Sen. Sally Fox, public advocate extraordinaire, has died after a two-year battle with lung cancer.

According to reports on Vt Digger, House Speaker Shap Smith made the announcement Friday to a shocked chamber of legislators, many of whom had been her colleagues during her seven terms in the House. She was in the middle of her second term in the Senate. According to the story in the Free Press (limited free access) Senate President Pro-tem John Campbell called her “courageous and passionate in fighting for people who couldn’t fight for themselves.”

I met Sally Fox a few times, and was inspired and impressed. Hers was clearly a public service life, dedicated to speaking up for those with less access to power. She was kind and smart and did terrific work. She will be missed by thousands of people, some of whom might not ever have known who she was or what she did to make their lives better.

Our hearts and thoughts go out to her husband and children and to all those who must find a way to carry on without her voice, her compassion, her presence to make justice real in this world.

Perhaps someone who knows Floyd or Cindy Nease better than I should be writing this piece. But here I am, to remind the Democratic Party and the lesbian and gay community that we need to rally round Floyd, our brother in grief.

It was Floyd Nease who, as House Democratic Majority Leader, rounded up the last 11 votes the House needed to override Jim Douglas’s ugly veto of the marriage equality bill in 2009, despite his private grief over the death of his mother on the morning of the vote. He has been a consummate Democrat of the kind we’d like to see many more in office.

And now, Floyd’s wife and companion of more than 40 years, Cindy, has died, last Wednesday, according to her obituary in Sunday’s Free Press, from “complications of 20 years of cancer treatment.” She was 62 years old and had been married to Floyd for 41 years.

The Neases came to Vermont two years before I did, and moved to Johnson. And Cindy dealt with two rounds of cancer. According to his “exit interview” in the Stowe Reporter, they would have been bankrupted but for the help of friends and neighbors.

His decision to run for the Legislature came after his wife struggled with cancer twice, and friends and neighbors rallied around the family, raising money to save them from the brink of bankruptcy.

Nease, then executive director of Laraway Youth and Family Services in Johnson, decided he could repay his community by serving in the Legislature.

I met Cindy a few times at Democratic Party events. She was a lively, engaged and engaging woman. I regret not coming to know her better.

Floyd decided to leave the legislature in 2011 and to decline a run for Lieutenant Governor at least in part to be more available to and spend more time with Cindy.

There will be an open house celebration of Cindy’s life from 1:30 to 5 p.m. in the dining hall of the Vermont Studio Center on Pearl Street in Johnson on Saturday, Nov. 30, 2013. […] The family asks that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to Lamoille Home Health and Hospice, an organization that Cindy valued both as a member of its board and as a patient. Without their highly capable help, she could not have achieved her last wish, which was to die peacefully at home. To make a memorial donation, you may: write a check payable to Lamoille Home Health & Hospice and mail it, along with a memorial notation, to 54 Farr Ave., Morrisville, VT 05661, or donate online at: http://www.lhha.org/.

Our most heartfelt condolences go out to Floyd, their daughters and grandchildren, and to all those who were touched by Cindy’s life.

Aaahh, the expansive green lawns, the sturdy brick buildings with columned porticoes, the long tradition of the ivy league. Dartmouth College, genteel, liberal arts, sports, a high-class education. This is, after all, a college with its own foundation, the Tucker Foundation, dedicated to instilling “moral leadership” in its students.

That foundation seems to have had trouble executing its mission, except for a double handful of students who had the courage to speak out against the racism, sexism, incidence of rape, and gay bashing on campus last spring. Those who spoke out experienced something more like one continuous hell-week, with threats of bodily harm.

The comments offered streams of profanity-laced insults about the protesters’ ostensible sexual orientations and appearance, and included calls for physical violence against them involving razor blades and other weapons.

“Why do we even admit minorities if they’re just going to whine?” one commenter asked. “Wish I had a shotgun. Would have blown those [expletive] hippies away,” wrote another.

And now, the Tucker Foundation has chosen to hire as its new dean James Tengatenga, Anglican Bishop of Southern Malawi. (The previous dean announced his retirement a year ago and has stayed on until his replacement arrives.)

It just so happens that Bishop Tengatenga was among the most outspoken African bishops condemning the New Hampshire diocese’s election of openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson.

“I come from an angry people. I come from a very frustrated church, a church that feels it has been betrayed by its brothers and sisters,” [Tengatenga] said, referring to the dispute with the Americans.

