Say you're a human being, in a society of human beings.  You folks get together during the day to find food, and at night gather around the fire because there's lots of things that'll eat you.  Then you invent agriculture, settle down, get better at the whole thing, start producing surplus which you have to store and keep track of, and ultimately you invent civilization.

The civilization gig is pretty handy, providing some order and predictability you might not have had wandering around looking for nuts and berries, and even allowing for some division of labor.  As your civilization grows, you enjoy some economies of scale and can start tackling some big, complex projects through coordination and management, but that takes some people away from directly producing food.

That's cool because some of the public works projects, like irrigation canals and whatnot, can help produce more food or contribute to safety.  Sure there are boondoggles like pyramids, but people also dig looking at cool things and they're certainly an expression of human nature.  Anyway, you gotta feed the workers, so the managers look for contributions from society at large.

Thus the Taxman is invented.

Okay, I'm being a bit glib, but I think Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, was right about taxes and civilization.  We have it pretty good being a part of society, and everybody's got to ante up and kick in to make it work.  Nice to see that President Obama generally thinks so, too:

We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, hard times or bad luck, a crippling illness or a layoff, may strike any one of us. “There but for the grace of God go I,” we say to ourselves, and so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, and those with disabilities. We are a better country because of these commitments. I’ll go further – we would not be a great country without those commitments. 

For much of the last century, our nation found a way to afford these investments and priorities with the taxes paid by its citizens. As a country that values fairness, wealthier individuals have traditionally born a greater share of this burden than the middle class or those less fortunate. This is not because we begrudge those who’ve done well – we rightly celebrate their success. Rather, it is a basic reflection of our belief that those who have benefitted most from our way of life can afford to give a bit more back.

Also channeling a bit of Teddy Roosevelt today:

The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the State, because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government. Not only should he recognize this obligation in the way he leads his daily life and in the way he earns and spends his money, but it should also be recognized by the way in which he pays for the protection the State gives him.

Now that wild-eyed communist, Adam Smith, observed (slightly bloggified for easier reading):

According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings:

• first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; 

• secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; 

• and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works, and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual, or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.

Most anti-government, pro-free market fairy types have boiled Smith's masterwork of five tomes down to the Invisible Handjob and like to pretend he was completely laissez faire and all about unfettered individual liberty being the best for society.  Of course that's not entirely true, and those folks tend to ignore vast swaths of text that are a bit more sophisticated and subtle than a blanket love for the marketplace.

One can certainly squint at The Wealth of Nations, cherry picking and interpreting however one wishes to prove a point just as one can the Bible or the Constitution.  If we were left with the three duties of government enumerated above, one might argue that everything Obama mentioned today goes well beyond Smith's vision.  However, he further expanded on these basic objects with specific examples:

• Sterling marks on plate and stamps on linen and woollen cloth (WN138–9); – consumer protection!

• obligations to build party walls to prevent the spread of fire (WN324); – building codes!

• ‘Premiums and other encouragements to advance the linen and woollen industries’ (TMS185); – government subsidies!

• ensuring the ‘cheapness or plenty [of provisions]’ (LJ6; 331); – price controls and busting monopolies (“as goods are a conveniency to the society, the society lives less happy when only the few can possess them”).

• erecting and maintaining certain public works and public institutions intended to facilitate commerce (roads, bridges, canals and harbours) (WN723); – but certainly not electricity, telephones and broadband Internet, right?

• regulation of institutions, such as company structures (joint- stock companies, co-partneries, regulated companies and so on) (WN731–58); – how dare the government interfere!

• education of youth (‘village schools’, curriculum design and so on) (WN758–89); – did that inspireVermont's framers?

• education of people of all ages (tythes or land tax) (WN788); – wait, higher education, too?

• encouragement of ‘the frequency and gaiety of publick diversions’(WN796); – just noMapplethorpe. for Christ's sake.

• the prevention of ‘leprosy or any other loathsome and offensive disease’ from spreading among the population (WN787–88); – yeah, like healthcare is a public good or something.

• government restrictions on interest for borrowing (usury laws) to overcome investor ‘stupidity’ (WN356–7); – weird the banksters never mention this.

