In my inbox today came this:

…the new Batman movie will be shown at the Capitol Theater (in Montpelier) 6 days before the official preview.  Senator Leahy has a cameo role in it.  His office has arranged this showing as a fundraiser for the Kellogg Hubbard Children ‘s Library endowment fund.  Batman fans can get tickets for $50 a piece.  For an additional $50, you can attend a reception at Capitol Plaza with the Senator and Barry Meyer, Chairman & CEO of Warner Bros before the movie.

Perhaps if our senior Senator had paid more attention to the caped-crusader’s crime-fighting habits he would have done more to stop the telecom company’s immunity from passing.

(sorry, I just felt there had to be a joke/dig in there somewhere).  Benefitting the Children’s Library endowment is of course a great cause, and who in their right mind would pass up a cameo in a Batman movie?  Of course, it does make you wonder: who approached who about getting Pat on set?

(Important stuff here, folks. This should not happen. – promoted by JDRyan)

Civil Disobedience is an invaluable tool for any people and an inalienable right of a free and democratic society.  From those who rebelled against the rule of the British crown to create the world’s first democracy to great social commenter’s like Henry Thoreau to social justice leaders like Martin Luther King Jr, civil disobedience has been seen and used as an incredibly powerful and meaningful way to work towards achieving a redress of grievances from the people to their rulers and exploiters.  For as many people there are in the world, there are probably an equal number of opinions and comfort-levels with CD, yet it is hard ignore the tactics effectiveness: the founding of a government which is meant to represent ‘the people’, the end of laws which legitimize racism and sexism, the end of wars, the achievement of worker’s rights and workplace and product regulations…. as a tool for outraged citizens acting in rebellion against the way things are, in hopes of making society better and more equitable, CD has done us a whole lot of good (not to say that CD has done all the work in achieving such things- but to note that CD has been an effective tactic in all such campaigns).

Yet, Burlington-area activists who recently engaged in acts of CD at General Dynamics in Burlington in hopes of drawing attention to what they consider to be the immoral actions (and political powers) of that corporation have been circulating a letter in which they reveal a shocking betrayal of the public trust: Chittenden County State’s Attorney Donovan, in prosecuting these activists, is seeking unusually severe sentences for them, and has declared his intent to “put an end” to civil disobedience in his district.  His stated motivation: the City of Burlington, in these tough economic times, lacks the financial resources to handle such things.

Writing about their experiences in this recent case of civil disobediance, the activists note:

While, for the most part, our interactions with the Burlington Police Department were pofessional and even quite amicable (some police even voiced their support for our cause) our dealings with the State’s prosecutor have been less so.  Threats and needless acts of intimidation greeted us at our arraignment.  While the district attorney’s office was not successful in forcing $1,000 in bail to four of those arrested, District Attorney Donovan expressed his desire to seek from us over $6,000 in “restitution” costs: $4,043 to pay for City of Burlington police and fire personnel, $890 for the Chittenden County Sheriff and (outrageously) $1,228.17 in cleaning costs to General Dynamics themselves.

Perhaps Mr Donovan would have liked to see the perpetrators of the Boston Tea Party charged for the tea they threw in the Bay, or Southern African Americans forced to pay restitution’s to the Birmingham transit system for lost revenues following their boycott of segregated buses; perhaps factory workers should have been made to pay for the bullets fired at them as they went on strike, demanding safe working conditions, fair pay, and an end to child labor.  Perhaps Ghandi should have been made to pay for all the clubs that were broken over the heads of Indians demanding their own freedom.

None one (that I know of) is disputing the fact that these are tight economic times, and that acts of civil disobedience and public protest do use public resources (police, courts, etc).  However, a free people’s right to protest, to act out of conscience for the greater good of society even if it is in defiance of the law, is an invaluable right and tradition that must be protected.  Over-burdensome fines and prosecutions are by no means a reasonable way to “protect” the community from itself: rather, it is an unjustifiable use of (economic) force against a people, wielded by those with power against those without it.

Do our community a favor and call Mr Donovan and let him know that civil disobedience is a valued aspect of any healthy democracy.

In light of Governor Douglas’ veto of S.373, which the legislature passed in order to ensure that Entergy Nuclear- or any other subsidy which comes into owning Vermont’s nuclear power plant- remains clearly, legally responsible for all clean-up costs of the plant, a group of citizens took the opportunity on Friday to launch a fundraising initiative to collect the estimated $300,000,000- $600,000,000 necessary for the plant’s decommissioning.  The group kicked-off their efforts with that most time-honored tradition of raising money for under-funded programs: they stood in the street and held a coin-drop collection from passing motorists.

