UPDATE Tuesday April 8: From Allen Gilbert via email: Testimony on the Taser regulation bill (H.225) has been scheduled for tomorrow (Wednesday) in the Senate Government Operations Committee. […] If you haven't already contacted the five senators by email or other means, please do so within the next 24 hours. [See below for names and contact info. ~ NanuqFC]

In the debate over the use of Tasers one of the claims made by Taser proponents is that the use of Tasers saves police departments money because their people are less likely to be injured, and that as a consequence they save money on their workers' comp premiums.

One might be forgiven for questioning whether the cost savings justify the severe injuries and fatalities suffered by people injured by Tasers, but there's more to the story.

A report just completed by the Vermont chapter of the ACLU demonstrates that Vermont's taxpayers are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for the improper police deployment of Tasers.

Here's the report, reprinted, of course, by permission.

 Police Abuse Of Tasers Costs State Over $250,000

The total keeps growing the deeper we dig into police records. State government and local towns have paid out $269,500 since 2006 in seven different lawsuits alleging Taser abuse by Vermont police.

If the bill that's passed the House and is now in the Senate becomes law, the lawsuits will likely continue. That's because the House bill codifies the existing Taser deployment standard — a standard that allows police to use the powerful weapons on anybody “actively resisting” an officer. “Active resistance” includes a subject crossing his arms over his chest, or even protestors who have chained themselves to a barrel and refuse to move. No immediate threat to anyone's safety is needed to justify a 50,000-volt shock.

We'll be fighting in the Senate for a new standard — a standard that says Tasers should only be used to reduce an immediate threat of serious injury or expected death to a subject or others. We'll also be fighting for measurement and calibration of Tasers' electrical charge; that's crucial to the weapons' safer operation but isn't currently required. We also want officers to carry cameras when they carry Tasers; even Taser International's CEO says cameras can reduce abuse. Finally, we want civilian review of incidents involving Tasers. Internal reviews don't bring the impartiality and objectivity that independent panels do.

The bill is now in the Senate Government Operations Committee. If you know any of the committee members, send them an e-mail. Tell them you want a Taser bill that stops the abuses that so far have cost the state over a quarter million dollars — as well as the death of a disturbed, epileptic man, and unnecessary injuries to others. Mention the need for calibration, cameras, and civilian review, too.  

• Sen. Jeanette White, committee chair
• Sen. Anthony Pollina, vice chair
• Sen. Claire Ayer
• Sen. Eldred French
• Sen. Norm McAllister

For more information on Tasers and their use, navigate to our Taser research series:

• “Lawful But Awful” Taser Cases
• $269,500 Paid Out In Taser Abuse Cases
• Letter To House Government Operations Committee Chair Rep. Donna Sweaney objecting to House makeover of H. 225
• H. 225 as introduced
• H. 225 as passed the House

Thank you to Allen Gilbert and the ACLU-Vt. for carrying on this fight! 

We've said this before, but I really have to ask where is the fight in Obama?

 The issue this time is the trial balloon they've launched that they might release convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.

Pollard is a bad guy. He's serving a life sentence for selling American military secrets to Israel, secrets that found their way to the KGB in short order. As reported in Slate: The information Pollard gave to Israel included technical details of U.S. spy satellites and highly classified information about how the U.S. intercepted Soviet communications.

For years he's had supporters agitating to get him released, and now Obama is talking about turning him over for some kind of illusory promise by Netanyahu.

Not only is Pollard bad, what we're going to get for rolling over for Netanyahu is almost precisely nothing.  Or, to be a little more specific, what Obama gets in the deal is Netanyahu sitting at the table pretending to negotiate in good faith for another year or so.

 As usual, Josh Marshall has it right. If it's inevitable that Pollard will be released, the only time it should ever happen is if we get something really, really big for it. Like a comprehensive agreement. Pollard's release might be the biggest thing Netanyahu wants from Obama (except for getting him defeated, which he tried to do in 2012), so once Netanyahu gets Pollard back there's nothing left to give.