That's just a subset of Smith's list which I've stolen from Canadian economist, Jacob Viner, with the help of this site (or vice versa), and briefly annotated.  The point is that many things conservatives decry as being government intrusions on the genius of the market are actually part and parcel of government duty.

In fact, Smith also noted in his Lectures:

[T]he government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that the one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich. There are many expenses necessary in a civilized country for which there is no occasion in one that is barbarous. 

That jibes with what Adolf Wagner postulated the following century: The advent of modern industrial society will result in increasing political pressure for social progress and increased allowance for social consideration by industry.

A brief background of Wagner's Law:

Wagner offered three reasons in support of his hypothesis.  Firstly, as nations develop they experience increased complexity of legal relationships and communications, as a result of the immense division of labour that accrues with industrialization.  Because of this, Wagner envisaged an enlarged role for the state in  the form of public, regulatory and protective activity.  Further, increased urbanization and population density would lead to greater public expenditure on law and order, and economic regulation due to the associated risk of more conflict in densely populated urban communities.  

Because of the substitution of private for public activity, the administrative and protective functions of the state would expand.  Thus, as nations become more advanced the number and/or magnitude of  market failures would force the state to become more regulatory in nature, thereby expanding its role and this would inevitably involve higher public expenditures. 

Wagner predicted the expansion of ‘cultural and welfare’ expenditures based on the presumption that as income rises, society would demand more education, entertainment, a more equitable distribution of wealth and income, and generally more public services.  Public Services were seen as normal goods,  that is, their income elasticities of demand exceeded unity.  Wagner cited education and culture as areas in which collective producers were more efficient than private producers.

I think we've reached a critical point, though, where we've collectively come to rely on the services of civilization without expecting to pay full price.  The orgy of tax cuts since Reagan slashed the top marginal rates (though he did raise taxes 7 times in 6 years to mitigate the tumbling economy and deficit, people only remember the reductions) has created an imbalance in our accounts, briefly corrected during the Clinton Era and pushed out of control by Bush.

Eexacerbating this is the incredible economic inequality that's developed in the United States over the last few decades.  When the richest of the rich dominate our policy decisions and electoral processes, we end up with the discordant sounds we hear in Wisconsin and Ohio, and in Washington, DC: cries of “we're broke” as all the progressive gains we made since before the Depression are wantonly destroyed to pad the wallets of uberwealthy corporatists.

Sadly, we hear similar refrains in enlightened Vermont from our Democratic governor, who won't brook raising taxes on the top earners but brags about making deep cuts in spending.  We've even got folks who view taxation to support vital services and human rights as slavery.  Which is weird because that Smith guy (again!) observed: Every tax, however, is, to the person who pays it, a badge, not of slavery, but of liberty.

Indeed, as Alexander Hamilton said just before the American Revolution: Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society.

And civil society requires a little investment:

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.

What's more, to help protect all the services that an advanced nation requires:

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

So raise taxes on the rich at the Federal level.  Patriotic rich folks won't mind!  And raise taxes on the rich at the state level.  Again, patriotic rich folks won't mind!  Our civilization demands it.

ntodd

Shummy pats himself and his Democratic majority on the back:

As the whole country waits to see if Congress can come to a budget agreement before the current spending bill ends at midnight, we can’t help but notice the stark difference between Washington and Vermont. Our budget woes are no less difficult than those faced by our U.S Representatives and Senators. In fact, Vermont is faced with the task of cutting a larger percentage of our budget.

…

We as a state have had to make a bigger reduction, yet Vermont does not have a government shutdown looming. We are not months late in passing a budget. In fact, our budget is moving through the legislative approval process quite smoothly. Sure there has been debate out how much to cut and where. That is inevitable when you are facing the type of tough spending choices we’ve had to make this year. 

What's missing from his post?  The same exact thing at the national level: honest discussion of revenues.

I don't see an appreciable difference between DC and Montpelier when our Democratic leadership is failing to ask the wealthiest of the wealthy to kick in their proportion to safeguard necessary state services for the rest of us.  I'm going to be a broken record on this through the 2012 campaign and suggest we follow Republican Governor Richard Snelling's lead.  We can start by raising the top marginal rate instead of kowtowing to a few hundred rich folks who stomp their feet and threaten to leave their communities in the lurch.

