If you were lucky enough to witness the fabulous show of aurora borealis night-before-last, I envy you.  It was a no-show for me in St. Albans (too much ambient light.)

Whether or not you caught the “glow,” this seems like a good opportunity to point out that solar events such as the one that produced that spectacular display represent the potential which some future event holds for catastrophic consequences here on earth.

Fairewinds Energy Education (with whom I am proud to be associated) coincidentally just released this compelling new video in which Arne Gundersen interviews Mat Stein, best-selling author of  “When Disaster Strikes” and “When Technology Fails,”  who explains how our complex and overloaded electrical infrastructure leaves us vulnerable to an electro-magnetic impulse big enough to knock-out key components, thereby unleashing a string of systemic failures that might even lead to  the end of life as we now know it.

Such a rare cataclysmic event scenario is known as a “Black Swan.”

It was no more than a heavenly show this time, but massive solar events have impacted the earth’s magnetic field many times in the past; even as recently as in 1921. That was, of course, before our infrastructure had reached the tipping point on which we are now poised.  

This is pretty sobering stuff.  Have a listen!

In 1859, a gigantic coronal mass ejection (solar storm) struck the Earth’s magnetosphere, creating an astonishing light display all over the world, but the only infrastructure disturbance it could cause was to telegraphic communications.  

When a significantly lesser solar storm impacted the Earth in 1921, the potential for disturbance was still relatively minimal. Were we to be, in 2014, struck by a solar event of similar magnitude, the consequences would be catastrophic.

As I listened to Mat Stein describe the cascading disaster that would unfold in the unprepared modern world, should such a “Black Swan” solar event come to pass, the biblical story of the Tower of Babel flashed through my mind.

Strip away religion, and hubris is at the heart of that cautionary tale.

So it is at the core of the governmental/industrial complex which, to serve the gods of unlimited growth, has hurtled the nation and much of the world ahead, full-throttle, with never a look in the rear view mirror to see what consequence may be gaining on us.

In far less than a century, using the building blocks of rapidly advancing technology, we have built our own teetering tower to the riches of heaven.  In doing so we have forgotten the lessons of the cosmos: that  we are small and inconsequential; that millenia are no more than micro-seconds, and nothing is more certain than that all we build will end as dust.

Conrad Smith, who worked in environmental protection for the state of Vermont for many years, died two weeks ago. Because I knew him before he came to Vermont, I shared this story at his memorial service yesterday. Conrad did great things, and he will be missed. 

As a lawyer, a piece of advice I would give just about anyone is: try not to get thrown in jail. Especially if you’re a lawyer.

I first met Conrad Smith in Michigan back in the mid-70’s, before I went to law school. I was a tenants’ rights activist and Conrad was running the Landlord-Tenant Clinic in downtown Detroit.

The Landlord-Tenant Court in Detroit was in the Lafayette Building, which has since been demolished, and the Clinic was across the hall. Tenants would line up every morning before their eviction hearing in the hopes of getting a student attorney to defend them. The purpose of the landlord-tenant court was to evict poor families from their homes as expeditiously as possible, and the purpose of the Clinic was to defend those tenants’ rights to decent housing and prevent evictions whenever possible. Because of the high volume of cases, only a small number of the tenants would get representation; the remainder would appear in court by themselves and be ordered to leave in ten days.

Soapy Williams, former governor, heir to the Mennen toiletries fortune, and chief justice said in the opinion he wrote for the Michigan Supreme Court in one of Conrad’s successful appeals:

The atmosphere of the Detroit Landlord-Tenant Court where these cases originated does not encourage deliberate, reasoned and compassionate justice, although it deals with one of the basic material essentials of life, a roof over one's head. Judges, litigants and court personnel are harassed and depressed. In many cases both the landlords and tenants are barely making it financially, and oftentimes they are not making it at all. Cases involve housing conditions that are not the most desirable. Consequently, relations are often strained and not infrequently beyond the breaking point. Many of the tenants do not understand their rights at all, although some understand them too well. Sometimes landlords are in the same posture. It would be difficult to handle these cases with justice in the best of circumstances. But circumstances are far from the best. The case load is incredible. The court facilities are just a little better than tolerable. Matters that can be avoided are avoided. This may be what generated this case but is not in issue here. Operation under such conditions obviously causes need for appeal from time to time.

There was open hostility between the Clinic and the court about some of the most basic elements of due process, like whether a tenant could get a court reporter to make a record of the court’s proceedings without paying a fee. This is the context in which Conrad had to go into the courtroom one morning asking to look at a client’s file, because the student representing the client was sure that the judge had fabricated what the tenant had agreed to in court.

