers and two National Book Awards was underappreciated. It may be that the anti-Americanism bred of Bush's presidency is what deprived him of the Nobel, but this oversight will not diminish the legacy of this great man.

Count me in, Vermont!

January 27, 2009UncategorizedJack McCullough

If you're sick of hearing Douglas and the members of the legislature say there is no capacity to raise taxes to help meet our budget shortfall, raise your hand.

That's what I thought: just about everyone.

Next question: what do we do about it?

There's a new web page that starts to answer the question, to give Douglas the message that we read from Northfield Democratic chair Chris Curtis in the Free Press yesterday: “Somebody needs to explain to the governor that the word tax is not a four-letter word.”

The page is called Count me in, Vermont, and it's been started by Liz Schlegel, the chair of the Waterbury Democratic Committee. It starts out by asking a couple of very simple questions: how much would middle class Vermonters be willing to pay in increased taxes, and how much money could a small tax increase generate?

The answer may surprise you. Using data provided by frequent GMD contributor Doug Hoffer, the answer is millions, and not just a couple.

I agree with Liz. I like to pay taxes, and I think there are a lot of people who, even if they don't affirmatively like it, accept that paying taxes is the duty we gladly take on as the price of living in a civilized society.

Now what we need to do is let our elected representatives know. Get the petition, print it out, and get your friends to sign it.

“The only tired I was, was tired of was giving in.” Rosa Parks

January 25, 2009UncategorizedJack McCullough

One thing that bothered me about the pre-inauguration concert last weekend was Samuel L. Jackson's speech, and how he characterized Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her seat. It's a comforting myth: the unobtrusive, non-troublemaker who was just too tired to get up and move to the back of the bus on her way home from work.

Today, On the Media carried a story that clearly contradicts the accepted myth. In fact, Rosa Parks is what we raise our children to be, and what we expect of ourselves: a committed, active citizen, organized with her fellow citizens to change what was wrong.

I don't know about you, but the truth enhances, and doesn't not diminish her, in my eyes.