[Police access to medical databases is a major Fourth Amendment issue – one you can help keep for Vermonters who object to unwarranted search and seizure. A vote on an amendment allowing such access is due this week in the Senate. Contact info and bill text links are below the fold.]

It’s crunch time under the golden dome, and one of the things that might be crunched this week is Vermonters’ Fourth Amendment (U.S. Constitution) right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

GMD has for quite some time been tracking the attempts by law enforcement to go fishing in pharmacy records. And JVWalt posted just last Thursday on this issue and the “compromise” put forth in the Senate as an amendment to H.745, the Prescription Drug Monitoring Bill.

At issue is whether law enforcement officials will be able to use the Vermont Prescription Drug database to get information on individuals who might be abusing or selling certain prescription drugs – without any court review, a.k.a., warrantless access.

ACLU Director Allen Gilbert sent out an urgent message this weekend urging Vermonters who care about their constitutional protections to contact their state senators ASAP, as a vote is likely this week. by noon Monday, April 16.

The text of Gilbert’s message (posted with permission) – with text and contact links – is below the fold.

I don’t often send out personal appeals for help, but this issue is important.

A bill, H. 745, making changes to the state Health Department’s centralized prescription drug database has been working its way through the legislature. I’ve been following it closely for the ACLU because the Shumlin administration wants to allow police to obtain information from the database without a warrant.

I’m asking you to consider sending an e-mail, or making a phone call, to your senators opposing a warrantless access amendment the Senate will take up next week (the week of April 16). I provide a sample message, below.

But first, let me explain why we are worried about police having warrantless access to information in the Health Department’s prescription drug database:

1. When the state’s prescription drug database was created in 2006, the legislation promised the database would be used for health, not law enforcement, purposes. The Shumlin administration now wants to break that promise by allowing police to obtain reports on patients from the database. If the legislature breaks its promise on the privacy of prescription drug information, what’s to prevent a similar retreat from the promise to protect the privacy of information in the state’s soon-to-be-launched e-medical records exchange system?

2. While we agree Vermont and other states face a serious prescription drug abuse problem, there’s little data showing prescription drugs sold on our streets are coming through pharmacies. A federal study done in Utah described how a majority of prescription drugs on the streets of that state were not dispensed by Utah pharmacies, and therefore wouldn’t show up in the state’s prescription drug database. During legislative hearings, no one has presented anything but anecdotal evidence about the source of the drugs available for sale on Vermont’s streets. In truth, no one really knows where they’re coming from. It’s not worth undercutting privacy rights for uncertain results.

3. The Shumlin administration argues that police already have warrantless access to Vermonters’ prescription drug records in pharmacies – what’s wrong with giving police warrantless access to the Health Department’s drug database? While it’s true that police can walk into any drugstore in the state and look at anyone’s prescription drug records without a warrant, that authority is based on an outdated statute passed long before federal privacy protections (under HIPAA, the Health Information Portability and Accessibility Act) were put in place. Were the state’s drugstore access law (passed in 1968) to come up for consideration today, it’s doubtful the legislation would pass.

4. We acknowledge that there are times when law enforcement can access our private information. Indeed, the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment sets up the procedure to obtain such information — by police going to a judge, showing probable cause that a crime has been committed, and getting a warrant. This procedure has been in place for more than 200 years. It works. But increasingly, police have sought end-runs around the Fourth Amendment’s protections, particularly when seeking personal information in government or private databases. The fight over police access to prescription drug database information is really a fight over what kind of access police will have to electronic data about our private lives. What the legislature does now will likely be looked at later as a precedent in defining police access to e-data.

5. The warrant requirement plays an important role in the balance of powers among the branches of government. Allowing police access to Health Department data allows an otherwise unauthorized transfer of personal information between two administrative agencies without judicial review. It is judicial review that protects personal privacy rights. Removing that review removes citizens’ main protection against government intrusion in our private lives.

