In honor of the students who spoke out and organized; the legislators who took action after years of sitting on their hands (with a few exceptions); and the governor who has promised to sign three gun accountability bills on Wednesday, April 11:
Lyrics:
There’s something happening here/What it is ain’t exactly clear/There’s a man with a gun over there /Telling me I got to beware
I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound /Everybody look what’s going down
There’s battle lines being drawn/Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong/ Young people speaking their minds/Getting so much resistance from behind
It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound/Everybody look what’s going down.
What a field-day for the heat/ A thousand people in the street/Singing songs and a-carrying signs/Mostly say, hooray for our side
It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound/Everybody look what’s going down
Paranoia strikes deep/Into your life it will creep/ It starts when you’re always afraid/You step out of line, the men come and take you away
We better stop, hey, what’s that sound/Everybody look what’s going down/Stop, hey, what’s that sound/Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, now, what’s that sound/Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, children, what’s that sound/Everybody look what’s going down
Stay to Stay — the Vermont state tourism agency’s planned series of four weekends in different locations designed with the intent of turning tourists into full-time residents — got off to a “chilly start” this weekend according to Vtdigger.com: Like the recent weather, the first-blush level of commitment for the state’s campaign to entice nonresidents to move to Vermont has been cool.
Organizers note, however, that this is but the first of four scheduled weekends for people interested in becoming Vermonters to be formally welcomed as part of the Stay-to-Stay initiative.
Think! Vermont, Scott’s Department of Economic Development promotional webpage slogan, describes the events in terms not unlike a vacation timeshare real estate sales pitch weekend. Vermont commissioner of Tourism and Marketing Wendy Knight says her inspiration for the promotional campaign happened when: “I got to thinking; visitors are an ideal captive audience,”
Sure sounds like timeshare pitch, only (befitting the Vermont brand) a bit more refined — sweetened with real maple syrup: [Stay to Stay] gives tourists the opportunity to relax and also to network with business leaders and tour Vermont communities with real-estate experts to learn more about relocating to Vermont.
It is all part of Governor Scott’s unproven million-dollar effort to boost Vermont’s population and address the state’s worker shortage. But attendance at the Department of Tourism’s weekend premier in Brattleboro, Bennington, and Rutland is expected to be less than even the modest numbers hoped for. Half of the dozen potential visitors signed up for the Rutland and Brattleboro areas cancelled and no one who signed up will be visiting Bennington.
Undaunted by the dismal turnout Knight noted one positive — the free media she had gotten nationally for the first event. Bloomberg.com does indeed have nice blurby press release style bit about “Stay to Stay” headlined:This Weekend, Aging Vermont Will Try to Make Tourists Into Residents.
But the thing about free media is you give up a certain amount of control of the whole message.
The U S News piece about Stay to Stay starts with what I hope is unintentionally a funny headline:Vermont Taps Tourists to Bolster Workforce. That headline sounds to me as if Governor Scott, desperate to boost our workforce, intends to force visitors to pick apples, milk cows, turn cheese curds, or tend sugar houses.
But the “great” thing about the US News bit is the targeted sidebars, as you can see from the two screen shots, which all tout other states — Massachusetts best for women and children, Connecticut high school record graduation rate, and a list of the U S News top five states not including Vermont.
Maybe it was just the weather that ruined this Stay to Stay, so spin it however you want. But you can’t spin away from the out-of-proportion amount of taxpayer-funded effort it took to get a half dozen out-of state “captive” visitors to sit still for a Think!Vermont sales pitch in April.
Maybe some nice sticky sugar-on-snow painted on the seats would help.
President Donald Trump (I’ll never get comfortable writing that) was thrilled a couple days ago and twitter bragging about a Rasmussen poll that showed his approval rating hitting 50% — the first time he’s polled that high since February. Rasmussen’s results are recognized as historically being more favorable to the GOP and Trump.
But now some other polls are showing Trump’s ratings are still bobbing along below the 50% surface. In fact The Hill.com reports on several polls that show him at record lows.
Morning Consult’s 50-state approval tracker finds 41 percent of registered voters approved of Trump’s job performance during March.
A majority, 54 percent, disapproved of the president’s job performance.
The data from March surpasses [sinks below] the president’s previous lows in the Morning Consult poll. In October and November, 42 percent of respondents approved of Trump’s job performance and 53 percent disapproved.
Other results from an average of poll numbers by RealClearPolitics show a recent approval rating of 41.8 percent for Trump.
A majority, 53.3 percent, disapprove of the job Trump is doing in office, according to the average.
Donald Trump may not be sinking like an anchor but he looks to be swamped, with some polls showing over half of those surveyed disapproving of his performance in office. In the nautical world swamping typically means that a boat fills with water (often from capsizing) but often will remain barely floating, filled to the gunnels — for a while — before finally sinking.