He has said that his church condemns homosexuality. He rejects same-sex marriage. He has publicly supported anti-gay legislation in his own country. So much for moral leadership in civil equality – any gay, lesbian, queer, or transgender student at Dartmouth had better look somewhere else for “moral leadership,” or even simple acceptance.

[The Rev. James Liberatore, who hosted Tengatenga in Texas during his seminary years] added that Tengatenga’s traditional values make him a good fit for a service position at the College.

Given that one of the new dean’s duties is assisting with fundraising, I’m sure his views on the exclusion of gays and lesbians will go over well with Dartmouth’s ruling-class funders.

[…] Tengatenga will also serve as the College’s moral spokesperson.

Perfect.

UPDATE: The Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, via its director Allen Gilbert, has taken note of the poll, its unfortunate implications for our justice system and the need to hold police officers legally accountable for their actions. Full disclosure: I am a member of the ACLU-VT and am serving the first year of a term on its board. The following diary represents my personal views and not necessarily those of the ACLU-VT.

The situation is a sad commentary on how badly Vermont police deal with people having a mental illness or crisis.

Isaac Sage was confronted by police who were called to address a trespassing complaint at a gym in Winooski. He struggled with officers, apparently hit Cpl. Jason Nokes in the face, was Tased twice without effect, and shot in the leg by Nokes.

Chittenden County State’s Attorney TJ Donovan convened a grand jury to examine the evidence (certainly more than Attorney Bill “Cops Are Never Wrong” Sorrell has ever done in a questionable shooting involving law enforcement officers). That jury has returned an indictment with two misdemeanors and a felony charge against Cpl. Noyes, who remains on “medical leave.”

The charges against Cpl. Nokes  include aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, reckless endangerment, and providing false information to the Vermont State Police.

Charges against Isaac Sage, including the misdemeanors of resisting arrest,  and unlawful trespass and two felony counts of assault on police officers, were dropped when he was found to be “insane.” At least Sage is alive to receive treatment for his mental illness, unlike Macadam Mason.

Some questions remain unanswered, such as why the Taser was ineffective (defective? not charged? not applied correctly to achieve maximum shock value?).

Whether or not Nokes is eventually convicted in a court of law, it is a refreshing change in attitude for the county’s top law enforcement member to understand this:

“This case is important because it is a case about public trust,” Donovan told the Burlington Free Press outside the grand jury room at Chittenden Superior Court on Main Street. “It is a case where the standard has to be consistent, that a police officer has to be held to the same standard as an ordinary citizen.”

Meanwhile, the Burlington Free Press is running a poll on its online front page as to whether you think the grand jury’s decision was correct. As of 2:30 p.m., the answers were running two-to-one against the grand jury, with another quarter of respondents saying they didn’t know enough to decide.

Interesting that the Free Press should decide to put a legal question to a vote – I mean, the proceedings of the grand jury are, after all, secret.

Should you care to go vote to support or oppose the grand jury’s decision, click here. You need not be a subscriber to participate.

Update:Visitation hours for Lloyd will be Wednesday, Feb. 27, 4-7 pm at Spears Funeral Home at 96 Dickinson Ave. in Enosburg Falls. Funeral services will be Thursday, Feb. 28 at 11 a.m., at the Franklin United Church, 5374 Main St., Franklin, VT.

For those who wish, contributions in Lloyd’s memory may be made to Enosburgh Ambulance Service, 83 Sampsonville Rd., Enosburg Falls, VT 05450 or the Enosburg Food Shelf, P.O. Box 614, Enosburg Falls, VT 05450.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Lloyd Touchette, a longtime Democratic activist in Franklin County, died Friday afternoon as the result of injuries from a car accident last Wednesday on Route 105 in Sheldon. He was [66] 65.

I hardly know what to say, even though I’ve had a couple of days to think about him – we had gotten the mistaken word Wednesday late afternoon that he had died, and then the corrected info that he was in intensive care. I didn’t write then because I didn’t want to “jinx” any possibility that he might recover.

Lloyd was a longtime member of the Vermont National Guard, a member and eventually chairman of the county Democratic Committee, a longtime member of the VDP State Committee (he served as assistant treasurer for the last several years), a selectboard member in Enosburg, a consistent worker at his hometown food shelf, a strong member of the American Legion and a stalwart worker for the Lions Club. That’s him in the brown teeshirt lending a hand when the County Committee volunteered an afternoon to help with a Habitat house.