Here’s how the administration’s warrantless access would work, according to the proposed amendment: Police receive information from a pharmacist or health care provider that a person may be criminally misusing a prescription drug. Police open an investigation of the person. Police ask the Health Department for drug database information on the person. The Health Department MUST provide police with the person’s name and date of birth, and the name and address of pharmacies where s/he’s had a script filled. No specific drugs or quantities are noted – just enough information to point police to a specific pharmacy(s) to check out the individual and his/her purchases.

The text of the proposed warrantless access amendment is on our Web site; the text of the prescription drug monitoring bill (H. 745)   as it passed the House is on the legislative Web site.

I generally would assume that readers of this blog have contacted their legislators at least once in the last decade. In case that’s an (ahem) unwarranted assumption, I’ll close with Gilbert’s suggestion for how best to make your opinion on this issue known:

Here’s what to do:

Please send an e-mail to the senators in your county by Monday noon (April 16)  [Your] senator […] may be receptive to arguments that police should have to get a warrant before receiving reports from the prescription drug database. A simple message is fine: “I am concerned about the privacy of medical information. I don’t want police to have access to information in the state’s prescription drug database without a warrant. Please vote against any amendments to H. 745 that would allow warrantless access.”

If you know any other senators beyond your own county, consider contacting them, too. If you’d like to expand your efforts even further, contact all 30 senators.

Besides using e-mail, it’s also possible to fax written messages to senators. Fax to 802-828-2424 (include the senator’s name). And you can leave a simple verbal message for an individual senator by calling the statehouse Sergeant at Arms office (during business hours) at 802-828-2228. Include the number of the bill (H. 745) in your message.

Finally home phone numbers for senators can be found on the legislative Web site.

Thanks for considering this request. Please call or write with any questions.

Allen Gilbert

Executive director, ACLU-VT

137 Elm St.

Montpelier, VT 05602

802-223-6304

agilbert@acluvt.org

Dear Shap,

You enjoy a well-earned respect from legislators, members of the Shumlin Administration, and Vermonters along the spectrum of political belief. Some of us may disagree with your handling of this issue or that, but in general, you’ve been effective leader, and a Democrat we can be proud of.

Which is why, despite Vermont’s desperate need for leadership in the Attorney General’s office, we need you to stay where you are.

With TJ Donovan already committed to running in a primary against incumbent Bill Sorrell, we need the stability and leadership you provide to stay on top of things in the House.

Should TJ win, the changeover after such a long period of placeholding and bad advice (campaign finance, for one; sugar-sweetened beverages for another) will stir things up – and your steady hand as a lawmaker will be absolutely necessary.

Should the incumbent win, Vermont and the legislature in particular will need your leadership and guidance on whether a measure under consideration goes too far (since the incumbent has not provided competence in that regard).

As VPR’s Bob Kinzel reports, the legislature is arguing over the $21 million CVPS owes consumers upon its sale to GMP owner Gaz Metro. [Late addition: NOTE that the purchase/merger deal is on the docket of the Public Service Board for review. It is unclear what impact a legislative prescription for the $21 million ‘refund’/’investment’ will have.]

In its campaign to get the money back, AARP cites the utilities’ own survey (403 Vermonters by phone in January this year) as showing Vermonters’ disbelief that they will ever see a dime.

The Vermont electric utilities telephone survey explores the opinions of 18+ residents on the upcoming merger between Central Vermont Public Service and Green Mountain Power.

The survey finds that Vermont residents do not believe they will see lower electric bills as a result of the merger. Some residents believe that the $21 million dollars that Central Vermont Public Service (CVPS) customers paid to prevent CVPS from going bankrupt should be paid back through a one-time refund while others think it should be paid back through savings over the next two years.

[emphasis added]

I tend to agree. Every time Mary Powell or her good friend Governor Peter Shumlin speak on this issue, it begins to sound like hedge funders talking about credit default swaps. Here’s Powell, with a response from Sen. Vince Illuzzi:

(Powell) “I’m not arguing with how the $21 million is counted in terms of our ability to earn a return on it. We will, yes, when we take the $21 million and we invest it, there’s a return that is paid.”

(Illuzzi) “The utility then gets to reclaim that $21 million in the form of increased electric rates. And that, in my judgment, is not how you repay a loan. You don’t simply advance what you owe back and then take it back again.”