While collecting the money, pennies and quarters at a time during their coin-drop fundraiser in the middle of State Street in front of the Statehouse in Montpelier, the group also handed out fliers which read, in part:

On our behalf the VT legislature passed S.373 ensuring we wouldn’t be stuck with the costs of Entergy’s clean up.  Douglas however decided to pity the billionaires and vetoed the bill, leaving us to pay the costs.

Fundraising hundreds of millions to subsidize a corporation is more than a laughable goal; it is tragically unjust.  Sadly, it is all too common an occurrence with our state and federal tax dollars, thanks to corrupt politicians like Gov. Douglas.

Also on Friday, “unknown parties” traversed the rooftops of downtown Montpelier, hanging banners across State Street which read “Decommission Douglas” and other anti-nuclear sentiments (the Times-Argus photo of the banners doesn’t seem to have made it online yet, but I’ll try to get it up here once they do).

Last night, MSNBC and CNN were reporting (at length) that Hillary Clinton has a scheduled speaking event in her (adoptive) home state of New York following today’s final two State primaries.  She has reportedly gone out of her way to invite all of her major donors and supporters, and there is nothing on her official schedule for the days or even weeks afterwards.  The reasonable speculation, of course, is that she’s done with.  This is countered, however, by the fact that all the cable news channels were still swarming with representative’s from her campaign who continue to insist “she’s in this race to win”.  It would seems though that the end is finally near.  Having nothing on her campaign schedule pretty well shows her hand.

(time-out for some shameless self-promoting; as far as how “political” this post is, I guess that depends on what your definition of “is” is).

Tickets for the 2008 Northeast Kingdom Music Festival go on sale today, June 2.  For those of you who have never gone, or never heard of it, the NEK Music Fest is an incredible weekend of off the hook music, friends old and new, creative expression, and community-building.  From Seven Days’ recent Vermont Summer Preview Issue:

Summer music festivals have long been viewed as the domain of the nomadic jam-band scene. In large part owing to the epic outdoor concerts proffered by our own Phab Phour, Phish, the very term “Vermont music fest” conjures visions of barefoot revelers feverishly wiggling to their heart’s content. But, of course, music in beautiful outdoor settings appeals to a far wider audience. And, thanks to one industrious Vermont fan, the hills are alive in an unlikely corner of the state with the sounds of a remarkable variety of music.

Ed DuFresne, best known as the man behind the scene at Montpelier’s eclectic Langdon Street Café, founded the Northeast Kingdom Music Festival six years ago. Following the lead of any number of jam-oriented fests, the two-day concert initially featured a fairly predictable lineup of heady acts. But recent years have seen a fundamental shift in DuFresne’s approach to booking, and the result has been a vibrant celebration of local, regional and national talent from diverse genres.

Though NEKMF has yet to announce a headlining act for this year, the lineup is already worth the relatively low price of admission – around $65 for both days and camping. It features a slew of Langdon Street faves, including indie geeks The Mathematicians, Americana darlings The Amity Front and local-ish newgrass outfit The Powder Kegs. Previous years have brought an impressive roster of national talent, as well, including funk-punk legends Fishbone, righteous babe Anaïs Mitchell and the then up-and-coming act Gogol Bordello. So expect big things when the headliner is announced.

Though the music is always excellent, the festival’s real draw might just be the pastoral setting of its adopted home: the Chilly Ranch in Albany. It’s only a short jaunt to Bread & Puppet’s digs in Glover, and some primo swimming holes are even closer. So load up the cooler – the festival is BYOB – and plan to spend August 1 and 2 with 2000 new friends.

Well said.  While it may cost $40, $60, even more to see a two or three hour show of your favorite band (or well over $150 for a weekend at the big, “oh my god these kids are annoying as all hell” Bonaroo-style events) the cost to get in to NEKMF starts at a preposterously low $65.  Kudos to management for keeping the costs down, especially in these economic times (full disclosure: I am a part of that management team; even further disclosure: I argued, unsuccessfully, for steeper ticket prices this year).  What better way to spend your economic stimulus money than a weekend supporting local Vermont entrepreneurs, musicians, food and craft vendors, and the guys who rent us all those port-o-poties from Danville?