So when Netanyahu once again says he's not giving anything, and not stopping the illegal settlements, and we need to do something to persuade him to negotiate honestly, what's left?

 Here's how to contact the White House. 

 Call the President

PHONE NUMBERS

Comments: 202-456-1111

Switchboard: 202-456-1414

TTY/TTD

Comments: 202-456-6213

 Call them today and tell them not to release Jonathan Pollard.

Here's tonight's news from Comcast:

Pat Boone is a wanted man.

The legendary “Ain’t That a Shame” crooner, who scored five number one hits in the 1950s, has an arrest warrant with his name on it after missing a scheduled court appearance in connection with a recent lawsuit.

Needless to say, I have no objection to anyone wanting to throw Pat Boone in jail. It's just ironic–not to mention almost sixty years overdue– that the warrant isn't for this:

Are doomed to repeat it.

George Santayana said that, and now the saying apparently describes the CCTA Board of Commissioners.

 According to Vermont Digger, the CCTA Board is poised to escalate an already hostile situation to one of extreme bitterness. They voted today to hire scabs to break the three-week-old bus drivers' strike.

 Here's the operative language in today's resolution:

 In the interest of restoring transit service as quickly as possible, the Board authorizes staff, subject to the Board’s subsequent approval, to secure temporary drivers until the negotiation is resolved. The Board requests that staff prepare an action plan that includes options for legal action to end the strike.

 People who have lived in Vermont long enough will remember the 1985 Hinesburg teachers' strike, which eventually went on for eighty-seven days. In that strike not only did the school board hire scab teachers two weeks into the staff, but the board chair, Rita Flynn Villa, tried to throw out teacher pay scales, eliminate teacher grievance protection, and generally tried to bust the union.

The teachers were ultimately reinstated, but not without causing bitter divisions between teachers, management, and parents in the town.

This year it's not the teachers, it's the bus drivers, and they and their supporters have already been complaining about what they consider unfair and unbalanced press coverage of the positions of the two sides.

Hiring scabs, while it may look like an attractive short-term solutions, will only further poison relations with the drivers. The company may be legally justified in taking this action, but they should recognize that there are already calls by community groups to replace management, and those calls will only increase if the board goes nuclear. 

A few days ago we asked “How can they say no?” and the question was how could the Legislature possibly refuse to even look at the revenue potential of marijuana legalization.

You see, right now, marijuana growers in Vermont are getting a huge tax break by escaping both sales and income taxes on their sales, and a cadre of House members thought it would be a good idea to put a stop to this and start collecting money to help balance the state budget. An amendment was proposed to the miscellaneous tax bill, it garnered over fifty cosponsors, it even gained the support of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

So what happened when it got to the floor?

 * * * Joint Fiscal Office Report * * *

Sec. 31a. JOINT FISCAL OFFICE REPORT

On or before January 15, 2015, the Joint Fiscal Office shall report to the General Assembly regarding the projected revenue and cost impacts of the taxation and regulation of marijuana.

Thereupon, Rep. Koch of Barre Town raised a Point of Order in that the amendment was not germane to the bill, which Point of Order the Speaker ruled well taken.

I wasn't there but by the outcome I have to figure that the amendment's supporters didn't have the votes to override the Speaker's ruling.

Of course, we do have a bicameral legislature, and I understand there is support in the Senate, so we'll keep watching this one. 

Just an interesting sighting from the Web.

It's another Tayt Brooks sighting, whom you may remember as the acolyte of Lenore Broughton, who singlehandedly funds right-wing causes here in Vermont.

This time around Tayt is crowing about the success of some Burlington School Board candidates who had the backing, or attended a training, or something put on by an astroturf group called American Majority.

 One of these candidates claimed that after going through the training he tripled his vote count, and that could very well be true. Maybe they actually did teach him how to identify supporters, hone his message, raise money, and actually succeed in politics.

