The NRA has spoken; and their answer to the horrors of Newtown Connecticut is to tell Congress to set aside a massive amount of money to station an armed guard at every school.

This is a great solution for weapons manufacturers because it creates a huge new market for their products.

I have a better suggestion.  

If stationing an armed guard at every school is the only way to avoid another Newtown massacre, weapons manufacturers, not taxpayers, should bear the burden as a cost of doing business.

Half of all taxpayers don’t even own a gun, but we are all vulnerable to weapons stockpiled by the rest, and we all pay the collateral costs of gun violence.

I don’t want to hear any more about how “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”  People with guns kill people in extremely large numbers in this country, and that smug little truism does nothing to alter reality.

It is shocking and shameful that we have allowed our Constitution to be hijacked by an industry and its auxiliaries to justify a class of products that are about nothing more noble than wholesale slaughter.

It’s time to demand from Big Weapons the same kind of payback as we demanded from Big Tobacco, who successfully avoided government regulation of their deadly product for decades with the argument that it would violate our Constitutional rights.

I listened to an interview on VPR’s “Fresh Air” this afternoon, concerning the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.  

Apparently in the last few months, the town had been grappling with the question of whether or not something had to be done about the proliferation of informal shooting ranges in residential areas, and random semi-automatic gunfire for recreational purposes.  

There had been such a growth in these activities that the town was divided between those who wanted more regulation and those who insisted regulation would violate their constitutional rights.

What I found arresting about this revelation was the fact that not even a week before the shootings, an almost identical controversy in Highgate, Vermont was reported on by Michelle Monroe in the Messenger.  

As in Connecticut, locals are divided between those who are concerned for their own safety and that of their children, due to the risk of stray bullets; and those who feel they are well within their rights to use their land as they see fit.  

There is heat in both communities over the issue; heat that almost never leads to tighter regulation, unless something like the Newtown shootings results in instant conversion to the cause.

But there is another interested party, an outside interest, which holds much of the power in these local skirmishes. That interested party is comprised of gun and munitions manufacturers, who enforce their hegemony over the gun debate through political activities of the NRA and similar organizations.

A gun manufacturer’s primary interest rests in selling more guns.  Like the manufacturers of cars, clothing and potato chips, their fortune lies in convincing us that one is never enough.  

But since the fundamental purpose of a gun is to kill,  the best marketing scheme must necessarily involve ramped-up kill potential, coupled with a heavy dose of good old fashioned paranoia.  From the multiple market saturations that have been achieved by the munitions industry, we can conclude that their marketing scheme is a lulu.

So while we’re distracted by the nearly impossible task of reconciling public safety with Second Amendment arguments; those guys are making out like bandits.  Thanks to the double edge of paranoia (to mix a metaphor) their cup is overflowing.

On the one hand, gun owners are reminded endlessly that  civilized people might at any time decide that enough is enough and put restrictions on gun sales.  On the other, since their market saturation has been so successful, new recruits can always be had through the argument that the only way to be safe against guns is to have a bigger one.

The Cold War may be over, but the Domestic Arms Race is burgeoning.

We are missing our biggest opportunity to stem the tide of assault weapons: manufacturer liability.   That boat sailed way back in 2005 when Republicans, with not inconsiderable Democratic support and under cover of post-9/11 paranoia,  pushed through a measure to essentially indemnify the gun industry from all liability associated with gun violence.

That was stupid to the nth degree.

Until gun manufacturers have some skin in the game when it comes to gun-violence prevention, they will continue providing consumers with ever newer and deadlier toys.  And they will continue to promote a culture of gun-worship and paranoia that will only worsen with time.  This is their business model, and it works;  just as “Joe Camel” and the “doctor” recommendations worked to make Big Tobacco the rich and powerful industry it was before Americans decided they’d had enough of lung cancer deaths.

It’s time to go back to some liability for gun manufacturers in the event of gun violence.  If they don’t want us to limit the “right to bear arms,”  then they should have to accept the victims’ “right to bear torts.”

All those arguments about how Vermont “needs” Vermont Yankee?  Not even Entergy can make that claim with a straight face now.

According to Reuters:

Ignoring the odd phrasing for a moment; the point is that the ISO has agreed to delist Vermont Yankee from the annual forward-capacity power auctions for 2013-2016…because it simply isn’t needed.