Hit the link at the top of this page to get to the Festival website (which is in the process of being updated and revamped).  There you can find out more info, buy tickets (locals can find out where to go to purchase discounted ‘early bird’ tickets), get updated about the lineup, and maybe get talked into purchasing the fun and eclectic NEK Music Festival Movie (from True Form Pictures of California), which highlights the performances and events from the first five years.

The official band line-up for this year, which as always, includes some of the greatest musicians you’ve never heard of as well as a healthy smattering of the best that VT and New England has to offer:

Mr Lif

The Devil Makes Three

Mathematicians

The Screaming Headless Torsos

The Superpowers

The Powder Kegs

Vorcza

Accordian Death Squad

The Amity Front

Pariah Beat

The Primate Fiasco

Stripmall Ballads

Rusty Belle

Danny Schmidt

In This Century

Evan Crandell and the Too Hot To Handle

DROP

Jan M. Meese

Taken from my original post at Integral Psychosis

A few days ago I read a New York Times op-ed “Aid at the Point of a Gun” (no link as the piece has since changed to requiring a password).  But the gist of the piece was that, given the military dictatorship in Burma/Myanmar’s obstructionism against foreign aid into the country following the devastating tsunami there, where it is estimated that at least 100,000 people have died and many more hundreds of thousands are further at risk of dying in the storms wake from starvation and disease, it may be necessary to use military force to provide aid against the wishes of the Burmese State.  This same sentiment was recently written in Time magazine.

Now, it’s not that I am in any way against doing what is necessary and prudent in offering any and all help to the suffering people of Burma or elsewhere for that matter.  However, my “bullshit alarm” goes off pretty loudly whenever I hear a proposal for military intervention, and especially when it’s under the guise of the oh-so benevolent and pious U.S. government’s “humanitarian” “concern”.

For instance, if the starvation of hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people were such a concern to the powers of Washington, where is their response to the 35.5 million Americans who live in what is called “food insecurity” (11% of all “households”) or the other 4.6 million who live in what is called “very low food security”, to say nothing of addressing the systematic, societal failures that allow such an instance to arise in the first place (1).  The asinine idea of aid through military force (an invasion of another region of the world) reads as little more than another outlet, a giveback (in fact, in the end a regressive taxation which overly burdens the poor, working, and middle classes the the enrichment of the upper, elite, and ruling classes) to military contractors, big agribusiness, and the oil conglomerate/cartels (the drive for global control of oil supplies is, after-all, far more about military might than consumer markets- military strength at this point in time is inextricably intertwined with oil and fuel resources).  Sending the military into Burma to provide humanitarian aid also has the convenient effect of demonstrating to the regional powers (China, Iran, Russia- who all are against such a proposal) that the U.S. is still capable of operating in new theaters of “war” at it’s pleasure, despite everything else.

As well, if disaster relief is of such concern and import to the Bush Administration, perhaps they could have done something- anything- before, during, and after (even to this day) Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  The Israelis, Canadians, Germans offered aid: if was refused.  You know who offered aid: Fidel Castro’s Cuba (um, that was refused too).  Interestingly, while most aid was refused from our Western “friends”, it was happily received from China and others.  Yet the failure of agency after agency, policy, and system (i.e., the failure of the State) to rightly provide for the people who were first living in extreme danger, then devastated, and finally ignored, obstructed, and thrown into forced migration for the “development” and privatization (benefit) of the already wealthy and powerful proves that any offer of humanitarianism is a callous and cynical rouse.

Now, I am not by any definition one who is particularly interested in ideas of nationalism, national pride, or some sense of “patriotism” that rests on meaningless rhetoric and sloganeering.  Nonetheless, I am loath to know that it is my money that is going to accomplish- or not accomplish- all of this monstrosity.  It may even be true that the best thing for the people of Burma would be for the international community to act on their behalf to bring relief and supplies- unfortunately, from what I’ve seen of the U.S. in my lifetime, I cannot believe that such actions come from a motivation for anything other than profit an greed.