The real flaw in the deal where the bullies keep our money is the sweetener: the merged company says it will invest the $21 million in efficiency, saving all ratepayers even more over time.

Do you, Mary Powell, and you, Governor Shumlin, really expect us to believe that the utility would not otherwise invest in efficiency?!

Puh-leeese.

Not to mention, if I’m reading this aright, it wasn’t all Vermonters who advanced that money to CVPS: It was CVPS’s own rate payers.

David Reville, the communications director for AARP Vermont, has one of the better analogies:

Reville said in the past month and a half 14,000 Central Vermont Public Service customers have sent petitions to the Public Service Board, saying they want their money back.

“The bottom line is it’s a matter of fairness,” Reville said. “What they’re proposing is tantamount to the state taking your tax refund and spending it on bridges, state parks, road salt or new trucks because they think it will help Vermont.”

[emphasis added]

This shell game is part and parcel of the attitude of the owning class toward the rest of us, a patronizing reassurance that they know better than we do, and everything will be fine, if we would just sit back and let them take total control of our lives and bank accounts. Powell’s got it, and Gov. Shumlin’s got it (in his refusal to ask the ones who can afford more to pay more).

Enough! CVPS owes its ratepayers $21 million and has stated its intention never to hand over a single thin dime, and to bury those dollars in the hazy “efficiency savings.” The deal should be stopped until that money is paid.

We can only wonder whether the return of more typical late-winter/early spring weather after summer weather ended the maple sap run is a relief or a case of humanity playing a colossal and extended April fool prank on us all. The frogs in my pond are clearly confused.

The photo above is the pond and some of its surprised denizens during the warm weather.

This one was taken not long after.

Poor froggies.

GMD has learned that one of the hidden provisions of the state’s new healthcare law, strongly backed by Governor Peter Shumlin, would require grocery store cashiers to remove all sugar-sweetened beverages in any person’s order and substitute an equal dollar amount of broccoli.

“They can carry it on their shelves,” Governor Shumlin declared, referring to sugar-sweetened beverages, “but we’re not going to let people get diabetes and cost the taxpayers money for sugar- and obesity-based diseases. That just burdens our system and wastes healthcare dollars. Let ’em eat broccoli!”

The governor’s stance was closely aligned with President Obama’s healthcare plan provisions, although the checkout substitution for soda pop and other sugar-sweetened beverages is a uniquely Vermont twist. The Governor’s spokesman, Secretary of Administration Jeb Spaulding, refused comment on rumors that the original proposal specified kale instead of broccoli. Broccoli was accepted, knowledgeable insiders said, as long as kale was the back-up vegetable in the absence of broccoli of sufficient quality.

A legislative tussle behind closed doors before the bill gained committee approval featured Attorney General William ‘Wild Bill’ Sorrell throwing what observers called “a tantrum” because his favorite vegetable, Brussels sprouts, was not the required ‘green’ substitute.

Sorrell, facing a Democratic primary, refused to acknowledge the broccoli-Brussels sprouts split in the ranks. “I still have serious Democratic support,” he maintained, “Governor Dean still likes me! Or at least, he still feels like he owes my dear departed mother for his political career. Thanks, Mom.”

The incumbent attorney general also claimed that the substitution of an equal dollar amount of a vegetable was his idea. “It’s even better than a tax, there’s no oppression of the poor here, and it doesn’t cost more money to make them eat green,” he explained. “It’s the best idea I’ve had in decades! But it really should’ve been Brussels sprouts.”

No one is discussing the possibility of lawsuits by soda-industry giants Pepsi and CocaCola and large-scale purveyors of what is popularly known as “junk food,” such as Walmart.

Nor has there been any response to questions regarding what unintended effect this provision might have on the market price of broccoli, or whether the green vegetable closely associated in popular culture with apparent melanin-overriding growth hormones, resulting in a change of skin color and giantism, would be conventionally grown or organically raised.

According to an email notice from the Vermont ACLU, the issue of whether police arrest records are public documents available to reporters will be argued in Vermont Supreme Court Thursday [corrected] at 2 pm. The case involves not just police secrecy, but potential racial profiling.