Lloyd had a big, booming voice you could hear from three crowded, noisy rooms away. He was a French-Canadian American to the core, greeting anyone with a French-Canadian last name with a hearty call, “Eh, ça va?” He first suggested that I would make a good representative for Franklin County to the Vermont Democratic Committee something like 10 years ago.

He had a kind heart. When Lloyd decided you were a good Democrat, he’d stand with you without fail. Despite resistance from old line conservative Democrats, he backed an effort to get Progressive Cindy Weed to run for the legislature in Enosburg with the Democratic label too. Lloyd recognized that Cindy is bright, communicates well, is known in the community, and that our best shot to unseat the Republican was for both Progressives and Democrats to get behind a single candidate. And while she was unsuccessful the first time, she was elected last year with both the P & D next to her name.

He showed up. I know that sounds mundane, even banal. But my dad, quoting somebody, used to say that 90 percent of life is just showing up. Lloyd came to meetings, worked booths at the fair and Dairy Days, carried banners when he was fit enough, drove mobility impaired legislators in parades, worked the phones during the run-up to elections. And did similar mostly behind-the-scenes yeoman work for many of the organizations he was involved in.

And he didn’t express any negative feelings when I beat him in an election for chair of the Franklin County Democratic Committee – at least not to me. In fact, he stuck around, offered advice, usually in a private phone call and always with a “I don’t want to be stepping on your toes, Madam Chair, but I did want you to know …”

He prided himself on his connections with the upper tier of politicians and officeholders, all of whose campaigns Lloyd had worked on. Patrick Leahy and Peter Welch and Peter Shumlin, among many others, all knew Lloyd’s name, and their campaign staffers knew he was the guy to talk to in Franklin County if they wanted to connect with the traditional Democratic base.

Lloyd was no saint, none of us is. He’d sometimes forward the most awful conservative emails – info straight from Fox News it seemed. He was an old fashioned sexist, although he was just 6 years older than me.

We were, after a fashion, friends as well as colleagues. A County Committee member heard us scoring points off each other with sarcastic jokes and digs before a meeting, and she said, “You two bicker like an old married couple!” Lloyd and I looked at each other in horror at the thought. And then we both laughed. His laugh was as big as his voice, unless he was giggling behind a goofy smile. He did his best to be charming in public situations.

And Lloyd (eventually) accepted me, worked with me, and backed me – even after it became clear I was a unreconstructed lefty liberal lesbian, and a pushy broad besides.

Lloyd also made sure that Democrats turned out for funerals of “our people.” And now we get to do that for him.

I’ll miss him.

Our own Rep. Peter Welch has introduced a bill to repeal a $500 million provision of the recently passed “fiscal cliff” bill characterized by The New York Times as a “gift.”

The bill Rep. Welch is sponsoring involves a complicated bit of legislative legerdemain buried deep in an essentially unrelated bill that went mostly unread before it was approved. But the gist is that Sens. Baucus (D-Montana), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah, Big Pharma branch), and Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader) all strongly supported a provision inserted in the fiscal cliff bill that granted an additional two-year delay in implementing a Medicare payment reform for kidney dialysis, through 2016. The reform would “bundle” payment for dialysis and the drugs prescribed to kidney patients, instead of allowing doctors and dialysis centers to bill separately for the drugs, a set up, The NYT says tended to result in overprescribing. The delay in the billing and payment reform is worth $500 million over the two-year span.

While several companies make drugs involved in dialysis treatment, the biotech company that arguably stood to gain the most – and has 74 lobbyists on Capitol Hill and was the only company pushing for the delay – was Amgen. Amgen pled guilty just a few weeks ago to illegally marketing an anti-anemia drug, and was fined $762 million in criminal and civil penalties.

It is notable that among these three supporters of the billing reform delay, several current and former members of their staffs have close ties to Amgen, as The NYT documents: Orrin Hatch’s top aide was a healthcare policy analyst for Amgen; Baucus and McConnell were likely lobbied by their former chiefs of staff, who now work for Amgen. Further, all three Senators received substantial campaign contributions from Amgen employees and PACs, ranging from almost $60k to over $70k each since 2007.