From The Cape  Cod Times:

The Kennedy family is preparing to host the annual Best Buddies Challenge event in Hyannisport this afternoon, which is a fund-raiser for the organization. Best Buddies was founded by Anthony Kennedy Shriver and helps people with intellectual disabilities.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’m going to donate some money to these folks… I think they’ve got a lot of work to do…

P.S.- The actual story that this is from, about Senator Ed Kennedy falling ill, is of course not something to make fun of; but reading that line above (in bold) I couldn’t help myself…. apologies in advance to the hyper-P.C. crowd…

Cross-posted from  Integral Psychosis

A friend just sent me this link, and you should check it out.  Chris Martenson is a very bright guy who has put a lot of incredibly hard work into trying to sort through all the noise of “what’s going on” with our economy.  He has put together this thing he calls his “crash course” in which the current economic (and food, and environmental) crisis is demystified and explained- quite clearly- and put into context of how we got to where we are.  In all, it takes a bit more than and hour and a half to watch the entirety of the “crash course”, but it is essential that you do.  Check it out here.  The severity of our problems are immense, and very seldom does something come along that is so clear and helpful in speaking directly to what those problems are and why.  Cheers to Mike for sending me the link.

(Good story. It’s the Vermont connection that gets the promotion from me. – promoted by Jack McCullough)

According to the Burlington Free Press, 10 people were arrested today (May Day) inside the Lakeside Ave headquarters of military contractor General Dynamics.  The protesters had “locked down” in the building’s main reception area, a tactic whereby they chain themselves together in a manner that requires heavy duty equipment, including bolt cutters and sometimes industrial saws, to remove individuals.  Several dozen supporters demonstrated outside.

In all, it took almost six hours for police, firefighters, and other rescue personel to unchain the protesters.  They were brought to the BPD and cited for criminal trespassing.

According to a statement released by the protesters, they were there demanding General Dynamics “stop giving campaign contributions to the politicians responsible for regulating it, stop making Gatling guns, missiles and other weapons of mass destruction and give back the 3.6 million dollars in Vermont tax breaks General Dynamics  

received in 2007″.  I don’t know about you, but that last line sure caught my attention: $3.6 million in State subsidies and tax breaks?

“This corporate welfare in the form of tax breaks belongs to working Vermonters, not a war profiteer which made $27 billion last year, and who’s stocks have tripled while the Vermont economy has tanked,” said demonstrator Jonathan Leavitt. “While our state struggles with Jim Douglas’ budget cuts and layoffs, gas prices, affordable housing and lack of health coverage, war profiteers like General Dynamics steal tax breaks from working  

families. We’re here today as Vermonters to say no more handouts for war profiteers.”

For more info, check out:

http://stopgeneraldynamics.blo…

That title is only slightly a joke, as apparently our honorable and distinguished president, in a pre-recorded video appearance on the game show Deal or No Deal (which, admittedly, seems kinda familiar but I certainly have never seen it)  actually did ask host Howie Mandel that question.  According to the UK Guardian, Bush joked to the show’s host:

Howie, I don’t know if you’re free to come to Washington any time soon but I have to reach an agreement with Congress on the federal budget. How’d you like to host a $3 trillion ‘Deal or No Deal

I guess it could have been sorta funny, if not for the fact that Howie could almost certainly put together a better Federal budget than Mr Bush.

What was much more interesting to me from the article (which you can read here) is the fact that the people at Gallop just yesterday announced that Bush now has the lowest approval rating of any president since they began tracking such things, back in 1941 with FDR.  Bush even said he was thrilled to be on the show:

Come to think of it, I’m thrilled to be anywhere with high ratings these days.

Go ahead, laugh; I’m laughing.  The previous disapproval rating record was set by Truman in 1952 at the hight of the Korean War.

Bellow the fold, Gallops record of presidential approval highs and lows for as far back as records have been kept:

The highs and lows of US presidents (courtesy of Gallup)

George Bush

High 89% approval (September 2001)

Low 69% disapproval (April 2008)

Bill Clinton

High 71% approval (December 2000)

Low 53% disapproval (September 1994)

George HW Bush

High 89% approval (March 1991)

Low 59% disapproval (July-August 1992)

Ronald Reagan

High 71% approval (January 1986)

Low 56% disapproval (January 1983)

Jimmy Carter

High 74% approval (March 1977)

Low 59% disapproval (June 1979)

Gerald Ford

High 70% approval (August 1974)

Low 46% disapproval (November 1975)

Richard Nixon

High 66% approval (January 1973)

Low 65% disapproval (July 1974)

Lyndon Johnson

High 79% approval (March 1964)

Low 52% disapproval (August 1968)

John F Kennedy

High 79% approval (November 1961)

Low 30% disapproval (November 1963)

Dwight Eisenhower

High 77% approval (January 1956)

Low 35% disapproval (March 1958)

Harry Truman

High 91% approval (August 1945)

Low 67% disapproval (January 1952)

Franklin D Roosevelt

High 79% approval (January 1942)

Low 26% disapproval (August 1941)