Category Archives: Uncategorized

Phil Scott swims with the GOP

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Last November Phil Scott was reported to support the growing call for stopping planned Syrian refugee immigration. Shortly thereafter he had to clarify his position to say that he had meant “pause.” Scott’s awkward swing at the anti-immigration issue didn’t look too good for a first-time gubernatorial candidate.

Not that he was the only state executive to weigh in. In the panic and unease following the early-winter terrorist attack in Paris, amid reports and rumors of a connection to the Syrian conflict, the Republican governors of Maine and Massachusetts and others said they would halt efforts to relocate Syrian refugees to their states.

Phil Scott and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Lisman both expressed a similar desire to hold off allowing Syrian resettlement in Vermont. Both were rebuked by supporters of allowing vetted war refugee immigrants to come to Vermont. Among the critics was Governor Shumlin, Democratic gubernatorial candidates Sue Minter and Matt Dunne, who said Scott and Lisman were “playing to our worst fears.”

Scott responded, saying in part “[…] I probably should have gone a little further to explain that I don’t understand the situation and I certainly don’t feel like we can pause or stop the refugee program in its entirety,” and from there proceeded to backtrack.

In very short order, Scott also suggested his position had been “misinterpreted” (VPR published the transcript of the interview), and found himself clarifying that he didn’t understand the refugee vetting process, was worried about security and wanted a “pause” not a “ stop.” He even helpfully added that “pause” meant “to stop, take a breath, explain the process and then resume.”

Belatedly he arranged for Vermont Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn to “get a couple of people together to explain it [security vetting process] to me.”

I say he backtracked, but looking back to last November it appears more like he just squiggled around awkwardly after sticking his neck out a bit and luckily for him finessed the issue –down the memory hole — away in a few news cycles.

So what might cause the normally cautious Lt. Governor to uncharacteristically speak out against I mean, come out in favor of a “pause” on war refugee immigration to Vermont? In this particular bit of clumsy international-state policy pronouncement, he may have spent down a little of the Phil-Scott-is-a-great-guy credit he accumulated with Democratic crossover voters.

It should now be obvious that while Phil Scott and Donald J. Trump are very different politicians, they both belong to the same Republican Party.

And since national polls show Republicans were twice as likely as Democrats to say that some religions’ teachings promote violence, there is broad support in the party for these views.

In a survey conducted in January, Pew found that 65 percent of Republicans or those who lean Republican want to hear blunt talk about Islam, even if it includes blanket statements about the faith, while 29 percent prefer that politicians be careful not to criticize the faith as a whole.

Only 22 percent of Democrats and those who lean Democratic want politicians to use sweeping statements to criticize Islam, while 70 percent prefer more nuanced approaches.

So Donald J. can go around the country yowling “I think Islam hates us.” and find himself soaring in the polls. Vermonter Phil Scott hasn’t done that, but given Trump’s primary victory here, you can make the case that even in Vermont Scott is now swimming in the same fetid pool of GOP voters. And to win the governorship he must appeal to those Trump voters.

Why more young people don’t vote.

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Republicans, whose star seems to be on the wane, have been trying to suppress the vote of all but the narrow sector to whom their message still appeals.  Democrats, on the other hand, project a message of inclusion which should bring far more people into the process. Why is it not more successful?

Bernie Sanders’ support demographic is a particular challenge, being heavily weighted with new voters.

It annoys me when media types refer to young people as being ‘unreliable’ when it comes to voting. The implication is that they are a monolith with one defining characteristic: they are undependable.  That is so unfair.

In fact, younger voters tend to be far more mobile than their established elders…not because of any particular lack of reliability, but out of sheer necessity. They must move much more frequently simply to be in the vicinity of their schools and employment opportunities.

If they have already left school and have a job, they are probably renters. In the tight rental market young people on skimpy budgets often must move from one municipality to another nearby in order to pursue more affordable housing opportunities. Theirs is a constantly shifting environment of economic instability, something that the current voter registration practices do not recognize.