This development comes on top of the Public Service Board‘s refusal to grant Entergy a delay in its requirement that a new certificate of public good be obtained for the relicensed plant to continue operating.  

The PSB is expected to rule on the question of Public Good in August of next year.  Meanwhile,  the New England Coalition is asking the Vermont Supreme Court to simply shut VY down, once and for all.  

So much storm und angst; just because Entergy wants to continue its game of “hot potato” long enough to wring a little more value from VY, and perhaps slide out from under its liability for decomissioning.

In the year and a half since Fukushima briefly brought the nuclear debate front and center here at home, U.S energy consumers may have left that lesson largely unattended while focussing on political dramas; but other nations are actively pursuing ways to extract themselves from dependence upon an aging nuclear energy “fleet” that looks more and more threadbare every day.  

Japanese consumers in particular have learned how corrupt and irresponsible have been the very agencies and individuals that were entrusted with regulation of that nations’ nuclear grid.

There are indications that our own Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in what appears to be a long established effort to diminish public anxiety, has been considerably less than candid and has deliberately dampened the lessons from Fukushima.

We learn, for example, from internal NRC memos, that even back on March 17, of  2011 they knew that not all spent fuel pools at U.S. reactor sites had been built to withstand the rigors of earth tremors:

Some US spent fuel pools are simply not ‘seismically qualified.’

And speaking of spent fuel pools in seismically active regions, Fairewinds Associateshas issued a new educational podcast that explains the consequences of locating nuclear reactors in seismically active areas, and takes a look at the issues associated with moving spent fuel from the damaged reactors at Fukushima.

We don’t really know how Vermont Yankee would fare if a significant seismic event had its epicenter near that facility.  Despite known design flaws and an age approaching the outer limits of its original life-expectancy, the NRC rushed to approve a twenty-year license extension of the aging VY facility before the dust had even settled at Fukushima.  Following NRC practice, a physical inspection of VY was not even required for relicensing!

I still find that pretty unbelievable.

Even the NRC seems to have partially gotten the point (although too late for VY), and as of August 2012, has suspended all new licensing of nuclear facilities until it puts together new regulatory conditions in response to a court ruling on spent fuel storage.

Unfortunately, the half-life of Vermont Yankee goes on and on.

I can’t say I’ve cared much for the way in which location of the F-35’s at Burlington Airport has been promoted by the Vermont power base.  

It sounds too much like the manner in which ill-advised development projects have all too frequently been greased through the works on economic arguments, allowing things like “offsets” to inadequately address environmental impacts.

Put simply: I distrust the process.  

I have no definite opinion as to whether or not the F-35 basing should be accepted; but I distrust the process.  

There is something very uncomfortable in seeing the legitimate concerns of South Burlington persistently minimized by those who won’t have to cope so intimately with the impacts of a possible location.

Now we learn that South Burlington officials have been excluded from a planned junket to Florida to see and hear the planes in action.  

Here we have Frank Cioffi’s Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation and developer Ernie Pomerleau, footing the bill to fly Governor Shumlin, Mayor Miro Weinberger of Burlington, and Mayor Mike O’Brian of Winooski to Florida so that they can have a live encounter with the F-35.

That may make some sense for Mayor O’Brian, who maintains that he needs “more information” in order to sign-off on the plan; but if GBIC was planning the trip anyway, wouldn’t it have made more sense to bring along the City Council Chair of the airport’s home City?  

Seven Days quotes South Burlington City Council Chair Roseanne Greco who, with the majority of the Council, opposes the F-35 siting in South Burlington:

“I’d like to go only because I’d like to have the opportunity to sit down and talk with the governor and both mayors about the F-35,” Greco says. “Going to hear aircraft in another location that is still in testing to see if I personally find the noise too loud, too soft, just right, is, I think, a waste of time.”

Well, exactly.

You may recall that back in 2010, when the controversy first came to light, I speculated

Perhaps I have missed something, but so far I am unaware of any conversation about bringing the plane to South Burlington’s airspace for a demonstration of the sound experience in various modes, before the very people who will have to live with it.

There well may be constraints on the practicality of such a demonstration; but imagining that demos staged for a select and favorable audience in a location not remotely similar to Burlington should somehow serve to answer critics?  That’s utter nonsense.

Not only are the circumstances relatively valueless to the debate but the optics are terrible.