The arrest included striking the [African-American] man with a baton, pepper-spraying him, handcuffing him, and dragging him nude, wrapped in a blanket, down the stairs and out of his home.

 

The ACLU caught the case when VTDigger.org’s Anne Galloway sought release of the arrest records to investigate the potential involvement of racial profiling and was refused.

 

The Hartford police entry into Wayne Burwell’s home on Memorial Day weekend in 2010 led to harsh criticism of police actions and suggestions that police engaged in racial profiling.

 

Police had received a call from a cleaning service of a suspected burglary at the residence. When officers arrived, they found the African-American man sitting on a bathroom toilet, naked and dazed. The officers claimed that Burwell resisted arrest because he was unresponsive to their commands. They struck him with a baton, then pepper-sprayed and handcuffed him. He was wrapped in a blanket and dragged down the stairs out of the townhouse.

 

Neighbors and EMTs responding to the scene identified Burwell as the home’s owner. He suffers from a chronic blood sugar imbalance and had apparently slipped into a semi-conscious state. He was taken to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital, treated, and released. He was never charged with any crime.

 

The state police investigated and absolved the arresting officers, as did Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell.

 

Galloway, who has written stories about possible racial profiling in Vermont, wanted to know more about the Burwell incident. She asked the police department for relevant records but was told she couldn’t have them. She appealed that decision to town officials, and was again denied access. She then sued in Vermont Superior Court, represented by the ACLU-VT.

 

In a decision released in May 2011, the Vermont Superior Court ruled that police investigative records created prior to a decision whether to charge someone with a criminal offense are exempt under the state’s Access to Public Records Act (APRA).

The ACLU has now taken the case to SCOV, where it will be heard at 2 p.m. Thursday [corrected] in the Supreme Court building on Main St. in Montpelier, second floor.

On Monday you had to get to the Vermont Supreme Court hearing room an hour early to be assured of a seat. By the time it became obvious that Governor Shumlin was running late, the crowd that included House Speaker Shap Smith, former House Majority Leader Floyd Nease, Reps. Tony Klein, Tim Jerman, and Bill Lippert, and State Treasurer Beth Pearce was standing two and three deep along the back wall and down the sides, with an overflow crowd out in the hallway.

But for me, the first highlight came half an hour before that, when about-to-be-sworn-in Supreme Court Justice Beth Robinson entered the room to place a folder and a glass of water on the podium. The crowd stood and erupted into applause. Beth made shooshing, sit-down motions, which were ignored for at least 5 minutes. “No, wait, it hasn’t started yet,” she tried to explain.

Oh, but it had.

The esteem, the respect, the sense of recognition for hard work done with total integrity, the idea of justice achieved for a formerly despised minority – those had all begun, in some cases long before Monday afternoon’s ceremony, in others the moment her nomination was announced on October 18.

There was an amazing amount of laughter (check out Glenn Russell’s photos) for such a solemn occasion, much of it prompted by Susan Murray, Beth’s law partner at Langrock Sperry & Wool and co-activist for marriage equality.

Murray, detailing the qualities that Robinson brings to the Supreme Court, recalled many excursions walking up Mt. Philo together, talking strategy or just taking a break. “Beth would say, ‘Excuse me just  a minute,’ and then run the rest of the way up the mountain and back. And then, if she still had more energy, she’d do it again. There’s not a lazy bone in her body.” She called Beth’s intelligence “breathtaking,” and her mind “agile,” and “a pleasure to watch as it worked” through a case.

She assured the other justices of what the rest of us had already seen that afternoon and years before: “There’s no grandstanding, no arrogance or ego” to Beth. She listens, is patient, a team player, has an uncanny ability to ask just the right question at the right time, Murray went on. “And most importantly, she has the ability to laugh at herself.”

Another highlight was a comment by Denise Johnson, Vermont’s first female Supreme Court Justice, whose retirement opened up the seat on the Court that Beth will occupy: “If you’re here long enough,” she said, “today’s dissent will become tomorrow’s majority.”