Eviction hearings were done for the morning, and as he asked for the file, the judge said, “What do you want the file for?”

“You Honor, I just wanted to look at one of the entries in the file.”
“You’re calling me a liar!”

“No, Your Honor, I just wanted to see what was entered in the file.”
“You’re calling me a liar, and you have five minutes to prove it.”

Conrad left the courtroom, not really sure what to do. After five minutes of pacing he returned, asking the judge, “Your Honor, what is the nature of these proceedings?”
“These are contempt proceedings, Mr. Smith.”

“Your honor, if these are contempt proceedings I am entitled to representation.”

The judge, pointing to the student attorney sitting next to him: “She’s your attorney.”

“No, Your Honor, I am entitled to counsel of my choice. She is not my attorney. I will not proceed without counsel of my choice.”

“Take him away,” and with that Conrad was led away to jail.

It being a Friday, Conrad was looking at a weekend in jail, but calls to some local attorneys obtained representation before a higher judge, so he was out within hours.

The following Monday he was back at the office and, representing a carefully selected client who had been made aware of the situation, back in court. The same judge looked at him and asked what he was doing there.

“I’m representing my client.”
“You can’t represent anyone. You’re not in good standing in this court.”
“As far as I know I am, Your Honor.”

“Take him away.”

The case went up on appeal, and the Michigan Court of Appeals ruledthat not only was the court wrong in holding Conrad in contempt, it also found that the Landlord-Tenant Court was denying the tenants’ their rights by refusing to provide court reporters without paying a charge for it.

I still think “Try not to get thrown in jail,” is good advice, but that day Conrad Smith taught us something important. Getting thrown in jail is not the worst thing that can happen. Failing to stand up for your client, when you’re right and you’re the only person who will, is worse.

Chaney, and the 2 Jews, Goodman and Schwerner–1964. (NATIONWIDE OUTRAGE!)

Michael Brown–50 years later.  (Michael who?  Is he a basketball player?)

Hmmmm…Listen to THE SILENCE OF THE LEFT.  Hear it?  Maybe Michael Brown was Jewish? (Evil Israeli?) Nah.  However, if he were a Palestinian, the leftie lib-er-al vigil guerrillas would have jumped all over it.  Candlewax all over the place.

The WHITE Leftie Lib-er-als no doubt are still waiting on the grand jury investigation?  Boy, I’ll bet that will be a real classic.  Remember the Warren Commission Report in ’65?

This is what makes for my foul politically incorrect mood.  50 fucking years of white lib-er-als marginalizing blacks and workers and women and…etc.  How else can there exist in Ferguson a situation where only 3 of 53 cops are black, and only 1 of 6 city council members is black?  And how is it all across the nation?  Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act thrown away.  Maybe American blacks should move to GAZA to get some attention.

And yes, back in the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties, JEWS were at the forefront.  And in the Anti-War Movement too.  No longer.  White Leftie Lib-er-al activists have marginalized American Jews also, with their EVIL ISRAEL signs at marches and rallies.

Fucked-up.

MICHAEL BROWN!  HEL-LOOO???

Nation of sheep, ruled by wolves, owned by Pigs.

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier (Sensitiveville), Vt.

*(Peter–I want you folks at VPR to pay attention to Rosmarie Jackowski’s run for AG this time.  Sorrell is both the wolf and the pig.  Thank you for your gracious comments today.  Glad someone is reading my lib-er-al bashing here.  Not just talking to myself.)

Crossposted over yonder at The Vermont Political Observer.

Well, well. Looks llike there was more to the story of Louis Freeh’s car wreck than we were led to believe.

The former FBI director was driving on state Route 12 in Barnard on August 25 when his vehicle left the road and smashed into a tree and some shrubs. It’s assumed that he fell asleep at the wheel. State police had said they would not seek charges nor even write a ticket. But look what the Burlington Free Press’ Mike Donoghue dug up:

An out-of-control SUV driven by former FBI Director Louis Freeh almost struck head-on three motorists, who were forced to take evasive action to avoid crashing in southern Vermont, according to one of the drivers.

The driver, Van Coleman, gave a written statement to a Windsor County deputy sheriff, who was the first police officer on the scene of the Aug. 25 crash of Freeh’s vehicle. Deputy Sheriff Justin Hoyt said he gave the eyewitness report to state police.

Donoghue reports that a motorcycle and two cars were forced to “swerve into the left lane when Freeh’s vehicle crossed the center line… and headed at the trio at a high rate of speed.”

Apparently, Coleman’s account failed to make it up the chain of command. VSP spokesperson Stephanie Dasaro, who issued three news releases that didn’t mention the close calls, said “I did not have that level of detail.” And Public Safety Commissioner told Donoghue “This is the first I have heard about that.”