As teenagers, these good citizens registered to vote as soon as they were of legal age, and then life took over and set them on a dead run.  A couple of years go by, an important national primary or election looms; and thinking of themselves as already registered, a lot of busy young voters completely forget that, having moved once or twice in the interim, they are no longer qualified to vote without re-registering.

They show up at the polls on election day and are turned away, after which some simply abandon the democratic habit.

As of this writing, same day registration is available in only eight states. Vermont will soon join that number, but only in 2017.

Bummer.

This is another stupid flaw in the system that no doubt disenfranchises huge numbers of individuals who would otherwise be gladly participating in the process.

Why should national elections be subject to restrictive voting rules imposed by the individual states? Shouldn’t there be a national voter registry, accessible anywhere in the nation?

Like efforts by the Republicans to disenfranchise minority groups whom they view as unfriendly monoliths rather than individual constituents, the voter registration practices that make it difficult for students and people with no fixed address to participate in the process strongly favor the continuance of establishment politics over those of innovation and progressive

This does not serve the best interests of our democracy, nor does it bode well for our international competitiveness in the future..

Tulsi Gabbard: A new face for the future.

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I’d just like to take a moment to celebrate Hawaii’s Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who is being hailed by the New York Times as “a new rising star in Democratic politics.”

As a vice-chair of the DNC, Gabbard has publicly criticized DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz over the dramatically poor debate scheduling that most took to favor the campaign of presumed nominee Hillary Clinton, by minimizing her exposure to debate scrutiny.

She has now gone one step further, resigning her position at the DNC in order to boldly endorse Bernie Sanders for President.

This gal has chutzpa, a commodity sadly lacking in the world of DC cronyism.

Ms. Gabbard explained her decision in a video on YouTube in which she said that, as a military veteran, she wanted the United States to avoid “interventionist wars of regime change.”

Her statement has extra gravitas, given that it comes from a seasoned veteran of foreign conflicts:

“As a veteran of two Middle East deployments, I know first hand the cost of war,” said Ms. Gabbard, one of the first female combat veterans to serve in Congress. “I know how important it is that our commander-in-chief has the sound judgment required to know when to use America’s military power and when not to use that power.

Once more, the island state of Hawaii, way out in the Pacific has put forth a leader for a new generation of Mainlanders. I look forward to following her future.Tulsi-gabbard-promoted-major

Are you experienced, or just living in a purple haze?

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by Dan DeWalt
As the race for the Democratic presidential nomination intensifies, Hillary supporters and many pundits have started to talk about her superior knowledge and capability in the realm of foreign policy. After the South Carolina debate, NPR political reporters were musing on why in the world Sanders would bring up an ancient topic like the misguided U.S. overthrow of Mussaddegh in Iran in 1953. One speculated that he was an old man living in the past and wondered how that could be relevant to the millenials who are flocking to his campaign. This blithe ignorance of history and the lessons that should be learned from it is commonplace in the media and political establishment. This kind of thinking does us no favors, we need to learn from that history and let it inform our actions in the future.
Hillary has not been President, and can’t be blamed for other Presidential actions (including her husband’s), but she clearly has embraced the general continuum of American foreign policy, especially as excercised by Democratic Presidents, and she wants to be seen as the steady hand of experience who embraces the vision of America as the leading power and influence in world affairs. Unfortunately, she has shown that she is not very good at learning from history herself. She repeatedly tells Sanders to forget about her wrong Iraq vote, saying that we don’t need to harp on past mistakes, but should concentrate on new solutions. But if you don’t learn from your past mistakes, then your new solutions won’t be new at all, but will just be variations of the approaches that have failed us so miserably in the past.
Consider the Mossaddegh overthrow. Iran had democratically elected a new leader in free and fair elections. One would suppose that the U.S. government would welcome this new addition to democratically elected governments supported by their citizens. But Mossadegh represented a threat to U.S. and English oil interests. Choosing to represent big oil rather than democracy, we and the English engineered a coup that imprisoned Mossaddegh and installed a regime under Shah Pahlavi that ruled through fear, violence, intimidation and torture until the Iranian people finally revolted in 1979. The Shah had repressed civil opposition, but he was unable to repress religious opposition, especially when its leader, Ayatholla Komeini was living in exile in France. So the Iranian revolution was not led by seekers of a new democracy but was instead an Islamic revolution. Not only a blow to the Shah and his coterie, it was also directed virulently against the nation most responsible for putting him in power, the U.S. The new Iran established itself as an implaccable foe to the U.S. and our policies.
Fast forward a few years; after invasion and occupation, Russia has been driven out of Afghanistan. American supported mujaheddin warlords will not work together to control the country. Atrocities against civilians are an everyday occurrence and the Taliban are formed in reaction.
In large part, because Iran is against the Taliban, America offers the Taliban at least tacit support through Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as well as direct clandestine help from the CIA. At the time, Iran and Turkmenistan were talking about building a gas pipeline that would help the economies of newly emerged Central Asian countries as well as Iran. U.S. obsession with opposing Iran led Bill Clinton to support Pakistan in its bid to install the Taliban and then to build a pipeline running through Afghanistan avoiding Iran.* As we know, this never worked out, because the Taliban never considered cooperating with the U.S., or for that matter, even with their chief sponsors, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Without the help of those two countries, abetted by the U.S., the Taliban would never have been able to gain complete control over Afghanistan. By the time the Clinton admisitration decided that the Taliban were too violent and misogynistic to support, it was too late and the Taliban were in power, violating the rights of women and all who were not precise co-religionists with the Taliban, as well as hosting Osama bin-Laden, while he prepared al-Quaeda for its atacks on America in September of 2001. When America could have really used Iran as an ally, we instead did everything we could to keep them out of the Afghanistan conversation, ignoring the reality of their regional prominence, further worsening relations and antagonizing Iranians towards U.S. policy.