Get a clue, Gentlemen.

Just a quick poll: how many tee-shirts do you own? How many pairs of pants, socks, underwear?  How many hats, coats, jackets, scarves, pairs of gloves?  ‘Don’t know offhand?  Neither do I.



When I was a girl we had plenty of clothing to wear; suitable for all seasons.  But “plenty” had a different meaning in those days, when closets weren’t jam-packed with a rainbow of alternatives; and there was no overflow going to tag-sales, re-sale shops, and into the waste bin.  Buying even a shirt represented a considered investment for the average shopper, who worried about things like wearability and how many launderings it could survive.

In song and pictures, we were told to “Look for the union label…;” the message being that we could be confident in the workmanship and proud of our purchase when we knew it supported a responsible American industry.

But that was then, and this is now.

News of the Bangladeshi clothing factory fire just gets worse and worse.

At last count, the blaze that burned over Saturday and Sunday claimed the lives of 110 victims, highlighting the appalling working conditions at the factory that services U.S. retailers like Walmart, JC Penney and Kohl’s.

That the situation was not limited to a single factory was brought home when a second similar fire occurred at another Bangladeshi factory two days later.

According to Al Jazeera’s Nicolas Haque:

“These are workers who make clothes for the world’s leading brands, so it’s expected that they should have international standards in these factories,” he said. “But since 2006, 600 factory workers have died in fires like this one.”

Then, yesterday, a preliminary inquiry suggested that the fire that killed so many had been deliberately set.

Bangladesh’s interior minister, Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, said a preliminary inquiry had concluded the fire was the result of arson. “We have come to the conclusion that it was an act of sabotage. We are finding out as of now who exactly the saboteurs are and all culprits will be brought to book,” Alamgir said.

Today, we learn that workers were prevented from fleeing the inferno by a locked gate, which represented the only means of escape.

I am not the first person to comment on the parallels to the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911.  That deadly fire took place in the middle of Manhatten, and resulted in the deaths of 146 female garment workers.

Helpless onlookers never forgot the horror of watching as countless young women leapt to their death to escape the flames.   They, too had found the only accessible exit locked-up tight.

That appalling industrial disaster brought so much attention to the plight of sweatshop workers that it prompted legislation governing factory safety standards, and led to the success of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union, a key player in the era of union power.

Yesterday, a commentator on CNN mentioned the Triangle fire and the resulting push for unionization and wondered if something similar could happen in Bangladesh.  

She seemed completely unaware of the singular irony in her remarks.

If globalization measures had not devastated the American garment industry over the past thirty years, workers here might still be enjoying well-paid jobs as full participants in a thriving consumer economy.

What was sold to American voters as an opportunity to empower third-world economies while at the same time lowering the cost of living at home, turned out to be just the starting gate for a global race to the bottom that now sees the majority of worldwide clothing being produced in Dickensian circumstances that Americans, not to0 long ago, would have abhorred.

If those Bangladeshi workers were to succeed in organizing for better conditions, the patrons of their factories, the Walmarts, JC Penneys and Kohl’s, would simply go elsewhere to contract for clothing manufacture. That’s because the only real power to affect change is still in the hands of the American consumer.

Unless we once again learn to want less and demand more from clothing suppliers, third-world sweatshops will continue to be the rule in the garment industry.  

‘Just a little something to bear in mind this holiday season, as discount retailers try to outdo themselves in the “bargain” department.  

It is odd how you can entirely agree with someone on the one hand, and entirely disagree with them on the other.

George Plumb of Vermonters for a Sustainable Population has penned another op ed that seems to be accusing the Vermont Natural Resources Council, the Lake Champlain Committee and the entire “modern day environmental movement” of somehow having abdicated their mission because they do not make “better” the victim of “perfect.”

As an example, he once again cites the VNRC’s 50th anniversary comment which he finds objectionable:

“It is commendable that we’ve found a way to grow our economy while maintaining the health of our environment.”

Plumb quite rightly observes

“…the concept that we can grow forever with finite resources makes no sense.”

I doubt that you will find anyone who has dedicated his or her work to sustainability, who would disagree with that statement; including the environmental organizations he is challenging.

However, there are two components to the discussion which Mr. Plumb seems to ignore.

One is a simple matter of semantics.  