And from what we’ve seen of Trump he’s more likely to head out for a round of golf than to bail his sinking ship.
When I began writing on GMD a number of years ago, as I learned the hard way, the topic of gun control was a third rail even among progressive thinkers.
Further conversation on the subject was commonly dismissed with the slightly smug assertion that “we don’t have a gun problem here in Vermont.”
After a few tries, I learned that even pointing to the obvious: that Vermont isn’t an island, magically immune to the evils beyond its borders, was an exercise in futility.Vermont didn’t have a gun problem and there would be no further discussion.
Well, times have definitely changed.
No one would argue that the legislative fixes to gun law that passed on Friday are perfect, but it behooves us to recognize what a significant and profoundly brave development this is in the maturing of our state.
S.55 is part of a package of gun legislation that is on the way to the governor. On Thursday, the House passed S.211, known as a “Red Flag bill,” which permits law enforcement to seize guns from a person deemed an “extreme risk” to themselves or others.Also, Senate of Thursday approved H.422, known as “the domestic violence bill,” which sets in place a process for police to confiscate firearms from people cited or arrested on domestic violence charges. S.221 received final approval in the House on Friday morning and H.422 passed a third and final reading later in the day in Senate.
Phil Scott, who has promised stop sign all three bills into law, deserves some extra credit for rising above NRA pressures and standing behind some commonsense measures to curb the spread of mass shootings before Vermont “has a gun problem.”
I can’t say I’m disappointed in Franklin County Republican legislators who did not support this historic moment.I’m not disappointed because I expected little else.While ultimately voting against the bill, Corey Parent (R) and Lynn Dickinson (R) pushed for an amendment to the House billthat exempts Florida-based gun manufacturer, Century Arms from the ten-round limit on the manufacture and sale of magazines if larger capacity magazines are only sold out of state.Century Arms employs about 100 Vermonters in its Franklin County location and I am sure Parent’s 2018 bid for the senate can count on generous NRA support.
While it seems rather immoral to export a mass shooting hazard to communities outside of the state while unequivocally recognizing it as such with an in-state prohibition, I cannot quibble with the terms under which any movement has miraculously come to pass on gun control in Vermont.
For this we have to thank the voters of tomorrow who stepped into the void and made their voices heard.
Just as a hammer goes with a nail, peanut butter with jelly, and the Trump administration with lies and falsehoods* April Fools Day for the past two years has been paired with Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Day, April 2nd.
The International Fact Checking Network (IFCN) are calling for a broad coalition of journalists, students and everyday media consumers to arm themselves with the tools and methods needed to decipher what’s real and what’s not all year long.
Alexios Mantzarlis, Poynter’s Director of IFCN says: “International Fact-Checking Day is meant to be lighthearted, but practical. Our hope is that we can all commit one day to paying extra attention to the accuracy of what we read and especially of what we share.”
*According to the Washington Post as of January 2018 Trump’s total number of false or misleading claims stood at 1,950 claims in 347 days, or an average of 5.6 inaccurate claims per day.
The departure of so-called Trump Whisperer, Hope Hicks, from the West Wing has left many staffers anxious about what new chaos tomorrow will bring.It was therefore with great relief that they received the news that a new “Communications Director” has been hired.
The almost preternaturally silent Hick’s replacement will be a giant PEZ dispenser in the image of…you guessed it, Donald Trump.
The lanky orange and yellow sweets dispenser will be aided in sartorial responsibilities for the president by a Deluxe Personal Valet Station from Hammacher-Schlemmer.
Henceforward, the Commander in Chief will be alternately soothed and steamed by the best team of passive enablers he could ever hope for.
Governor Phil Scott isn’t ready to completely give up stock car racing anytime soon, but since becoming Vermont Governor, according to news reports he has taken up a hobby that many who know him would consider unlikely: painting. I suppose he may find the demands of being Governor more taxing than his terms as Vermont’s part-time Lieutenant Governor. So it’s not so surprising that he desires some time to unwind from his full-time demands.
Scott’s new pastime isn’t unheard of in the political world. Notably Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, even George W. Bush are just a few well known political leaders who took to the brush and easel for relaxation and escape.
The interesting thing in Governor Scott’s case is that no one outside the immediate circle has seen his work. So as you can imagine since news of this activity has leaked out speculation among the Montpelier press corps is rife over what style and subject matter he has taken to portraying.
Not much else is known but the emerging conventional wisdom among reporters is Scott works in acrylics and finds inspiration in the Vermont landscapes — our gentle rolling mountains dotted with farms, mills, and maples. Would Scott favor the style of Norman Rockwell, or, say, Grandma Moses?