MoveOn.org has taken notice, via a petition supporting Rep. Welch’s bill to repeal the delay in implementing the Medicare payment reform, a.k.a, Amgen’s “gift.”

From Rep. Welch’s press release:

“This eleventh-hour, backroom deal confirms the American public’s worst suspicions of how Congress operates,” Welch said. “As the nation’s economy teetered on the edge of a Congressional-created fiscal cliff, lobbyists for a private, for-profit company seized an opportunity to feed at the public trough. Without scrutiny or debate, the American taxpayer was stuck with the $500 million tab. This special interest provision should have stood on its own merits with an up or down vote. It’s no wonder cockroaches and root canals are more popular than Congress.

Thanks, Peter. Good work. Given that two of those three Senators are among the “fiscal hawks” demanding spending cuts (except for their friends and donors) “or else,” it’s clear that your hypocrisy detector is still functioning well, and that you have the spine to do something about it.  

UPDATE: As of Sunday morning, December 30, a pharmacist at the local CVS has taken it on to provide a sensible solution. I’d rather not discuss details until it’s fait accompli, but it’s fair to us, I don’t have to short my shots, and I’m happy with it. ~ NanuqFC

Not only is IBM sticking it to their current employees, with the latest pronouncement on annual payments into the 401k accounts that have replaced defined benefit pensions (as opposed to the previous practice of paying in each pay-period). The company is contracting with a health care/prescription provider that is sticking it to their retirees. My spouse worked for IBM for 32 years.

I use insulin of a particular kind that is not available as a generic. A couple of days ago, I ordered my usual refill, a three-month supply through the nearest CVS pharmacy (almost an hour’s drive from our house), which handles the IBM accounts. Yesterday my spouse went to pick it up. Instead of the usual $70 for that amount of insulin, the cost to us was $353.57. I was out of cell phone range. My spouse did not want me to be without a necessary drug, and she put the cost on plastic, having been assured by the pharmacy tech that the drugs could be returned, if not used, and the cost refunded.

That turned out to be a lie – or at best, total misinformation.

I called IBM member services to complain about the outrageous price hike. That phonedrone called CVS. Together they told me that we had “met” our annual maximum of $2500, and therefore had to pay full price for the insulin. I asked what options there were, and unless there’s some higher math going on here that I don’t know about, the CVS rep then lied about the cost of a single vial (there are usually 5 in an order), telling me it would be $139 (but now, not on the phone and with calculator in hand, I can see that $353.57 divided by 5 = $70.71).

“Okay?” the CVS woman said. “No,” said I. “It’s never ‘okay’ to deprive people of necessary drugs for money. But, yes, we’re done.”

Then I called the store, and “Dan” got on the phone at the pharmacy. I explained the situation, and that I had kept the prescription in the bag, hadn’t opened the bag, still stapled with the receipt, whole thing in the fridge, did I need to go there today (at just after 5 pm) or could the prescription be returned tomorrow?

That elicited an “Umm, let me ask the pharmacist about that.” He came back with, “Sorry, it’s not returnable. It’s both state law and pharmacy policy that we cannot accept any returned prescription once it has left the store.” He was polite and even somewhat empathetic (I’m sure they’re not paying him enough for dealing with polite but irate customers like me). “I don’t know who told you that it would be returnable, but it’s not.”

One more try: “So CVS makes a ton of money ripping off IBM customers, and I’m left with a huge hole in my budget that I can’t afford.” Dan: “I know, I understand that’s what it looks like, and I’m sorry, but there’s not really anything we can do.”

So, did we have any inkling that we had “met” our maximum benefit and that I should’ve waited two weeks before ordering a refill? Not really. We got a statement in July and there was at least $1000 left. Most of my scripts are generic, i.e., cheap. They don’t cost much. There was no reason to suspect that we’d be SOL before the end of the year – it had never happened before. Could I have waited two more weeks? It would have shaved things mighty close. Maybe if I deducted a couple of units from each shot, I could have made it over the finish line. And I could’ve confined my consumption to protein and water to try to keep my blood sugars in check. But I would’ve had to know before my spouse went to the pharmacy that we’d maxed out.

Ya think maybe CVS, which handles IBM prescription ‘benefits,’ might have had a (moral, if not legal) responsibility to inform the subscriber that their benefits had just run out for the year? Or that the people behind the counter should have been able to tell my spouse why the price was so unexpectedly high? Or at least not lied about being able to return it?