“Growth” has come to mean different things to different actors.  There is, of course, the macro on which Wall Street and the consumer economy is built; a fundamentally flawed model that ultimately is unsustainable.  But “growth” has another significance in the environmental community.

Recognizing how ingrained is society’s acceptance of “growth” as a positive,  Vermont environmentalists have co-opted the term and the aspirations behind it, reshaping them to refer to expansion of sustainable practices and the economic benefit available through their responsible exercise.

And that brings us to another important component of the environmental message, that seems to have escaped Mr. Plumb: the necessity to recruit support in order to effect change.

If groups like the VNRC had taken the perspective that their mission was to arrest development altogether; not only would they have been doomed to complete failure, and remained largely irrelevant in a world overwhelmingly dominated by growth initiatives; they would have seen few recruits to such a radical position and been unable to do much of anything to affect even incremental improvements over the status quo.

Mr. Plumb looks back at the Vermont he remembers from his arrival in the state in the early 1960’s and is understandably dismayed by the losses it has suffered in terms of open space, clean air and water, and the natural world.

It is a tragedy; that can’t be denied.

But to say that environmental groups have failed, and that their message should be all about acknowledging a failure, demonstrates a true disconnect with reality.

Mr. Plumb’s cup may be half-empty, and he may be preparing to leave the table; but Vermont environmentalists must necessarily view the cup as half-full, and their job: to work positively toward a better future.

We have a whole lot of work to do and face tremendous odds.  No one recognizes that more intensely than do I, as I watch my surroundings disappear into the concrete gullet of Walmart.

But forgive me if I am not yet prepared to say we failed.  We make ours a mission to mitigate, to educate and to advocate for meaningful reforms…a slow, thankless job that someone has to do.  

We celebrate whatever and whenever we can because that is how the human spirit goes on.

I do not see any lack of acknowledgement for the overwhelming gravity of our environmental situation from either the VNRC or its sister organizations in Vermont.

And there truly are things to celebrate; like how much better Vermont has done in resisting the scale of development that is practiced throughout the rest of the country.

Sack cloth and ashes may make the wearer feel more worthy, but they do little to cultivate improvement in others.

Perhaps the zero growth model favored by Vermonters for a Sustainable Population works in some alternative universe where there is no opposing force.  I, for one, could probably inhabit that universe in complete contentment.  

Here in latter-day Vermont we must accept the hand we’ve been dealt and do what we can to play it well.

Those of you who missed reading the caramelized musings of “Campaign for Vermont’s” Bruce Lisman over the past few months will be pleased to learn that Mr. Lisman has at last emerged from the underbrush.

You can almost imagine him thoughtfully plucking the burrs from his flanks and the twigs from his beard as he considers which way forward.

The ham-handed ways of “Vermonter’s First” may have been a little too outre for his delicate sensibilities; but now that the Vermont GOP is a smoldering ruin, the path lies clear for some lucky fella to breath life into it once again.

Will it be the unimpeachably dull Phil Scott? Or will it be Bruce Lisman himself?

In his newest op-ed, built around the departure of Energizer from the state, Mr. Lisman is clearly at a loss for a cohesive message.

His favorite dog whistle just won’t work for this one, and he knows it.  

Offering grudging praise for Governor Shumlin’s efforts to forstall the company’s departure, he even admits that the “carrot” approach failed to do the trick with Energizer:

It has been reported that Energizer isn’t leaving because of the business climate here. They politely declined relief on electricity costs (among the highest in the nation), or work force training (that has slipped far behind other state’s programs), or economic incentives. And newspapers reported that the governor spoke with Energizer at least twice after their intentions became known. We want our governor to be active with our employers, so that’s good.

He goes on to suggest that the real problem is a lack of outreach by the state businesses beyond its borders.  

I’m sure this is news to the Governor, who undoubtedly prides himself on outreach as he steps into the Chairmanship of the National Governors’ Association.  

Says Lisman:

…no one systematically calls on our largest non-Vermont based employers. No one regularly visits their headquarters; no one builds relationships with key decisions makers about expansion and relocation. We should have a team of people focused on this relationship building activity; individuals who come to understand the company’s needs, what drives their decision making, and how to help when they share their challenges.

So it appears that Mr. Lisman is advocating, in this era of belt-tightening, for creation of yet another layer of bureaucracy, a sales staff devoted solely to massaging  out-of-state employers of Vermont workers.  