What seems to bear watching is if this group allied to the Tea Party is really starting to have an effect in local politics. We've seen across the country the way right-wingers and creationists have started out in low-level, low-visibility elections to establish a foundation to propagate their ideas, and I've always been pretty skeptical that those ideas will be popular here in Vermont.

On the other hand,, if a well-funded national conservative organization is consciously targeting Vermont local elections to undermine the schools, it requires a well-organized response. We are already seeing liberal, civic-minded people in Burlington and Montpelier organizing to fight back against the attacks on our schools and school budgets. Let's hope those groups are the start of a counterforce against the big bucks flowing in from out of state.

 UPDATED again.

VPR reports that the amendment was supported by the committee this morning. Next stop is the House floor. With the support of the committee of jurisdiction things look very good. 

UPDATE, 3/27/14, 9:22 P.M.

The amendment has over fifty cosponsors now. They'll be making a presentation in House Ways & Means, which has members who are known to support the provision, in the morning before the amendment gets taken up on the floor. 

 Watch this space for more developments.

Expect the unexpected when the miscellaneous tax bill comes to the House floor later today.

I know what you're thinking. “Is there anything that I am less interested in than the miscellaneous tax bill?” 

Well, that's about to change. You see, the miscellaneous tax bill is about raising money, and every year the Legislature hears the same message: there's not enough money to do what you want to do, whether it's housing and heating assistance for poor people, environmental protection, or any number of activities that would really make a positive difference in people's lives. And of course, the other half of that message, the half that comes across loud and clear, is that there is no additional taxing capacity, no appetite for raising taxes on Vermont's hard-working or rich people.

But some smart House members are looking around the country and have identified a new source of revenue. As you know, out in Colorado they're raking in the dough even faster than they thought they would. The projected income for the first year is $40 million in new taxes, all paid by Coloradans who are more than happy to shell out for the opportunity to get high.

Yes, the green is coming from marijuana, and a tripartisan group of legislators, more than thirty so far, think it would be a smart move to figure out how much Vermont could raise in taxes if we legalized pot. Tomorrow when the miscellaneous tax bill is taken up one of the amendments that will be put before the house is this:

 Sec. XX  JOINT FISCAL OFFICE REPORT

No later than January 15, 2015, the Joint Fiscal Office shall report to the House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance regarding the projected revenue impacts of legalizing the possession of marijuana, including the feasibility of a sales tax on marijuana and any other information that would assist the committees in considering marijuana policy reform. 

It doesn't commit the state to doing anything, but if we're going to keep leaving money on the table we should at least know what kind of money we're talking about.

 They're still working on the language, but with thirty members signed on they are already well on the way to getting this passed. And from what I hear, if anything the support in the Senate may be even stronger.

Count on seeing some major pushback from leadership, but this seems like the obvious next step. 

Keep marijuana out of the hands of kids, regulate it, and start collecting the taxes Vermont needs.

This amendment is the first step. 

Or whatever they say at the beginning of a football game.

You read it here first: unionization is coming to minor league football.

That's right, a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that NCAA football players, this time the Northwestern team, are university employees, and are consequently entitled to form a union to bargain collectively for wages, hours, and working conditions.

You heard that right: wages, and that could mean big money.

 According to reporting by CNN: 

Figures filed by Northwestern University show that the Big Ten Conference football program had revenue of $30.1 million in 2012-13. It had expenses of $21.7 million, leaving it a profit of $8.4 million.

 How does this translate to the players?

Here's one way to think about it. In the United States major league athletes take home bring home half or more of the total revenues the teams get, more in baseball, basktball, and hockey, a little less in football. What's a fair share for the workers who enable the so-called universities to realize annual profits in the billions?

Or think of it another way: There are seventy NCAA football coaches who make more than a million dollars a year, not counting endorsements (which happen to be illegal for NCAA athletes).

