Monthly Archives: July 2018

Bias at the Franklin County Courier

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I am generally a big supporter of local independent newspapers, but John Walters’ article in Seven Days raises a longtime issue many of us have had with the (Franklin) County Courier over political bias that extends to its editorial policies. 

Walters’ piece discusses this bias as it specifically impacts Cindy Weed (P-Enosburg Falls), who is defending her seat against Republican  Felisha Leffler.  Besides being a Republican challenger to Weed, Ms. Leffler is the girlfriend of Gregory Lamoureux, the paper’s owner, publisher and chief reporter.    

As custodian of his little corner of the Fourth Estate, Mr. Lamoureaux should bend over backwards to avoid the appearance of bias, especially when it comes so close to home.

Weed is quick to point out that she was not the aggrieved candidate who apparently contacted Walters with the current complaint of bias against the Courier.   While she has had an ongoing struggle with the Courier just to get them to print her letters as Representative for the district, as well as those of others who support her positions; she is not the only one to remark on the Courier’s biased editorial policies, but rather one of many  unhappy locals.

Mr. Walters may have focussed on Cindy Weed due to a similarity in the bias issue involving Mr. Lamoureaux and his relationship to candidate Leffler to a bias controversy weathered a few years ago by publisher and co-editor of Seven Days, Paula Routly, who is the domestic partner of Tim Ashe (D/P Chittenden).  The circumstances at Seven Days had one notable difference: there was little indication that any conflict of interest had actually affected editorial policy at Seven Days.  The same cannot be said for Mr. Lamoureaux’ stewardship of the County Courier. 
If Mr. Lamoureaux’ excuse for the appearance of political bias is that he can’t afford a bigger staff in order to distance himself from occasion for bias,  he should know that he does himself and the Courier no favors with this argument.  I have friends who have cancelled their subscriptions to the Courier due to the peculiarly unwelcoming policies it practices with regard to letters-to-the-editor, especially when they fall outside the political views of Mr. Lamoureaux.
As Walters mentions in his article, the St. Albans Messenger has a policy of printing virtually every letter to the editor that it receives, without alteration.  This is just smart business practice as it provides a kind of “buy in” from the community, encourages subscriptions and makes for a much livelier read.  It isn’t as if there is so much more pressing news in Franklin County that the Courier can’t find room for commentary from all corners of the political spectrum; and the more the merrier.
If anyone, but particularly an elected representative, takes the trouble to compose a letter to the editor, it is a wise publisher who recognizes this for the gift it represents to a free and fair press…not something to be undervalued in these uncertain times. 

I did not know that.

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Forever eager to understand what fresh hell Donald Trump has in store for us, I, like many other folks, frequently check my search engine  for an update. Today I came across an article discussing His Nibs’ America First obsession, and how it doesn’t seem to matter that the self-branded products from which he and his family draw a handsome income  are only rarely made in America. 

No surprise there.

What did surprise me was the discovery that Trump Water is sourced from the sparkling waters of our own home state!

Now, you may recall as I do that, in kinder, gentler times (2008) Vermonters were growing quite concerned about the activity of bottling operations in the state. Disputes arose between enterprising landowners and their surrounding neighbors over the ease with which water could be withdrawn at an alarming rate from the shared aquifer simply by sucking it out through the property of a single user.

There was even a legislative attempt to limit the impact of such profligate schemes, led by the Vermont Natural Resources Council.  The effort resulted in a 3-year moratorium on commercial extraction and bottling.  In the meantime, the plan was to map the existing aquifers.

“It’s no longer an under-the-radar issue,” said Jon Groveman, the general counsel of the Vermont Natural Resources Council. “There is now a sense that groundwater is finite and needs to be protected.”

I remember some movement to get a water issue placed on town ballots in order to declare local aquifers a public resource and therefore not salable to private enterprise.  I have no idea how much was finally accomplished toward mapping the aquifers, but I suspect rather little, as funding for environmental initiatives soon after dropped precipitously.

As we experience the drought of 2018 we would do well to remember those concerns once again.

I don’t know who is bottling Vermont water for Donald Trump, but whomever it is ought to be ashamed of diverting a public resource in order to enrich a public nuisance.  

