In honor of gay and lesbian history month – did you know that October is LGBT History Month? – and the second anniversary of my wedding (11 years and 6 weeks after my civil union; 31 years, 7 months, and 3 weeks after my spouse and I initiated our relationship), I present the following photographs:

While I was at home getting married (by a JP in front of the woodstove in our livingroom), my friend and colleague Ernie and his husband Kevin were marching in Washington, DC. They were wearing these tee shirts they had made for the occasion. And because Vermont had just passed marriage equality over the veto of a Republican governor, they received rousing cheers wherever they went.

The fact that the anniversary of the date the law took effect (September 1) went by without much public notice is as it should be: equality is the right thing to do, the right law to enact, and it should all be as matter-of-fact as getting a birth certificate.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, North Carolina’s legislature voted last month to place on the May primary election ballot a proposed* amendment to their constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. The Democratic governor, Bev Perdue, is opposed to the amendment – not the idea of banning samne-sex marriage, mind you – saying it’s a waste of time and energy since same-sex marriage is already illegal by statute.

Next summer, guess where the Democratic National Convention will be held?

Ding-ding-ding! You got it – North Carolina! Charlotte, to be exact.

Bonus points for guessing which state also has a so-called “right to work” law, a.k.a. freeloaders’ rights.

But the DNC thinks gay men and lesbians and union members (there’s some overlap there) are going to go out and bust their butts for Democrats.

I hear there’s a lovely bridge for sale near Zuccotti Park.

On the up side, Republicans in Minnesota, the other state looking at a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, are against the measure:

Wheelock Whitney, a former [Republican] candidate for Governor and Senator … spoke against the amendment for both political and personal reasons.

“I have a gay son.  I have a gay grandson.  I love them.  I’m proud of them, and I don’t like to see them discriminated against in any way,” Whitney said, adding that he’d already donated $10,000 to the cause.

Take with a grain of salt the Gannett news outlet’s assertion (linked above) that 29 states have considered and all have passed an amendment  excluding same-sex couples from their definition of marriage. The map up at the at the national Freedom to Marry organization’s website says otherwise. By their count, 24 states currently have constitutional amendments excluding same-sex couples from marriage. Seven states, including Minnesota and North Carolina, do not recognize same sex relationships but also do not (yet) have anti-marriage equality amendments.

We’re watching as we near the halfway mark on equality, knowing that DOMA must be defeated or America’s hypocritical pretense of “equality and justice for all” will continue to be exposed on yet another front.

[ * corrected]

As if Vermont needs kicking when we’re busy helping each other recover from the damage of Tropical Storm Irene … Vermont’s R.U.12? LGBTQ Community Center has sent around an alert that the folks from Westboro, Kansas Baptist Church are planning to picket with the usual epithets at the State House in Montpelier TOMORROW, Labor Day, 2011.

Their message seems to be that Irene’s damage was retribution from an angry god because Vermont recognizes same-sex marriage.

As Vermont’s LGBT community center and advocacy organization, we wanted to alert the community that we’ve received news that the Westboro Baptist Church is coming to Montpelier with their “God Hates Fags” and anti-Semitic messages on Labor Day, Monday September 5th. (Read More About Their Visit Here: http://bit.ly/n2W6Si). This isn’t the first time that the WBC has come to Vermont to spread words of bigotry and intolerance, but this time their scheduled protest comes at a time when our region is recovering from a natural disaster, proclaiming that the loss of lives is proof that God punishes those permitting same-sex marriage.