Or one more perspective, also from CNN:  The average annual scholarship shortfall that athletes have to pay themselves to attend school is $3,285.

Yes, these workers, whom the NCAA calls without a hint of embarrassment “student-athletes”, and who are compensated by nothing more than a scholarship that is very unlikely to lead to a degree, wind up subsidizing their employers for the privilege of playing big-time sports.

 This is far from the end of the story. The case will go up to the full NLRB, and then undoubtedly through the federal courts, but this is a major step toward justice for NCAA workers.

As far as I know there's only been one, but it's important this week.

The year is 1990, the case is Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), a case in which two people fired from their jobs with the state of Oregon for using peyote in religious ceremonies appealed their disqualification from unemployment benefits because they were discharged for misconduct.

Their argument was that because their conduct was motivated by their sincere religious beliefs it was protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, and that it was unconstitutional to penalize them for their actions.

The Supreme Court rejected their claim concluding that religious motivation is not enough to give them a blanket exemption from neutral and generally applicable state laws.

Justice Scalia wrote the court's opinion, and here's the money quote:   

We have never held that an individual's religious beliefs [p879] excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate. On the contrary, the record of more than a century of our free exercise jurisprudence contradicts that proposition. As described succinctly by Justice Frankfurter in Minersville School Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 594-595 (1940):

 Most of the liberals on the court dissented, but I think they were wrong and Scalia was right.

What remains to be seen now, of course, is whether Scalia is going to have the intellectual integrity to hold to the position he took in 1990. This year the case is Hobby Lobby and it's challenging the contraception coverage mandate of the Affordable Care Act.

If Scalia were as intellectually honest as he likes to pretend he would follow his reasoning in Employment Division and uphold the contraceptive mandate.

One suspects, however, that we will see a results-oriented vote in favor of his base. 

Actually, it's only partly the rent.

The truth is, it's a mismatch between the rent and the worker's income. You might not be surprised to learn that a recent report demonstrates, once again, that Vermont is one of the hardest places to afford housing.

  In order to afford a modest, two-bedroom apartment at the Fair Market Rent in Vermont, renters need to earn $19.36 per hour, or $40,272 a year. This is Vermont’s 2014 Housing Wage, revealed in a report released today. The report, Out of Reach 2014, was jointly released by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a Washington, DC-based research and advocacy organization, and the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition.

 We don't have rent control in Vermont, and it's pretty certain that we never will, but we can do something about inadequate wages for working people.

For example, we can raise the minimum wage. That's only half the job, though. Sixty thousand workers in Vermont don't get paid sick time, so if they have to miss work they don't get paid. Picture being on a low salary already, then trying to make your rent when you miss out on a couple of days' pay this week.

We know that the means are at hand to address both of these problems: raise the minimum wage and require all employers to provide earned sick leave, but apparently that's a big lift this year.

 Tom Stevens, the State Representative who has been the champion of the earned sick leave proposal, and a small business person, Jen Kimmich, one of the founders of the Alchemist, writing at VtDigger.org, point out that the evidence supports the sick leave proposal. It turns out that where it's been tried and studied it has not hurt small businesses.

 A growing body of evidence should put to rest lobbyists’ predictions of doom. Kevin Westlye, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, opposed the first paid sick days bill in San Francisco, but later told a business reporter that it’s “the best public policy for the least cost. . . .” The current director of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce testified in committee hearings this year that concerns raised by Vermont’s business organizations were voiced in his city, too, but that seven years after implementation, earned sick days have had no adverse effect on his members.

In addition, just released research from Connecticut, the only state thus far to enact an earned sick day law, found that “the concerns articulated by many business associations that the law would impose heavy burdens on employers and invite worker abuse turn out to have been misplaced.” Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said the law had led to no change or an increase of less than 2 percent in their overall costs.

Time's running out. Call your legislator and tell them that you support both a minimum wage increase and earned sick leave.