Another area for speculation around his recently discovered hobby is how much relationship his art may have to his politics. What might be read in Scott’s imagery? A Scott landscape might show a small town, farm, blacksmith shop, mill building of some kind and likely a town school. Would that be a private prison complex under construction in the distance?
Would his town school be closed and empty? The local students now relocated, bused to classes at a large regional-run educational district? Are there artistic hints that the farm is operating free from certain state regulations the artist painter might consider burdensome? Maybe the streams bordering the village and the distant lake are abloom with “gorgeous” toxic blue green algae caused by uncontrolled agricultural phosphorus runoff. The neat modern industrial mill building nestled in the valley might be closed-up despite thousands of dollars in state sponsored tax incentives and development grants handed out for job creation and retention over years. Likely the owner, a multi-national corporation, bolted from the Vermont landscape unconcerned that the state might try to claw back the funds or demand an accounting for the grants and incentives.
Another theory taking hold concerning his subject matter is that the Governor is painting NASCAR art. Born out of nostalgia for simpler days, longing for his time as Lt. Governor racing his stock car at Thunder Road, perhaps he’s artistically emulating Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, the legendary 1960’s artist of the hot-rodding world.
No fooling, it is all idle speculation at this point — and no public art shows are in the offing, speculation not withstanding. Governor Scott when reached by phone (at his studio?) on April 1st would only say: “Life is much too short to worry about art critics.”
I heard about income-based traffic fines in Europe a couple years ago, and now I see the New York Times has an op-ed piece in support of it here in the U.S. The concept of basing fines for traffic violations on income is that flat-rate fines , associated costs, and collection fees weigh more heavily on lower-income drivers than on higher-income speeders. A flat-rate fine also fails its role as a behavioral deterrent to speeding if it is only a slap on the wrist to wealthy violators.
In Finland, several other European countries, and Argentina, penalties on offenses ranging from shoplifting to securities law violations are imposed on a sliding scale based on a person’s last declared income and the nature of the crime. In these nations it is believed the wealthy and the poor should suffer equally for infractions. In other words, as the title of nytimes.com opinion piece by Alec Schierenbeck suggests :A Billionaire and a Nurse Shouldn’t Pay the Same Fine for Speeding.
And the author makes a good case for change: For people living on the economic margins, even minor offenses can impose crushing financial obligations, trapping them in a cycle of debt and incarceration for nonpayment. In Ferguson, Mo., for example, a single $151 parking violation sent a black woman struggling with homelessness into a seven-year odyssey of court appearances, arrest warrants and jail time connected to her inability to pay.
Across America, one-size-fits-all fines are the norm, which I demonstrate in an article for the University of Chicago Law Review. Where judges do have wiggle room to choose the size of a fine, mandatory minimums and maximums often tie their hands. Some states even prohibit consideration of a person’s income. And when courts are allowed to take finances into account, they frequently fail to do so.
Here in Vermont a judge is allowed “wiggle” room to consider income when handing out a fine. However someone charged with a violation that wishes a judge to consider their income must take the time to appear in court to contest rather than mailing in the traffic fine. Vermont fines range from 0-$1,000.00 with a non-waivable surcharge of $47.00. Conceivably someone could leave with only a $47.00 fee to pay as a “fine” if the judge accepts a public plea of poverty. Although more reasonable, than, say, the Ferguson Mo. practice, getting a day off work to plead your case carries a built in hardship — likely loss of pay for many low-income people.
In 2016 Vermont changed laws to help low-income drivers whose driver’s licenses had been suspended for non-criminal offenses regain the right to drive. Now the legislature is exploring changes to the new, rigid, computer-driven vehicle-inspection regulations. The change sought would allow some repairs to be listed as “recommended,” rather than “required,” where the faulty part is not safety-related. There is growing awareness that the stricter rules can be an unfair burden, particularly on low-income drivers who rely on high-mileage used vehicles.
So now might be the time for income-sensitive traffic fines to be considered for the same reasons.
Income based fines — charging wealthy drivers enough for traffic and speeding violations so it really is a deterrent — might be just the ticket for economic fairness and safety.
Hmmm, imagine that Jaguar driver on the side of the road in front of blue flashing lights having to pay 10 times what the 10-year-old Chevy driver pays. In the privacy of your vehicle, you’re allowed to smile.
Studies and polling surveys showing tepid support for democracy in the U.S. have been appearing on regular basis for a while. In light of Donald Trump’s “joke” about the U.S. needing a president for life, the findings in a recent poll done by a new research collaborative, the Democracy Fund Study Group, are unsettling. Their study, completed this March, was designed to measure how committed Americans are to democracy in the age of Trumpism.