Spouse has been looking (at my outraged behest) for an avenue of complaint. I think IBM should at least pretend to care in public about the lousy job its contractors are doing administering its self-insurance benefits. Maybe it’s “Welcome to the ‘new’ nimble IBM: we don’t care who we fuck over.”

Moral of the story: This is what corporado-run health care looks like, even with relatively “good” benefits from a major corporation. One of those corporations running healthcare might end up being the State of Vermont, Inc., if Shummy’s prediction comes true about costs going up for the poorest Vermonters under the new “universal access plan” when it replaces Catamount Health and VHAP.

In my fantasy, I’m walking the sidewalk in front of CVS, carrying a sign: “I’ve been SCROOGED by CVS: IBMers Beware!”

This is an example of why I love Vermont – just in from the ACLU in a press release:

MONTPELIER — The Vermont Supreme Court gave electronic privacy a big boost Friday when it approved restrictions placed upon police when conducting searches of electronic devices.

In the case, police in Burlington were investigating a report of a person applying for credit cards online using someone else’s identity.  Once the police narrowed the investigation to a street address where they thought the perpetrator might live, they asked a judge to issue a search warrant for “all computers or electronic media” located in the house, even though the house had multiple residents.

The judge issued the search warrant, but was wary about approving a broad search of all computers, iPads, and other devices that might be in the house.  So he imposed a number of restrictions on the search, including that the police could only look for evidence relating to the alleged identity theft, had to turn the devices over to a third party to conduct the search, and would not be permitted to prosecute a suspect based upon evidence of other crimes found on the devices.

After obtaining the search warrant, state prosecutors appealed the search restrictions to the Vermont Supreme Court.  Prosecutors argued that under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, judges must either approve or deny search warrant requests but may not approve them with conditions.

Search warrant applications are not contested, so at the request of the Vermont Supreme Court, the ACLU-VT, the national ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, “argued that the Fourth Amendment permits judges to tailor search warrants to avoid overly invasive searches.”

On Friday, the Vermont Supreme Court agreed, concluding that conditions limiting the invasiveness of digital searches “serve legitimate privacy interests.”

According to ACLU-VT staff attorney Dan Barrett, “The decision really addresses two questions. The first is whether judges have any ability to limit the invasiveness of digital searches.” The second, he added, is “whether each of the conditions imposed by the trial court that issued the warrant [was] permissible.”

[T]he court held that a judge’s authority to limit the invasiveness of a digital search is the same as the judge’s authority to limit a physical search.  Justice John Dooley, writing for the majority, explained: “A judicial officer might authorize a search of a person, including his pockets, without any particular basis for thinking that evidence will be found in the person’s pocket as opposed to elsewhere on his person. But that same officer might permissibly refuse to authorize a search of the person’s body cavities based on evidence of similar generality.”

In both physical and digital searches, the court held, “the investigatory promise must justify the collateral exposure” of a person’s private life.

“That’s a very important statement for modern privacy,” said Allen Gilbert, ACLU-VT executive director.  “We’re pleased that the court recognized that electronic devices like iPhones have incredibly personal information on them, like who your intimate partners are, what your finances are like, and whether you have health conditions.”

When it came to the second question – the legitimacy of each of the specific conditions that the trial court imposed on the search warrant — the Vermont Supreme Court upheld all but one.

More about that “one condition” on the flip.

 

The sole condition struck by the Supreme Court was the requirement that the police not use evidence of other, unrelated crimes that might be discovered during the search.  “[W]e find this instruction unnecessary for privacy protection and inappropriate,” the decision held, because the search would be conducted by a third party, and the police therefore wouldn’t stumble upon evidence of an unrelated crime.

“The trial court did some very forward thinking and borrowed some ideas from electronic discovery methods in civil litigation,” said Barrett, “things like turning the hard drive images over to a third party data contractor, and having the contractor perform the actual search, to avoid giving the police free reign to view whatever files they like.”

Gilbert said, “From Washington, D.C., where Congress is updating decades-old laws about e-mail privacy, all the way to Vermont, courts and policy-makers are getting the message that privacy matters. This decision is a very positive result for personal privacy.”

A copy of the court’s decision is available on the ALCU-VT Web site at http://bit.ly/UGbRis

So the balance wavers but continues: public records should be public; our private, non-offending lives are private and not a pond for police to go fishing in.