Von Trapp EB-5 Brewery’s small beer job creation

Business, local/regional, National, , , ,

The headline says von Trapp Brewery so far unaffected by closure of Vermont EB-5 center but how about 900 jobs they promised?VonTEB5beer

Last week the United States Immigration Customs Service (USCIS) handed down their decision to shut down and terminate the Vermont EB-5 Regional Center, which is run by the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development (ACCD). The closure comes as a direct result of the EB-5 Jay Peak Ponzi scheme. Bill Stenger and Ariel Quiros defrauded millions of foreign investors while under the ACCD’s and Vermont EB-5 Regional Center’s oversight.

But there are other Vermont businesses participating in the Regional Center’s EB-5 program, and as the Jay Peak dust settles those programs are getting some attention.

The EB-5 program is designed to provide capital investment by foreign investors and stimulate the U.S. economy through job creation. Approved participating businesses present the Regional Center with plans on how they would create a certain number of new jobs with their foreign investor funds — but as with so many other business incentives programs there’s little follow-up verifying actual results.

From Vtdigger.com’s article as published in The Stowe Reporter — von Trapp’s hometown paper:

Sam von Trapp said he’s seen no indication that his company will need to refund any investors.

He doesn’t know how many of those investors have received their permanent resident status, but says most of them have achieved “early levels of approval.”

“We’ve had an effective project, and our people are not at risk, but it is going to be a distraction and an annoyance if we indeed have to move to a different regional center,” von Trapp said.

It may all feel like a “distraction” for von Trapp, but for immigrant investors it is quite a blow. They trusted the Vermont Regional Center, investing millions expecting they’d actually get green cards as promised; now many are out of luck along with losing their investments.

And the promised new local job creation used to create positive buzz and sell EB-5 projects?  The von Trapp Family lodge pitched EB-5 jobs angle as Jay Peak and other businesses did. And like them the von Trapp organization made pretty BIG promises about new job creation.

The Wall Street Journal reported: In [2013] offering materials, Mr. von Trapp’s economist asserts the finished project will not only preserve 200 jobs at the lodge, but also will create 904 new jobs within three years – 66 jobs at the Trapp Lager brewery and restaurant, and the rest “indirect” jobs as the capital spending ripples through the economy.[added emphasis]

Following the 2008 recession The von Trapp Family lodge qualified as a “troubled business” under EB-5 regulations. The reasoning was that some investor funding could be used to help maintain existing jobs, not spent on creating new ones.

Stowe Reporter: von Trapp Brewing and Bierhall used investments from 40 immigrant investors.

von Trapp wouldn’t say how much funding was used from those immigrant investors, though a 2013 Wall Street Journal article states Johannes von Trapp had a goal to raise $22 million from 44 investors by June of that year.

By March 2013, the brewery had raised $2.5 million from five immigrant investors, according to the Journal.

More than 50 jobs were created during construction and operation of the brewery and the Bierhall, von Trapp said, although only brewery jobs count toward the green-card program.

Rather than sending “ripples through the economy” as von Trapp promised the EB-5 funded brewery comes up flat on job creation with something less than fifty jobs — and that hardly rates even a good belch. Calling Doug Hoffer …

The Onion: “6,000 Mike Pences pouring out of a small wormhole”

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For anyone watching it’s been a long, long week of zigzagging statements and generally crazy news from source Donald. But right now it’s Friday at last and the reports have slowed to a crawl. And it’s quiet, almost too quiet. A no doubt exhausted President Trump fled Washington D.C. for one of his golf courses — but it’s likely only a matter of time before he feels the urge and lets go on his twitter account again.

But until he does here’s something from The Onion.com:

WASHINGTON — Revealing that the physical world could no longer bear the weight of numerous contradictory realities, sources confirmed Friday that dozens of Whites Houses have begun to leak from a temporal vortex as President Trump’s rapidly changing story of meeting Putin tears apart space-time. “A White House is blinking in and out of reality atop the Washington Monument, and another has materialized inside the wall of a Georgetown apartment building—it appears the fourth dimensional plane is collapsing in on itself as Trump’s untenable, competing statements rupture the very foundation of time and relativity,” said astrophysicist Maria Steagall .[…]

trumpvortex

One witness reported seeing 6,000 Mike Pences pouring out of a small wormhole in the Cabinet room before suddenly vanishing. Countless universes are colliding and folding over each other every time Trump disputes his earlier statements; this is one of the greatest traumas the fabric of the universe has suffered since the Big Bang.