Save the self-congratulatory posts for when we see real courage on taxation.

ntodd

Stiglitz:

Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century—inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today. The justification they came up with was called “marginal-productivity theory.” In a nutshell, this theory associated higher incomes with higher productivity and a greater contribution to society. It is a theory that has always been cherished by the rich. Evidence for its validity, however, remains thin.

The corporate executives who helped bring on the recession of the past three years—whose contribution to our society, and to their own companies, has been massively negative—went on to receive large bonuses. In some cases, companies were so embarrassed about calling such rewards “performance bonuses” that they felt compelled to change the name to “retention bonuses” (even if the only thing being retained was bad performance). Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.

…

Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The top 1 percent rarely serve in the military—the reality is that the “all-volunteer” army does not pay enough to attract their sons and daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed money will pay for all that.

Foreign policy, by definition, is about the balancing of national interests and national resources. With the top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain.

Inequality and warfare have always been two sides of the same gold sovereign: kings waged war for lands for which poor subjects bled, then worked upon for feudal fat cats.  The old Divine Right of Kings really isn't that much different than our contemporary Permanent War Economy.  

At the end of his article, Stiglitz refers to de Tocqueville's notion of “self-interest properly understood.”  The flip side of this is described near the end of Democracy in America:

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.

Worshippers of Galt, who earnestly believe they never benefited from society and think the commonwealth enslaves them, are both a symptom and cause of our decline–part of a feedback loop.  They are counterexamples of de Tocqueville, the antithesis of enlightened, or at least pragmatic, individualism exemplified by the likes of Henry Ford or even Adam Smith.

But they're easy to pick on, what with their obvious and extreme embrace of the virtue of selfishness.  What about the rest of us who enjoy an oil-based, consumerist society, albeit to a lesser extent than our wealthy masters?

There's something very important that a lot of people, right and left, have really failed to recognize as they cheer on their preferred military conflicts, whatever the noble cause may be.  They forget that James Madison identified the greatest threat to our liberty:

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes and the opportunities of fraud growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could reserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Emphasis mine.  Apply these words to not only Bush's wars, but also Obama's keen search for monsters to destroy in a time where we see militarized corporations like GE pay no taxes and Republicans push to increase the burden on the lower rungs of America's economic ladder.  

Isn't it a vicious cycle, wherein inequality enables war and war generates more inequality?  Thus, cheering for an intervention such as in Libya is essentially cheering for greater inequality at home.  Every Tomahawk launched will be replaced by our PWE, and the new royalty/aristocracy will reap more profits while government by the rich squeezes the middle class and poor even more.

As Dr King noted 44 years ago this week:

We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Rebelling against the Divine Right of the Koch Brothers requires a revolution of values within ourselves.  There are many reasons they are as ascendent today as the Robber Barons of the 19th century or the feudal barons of the 10th, but one that's overlooked is supporting “good” wars when our guy is in office because it makes the next “bad” war easier, which helps the gulf between rich and poor grow here at home and abroad.  The “good” wars are a threat to liberty worldwide.

By all means, let's lay blame at the feet of our new kings.  But let's not let's not forget our own divine rights and responsibilities in the fight for justice.  

I don't suggest everybody puts on loincloths and start producing their own goat's milk, or even necessarily giving up their cars and Wii Fits.  My proposal is more modest today: just tell Mr Obama you don't support his war.  We can fill in the rest of the details later.

ntodd

A fellow Fletcherite and I had an exchange on VPR's Facebook link about the Republican legislative agenda and the caucus' relevance.  Sure he only lives about a half mile away, but our little community doesn't really have a town square so online interaction works nicely, thank you very much.  Anywayz, in light of that and the results of Dr George Till's poll of the VT medical community, I wanted to say a more about healthcare reform in Vermont.  Because that's what I do.

Duh, nukes are scary:

[Calling fears of nuclear accidents] irrational isn't justified, said Georgetown University law professor and former Environmental Protection Agency associate administrator Lisa Heinzerling. She said people's concerns have been unjustly trivialized.

People have been trained to think about and prepare for low-probability, catastrophic events like the earthquake and tsunami that caused the Japanese nuclear disaster, Heinzerling said. She pointed to homeowner's insurance. Most people won't have a fire that destroys their home, but “we worry about really big things even if they are improbable because we will be wiped out.”