Even Mr. Lisman has to admit that this wouldn’t have made one bit of difference to Energizer unless the “massaging” included a guaranteed  workforce of laborers willing to accept third world wages.

Could Mr. Lisman be hinting to the Governor that he might be just the dude to head-up this travelling sales team?  

Or have we finally plumbed the depths of Campaign for Vermont’s idea puddle?

You’ve got to love Ben Cohen’s personal determination to remain rooted in the counter-culture, no matter how globally corporate his namesake, Ben & Jerry’s, has grown to be.

I don’t say this with so much as a drop of sarcasm or irony.   Here’s someone who made good in corporate America; and actually continues to try to do good.  That he has the resources to pursue this end is delightful.  

Mr Cohen is who most of us day-dream believers hoped to be one day, when the world would surely be at peace and our benevolent genius amply rewarded.

Focussing on Mr. Cohen’s latest adventure in grassroots activism, Stamp Stampede, which advocates for a Constitutional amendment remedy to Citizens United, Seven Days Ken Picard offers this overview:

“Some people think that all we need to do is overturn Citizens United and everything will be fine. That’s not true,” Cohen adds. “You overturn Citizens United and you go back to pre-Citizens United, when money was still corrupting politics. So we need to go deeper.” To do so, he contends, requires eliminating the right of corporate personhood altogether.

The idea is to use currency itself as a vehicle to carry the demand for reform.  To that end,  Stamp Stampede is distributing rubber stamps to be applied to paper money, carrying messages like

“Money is not free speech,” “Corporations are not people” and “Not to be used for bribing politicians.” The goal is to get as many people as possible to stamp their paper currency with these messages.

And in conjunction with another group that seeks to reverse the impact of Citizens United, Move to Amend, Mr. Cohn has personally invested $60,000. to take the show on the road.

a rolling, Rube Goldberg-esque contraption he describes as “a piece of traveling kinetic art.” Part sculpture, part political roadside attraction, the Amend-O-Matic is like a food truck, but for money stamping. Mounted on the back of a van, it stamps bills of various denominations with pro-amendment slogans.

The Amend movement is not without its detractors, however.  Representative of the wet-blanket contingent is South Burlington attorney, James Leas:

As Leas points out, hundreds of constitutional amendments have been proposed since the Bill of Rights was ratified 221 years ago but only 17 have been adopted. Pushing for one to end corporate personhood, Leas says, is “a wild goose chase” that will do nothing to get corporate cash out of elections.

Then there is the legal question: does stamping messages on dollar bills constitute defacement, and is it therefore against the law; or is it, too, protected as free speech?

It’s doubtful any action can be taken against Mr. Cohen’s money stamping activities, and if such a thing came to pass, it would only bring more attention to the message of the campaign.

I, for one, think it’s a great idea whose time has come.  As Mr. Cohen points out, a dollar passes through an estimated 1,750 hands in its lifetime, so it is an ideal petition vehicle; a “petition on steroids,” as he puts it.

So what if it won’t be easy winning a constitutional amendment?  It shouldn’t be easy!  And campaigning for such an amendment doesn’t preclude action on other fronts against the impact of the Citizens United decision.  

Bring on the dollar stampers and Ben’s infernal machine!  I’m all for this object lesson in how money “talks.”

The newest threat to family Thanksgiving celebrations makes football look all warm and fuzzy by comparison.

No longer content with midnight line-ups, proponents of the “door-buster” sale have advanced launch time  to 8:00 PM, just in case the family might be tempted to wash some dishes or lie down for a post turkey snooze and accidentally sleep through the night.

It doesn’t take much imagination to guess that before long there will be “pre-dinner door-busters;”  or (even more likely) “pre-game door-busters,” with free turkey dinner giveaways to the first 400 in line.  Pretty soon “Black Friday” will just be a memory and “Black Thursday”  will become the unabashed leader in sales.  

We might then consider moving Thanksgiving closer to the harvest; like the Canadians do in October. Traditional Thanksgiving could then enjoy the uncontested spotlight as the pageant of retail miracles it has come to be.

There still would be the Gold Rush ambiance folks know and love so well on that first official day of Christmas shopping.  People just love to stand in line for hours before making a mad break for the door so that they can spend their ever dwindling cash reserves on electronic junk that will be landfill within a couple of years…tops.