There was appreciative laughter among the audience members, most of whom had been here long enough to know that in the ground-breaking Baker v State case that led to civil unions, Johnson dissented from the majority’s “discrimination is unconstitutional, it’s the legislature’s job to fix it” decision in favor of a ruling for full marriage equality.

“Enjoy the company of friends,” family, colleagues, and well-wishers now, Johnson advised Robinson, because it will all go away soon, “as former colleagues begin to treat you with deference and distance.” The task of making rulings fair and standing up under legal and public criticism afterwards, Johnson advised, “makes advocacy and arguing a case before this court look easy.”

When Beth spoke, she thanked everyone, acknowledging Justice Johnson’s role on the court: “You’ve been a model for me, you’ve broken barriers I haven’t even had to think about.”

Perhaps her most moving thanks went to her parents, who had driven from Indiana for the occasion: “If I am half as fair and compassionate as a justice as you have been as parents, Vermont is in good hands.” Beth also reassured her new colleagues: “Despite the puffery of the last few minutes, I know I don’t have a clue,” she said, and promised to listen and learn and depend on their guidance.

“I know I’m not always going to get it right on the law,” she told us, “much as I love the law. I’ve come to love the people whose lives are affected by the law. My pledge is to always remember the people, and not just the abstraction of the law.

And then Beth Robinson was sworn in as the newest justice of the Vermont Supreme Court.

The story in Saturday’s Burlington Free Press on the aftermath of Josh Pfenning’s apparent suicide in the Occupy encampment in City Hall Park was reasonably well done.

Except one thing:

Today, a joint decision by the mayor, public safety and human rights officials that all tents must be removed from the encampment offers new challenges.

[emphasis added]

If you read through the whole 47 paragraphs, no “human rights officials” are identified or quoted.

How would anyone know from this story who those unnamed “human rights officials” would be? The ACLU? The state-level Human Rights Commission? How would any reader know what role these unnamed human rights officials played in the decision to shut down the camp?

Meanwhile, the inclusion of the phrase gives a certain moral legitimacy and cover to the actions of police and city government officials in evicting the protestors.

In a callback to the voicemail I left him, Robert Appel, Executive Director of the Human Rights Commission, said he’d been consulted. He said he was called originally by someone from the Occupiers, who reached him via Burlington Police Chief Mike Schirling. “I spoke to the Mayor,” Appel said, “and I reviewed the statement, but I did not endorse it. … I suggested that they tell everyone concerned ahead of time what they were going to do” about access to the park. “Mike wanted my name in there, and yes, I reviewed it, but I did not endorse it.”

In an email, Appel wrote to Police Chief Schirling:

By adding the threat of felony prosecution for what actions are yet to be fully defined, I cannot endorse the statement. However you may add my name and title with the statement

“reviewed and approved as to form as enforcement agencies are giving clear notice of their announced changes to enforcing applicable city ordinances “

Oh, and btw, “No one from the Free Press called me,” Appel said in his phone conversation with me.

Let me be clear: I am not expressing the opinion that the police have acted wrongly – in fact, other than getting pushy with Occupiers “near” the police crime scene tape, [and getting censorious with the press covering the scene]* the BPD has been circumspect. I am asking whether and, if so, why the journos have allowed their story to enhance the public perception of the police and city government’s moral legitimacy in their actions without specific information.

I emailed both reporters Saturday morning, asking similar questions.

John Briggs sent this response a few hours later:

Thanks for your note. I didn’t report that portion of the story, but my understanding is that the head of the state’s Human Rights Commission did agree with the police decision. You’re quite right that should have been clear in the story.

After my prompting to “do something” about that unexplained reference, John Briggs emailed that he has “notified an editor to get a clarification in the paper Sunday naming the official.”

* [added 4 hours after the original post]

Update: Briggs authored a clarification in today’s edition of the BFP, on the jump page (p. 7A). He quoted the statement and spelled out Vermont HRC Director Robert Appel’s involvement.