Or put another way:

Risk is about more than likelihood; it’s also about impact.  If I tell you that your chances of being bitten by a mosquito as you cross my yard are one in a hundred, you’ll think of that risk differently than if I give you the same odds on a deadly pit viper.

And that's where a lot of us are coming from.  It's not unreasonable to reject an energy source that can slowly poison not just you but your descendents through its operation, waste and failure, even if thus far it's “safer” than fossil fuels.  

In the past 30 years we've had 3 major accidents at level 5 (Three Mile Island), 6 (Fukushima) and the maximum of 7 (Chernobyl) the international scale.  The most recent one is at a plant that was designed to withstand a powerful earthquake (M7.9) and large tsunami (5.2m).  Unfortunately, Nature can alwaysdial things up a notch or thirty, and in this case the worst-worst estimates weren't worst-worst enough, as Fukushima got nailed with a magnitude 9.0 quake generating a tsunami 14 meters high.  

The casual dismissal of these severe accidents and people's concerns by governments, the media and alleged “experts” does a grave disservice to us all.  Oh yeah, and much of the pro-nuke stuff is, you know, based on ignorance or outright deception.

Take, for example, this claim:

The people who manufacture the wind turbines insist they can handle high winds. But then there’s the example of that windmill in Oregon that collapsed in 25-mph winds back in 2007 and killed a guy who was working on it. That means wind power has already killed more Americans than have been killed by nuclear power in all our history.

51 people who died 33 years ago might beg to differ.  What's that, the pro-nuke apologists say?  You can't count deaths in building plants?  Well, that's precisely what has been counted as deaths caused by (rooftop) solar, so we might as well compare renewable apples to radioactive apples.

Yup, you can slip from a roof when installing solar panels.  A wind tubine might fall on you.  Heck, you might die falling down the stairs.  Life is not 100% safe.  Nobody is claiming that energy alternatives are completely free of risk.  

Compared to deaths related to sustainable energy, coal mining accidents seem particularly horrific.  And yet, no individual mine collapse requires people to evacuate for many miles around the area, stop drinking water hundreds of miles away, and threaten the entire globe.  

We don't find, say…radiation in New England and the southern US when a coal mine collapses in China.  We don't see the mental development of our children impaired by coal seam fires.

We do see extreme conditions that prevent people from containing the problem (which may have just gotten even worse).  Not unlike the BP disaster, except even wider in potential impact.

Anyway, I do accept at face value that nuke is “safer” than oil and coal.  My conclusion is, however, that from a risk POV it's not worth keeping in our energy portfolio, even in the short term as a way to wean ourselves from our more immediately dangerous fossil fuel addiction.  It doesn't make sense in terms of greenhouse gases, and it doesn't make sense economically.  Heck, we even have a Peak Uraniumproblem that makes nuclear unsustainable.

While solar is currently more expensive than nuclear, it's also the case that wind, geothermal and hydro are cheaper.  And much like we saw with hybrid vehicles–their costs have dropped and are expected tocontinue that trend–I'd wager a critical mass of uranium that solar technology will improve and become cheaper and more efficient.  Vermont's largest solar farm, for example, saw their need for 5200 panels drop to 3800 in just the 10 months between proposal and operation.

We can also create more jobs by shutting down aging plants like Vermont Yankee and investing aggressively in sustainable energy.  So there really is no argument to made from the employment angle.

Fortunately, the default for Vermont Yankee is to be decommissioned.  Since Entergy agreed to follow Vermont law in 2002, we've had several elections that have returned Democrats to power in the Legislature and now also put a Democrat back into the Governor's seat–this after the Senate beat back an attempt to extend VY's life in 2010.  As far as I'm concerned, it's a done deal (silly unscientific polls and continued FUD campaigns notwithstanding).

Unfortunately, our default for replacing our nuke plant is to do very little in building our sustainable energy portfolio.  That has to change, lest we all find ourselves right back to choosing between the same old poisons.

ntodd

 PS–A corollary from Yemen:

Across town, an even larger number converged on a square chanting slogans calling for his ouster and waving red cards emblazoned with the word “leave” despite fears of more violence a week after government security forces shot dead more than 40 demonstrators in Sanaa.