Flynn added that he “would ask for an explanation.”

He’d better. This smells as bad as a week-old fish. If Freeh is not charged or ticketed, the State Police needs to provide a solid, thorough, convincing explanation. Otherwise it’ll look like the Good Old Boys’ Network got the better of justice.

( – promoted by Sue Prent)

The founders of our country declared their independence from what they viewed as a tyrannical aristocracy in England. More than two centuries later, today’s tyrannical aristocracy is no longer a foreign power. It’s an American billionaire class which has unprecedented economic and political influence over all of our lives.

Unless we reduce skyrocketing wealth and income inequality, unless we end the ability of the super-rich to buy elections, the United States will be well on its way toward becoming an oligarchic form of society where almost all power rests with the billionaire class.

In the year 2014, the U.S. has by far the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth. This inequality is worse than at any time in our country’s history since 1928. Today, the top 1 percent owns about 37 percent of the total wealth in this country. The bottom 60 percent owns only 1.7 percent of our nation’s wealth.

At a time median family income is $5,000 less than it was in 1999, the net worth of the top 400 billionaires in this country has doubled over the past decade. The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent of Americans and one family, the Walton family of Wal-Mart, owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans.

In terms of income, the top 1 percent earns more than the bottom 50 percent. Since the Great Recession of 2008, 95 percent of all income gains in the U.S. have gone to the top 1 percent. While the rich have become even richer, more Americans are living in poverty than at any time in our nation’s history. Today, half of Americans have less than $10,000 in savings. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty — 22 percent — than any major country on earth.

More than a century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt recognized the danger of massive wealth and income inequality and what it meant to the economic and political well-being of the country. In addition to busting up the big trusts of his time, he fought for the creation of a progressive estate tax to reduce the enormous concentration of wealth that existed during the Gilded Age.

“The absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power,” the Republican president said. “The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is passed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in … a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”

Roosevelt spoke those words on Aug. 31, 1910. They are even more relevant today.

A progressive estate tax on multi-millionaires and billionaires is the fairest way to reduce wealth inequality, lower our $17 trillion national debt and raise the resources we need for investments in infrastructure, education and other neglected national priorities.

I will shortly introduce legislation that will:

• Call for a progressive estate tax rate structure so that the super wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. The tax rate for the value of an estate above $3.5 million and below $10 million would be 40 percent. The tax rate on the value of estates above $10 million and below $50 million would be 50 percent, and the tax rate on the value of estates above $50 million would be 55 percent.

• Include a billionaire’s surtax of 10 percent. This surtax on the value of estates worth more than $1 billion would currently apply to fewer than 500 of the wealthiest families in America worth more than $2 trillion.

• Close estate tax loopholes that have allowed the wealthy to avoid billions in estate taxes. Some of the wealthiest Americans in this country have exploited loopholes in the tax code to avoid paying an estimated $100 billion in estate taxes since 2000. My bill would close those loopholes.

• Exempt the first $3.5 million of an estate from federal taxation ($7 million for couples), the same exemption that existed in 2009. Under this legislation, 99.75 percent of Americans would not pay a penny in estate taxes.

This legislation would exempt more than 99.7 percent of Americans from paying any estate tax while ensuring that the wealthiest Americans in our country pay their fair share.

I agree with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich who wrote, in support of this legislation, that America “is creating an aristocracy of wealth populated by heirs who don’t have to work for a living yet have great influence over how the nation’s productive assets are deployed.” He is right in calling the proposal that I’ve laid out “a welcome step toward reversing this trend.” Let’s fight together to see that it is implemented.

Yesterday VPR broadcast a commentary on the fortieth anniversary of Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon for all the crimes he committed while president. In the commentary, Vic Henningsen expressed the following sentiment:

 But most of us now believe Ford was right; that a pardon would harm the country less than prolonged criminal proceedings against the disgraced former president. Though it wasn’t clear at the time, Ford did us a favor.

 I don't know who the “us” is that Henningsen is talking about, but he and anyone who thinks the decision to pardon Nixon was the right thing to do is dead wrong.

Remember the context. We had just, one month earlier, seen the end of the most corrupt administration in history, and we had not yet seen the full scope of Nixon's criminality. Nixon's resignation in lieu of impeachment was just the beginning of the effort to reclaim the rule of law. Ford's pardon deprived the country of the chance to see Nixon's crimes redressed.