 

The RU12? Community Center staff and board are encouraging folks to avoid giving this hateful group the attention they are seeking. Instead of participating in an in-person counter protest in Montpelier, we are asking the community to consider directing their focus towards helping Vermont recover from the devastating storm last week. By getting involved in the recovery efforts, we can turn this hate filled message into something positive for our communities. […]

[emphasis added]

You can also counter the Westboro Baptist Church’s message by helping Vermont LGBT organizations end hate and build community: Pledge a dime, a quarter, a dollar or two dollars, (or however much you can!) to the RU12? Community Center, Outright Vermont, or Vermont Fund For Families for every minute WBC is picketing in Vermont.Email these groups with your name, phone number, mailing address, and the amount per minute you’d like to pledge at TheCenter@ru12.org, info@outrightvt.org, or info@vermontfundforfamilies.org.

 

You can donate directly on the Network for Good website:

 

Outright Vermont: http://bit.ly/nf43NV

RU12? Community Center: http://bit.ly/nOJNR3

Then again, after Irene, the WBC’s hateful bloviating is pretty pathetic. Too bad we couldn’t capture the hot air to dry out a few basements.

Acting VDP Chairman Jake Perkinson sent around the following note after spending the day helping folks in Duxbury clean up from Irene-spawned floods (and unfortunately, as of 7 p.m., there were reports of more heavy rainfall in some of the already hard-hit areas):

I’ve just returned from working in Duxbury today with Senator Sally Fox, Representative Tom Stevens, Burlington City Councilor Joan Shannon, the staff of the Vermont Democratic Party, and other friends and volunteers. The devastation there, and throughout many communities in our state, is staggering. We helped clear out basements, haul away saturated carpets and furniture, and sort through belongings to help people salvage what they can. There are volunteers working throughout the state and while it is making a difference, I can tell you now from personal experience that there is still so much to be done. Vermonters need all hands on deck right now because many of our friends and neighbors have lost everything. 

If you have time this Labor Day weekend, even a few hours, please consider donating your labor to help people reclaim their lives and begin the process of rebuilding. Below, along with updates about the recovery process, are a few resources for volunteering. […]

Thank you for all that you are doing at this time to help Vermont recover.

Sincerely,

Jake Perkinson

Read more from the VDP’s note below the fold.

The following information is again provided in cooperation with the Republican and Progressive Parties, the Governor’s office, and legislative leadership. I understand that there will come a time where we will be at the point of “information overload”. But we keep hearing that such information is needed throughout our state.  If you believe there are people within your community who need this but do not have access to a computer or the internet, please print this and share it in person.

New INFORMATION:

 

As of last evening (Wednesday, August 31st) , assessments found that about 120 homes have major damage or were destroyed; three more state roads opened today, 64 remain closed and Transportation crews are working into the night on those projects; 65 state bridges remain closed; four Red Cross shelters are still open, and several local shelters are also housing people who lost housing in the storm.

 

After hearing of concerns related to the 211 call center being overloaded with phone calls for information and assistance, the Governor’s office worked closely with FEMA and the United Way to triple the capacity, adding 20 new lines. Additional volunteers are needed to staff the line; anyone interested in volunteering should contact the Governor’s office at 802-828-3333.

“One of our priorities was to get the 211 telephone system staffed to the appropriate level to handle this unprecedented call level,” Gov. Shumlin said. He noted that social media, including Facebook, has also enabled Vermonters to volunteer, donate cash to help victims of the storm, and stay up to speed on road closing and other issues.

 

Power has been restored to all but about 10,000 Vermonters statewide, down from over 50,000 outages on Monday. Bridge inspectors are coming in from other states to assist the Agency of Transportation in getting bridges reopened; truck-loads and helicopter loads of food, water and supplies have been – and will continue to be – delivered to communities statewide; law enforcement is conducting welfare checks to ensure Vermonters’ safety.

Also today:

All of the 13 previously isolated communities now have vehicle access of some sort (some require four-wheel drive access). Transportation crews worked all day on the final community – Wardsboro – and provided access just before 6 p.m.

 

Recognizing that many Vermonters might be unable to meet the Sept. 1 filing deadlines for four programs administered by the Tax Department, the deadline for accepting those documents will be Sept. 30 (must be received by the Department for Property Tax Adjustment Claim; Homestead Declaration; Renter Rebate Claim; and Current Use Application.