The bloodshed last Friday prompted a wave of defections by military commanders, ruling party members and others, swelling the ranks of the opposition and leaving the president isolated.

When NV is met with violence, it increases the chances that the people being asked to carry out repression will defect to the opposition.  If the resisters turn to violence in response–which is part of the goal of the attacks in the first place–then the regime's actions are more easily justified and the apparatus loses fewer components.

Well, today the House approved final passage of H.202, our roadmap to single-payer, by a vote of 92-49.  That's similar to the previous roll call (for a third reading) in the wee hours this morning, with a few more Yeas and Nays from the members who had been absent.  

As expected, my Republican representative, Lynn Dickinson, voted against the measure. I admit to being a little surprised that Franklin-2's other rep, Blue Dog Dick Howrigan, who had voted for an amendment that would essentially derail and delay our current efforts, ultimately supported the bill.  Anyway, it's off to the even more Democratic Senate, where I'm confident we'll get what we want even after the sausage machine does its grinding.  

I guess at this point I shouldn't be disappointed that those on the wrong side of history would double down on their misguided rhetoric, but I am once again.  When S.88 was passed last year, Republican Senator Randy Brock dug out the old red baiting playbook, which was used again by freshman Tom Burditt who upped the ante by invoking fears of Islamofascism for good measure.

As eye-rolling as that is, what bothered me the most when listening to the debate were two other claims that could at first blush sound almost reasonable.  You can see the frothing mouths of folks who cry about Communists and Muslims, so in contrast hearing that businesses don't like “the uncertainty” and the process is moving “too fast,” you could be forgiven for thinking that it makes a bit of sense.

Hey yeah, if businesses don't know exactly what the world will be lke in 2014, well…um,  they won't create jobs, or they'll lose sleep at night, or something just as bad!  And it's awful that we're rushing through this legislation with so little time for the public to weigh in, so we should down to hammer out a few more details to the satisfaction of people who don't want universal healthcare in the first place!

The uncertainty canard is just a cartful of dung and has been a favorite of regressive pols at the national level for some time.  So glad to see it make it's appearance in our state.

Same goes for the “whoa, sloooooow down” crapola.  I guess it might seem like breakneck speed to somebody who fears the inevitable and hopes to throw a few more monkey wrenches into the works.  But let's be honest: we've been debating this stuff for a long, long time, and the People have driven our progress through it all.  

There were myriad public forums and legislative hearings during the debate on S.88.  We had reports from Dr Hsiao's team during the design study phase.  There was a 15 day public comment window after recommendations were announced.  The current bill was introduced almost 2 months ago and since then there have been even more hearings and forums all across the state.  We've had plenty of time for letters to the editor, phone calls to representatives, lobbying by businesses and consumer groups.

It is a bit of a puzzlement to me that people who decry uncertainty also want to keep the process lingering.  If you want to certainty, finish the job.  The time to dither is over.

ntodd

Sue Prent highlights our DC-3's view on Vermont Yankee:

We believe that Entergy should respect and abide by Vermont's laws and the MOU signed with the state in 2002, which require approval by the Vermont Legislature, and then the Vermont Public Service Board, for the plant to continue to operate beyond 2012.

Now she calls this a no-brainer, but that's only the case if there were no threat to corporate profits and the politicians who are funded by them.  Fortunately, I don't think those will hold sway with the current Democratic governor and legislature because, as Leahy, Sanders and Welch note, state law governs this and it'll be an uphill battle to change it or get an extension under it.

The Memorandum of Understanding from 2002 is rather important because under terms of Entergy's purchase of Vermont Yankee, they agreed that the Feds have no jurisdiction over the plant's operation beyond March 21, 2012.  Paragraph 12:

The signatories to this MOU agree that any order issued by the Board granting approval of the sale of VYNPS…will authorize operation of the VYNPS only until March 21, 2012 and thereafter will authorize [Entergy] only to decommission the VYNPS…[Entergy, et al]irrevocably agrees: (a) that the Board has jurisdiction under current law to grant or deny approval of operation of the VYNPS beyond March 21, 2012 and (b) to waive any claimeach may have that federal law preempts the jurisdiction of the Board…

The default action, therefore, is that VY must be decomissioned.  Doesn't matter what Entergy says.  Doesn't matter that they got NRC rubber-stamping or not.  Absent any positive Board approval, the plant shuts down about 364 days from now.