In a Time of Universal Deceit, TELLING the TRUTH Is a Revolutionary Act. ~ George Orwell  

(I found this most excellent piece over at Blue Hampshire, where it was posted last Sunday. The author, Tully Fitzsimmons, has his own blog as well, and responded enthusiastically to my request for permission to pass along his observations, as follows, in full. ~ NanuqFC)

By Tully Fitzsimmons

Over 35 years ago, Jerry Mander wrote a landmark book titled, “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.” One of those arguments was that with TV, the media now had the power to edit the variety of pictures they showed to the public, thus enabling them to create whatever ‘story’ they wanted based on what they chose to show.

On Friday, my partner and I finally got to Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan and joined in the Occupy Wall Street encampment. And I have to admit that what I saw was not at all what I had read or seen in the media reports. Thus, my post today is meant to debunk some of the myths I have heard over and over.

Myth #1: The Protesters have ‘taken over’ Manhattan’s Financial District and are interrupting and burdening normal activities.

Wrong. OWS “occupiers” are compactly situated in Zuccotti Park, a plaza about two short blocks north of Wall Street. It is plaza that is normally “occupied” by the public. For the last eight years I have taken student groups to Manhattan, and each year we have had lunch at the plaza. The sidewalks surrounding the plaza are clear, and there is no interruption of vehicular or pedestrian traffic. From as close as one block away, we had no idea that anything unusual was taking place.

[9 more myths addressed after the jump]

Myth #2: OWS is destroying the “park.”

Those unfamiliar with the park may incorrectly imagine this to be a grassy oasis in the midst of lower Manhattan. But there is not a blade of grass in the ‘park’ – it is a 100% paved plaza. The tents that have been erected are not compacting soil, killing vegetation, or being secured into the ground with pegs; rather, they are simply weighted down by their contents on the pavement. The Occupiers have taken great care to protect a planter of flowers and the small locust trees that have been planted around the plaza.

Myth #3: These protesters are just a bunch of spoiled young brats.

No, actually the group is as amazingly diverse as New York City and America are. Occupants are black, white, asian, and latino. They are students, war veterans (actually, veterans are present in significant numbers), grandmas knitting in chairs, economists in ties & suit jackets, middle aged laborers, and senior citizens. My favorite sign, held by one middleaged man with a great sense of humor, read, “Another green-haired, deer-hunting, real estate developer in support of OWS.”

Myth #4: They may be diverse, but they’re simply whiners looking for handouts.

No, these people are heroes. With temperatures falling below 40 and wind whipping through lower Manhattan, it is very cold right now. It is also very cramped: with over 100 tents squeezed together, occupiers barely have room to stretch out. They lack most of the creature comforts that the majority of us take for granted and go home to each night, without complaint. Rather than whining, these people are enduring hardship for all of us – hardship that many Wall Street Executives have never experienced.

Myth #5: OWS has no clear focus or message.

Nonsense. The diverse interests that make up OWS have a consistent thread: – opposition to corporate domination of the American political system. This opposition manifests itself in various ways: opposition to fracking, nuclear power, and the Keystone pipeline; indictments of corporate refusals to hire veterans; student loan burdens, and the exclusion of such loans in bankruptcy proceedings; the imprisonment of Bradley Manning; the Citizens United Court ruling; the irony of lower wages in a time of higher corporate profits; and the capture of both major political parties by corporate donors. Diverse causes, yes…but all undergirded by the influence of large corporations in government decisions.

Myth #6: OWS is disorganized and aimless.

A mere walk through the Occupy Camp shows an incredible amount of organization: there is a large lending library, a medical tent, a welcome table, a press tent, on-site legal assistance, scheduled teach-ins, addiction assistance, a food tent, a sanitation crew, and an energy operation. OWS has managed to create a voluntary, need-based, consensus-embraced camp, in spite of Mayor Bloomberg’s cutting them off from heat & energy sources and sanitary facilities.

Disorganized? Lacking electricity, OWS participants are peddling used, stationery bicycles to create electricity that is being stored in car batteries to continue their computer feeds – an effort in which your Blogger participated. This is impressive creativity, not disorganization.

Myth #7: OWS is hurting New York’s image and its economy.