 

The Vermont Bar Association, Vermont Legal Aid, Legal Services Law Line of Vermont and the Vermont Volunteer Lawyers Project have pro bono lawyers standing by to help victims of Tropical Storm Irene. Call 1-800-889-2047 to speak by phone with a Legal Aid or Law Line attorney, or be assigned an attorney through the Volunteer Lawyer Project. Visit http://www.vtlawhelp.org/disas… for answers to frequently asked questions.

 

Gov. Shumlin’s office is working with state agencies to make sure that state laws and permitting requirements aren’t unreasonably slowing recovery efforts.

 

The Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA) has allocated up to $10 million in special low-interest financing for Vermont businesses and farms who suffered direct physical damage as a result of Hurricane Irene. The Hurricane Irene Assistance Loan Program funds are available immediately.

 

Of the 327 Vermont public schools were closed Monday, all but 90 have reopened.

 

The Agency of Commerce and Community Affairs opened a call-line to report business damage from flooding : 802-828-3211.

Note: There are two sites in particular that you may want to check periodically for information on both assistance and volunteering needs:

Seven Days Blog: After Irene: How You Can Help Vermont

VTResponse.

I heard today on VPR (where the staff is doing an incredible job keeping tabs on needs and news in the affected towns) that a farmer in Royalton would be out of cattle feed as of tonight.

One woman called in to remind listeners that without electricity, the cows must be milked by hand; a large-animal veterinarian called in soon after to assure her and other listeners that the cows would be okay if they were not milked for a little while, and that it was better for the cows if farmers would stop milking altogether rather than trying intermittently to milk them.

There was discussion of mycotoxins in hay and grain that got soaked in the floods, making it unusable for animal feed – unless the crop was standing and could be washed off.

On a friend’s Facebook page I saw a photo of a former employer’s building in Brandon’s Conant Square with water up over the first-floor windowsills. This niche publisher had all of its inventory and shipping supplies in the basement, on a level with its back parking lot, a mere two feet above the pre-flood Neshobe River.

The Brandon House of Pizza, just around the corner, was shifted off its foundation by the force of the river.

Repairing roads and returning power are important steps, but they’re just the beginning.

Do what you can now, and again in three months, and in six months, and then maybe in a year we’ll begin to see some real recovery.

( – promoted by Sue Prent)

Watching weather.com tracking Hurricane Irene, listening to Mayor Bloomberg say, “Even if you have to walk, evacuate now.” Public housing units are shutting down (elevators, furnaces, water, electrical power), people being bussed out.

Where are all these people going? How does a homeless person get the news about special shelters? No one I’ve heard so far has even mentioned the word “homeless.”

(Lucky enough to have hatches that are battened here, though it’s likely to be just rain and a stiff wind if it gets to NW Vermont.)

( – promoted by Sue Prent)

In its coverage of the 5.9 Virginia-centered earthquake this week, on page 8 of the “A” section the Wednesday Burlington Free Press ran a sidebar of “notable” quakes felt in Vermont since 1638. Unfortunately I did not find it on the paper’s website, or there would be a link here. The source was credited as the U.S. Geological Survey.

The list mentioned 14 “documented” quakes “shaking up Vermont.”

Omitted: a 6.0 quake that was felt in Burlington in the early 1980s on a hot summer late-night/early morning. I was there. It felt like some large person had grabbed the side of my bed and was pulling it back an forth in my tiny, closet-sized bedroom in a small apartment a block off North St.

I remember the 72-point type in the Free Press headline a couple of days later as the Geological Survey decided the quake’s magnitude was 6.0.

My spouse remembers it too: her parents were visiting from Wisconsin in  her recently acquired condo a handful of blocks south of Main St., and she was sleeping in the guest room on the floor on a futon.