Bill Clinton acted like most American presidents, looking for short term maneuvers to play hackneyed geo-political games and ignoring the long term consequences. Tragically, U.S. reaction to the rise of Islamic State shows that we have learned nothing. The Bush/Cheney war on Iraq created I.S. We toppled Sadaam Hussein, and despite many years of occupation and coercion, the country is still in a shambles and fostered a wonderful breeding ground for radical Islamic terrorists.
Hillary advised Obama to oust Khadafi in Libya without a clue as to what would follow, and now we’re faced with another stronghold for the Islamic State. Now she is wedded to the goal of overthrowing Syria’s President Assad, which almost certainly would lead to the same bad result. Mrs. Clinton can talk until she’s blue in the face about coalitions and vetting and supporting opposition groups, but those are simply phrases that sound good to Americans that have little or no bearing on the reality on the ground.
Senator Sanders is right to point out that he has consistently excercised better judgement and has shown a greater understanding of the unpredictable outcomes that American military adventurism have led us, even when it has the best of intentions. At that same debate, Hilaary ridiculed Sander’s suggestion that he could get Saudi Arabia and Iran to work together to combat Islamic State. She implied that he was naïve and said flatly that it wouldn’t happen. Less than a week later, Iran announced that it is willing to try to work with Saudi Arabia to combat I.S. If Hillary’s experience simply means doing many things over and over, based on ideology and American mythology without fully understanding the consequences or the possiblities, then Senator Sanders’ superior judgement looks like a much better option for the future of our nation.
*[I am indebted to Ahmed Rashid’s Taliban for details about Afghanistan.]

White Supremacist Robocalls Now in Vermont

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I just got a robocall from the white supremacist American National Super PAC urging me to be proud of the white race and vote for Trump.

I only got the tail end of it, and their phone number.

“Donald Trump is not a racist, but Donald Trump is not afraid. Don’t vote for a cuban, vote for Donald Trump.”

As Sue Prent’s headline below says, “It takes an extremist to endorse an extremist.”

O Frabjous Day! Callooh! Callay!

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Good news travels fast, so you already know.

Scalia is dead, and good riddance.

Amidst the celebrations, I thought I’d throw out some initial thoughts about what this means.

First, Obama gets the opportunity to nominate a replacement. The Republicans may not like it, but here’s what the Constitution says:

He . . . shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law:

Second, he’s going to have a fight to do it. Already we’re seeing Republicans saying that he should hold off until the next president takes office. You can understand why they would say that, but bullshit. It’s almost a year until a new president takes office, and many cases to be decided. It would be irresponsible to leave the Court with a 4-4 split for the rest of the current term and the first half or more of the next term, especially when the sole reason would be to give a Republican the chance to do it.