However, the Board is subject Vermont law, which according to Act 160 stipulates:

No nuclear energy generating plant within this state may be operated beyond the date permitted in any certificate of public good granted pursuant to this title, including any certificate in force as of January 1, 2006, unless the general assembly approves and determines that the operation will promote the general welfare, and until the public service board issues a certificate of public good under this section. If the general assembly has not acted under this subsection by July 1, 2008, the board may commence proceedings under this section and under 10 V.S.A. chapter 157, relating to the storage of radioactive material, but may not issue a final order or certificate of public good until the general assembly determines that operation will promote the general welfare and grants approval for that operation.

Please note the reference to 'general welfare'.  That's what should drive this discussion above all else, and the Senate has already determined that extending an aging, flawed, mismanaged plant beyond it's original life expectancy does not meet that requirement–S.289 was shot down 26-4 last February, and voters didn't see fit to turn out the Democratic majority so it's highly likely that the decision will not be reversed.

That won't stop people from trying, which is a good thing in a democratic republic.  Unsurprisingly, the GOP rep from Vernon/Entergy is leading the charge:

[Freshman Rep. Mike Hebert] said it’s “improper” for the Legislature to have the power to decide Vermont Yankee’s fate. Instead, the authority should go to scientists, at places like the Vermont Public Service Board or the NRC, who know what they’re doing, he said.

It's amusing to see a Republican of all people get religion on science when the party generally is hostile to things like evolution and climate change (Herbert didn't complete his Politcal Courage Test so I don't know his overall posture toward science).  It's disturbing that they think the People don't have the ability or right to determine what promotes the general welfare.

Nevermind the increasing levels of radiation further from Fukushima.  Nevermind the odds of a disaster in Vernon.  I'm not concerned about the science and safety statistics at the moment.

I'm not even concerned that we can create more economic benefit by shutting down the plant and making aggressive investments in sustainable energy.

What concerns me is that a legislator wants to remove the People's voice from the process.  So I'm glad that the DC3 are reminding everybody of Entergy's agreements and the primacy of Vermont law.  They really remind us to stayy vigilant and ready to fend off cynical ploys to lock us out when the public good is at stake.

ntodd

It was the usual cast of characters: child care providers who want to organize, advocates for and clients of social services, activists for healthcare and other civil rights, senior citizens, and the occasional quasi-libertarian crank and vitriolioc public access show host.  All braved the “sudden” spring snow storm (one we'd expected that seemed to be vaporware until just before the event) to participate in a town meeting on the economy with Senator Bernie Sanders.

Ericka and Sam were there to show support for the Healthcare is a Human RIght campaign.  I was there for the free dinner.  Ironically, I didn't get any dinner because I was too busy working the crowd with my friend KC, asking folks to participate in the our photo petition.

I don't have anything to share about the post-dinner town meeting part because of probably the most important detail from my POV: the turnout was way heavier than expected to the point that the fire marshal required a significant number of folks to leave.  We volunteered to go because the large, noisy crowd was starting to wear on Sam–he's always extremely well-behaved and has been to myriad campaign events, but never quite like this.

It's okay that we couldn't stay because you already pretty much know the script anyway.  That's not to dismiss the value of such interactions, just that after you attend a few of these things it gets a bit predictable.  We go to show solidarity, do a little work and try to get other people engaged.

My only disappointment was that we couldn't see any fireworks from some segments of the crowd I knew were there to harangue our dangerous socialist senator.  You know who I'm talking about, in general if not the particular: the type who accosts, say…a nice write-in candidate for high baliff at the polls on election day, the type who thinks they deserve what they get and everything else is theft, the type who makes a show of carrying around a copy of the Constitution but is taken aback when you quote a clause that's contrary to their cries of unconstitutionality.

Anyway, Bernie's staff was mortified that the venue they chose–the St Albans Historical Museum–was not adequate for the crowd.  To me, though, that was the biggest takeaway from the event.  So many people, mostly from St A and Georgia judging from our petitioners, were willing to come out in dreadful weather because they're concerned about the state of our economy and to interact with their elected employee.