Now, if we could just get the legislature to stand firm on not allowing the police warrantless access (i.e., fishing) to the prescription drug database!

A week after the 2012 presidential election I stumbled across this story: ‘We the People’ Petitions Filed in Nineteen States Seeking Permission to Secede from the Union.

Neetzan Zimmerman, who reported the story for the Gawker website, counted “at least nineteen” secession petitions that have been filed. There are actually petitions from people in 28 states (as of this moment, it changes) requesting the Obama Administration to “Peacefully grant the State of [fill in the blank] to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government” that are currently posted on the official White House petition website. All of the secession petitions were filed or posted after Election Day, November 6, 2012, with Louisiana first off the mark on November 7. Most were filed Saturday, November 10, 2012, with a few a day later.

Some of the states – Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Missouri (which has two competing petitions, as do Georgia and South Carolina), Arizona, Tennessee, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Mississippi – you could pick off either the Red-Romney-Ryan (RRR) state electoral map (minus blue Florida), or a map of the late Southern Confederacy. (Although Virginia once led the seceding states in the late War of Northern Aggression, it was a blue state last week and had no petition for secession filed as of Monday night).

But Michigan? Well, Michigan (a blue state in the election), with its state-imposed corporate control of towns and cities ruled bankrupt by those who wish to buy, sell, or otherwise convert municipal assets to their own corporate uses and/or abrogate union contracts, might be considered a special case, seeking to keep the fascist* power structure it has built.

(*”Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” ~ Benito Mussolini, who, after all, would have known. See also the rest of the article here, and of course Wikipedia.)

After the jump, the rest of the new secessionist states, and petitioning to secede.

Then there are the other wannabe-runaway residents of states not associated with the last major (not so peaceful) attempt at secession: Delaware (blue), Pennsylvania (blue), New Jersey (blue), New York (blue) and Ohio (blue); California, Oregon, and Colorado (all blue); North Dakota (red), Montana (red), Indiana (red), and Nevada (blue).

The petition website is based on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Any petition (and other issues are represented, such as legalizing and taxing marijuana, signing an executive order along the lines of ENDA, and establishing a nationwide standard for Congressional redistricting, among others), filed on this official whitehouse.gov website, that attains 25,000 signatures within 30 days will get an official response from the Obama Administration. Texas is already there with over 48,000 signatures. Louisiana may get there before the end of the week (23,118 signatures as of Monday night).

Wow. This movement suggests a major tantrum by the disappointed RRRs. They didn’t win, so they’re going to try to run away, taking their states with them.

So, the question is: Shall we selectively encourage the red-beat, deadbeat states by adding our signatures to their petitions? Or take a moral stand for the 50 state union (or 51 if Puerto Rico makes it in, 52 if DC could get the vote)?

Or imagine what the President’s answer might be;

Dear Mostly Red States,

First, you all know that many of you tried this secession thing before, and it wasn’t very successful: a lot of people died, it set back economic development in the seceding states for generations, and, some might say, the hard feelings even now haven’t been resolved.

Second, it is not in the power of the President to grant or deny membership in the United States of America. If it were, we might someday become the Untied States of America. If we ran the country like a business, we would have had to let you go a long time ago as an economic drag on USA, Inc.

Third, I campaigned on the idea that we’re all in this together, red state, blue state, purple state, rainbow states, all states. Without you, we wouldn’t have any place to dispose of our unexpended tax revenues. Without us, you wouldn’t have any tax revenues to dispense. We are all in this together.

Now, I’m a parent of two spirited and sometimes rambunctious children. Aaannd I understand that you all need a little time-out to think this through. So, you may go to your rooms and think about our connections as a people, a nation, together. You can c’mon out on January 21, 2013 if you’re ready to behave yourselves and get along with your brother and sister states.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

President of the United States of America

Found this video via a link in the Maddow Blog (thanks to Steve Benen). It’s by Michael Moore for MoveOn.org, and as you can imagine, given the source, it’s both Not Safe For Work and pretty funny.

And, they have a point: Since the Rombots have shown how willing they are to lie and how frequently they’ll do it, it’s not much of a leap to consider that they might literally steal this election (see the story on the Romney stake in voting machines in Ohio, although Snopes disagrees, while finding sufficient Romney-connected ownership data to “raise some eyebrows”).