From their study summary: Specifically, the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group asked respondents to assess the favorability of three types of political systems:
A strong leader who does not have to bother with Congress and elections;
Army rule
A democratic political system.
One slightly reassuring finding in an otherwise discouraging survey of views on democracy is that when given a direct choice, the overwhelming majority of Americans will choose democracy: 75% of all respondents showed some support for democracy and 50% or more favor democracy as the strongest option.
But, when they dug deeper it was found that only a slim majority of Americans (54 percent) consistently express a pro-democratic position across all five of our measures.
And the following: Nineteen percent of respondents express one nondemocratic position, 13 percent express two nondemocratic positions, and 15 percent express three or more nondemocratic positions. Notably, 29 percent of respondents show at least some support for either a “strong leader” or “army rule.”
Other findings show 20% of Hillary Clinton’s primary supporters favor “strong man” option. […] and 15 percent [Clinton primary supporters] go so far as to support “army rule” — both slightly higher than the levels expressed by the primary supporters of Bernie Sanders, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz. (Yet Clinton’s primary supporters were more likely to say that democracy is preferable to any other form of government.)
However for those who favor a “strong leader” type, Donald is the one. Among those who voted for Trump in the primaries, 32% support a “strong leader.” Voters who supported Barack Obama switched parties and got behind Trump supported the “strong man” unbound by congress or elections by 45%.
Overall this survey seems like a batch of pretty grim stuff but there is this: [the Democracy Fund study] finds evidence that conflicts with two key findings that have recently raised alarm bells about the state of democracy: We do not find that public support for democracy in the U.S. is declining. Nor do we find higher support among young people for an authoritarian political system.
That’s a pretty slim sliver of light coming out of the storm clouds. But I guess for those optimists favoring democracy, the glass is not half empty. And for all those “strong man” fans who believe past dictators made the trains run on time — remember that assessment was a propaganda myth. Well, maybe the weekend Trump golf train to Mar-a-Lago will be on schedule: the rest of us can try to hitch a ride on a troop transport, or maybe a tank.
Adapted from “The Treachery of Images” Rene Magritte
Due to sheer volume — call it a flood, deluge, tsunami, or a simple fire hose flow of “news” — it’s a challenge to even focus on the less splashy yet highly damaging transgressions of the Trump administration. But it is slowly emerging that government agencies under Trump are now not only less vigilant at enforcement (well, except for ICE), but have “adjusted” their agencies’ mission statements, references, and associated language to reflect their political agendas in the new “reality.”
Steve Benen, a producer and blogger at The Rachel MaddowShow, has managed to spot and document this disturbing trend. First and foremost the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under acting head Mick Mulvaney (a vociferous opponent of the CFPB) announced in January that the agency will be “less focused” on protecting consumers. That announcement puts the agency’s mission directly at odds with the “reality” of the bureau’s mandated task and what of course the name should imply (in a normal world).
Benen notes other reality-challenging adjustments: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services [is] changing its mission statement, eliminating the phrase “America’s promise as a nation of immigrants.” Then it was the Department of Housing and Urban Development mission statement, which will apparently no longer reference “free from discrimination,” “quality homes,” or “inclusive communities.”
The Interior Department’s mission statement no longer references native Americans or providing “scientific and other information.” The State Department’s mission statement no longer prioritizes the goal of a “just and democratic world.”
And then there’s FEMA and its new strategic plan. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the federal government’s first responder to floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters, has eliminated references to climate change from its strategic planning document for the next four years.*
[*Clearly our own Governor Phil Scott’s administration is on board with that agenda and is using the same tactic in a recent editing out of climate change from a Vermont State planning document.]
That document, released by FEMA on Thursday, outlines plans for building preparedness and reducing the complexity of the agency.
FEMA’s strategic plan mentions expected cost increases “due to rising natural hazard risk,” but makes no mention of the global crisis that contributes to those risks.
This effort to spin reality (should I even bother mentioning it is right out of Orwell’s 1984?) may be expedited by Trump’s so called “beachhead teams”— almost 600 hires quietly installed early on throughout government bureaucracies. The teams included dozens of industry lobbyists, political cronies (many from far-right media) and can be found here in a problubica.org’s searchable database.
Who knows which Trumpist or GOP lackey made these changes? But given that President Trump has openly bragged about lying and making up “facts” in a meeting with the Prime Minister of Canada, it’s obvious where the deception and lies start. So it won’t be a surprise that in terms of deceptive practices this fish — the Trump administration — is continuing to rot from the head first.
*A word about the famous pipe image
“How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture ‘This is a pipe’, I’d have been lying!” — René Magritte
Thus, ‘this is not a mission statement’ and the Trumpists can stuff it.