So why is this event, trumpeted on the front page of the (pre-electronic archives) local daily as measuring a 6.0, not on any of the lists of significant earthquakes in the northeast?

Where did the records go? Why did no one at the Free Press think to physically check its own archives?

Down the memory hole indeed.

Imagine my surprise when I heard the (u)n-credible Entergy VY spokesman Larry Smith’s pronouncement regarding yesterday’s earthquake on this morning’s VPR news!

Vermont Yankee nuclear plant spokesman Larry Smith said nothing was recorded by the plant’s seismic monitor.*

*corrected

Perhaps ‘nothing was recorded’ because the machine wasn’t plugged in … or had no ink in its graphic pen … or was under a pile of newspapers … or because we’re not supposed to worry about what an “unlikely” earthquake might do to fuel pool containment, not to mention cooling systems and reactor containment.

Or perhaps nothing was measured as the flip side of how Entergy’s hyper-sensitive lab instruments measured tritium in riverbank samples “below minimum detectable levels.”

At our house, 171 miles northwest of the nuclear power plant, the lights flickered once, and that was all.

But imagine, my friends, what will happen when there’s a serious earthquake, before or after the plant closes. With onsite storage of old fuel (which, we learned from the ongoing Fukushima disaster, is still radioactively HOT!), that Vernon site, so close to the elementary school (3-tenths of a mile on the same road), will be dangerous for a very long time.

Just ask Arnie Gundersen.

I wonder whether the closing costs include the cost of building a new school. I wonder whether the evacuation plans include using roads that might be torn apart in a serious quake. I wonder why it is that we’re using this hellish fuel at all: have we no regard for the future? For our children and their children?

Earthquake, yeah. Nothing recorded, uh-huh, right.

Judy Bevans, whose 27 months as chairwoman of the VDP included major outreach to unions, “big-tent” inclusion, and efforts to work with Progressives in certain districts, announced in an email to members of the State Committee last night that she is resigning, effective immediately.

Her announcement, in full:

After much deliberation, I am announcing my resignation as Vermont Democratic Party Chair, effective immediately.  It was originally my intention to serve out the remainder of my term and not seek re-election.  However, I have accepted a position in the development office at Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, Vermont.

I have full confidence in the team leading the Vermont Democratic Party and leave knowing that our candidates and elected officials are in great hands going into the 2012 election.  Our new staff members have hit the ground running and I know that they will continue to improve and expand upon the goals I set for the VDP when I assumed leadership.  It is time for the next Chair to lead our team and carry this work forward.

Over the past three months, I have worked very closely with Jake Perkinson, first in his position as Chair of the financial subcommittee, and then as Vice Chair.  As acting Chair, Jake will carry our important work forward, and I am giving Jake my full support, as I hope you all will, and I look forward to electing him to the position of Vermont Democratic Party Chair.

Early on, I declared that my top priority was electing a Democratic governor.  After eight years with Governor Douglas, this would be a victory not only for the VDP but for all Vermonters.  With our hard work and a great candidate, we achieved that goal in electing Peter Shumlin.   We obviously cannot rest on this accomplishment: we must press ahead, united, to assure Governor Shumlin’s reelection and the election of Democrats at all levels.

In my 27 months of service, I have been spent my time working with such great people. From our federal delegation to our elected officials in Montpelier, the Executive Committee, State Committee, County and Town Chairs, it has been both an honor and a pleasure to work with such deeply committed Democrats.  I cherish your friendships.

I could spend pages listing all of our wonderful accomplishments together, but let me close with this: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you and serve Vermont Democrats as Chair.   I look forward to serving as a member of the State Committee and to all of the great things we will accomplish together in this upcoming election cycle and beyond.

Best,

Judy Bevans

Recently elected vice chair Jake Perkinson, a lawyer from Burlington, will be acting chair until a VDP State Committee meeting on September 10, at which members will vote on a new chair. If Perkinson is voted in as chair for the remaining three and a half months of Bevans’ term, the committee will also elect a new vice chair. The VDP’s bylaws require that the chair and the vice chair be of opposite genders. If the chair is female, the vice chair must be male.