Mind you, I don’t much care how folks choose to spend their Thanksgiving…so long as it is they who are doing the choosing.  

When I was a kid, retail workers could count on one day each week when they knew they would not be called into work.  Somehow, generations of Americans survived Sundays without shopping.  They practiced the lost art of planning ahead and most followed the convention of spending that time with their families.

But we sure loved shopping.  ‘Didn’t do it all that often; but shopping was a form of entertainment whose day was nearing.

We were overjoyed when Sunday became available as a shopping day.  Not only could we drop that planning business, but we had a new excuse to avoid quality time with kith and kin.  

A lot of retail workers weren’t too happy because expanded retail hours meant less time with their own families; but as manufacturing jobs disappeared they had little choice but to gladly accept employment under any terms at all; and that increasingly meant poorer wages and conditions for all.

But we loved shopping and we wanted more, more, more.  Department stores begot shopping centers; which, in time, begot malls.   Those malls begot superstores who smote the department stores and begot supercenters.  

Now, with internet sales poised to shut-down even the supercenters, “door buster” sales are one way to forestall the collapse of bricks and mortar retail.  As usual, it’s the little guy at the bottom of the pay scale who must bear the brunt by pulling a forced all-nighter on the day set aside for thankfulness.

And here we are again, penniless and mortgaged to the hilt; lining up like lemmings to hurl ourselves over our own personal fiscal cliff.

Gramma would have been so proud.

On Saturday, I had the pleasure of attending that singularly Vermont phenomenon, the Progressive Party annual convention at the statehouse.

I love that experience.  

As I’ve said before, being a big city/big state gal, born in Daley-era Chicago; after thirty years in residence here, nothing delights me more than a visit to the statehouse.  It’s like a step back in time to the birth of our democracy, when nothing stood between the people and their representatives but an open door.  

When the most viable third party caucus in America gathers there to do their thing, it’s icing on the cake.

And there was much to celebrate this year.  Cindy Weed of Enosburg joins her Progressive colleagues in the House.  With the addition of David Zuckerman of Burlington, Progressives have increased their representation in the Senate to three.  Republicans have just over twice that number.  Not bad for a third party!

Best of all was the win by Doug Hoffer, the first Progressive elected to statewide office.  True, he ran as a Democrat/Progressive, but Progs know where his roots lie; and Doug was on hand to thank his supporters and, in his characteristically understated manner, kept his remarks brief, matter-of-fact and “stump-free.”

The keynote speaker was Kathryn Blume of 350.org

Following discussion and vote on a resolution asking legislators to divest all state managed funds from fossil fuel investments (passed), a brief recess allowed interested convention goers to join Anthony Pollina and David Zuckerman on the statehouse lawn where they participated in a demonstration opposing Vermont Yankee, and calling on the Public Service Board not to issue a certificate of public good to the plant.

Regrettably, I had to leave before Cass Gekas and Ed Stanek addressed the assembly; but it was noted that Ms. Gekas was the first Progressive to “crack” 40% of the vote in a statewide race.  Ms. Gekas secured a respectable 41% of the electoral vote against a popular incumbent Lt. Governor; and Ed Stanek, who gamely leaped into the AG race at the urging of friends in labor when TJ Donovan was defeated in the Democratic Primary, managed to garner 6% of the vote.  

Their performances easily satisfied the requirements for major party status, and I heard more than one joke in the crowd about how much longer the GOP might continue to enjoy that status in Vermont.

I also missed Chris Pearson’s presentation and the vote on a resolution concerning Super PACs:

“…Therefore be it resolved that the State Committee of the Vermont Progressive Party calls on all political parties active in Vermont politics and all candidates running for office in the upcoming cycle 2013-2014 to abstain from accepting any and all donations from corporations.

And be it resolved that the State Committee of the Vermont Progressive Party calls on all parties and all candidates active in Vermont politics in the upcoming 2013-2014 election cycle to agree that any Super Pac money spend on behalf of any party or candidate will result in a donation of half that amount of money by the favored party or candidate to a Vermont charity.

Of course I don’t know the outcome of that resolution because night-blindness forced me to depart in time to miss the 4:22 sunset.

…Yet another reason why public transportation, discussed as a priority following Ms. Blume’s address, remains at the very top of my own personal “to-do” list.