I’m hearing people say that there is a tradition not to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in the last year of a president’s term, but that’s also nonsense. The occasion hasn’t come up that often, since there have been only 112 justices, but a quick look tells me that both Anthony Kennedy and Benjamin Cardozo were appointed in the last year of their appointing president’s terms.

Speaking of Kennedy, this is a huge demotion for him. If Obama does get a nomination confirmed this moves Kennedy from being the most powerful member of the Court, the perennial swing vote, to the guy who gets to decide whether there are three or four votes in dissent.

Still speaking of Kennedy, there are important cases that have already been argued this term, and important cases yet to be argued. One recent example is Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, an attack on public employee unions; there are also abortion rights and voting and redistricting cases before the Court.

The way the Supreme Court works is that it takes a majority vote to reverse a lower court decision that comes to the Court. Thus, if the votes are split, 4-4, which is the way things stand now, the lower court’s decision is upheld. If you look at the list of the cases already argued and awaiting decision, or even the cases yet to be argued this term, you will see that in some of the cases it is a conservative challenging a liberal decision, in some it is a liberal challenging a conservative decision. As long as there is a 4-4 split on the court we can predict that there will be some lower court decisions that would certainly have been reversed with Scalia voting but that will likely be upheld without him as the fifth vote to reverse.

Finally, a few last points about a replacement. I don’t doubt that the Republicans will do what they can to block any nominee, and if they vote as a unit they have the votes. There is one absolutely clear point you can make about the Republican caucus in the Senate:

Looking at the list of Republican senators I have a hard time seeing how he gets 14 votes (counting Sanders and King as Democrats).

Nevertheless, let’s say he goes forward with an appointment. I don’t have any inside information on who might get the nod, but I think we’re looking at a youngish–fifty or younger–person who has already been through the judicial or Cabinet-level confirmation process. Wikipedia has a list of people who have been “mentioned” for Obama before that I’ll link to here, along with a list of his judicial appointments. Look to judges who were appointed unanimously or nearly so: there may be some Republicans who would be hard put to justify rejecting someone they’ve already voted to confirm once or twice. Finally, as a long shot, there’s always the possibility of nominating a senator. I’ve heard it said that almost any senator would be confirmed, but that was in earlier, less bitterly partisan times.

And, to imagine one particularly unlikely scenario that might have a certain Machiavelian appeal to it, how about Hillary Clinton? She’s a smart lawyer, but she has two things that might make her appeal to the Republicans: she’s old, so she won’t be in office as long as a different appointee, and she gives the Republicans what they want, the chance to run against Bernie in November. Ya think?

Of course, anyone’s guess is as good as mine. I wouldn’t be much on his chances of getting someone through, but someone who has a less dark view of the Republicans in the Senate might be more optimistic.

Shaking Entergy’s Piggy Bank

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Does anyone other than me find it a little disconcerting that Entergy has managed to spend-down fully 10% of its decommissioning fund for Vermont Yankee in 2015 alone?

I don’t know about you, but I would very much like Vermont Auditor Doug Hoffer to take a look at how the decommissioning fund is being managed. He’s done a masterful job of casting a dispassionate eye over the efficiency of many government agencies, so I think he has more than demonstrated his mastery of such matters.

So far, Vermonters have nothing to rely upon other than Entergy’s own say-so that growing the decommissioning fund is right on track.

I know that we don’t get to say thing-one about matters of safety…like, for instance the plan to keep thousands of spent fuel rods on site in unconcealed casks, easily visible to nefarious fly-overs; or the fact that emergency planning is about to go away.

But, as the decommissioning fund arguably belongs to Vermont as much as to Entergy,
it seems entirely appropriate to ask that our auditor take a gander at the books.

(I write this as me, myself and I. Although I am pleased to be associated with Fairewinds Energy Education in a purely non-technical capacity, this diary was written with no input from Fairewinds.)