I have not (yet) heard of anyone on the state committee thinking of running for chair against Jake Perkinson, and it might be a hard row to hoe going against his virtual anointing by now-former chair Judy Bevans.

Let the games begin.

(Shumlin needs to hear this one over, and over, until he gets it.   – promoted by JDRyan)

The Wall Street Journal blogs, no friend of taxation on the rich, reports on a study of New Jersey’s rich folks and when and why they might move.

The study, by sociologists Cristobal Young at Stanford and  Charles Varner at Princeton, studied the migration patterns of New Jersey’s millionaires before and after 2004, when the state imposed a “millionaire’s tax” that raised rates on those earning $500,000 or more to 8.97% from 6.37%.

The study found that the overall population of millionaires increased during the tax period. Some millionaires moved out, of course. But they were more than offset by the creation of new millionaires.

Somebody oughta tell Governor Shumlin, quick! And Shap Smith, and Lucy Leriche and John Campbell, and Hinda Miller and …

Dr. George Till (D-Jericho, Underhill) will be one of six panelists at a public forum in Burlington, according to an announcement from Jake Perkinson, chair of the Chittenden County Democratic Committee.

The forum is at Burlington’s City Hall (Contois Auditorium) April 27, 6:30-8:30 p.m., and is being cosponsored by the Franklin County Democratic Committee.

The panelists include:

Anya Rader Wallack, PhD., Health Care Advisor to Governor Shumlin; Policy Director and Deputy Chief of Staff for Governor Howard Dean; ran the Vermont Program for Quality in Health Care 1995-1998. Dr. Wallack earned her PhD in social policy from Brandeis University.

Deborah Richter, MD, Co-Chair of Vermont Health Care for All, a doctor with Family Practice Associates in Montpelier, former president of Physicians for a National Health Program, years of experience caring for the uninsured, and extensive knowledge of the Canadian health care system. Dr. Richter attended SUNY at Buffalo School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences and trained at Highland Hospital.

Representative Mark Larson, (D-Chittenden 3-2) Chair, House Committee on Health Care, has served in the Vermont House since 2000 and on the Vermont Health Care Reform and Vermont Health Care Access Commissions.  He was instrumental in achieving passage of H.202 in the House.

Representative George Till, (D-Chittenden-8), Member, House Committee on Health Care,  Assoc. Prof. of Ob/Gyn at UVM and a hospitalist at FAHC; received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981. He is serving his second term in the Vermont House.

Senator Sally Fox, (D-Chittenden), Member, Senate Committees on Health and Welfare and Finance, has been Director of Family Court Operations, Policy Director for VBSR, and involved in the Burlington Community Justice Center, VT State Colleges, and a member of the Vermont Children’s Hospital advisory board. She also served 7 terms in the Vermont House.

Senator Hinda Miller (D-Chittenden), Member, Senate Committees on Health and Welfare and Appropriations. Sen. Miller is serving her 5th term in office. She was recognized as Legislator of the Year (2010) by Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility. Prior to politics, she was a successful entrepreneur. She received a BFA from Parson’s School of Design & MFA from New York University.

I’m not at all sure that 2 hours will be enough. I am sure that it’s going to take a stern moderator’s hand to cut off self-serving, political blather and allow questions from actual healthcare consumers.

Another brief video diary. This is how Congress works now.

Notice how the Speaker pro-tem denies the points of order and inquiry by redefining the terms? Notice the uproar when he does so. Notice that  the “nays” are clearly louder than the “ayes,” but the Speaker pro tem declares the “ayes” have it. The vote here is the defunding of National Public Radio.

This is the atmosphere Peter Welch is working in. Thugs are running the place. We need to help other states elect Democrats. This is why it matters.