First of all, the exercise of Constitutional Rights is not subject to image niceties. However, it is fair to say that not only is OWS not hurting New York’s image and economy – it has become a tourist attraction in and of itself. Located in the shadow of the newly-rising World Trade Center Building #1, tourists ringed Zuccotti Park the entire time I was there, snapping pictures, taking videos, speaking with Occupiers. The mobile food carts that have always been located on the south edge of the park remain there and are thriving….as are an increased number of street vendors that are set up across the street on the east side of Broadway.

Myth #8: These people are really anti-capitalist Communists.

To be sure, there are some Occupiers sporting Che Guevara signs and anti-capitalist slogans. There are also a number selling t-shirts, pins, souvenirs, and even refrigerator magnets. More than anti-capitalist (many of them are engaging in entrepreneurial activities), they are anti-corporatist, pro democracy, and promoting new approaches to wealth disparity. More than anything, they value social responsibility and paying a laborer what he or she is worth – a very American principle that has been sorely upended in the last two decades.

Myth #9: The Occupation has become unsanitary and a health hazard.

There’s no doubt that Zuccotti Park is messy & cramped – though hardly more cramped than some 6 x 10 student hostel rooms I’ve stayed in. And tents and canvas and signs and wind and a “camping” situation that is now 6 weeks old will not look like Martha Stewart’s living room. But “Unsanitary?” No. OWS has instituted recycling, composting, and its own “Sanitation Department,” complete with cleansing agents, brooms, and a garbage collection squad. On each side of the Park, very large “Good Neighbor Policy” signs are posted, clearly spelling out behavioral expectations. Considering it is the City of New York that blocked the delivery of port-a-potties (Bette Midler offered to pay for them), it is rather disingenuous of them to then suggest that the plaza is ‘unsanitary.’ (Ironically, this afternoon it was announced that port-a-potties will be located on the loading dock of the United Teacher’s Federation building, about two blocks away)

Myth #10: Crimes are going unreported (said Bloomberg today), and it is a lawless community.

I just have to laugh at this one. Police cars, trucks and at least one Police Tower are parked side-by-side along the north side of the park. TV trucks, with cameras looking down from twenty-foot-high booms, line the south side. Police stand on the sidewalks on all sides. There are more police at Zuccotti Park per square foot than in a Dunkin Donuts parking lot. To suggest that Zuccotti Park is crime-ridden in the face of the videos, cameras, cell phones, TV crews, and round-the-clock police presence, would tell us more about the ineffectiveness of the NYPD than about the Occupiers.  

So, the Democrats are having their annual fundraiser (directly following the state committee meeting to elect officers for the next 2 years), called the “Autumn Harvest” in Barre on November 5.

The event, to be held this Saturday beginning at 5 p.m. at the Old Labor Hall on Granite St. in Barre, is reportedly featuring both Peters – Welch and Shumlin – among other elected guests, including Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Patrick Leahy, and all the statewide office holders, Vermont House Speaker Shap Smith, and Vermont Senate President pro tem John Campbell.

One wonders:

• whether there will be picketing by VSEA, VtNEA, and other unions and their friends and allies
• whether Senator Bernie, at the immediately preceding meeting having presumably gotten the state Dems’ endorsement (which gets him access to DNC campaign funds, not that he needs them), will cross those lines
• who else among the Democratic statewide office holders – Condos and Pearce for two, and Sorrell, although no one I know thinks the A.G. will do anything but cross lines and flip off the unions – will show their lack of support for the unions by crossing lines to shmooze the richer donors inside

Given Peter Shumlin’s / Jeb Spaulding’s obvious and publicly expressed disdain for Vermont union workers, and Peter Welch’s obvious disdain for anyone among the lower echelons of the 99 percent, I would imagine that quite a few people, perhaps even some from the “Occupy” movement, might show up to express some opinions at this gathering.

One wonders.

Imagine …

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. ~ Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

The American people are quite competent to judge a political party that works both sides of the street. ~ FDR, Boston, Nov. 4, 1944

I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. ~ Paul Wellstone, later quoted without attribution [ironic mode on] by Howard Dean