Would President Sanders’ Agenda Be D.O.A. in D.C.?

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The idea of a President Sanders has really grown on me. So much so that a couple of weekends ago I went door to door in Woodsville, NH talking with undecided primary voters about how much we “Feel the Bern” over on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River. It was clear that the folks who were voting for Bernie were solid in their support, but the Hillary voters were open to giving Bernie a second look. Anecdotal evidence, but it sure seems to be supported by Bernie’s continued surge in the polls.

So,  if Bernie can win New Hampshire and has a shot at Iowa, then maybe this long-shot candidate could actually be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America. Let’s assume that happens, and President Sanders is sworn in a year from today. The question on my mind, really the only major hesitation I have about his candidacy: How could the Sanders agenda survive the grid-lock on Capitol Hill?

Let’s look at what happened to President Obama’s Hope and Change agenda. With a Democratically controlled congress he managed to just barely pass the Affordable Care Act. Then in 2010 the House was taken over by Tea Party Republicans who have spent the last five years voting to repeal the ACA over and over and blocking almost every other major piece of the Obama agenda. Immigration reform? Nope. Gun control? Bwahahaha. You get the idea.

So what would be different about a President Sanders? He wants to go to a “Medicare For All” healthcare system. He wants to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour. He wants to put trillions of dollars into rebuilding roads and transforming energy infrastructure to renewables. It’s a dream agenda for so many of us, but the cynic in me keeps saying, “Use your head, it’ll take a political mind with cunning who is ten times as cut-throat as these Tea Party whackos to beat them at their own game.” You know which Democratic candidate for president that is.

There’s only one thing that could make Bernie Sanders’ political agenda reality in this crazy world: a political revolution. That’s exactly what he’s calling for and that’s exactly what we’re going to have to deliver in order to see some real hope and change.

 

Frank talk overdue in Franklin County

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This morning, I read a thought provoking New York Times article about sexual assault against female farm workers.

Coinciding with the Norm McAllister scandal in Franklin County, the message seemed very timely.

Even when undocumented labor is not involved, farm work is dirty, low-wage labor that falls primarily to teenagers and economically unstable adults. Among this population, women exist on the lowest rung of vulnerability.

That suspended senator McAllister still insists he “did nothing wrong” says even more about the culture that allows him this delusion than it does about the man himself.

This is not a far-off issue affecting only immigrant laborers in the American southwest. Even though Mr. McAllister’s story is the most sensational in recent memory, for years I have heard rumors of mistreated wives and other women who live under the masculine thumb of dairy farming.

A senator and a respected pillar in his community, one must assume that Mr. McAllister is representative of the culture from which he has emerged.

He hasn’t even hinted at remorse. The passion he brings to absolute denial that he has done anything wrong suggests that in whatever community he thinks he belongs, the standards of that community are very different from what we would expect them to be.

That means that some frank conversations are long overdue in Franklin County.

This is a wake-up call that health professionals, spiritual advisors, educators and local media would do well to heed.

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Paula Schramm reports on “Mein Trumpf”

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The following is Paula Schramm’s firsthand report on the spectacle that took centerstage last week in Burlington:

I read with interest the Messenger editorial, and the articles about last Thursday’s Trumpfest (” Locals take in Trump”, 1/8/16). My first thought beforehand was to ignore it – not add anything to all the hullabaloo.

When something really troubling is being said, ignoring it can be interpreted as agreeing…. so it gets tricky.

I feel what Trump has been saying about banning any and all Muslims from coming into this country has crossed some line, and needs public discussion and attention. The challenge is HOW to talk about it, and from watching the enthusiastic Vermont Trump supporters in the theater, I have a good idea what that dynamic is……no one really cares WHAT he says – it’s that he can stand up to the establishment, Republican or Democrat, and TRUMPET their anger for them, ( because they’ve been feeling so frustrated and powerless to change anything. I can relate ! ) They feel he’s their CHAMPION, and they will rise to his defense, even over stupid things he says.

When it became so obvious that there would BE a great to-do, ( after the Trump Campaign’s announcement that they had sent out 20,000 free tickets to a 1,400 seat venue ! ), I changed my mind and went. To be a witness at least, and see for myself !