Constitutional crisis? No more than Spiro Agnew's prosecution for his crimes, or any other politician's. Ford's pardon was an advance ratification of Nixon's statement, in his David Frost interviews, that “when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

 No, even if there was no deal to get that pardon (and you will never convince me of that), by once and forever establishing that a president cannot face accountability for his criminal actions, Ford did a terrible harm to the United States.

(Abridged version of a pair of posts on The Vermont Political Observer.)

Out in Kansas, the reddest of red states, the Republicans are uncharacteristically nervous. Their longtime U.S. Senator, Pat Roberts, might actually lose the election due to a combination of his own lackluster efforts and the emergence of a popular independent.

Sensing trouble, the national GOP has parachuted in a veteran operative to take the reins of Roberts’ troubled campaign.

And the name of Pat Roberts’ would-be hero?

Corry Bliss.

Corry freakin’ Bliss.

Good God in Heaven.

Bliss, for those with short memories, is widely credited with bringing the Jim Douglas era to a crashing halt by piloting Brian Dubie’s gubernatorial campaign straight into the ground. He’s a prime example of a Republican campaign consultant who loses every time but somehow continues to get new gigs. And I mean every time: Bliss’ record is a stunning 0 wins, 7 losses.

His appalling career includes managing the re-election defeats of a pair of Virginia Republicans, helming the very expensive campaign of pro wrestling magnate Linda McMahon to a 12-point defeat, and managing the unsuccessful campaign of Karen Handel for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia earlier this year. But he’s best known around these parts for piloting the 2010 gubernatorial campaign of Brian Dubie straight into the ground. Or, as one informed observer put it:

“Corry Bliss took a candidate that was up 20 points and turned him into a loser by election day,” said Bradford Broyles, a Republican activist from Mendon, a town in the central part of the state, near Killington. “We’re still repairing the damage to the Republican party.”

Bliss ended his Vermont tenure by writing a court-ordered letter of apology to settle a libel suit.

Everywhere he’s gone, he’s been known for his scorched-earth tactics. Often, in the process, tarnishing the image of a politician formerly known as a good guy. Sound familiar, Brian?

After the jump: Corry Bliss’ other new job.

More details of Bliss’ dismal career are available in this GMD post or over at the VPO. And now, despite Bliss’ 0-7 record, he’s been called upon to save Pat Roberts’ political hide.

But wait — that’s not all! Bliss has also signed onto Texas Governor Rick Perry’s new political action committee; he’s serving as assistant treasurer for RickPAC. I don’t know why Republicans keep hiring the Joe Bftsplk of modern politics, but his presence at RickPAC should keep America safe from the potential catastrophe of a Rick Perry presidency.  

So last week when RNC head Reince Priebus dropped by Vermont for a quick $300 lunch and optional $2,000 for a photo op with the chairman, the press was excluded. Maybe after his first visit as RNC chairman in 2011 someone wanted a quieter event. Then, members from half a dozen labor unions picketed outside the Hilton in Burlington objecting to Priebus’ anti-union action in Wisconsin.  

When asked by Seven Days who banned the press from the latest Priebus visit, VTGOP Chairman David Sunderland hemmed and hawed but eventually got around to taking credit for the decision.

"I need to refresh my memory and think if that was requested by them or by us. I don’t think that it was ever, I don’t want to misstate something. I guess you could say that the Vermont GOP decided it would be closed."

Scott Milne, the Republican candidate for governor, was there too and made clear he had little to do with the party event. “It's not my event” he said three times when asked repeatedly about the press ban. Poor Scott isn’t exactly up to speed in the practice of speaking to the press in political subtleties.  

According to Sunderland it was an informal gathering for Vermont Republicans to listen to the RNC chairman’s thoughts on national party strategy. With no reporters at the event we don’t know what was actually said but Priebus may very likely have repeated parts of a message he gave to another party gathering a short time ago.  

At an August RedState event in Texas the chairman said the RNC should be

"a national party that's permanent, on the ground, all the time."

Priebus denied doing so but it sounds as if he is halfheartedly channeling parts of Howard Dean’s fifty state strategy.

"You've got to be competent in all fifty states," Priebus told Townhall.com. "You've got to be spending a heck of a lot more money in Florida, Ohio, and Virginia, than we are in maybe Vermont. But that doesn't mean you totally ignore Vermont forever, because once in awhile, you've got a good shot at a governor's race." [added emphasis]

 

Well, it’s likely that Priebus tweaked his Texas remarks a little bit for his VTGOP $300 a plate luncheon/$2,000 per photo op audience. I can’t imagine his statement:“Once in while you get a good shot at a governor’s race” will make a very good Vermont slogan or rallying cry to inspire the Republican faithful this year.  

But like Scott Milne said “it isn’t my event.”