It was a little disappointing to see so few of our local pols there.  Senator Sara Kittell was moving about–she always makes an effort to get out and talk to people.  I also saw former Rep Jeff Young but didn't get a chance to chat with him, and we sat with one of Sam's favorite candidates, Progressive-Democrat Cindy Weed from Enosburg.  Dick Howrigan gets a pass because I've been talking to him regularly on the phone and he's a bit under the weather.  

No Dickinson or Brock?  Well, of course not.  They would have to talk to people who actually want to preserve the safety net and even raise taxes on their base!  The horror.

As I said, there were a few people I knew aren't on board with any progressive agenda, which is great.  I think these sorts of gatherings tend to be self-selecting–we only had one Republican participate in a candidate forum on healthcare and other issues last fall, for example–so I applaud the folks who come out when they know they'll be in the minority.  Would that more voters engage in between elections.

Most of the people we talked to were eager not only to get more info about H.202, but also to have their photos taken for the petition and learn how else they might be able to help move the bill along–even with details still to be hammered out, they were very supportive of universal healthcare and want to be part of the process.  A few were not sure about things and just asked for literature.  We've been doing a lot of outreach, of course, and providing people with raw data, analysis, etc, but if you aren't following this closely and see mostly GOP claims about “unknowns” and “socialism” and little about the benefits to you and your community, then it's not surprising if you're a little leery of reform.

And that's pretty much it for me.  I'm sure other people will write up stuff about the town meeting portion. And I hope everybody drove safely afterward–we saw two accidents between St A and Fairfax on our way home.

ntodd

Our friends at the Vermont Workers' Center alert us:

By a vote of 8 to 3 the House Healthcare Committee voted the Universal Healthcare Bill (H.202) out. It will go to the House Appropriations Committee today and then will be voted on by the full House next week. And then it will go to the Senate.

That's great news, and brings us yet another step closer to what we need.

Our work is governed by the human-rights principles of universality, equity, accountability, transparencyand participation, which breaks down practically as:

1. Every person is entitled to comprehensive, quality healthcare.
2. Systemic barriers must not prevent people from accessing necessary healthcare.
3. The cost of financing the healthcare system must be shared fairly.
4. The healthcare system must be transparent in design, efficient in operation and accountable to the people it serves.
5. As a human right, a healthcare system that satisfies these principles is the responsibility of government to ensure.

While our state constitution doesn't explicitly address healthcare as a public concern–in contrast toMichigan's, for example–we did pass Act 128 last year which codified the same: It is the policy of the state of Vermont that health care is a public goodfor all Vermonters and to ensure that all residents have access to quality healthservices at costs that are affordable.  We now have to keep at it to make sure that policy is realized via the legislation currently going through the sausage machine.

It's an ugly process, and despite having a Democratic legislature still rife with uncertainty.  As Wisconsin has shown, even well-established rights are under attack, so trying to make progress on the right to healthcare is daunting.  But all the important battles are being fought at the state level right now, which gives Vermont a real chance to lead the nation on this issue.

That certainly makes a lot of sense, given the difficulties of building national consensus on healthcare.  As Justice Brandeis said:

It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

And that brings me to one strategic goal in the bill: create a public–private single-payer health care system to provide coveragefor all Vermonters after receipt of federal waivers.

Right after the election, Governor-elect Shumlin got Obama's committment for the waivers (ACA, ERISA, Medicare/Medicaid) we need to proceed and our Congressional delegation has also pledged to make sure this happens.  Not surprising despite all the naysaying by some folks during the campaign.  So we should be able to conduct our grand experiment, but we can't be complacent.

The biggest obstacle now is probably big business.  Not just insurance interests, but the likes of IBM et al, who don't want to see their extant coverage plans disrupted and payroll taxes to increase.  I happen to know for a fact they are pushing very hard to delay any implementation of a program through more “study”, shunting it off to myriad committees, and addressing the financing component first (I actually think they're right that we're putting the cart before the proverbial horse, but we should develop both at the same time).

I'm a bit concerned about Shummy's fortitude in the face of such well-monied resistance, given his reluctance to even consider raising taxes on the wealthiest Vermonters.  It means we have plenty of work to do, so please take action.  Let's keep the experiment going.

ntodd

[Update: LOL, of course David Sirota writes today about the down side of such laboratories when mad scientists are at work.  I think it reinforces the larger point I made the other day…]