So with a few friends, I spent my Thursday colliding with the underlord Trump’s dark world vision, and coming out into the bright Burlington buzz of VT Pub & Brewery’s celebration that was really all about Bernie !

We got down to “Trumpsville” and started doing our time waiting in line to get into the Trump event, and to witness it for ourselves. We arrived at 1:30 pm to be sure to get “first-come, first-served” seats for the 7pm talk. Two of us did visit the Bernie Campaign Office ( 131 Church St., 3rd floor ) while the others held our place in line…and both of us made contributions to Bernie in honor of the occasion ! We picked up free bumper stickers, Bernie signs & buttons, and bought a few lawn signs. The place was buzzing & the MSNBC news team had visited earlier. I think a lot of people took advantage of this opportunity to show their support for Bernie !

When we were back out on Church St. taking our Bernie loot to the car, we met Ben Cohen walking down towards City Park, holding a lighted Bernie sign in his hand. (They are very nice & will sell for $8 online on “Etsy”, as a fund-raiser ). While we were talking with him, a N.Y.Times reporter came up and started interviewing us. We let Ben do the talking, and had a good laugh when it became clear that she had no idea she was talking to a “famous”person, and went running after him when she found out. A very Vermont moment…

———————————————————–

We did make it into the Flynn for Trump’s talk…..we found out at the last minute from a young woman who’d been escorted out , that we had to lie & say we would vote for Trump to be allowed to stay after we gave our tickets in at the door. ( This was all so weird and obnoxious – it didn’t matter after all that we had gotten tickets or had waited in line 4 hours in the cold ! )
And then, since the Trump campaign had released so many more tickets than seats, there were maybe 500 fans left, out of the 2,000 or so of us who had waited in line, who didn’t get in. Meanwhile Trump defended himself in the press about the “loyalty oath” condition by saying how “loyal he is to his supporters”. All those left out in the cold just didn’t get the chance to experience his “loyalty” !

It was both instructive & disturbing to be there & see Trump in action for ourselves, & to see how people reacted to him. He spent most of his time talking about how wonderful he was, and getting the crowd to wave their signs & chant “Trump” and point to any protesters who spoke up…..until security was able to get them out. These brave, ( I thought, anyway ) people kept popping up every ten minutes or so ( about 9 times in all, and about 2 dozen people over all ) and Trump got increasingly irritated as they just kept on doing it. The crowd got increasingly worked up too. We were sitting quietly in the back row, and finally exited behind a group of protesters when we couldn’t take any more of the “blood-lust atmosphere”. As each group of protesters came out of the theater, they were greeted with cheers from the hundreds of people assembled across the street from the Flynn. That definitely made us all feel heartened….and we went over to the Vermont Pub & Brewery where Chris Hayes & MSNBC was set up to cover the day. We took in the very upbeat crowd and interesting, lively discussion among the commenters, including Howard Dean.
You may be able to watch it, if you want, on this link ( the Jan.7, 8pm show ) http://www.msnbc.com/all#

Just a few more thoughts : I wondered how the people featured in the Messenger front page story had fared with the Trump oath process. Did the daughter who was a Trump fan get in, but her mother who said she was undecided get escorted out ?

We met people who had said they were curious, or were there to hear what Trump had to say before deciding, who were heartlessly sent out. We also learned that the Trump signs that were used to such effect had been passed out just minutes after someone had reassured the Flynn owner that yes, of course, they would honor the contract agreement to have no signs of any sort.

Another lie from the Campaign that somehow fit their pattern of thumbing their nose at the city of Burlington, the police, and the tax-payers by refusing to co-ordinate or help with the security efforts needed from their sending out 20,000 tickets for such a small venue.
Trump’s love of the lie was on full view too – it was “ten below zero outside” ( so” take his coat “- he ordered the police to do to a protester). “There were 20,000 people here to see me !” ( There were about 2,000 of us in the line stretching down St.Paul St. ) ” The people here in Vermont are so great, they love me !”
It was clear to us that Trump wants people to love him as much as he loves himself. What wasn’t so clear was , will HE still love us tomorrow ?