We’ve heard it all before: how the U.S. must “lead” rather than follow; how ISIS poses an existential threat to Iraqi stability and a potential threat to the “homeland”; and how these people are exceptional monsters, worse than any before.

This time, a thinking man is at the helm, and Obama resists the siren song a little longer than his predecessor.  Already his presidency has become far more invested in warfare than he ever imagined as a mere senator.

He knows it will not end well, but he is just a figurehead in the vast corporate political machine that drives public policy; and the Middle East is critical to the interests of that machine.

There are evil men exploiting populations all over the world, but only in the Middle East does our national outrage repeatedly draw us into war.

John McCain sees red, Joe Biden goes all bellicose, and Wolf Blitzer licks his chops.  It’s all so familiar by now.  

The American public is war weary and skeptical this time, but the Pentagon and its suppliers need a raison d’etre.  A complicated international chain of corporate and political interests move the U.S. irresistibly forward into war and there is nothing we the people can do to stop it.

This is the very fuel that fires extremism.  Al Qaeda was supposed to be the devil incarnate; but now that distinction may be claimed by ISIS and Al Quaida is apparently nothing more than a toothless old bear. Squash ISIS and a new iteration will erupt, angrier and more dangerous than the last.

Was anybody really listening when, a few weeks ago, ISIS issued a statement that they want the U.S. to engage in war with them?  To strengthen their appeal and bring up their membership, nothing could be better for business!

I listened to CNN this morning, and a guy from the Brookings Institute was going on about how Obama has to stop stalling and iterate a “plan” now.

Then I turned to the New York Times and there was an article about how supposedly neutral Washington think tanks, including the Brookings Institute, are in the pockets of foreign donors, including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.  Think tanks don’t have to reveal their funding streams and go about their business of influencing policy without being identified as lobbyists.

This is what is driving the march to war.

Oil states just love it when the U.S. does their dirty work for them!

And what is the inevitable outcome for the poor oppressed populations who are used to engage U. S. voters in support of these military adventures?

Look at Afghanistan and Iraq.  Not only have those populations been cruelly decimated as collateral casualties of war, but tribalism and oppression arise once again almost immediately after the dust clears; and all we’ve gained is a new generation of recruits for the latest jihadist movement.  They have also gained an arsenal of modern weaponry, thanks to the excesses of the Pentagon.  

If we stayed in those countries, wrangling jihadis, supplying weapons and propping-up acceptable governments, for another one-hundred years we wouldn’t improve the situation.  We’d only deepen the resistance and raise the death toll; because we are occupiers from distant foreign shores.  

As much as some of them may hate the others, they will hate us even more.

One of the things I love about our independent Senator Sanders, is that he marches unafraid into territory that most politicians avoid like the plague.

This week, that march has led him right up to the cooling heels of America’s wealthiest inheritors.

Sanders is boldly proposing a new estate tax, to be levied only on the top .25% wealthiest Americans.  Not 25% (as you will no doubt hear misquoted in right-wing media) but point-two-five-percent.

The new tax would effect only a tiny number of uber-wealthy individuals, but has the potential to provide enormous resources with which to address the economic and social blight produced by growing income inequity in the U.S.

Sanders said the fairest way to reduce wealth inequality, lower the $17 trillion national debt and pay for investments in infrastructure, education and other neglected national priorities would be to enact a progressive estate tax on the wealthiest Americans, the top 0.25 percent.

Under his proposal, 99.75 percent of Americans would not pay a penny more in estate taxes.

The idea has won praise from some top economists, including former U.S. Dept. of Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, who observes that:

America “is creating an aristocracy of wealth populated by heirs who don’t have to work for a living yet have great influence over how the nation’s productive assets are deployed,”.

and calls the proposed estate tax bill:

“a welcome step toward reversing this trend.”

In calling for the new “wealth tax”, Sen. Sanders pointed to the fact that U.S. income inequity is now greater than it was in 1928, on the brink of the market crash and Great Depression.  

The richest 400 Americans have amassed more than $2 trillion in wealth, a sum greater than all of the assets of the bottom 150 million Americans combined.  One family, the Waltons of Wal-Mart fame, owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans.

It remains to be seen whether or not today’s baronial class of Americans will recognize that their own best interests will be served if they accept greater responsibility to support the nation that has  allowed their wealth to grow exponentially.

Their forebears cooperated pragmatically a century ago when building a social safety net was undertaken.  If not necessarily cognizant of the economic “big picture,” they nevertheless recognized the peril to civil society that extreme income inequality represented.

Post Citizens United, will the well-oiled machine of outrage and denial be allowed to completely drown out the voice of reason?   If so, it will be at the peril of American democracy itself.