And that either would or wouldn’t be funny.

The state of play for Trump’s enablers

local/regional, National, ,

nydailynews71618The New York Daily News front page on the day Trump met with Vladimir Putin in Finland and trashed the United States references his 2016 Iowa campaign remark that he could: “[…] stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,”

And his GOP enablers? Well, the New York Times reported some Republican leaders (mostly it seems those headed out the door for retirement) are expressing qualified outrage.

Yet as of today: “[…] no Republican in Congress pledged any particular action to punish Mr. Trump, such as holding up his nominees or delaying legislation, nor did any Republican promise hearings or increased oversight.”

More pointedly  Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration tweeted:

RReich716

In rare show of GOP courage one southwest Ohio state official resigned from the party as “a matter of conscience, and my sense of duty.” Here in Vermont?  Well, crickets so far — no press releases or remarks from Governor Scott that I know of or from anyone in the  VTGOP remotely  critical of Trump’s performance with Putin.

It was in Helsinki and not on Fifth Ave but for now it looks like Trump — as he predicted — may just be allowed by default to get away with this “shooting.”

And the GOP across the nation and in Vermont will be sure to stand at attention for the playing of “Taps” over the grave of our Democracy, while offering their ubiquitous and ineffective “prayers and thoughts” to the family and friends, as they do after every mass shooting that could have — should have — been prevented.

‘Tis the Reason to Say “Treason”

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Kudos to BP for doggedly re-focussing us on Vermont’s timely issues.  These days, it is beyond me to do the job.  

I’m like the clueless cat who is so easily distracted by fast moving objects that he walks into walls.  Every morning I learn about some new outrage that Donald Trump has unleashed on basic American values and I’m off in hot pursuit.

So, please bear with me while I work through my indignity, time and time again.  

If you haven’t been surfing the underbelly of legitimate news sources, you may not have caught yesterday’s head-slapper du jour.  From The Washington Post and The Guardian, we learn that Russians are praising Scott Pruitt for removing restrictions on ASBESTOS(!) and showing their gratitude by marking bales of the carcinogen for export with Donald Trump’s face and name!!

Better than the Onion; you simply can’t make this stuff up.  In the story lie two reminders of the way in which the 45th president has so far managed to keep Republicans on his leash.

What, in any other administration, could singularly bring about ruin becomes nothing more than a forgotten anecdote when enmeshed amongst layer upon layer of daily scandal, violation  and incompetence.  Asbestos, the scourge of a healthy living environment throughout the late 20th century, has apparently been given one of Donald Trump’s famous pardons and is now poised for a comeback!!

It’s all but forgotten today because Donald Trump has spent the past two days ripping the pins out from under NATO and all of your traditional alliances, and shows every indication that he will kiss Putin’s pinkie when they meet privately later this week.

IMHO, it is time to break out the “T” word.  Surely it is treason for any president to take advantage of his presidential privileges in order to serve the counter-strategic interests of our most powerful adversary.

Still, the GOP has made its deal with the devil and is clinging to him like stink to garbage.  Most are so complicit at this point that they must inevitably be touched by the “T” word as well.

I was interested to read yesterday in the Messenger that one-term Republican Senator Carolyn Branagan, who filled Dustin Degree’s vacated seat when he was appointed to a position in the Scott administration, and who had earlier announced that she would not run again in 2018, announced that she was now considering running as an Independent.

No mention was made of her reason for dropping GOP endorsement, but Branagan is known to be a moderate and I’d like to believe that she has simply chosen the moral high ground.

Being a woman must be additional motivation to run far, far away, even from the Vermont GOP.

One has to wonder how many Republicans in regional races have made a similar decision to leave the party’s branding (and funding) behind.  Just how toxic will the GOP label prove to be in the coming years?

Vermont to allow “pop-up” business marketing on state’s rural trails

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“Surprising hikers on the trail where they would least expect it.” Merrell Magic

Coming to a Vermont state hiking trail on July 16th will be a commercial marketing campaign consisting of a “pop-up” back country lemonade stand sponsored and set up by Merrell Outdoor apparel and Backpacker Magazine. Vtdigger.com reports: The free lemonade is part of a social media marketing campaign called Merrell Magic to “celebrate the trails by surprising hikers and trail crews when they least expect it,” according to Merrell’s website.

pinkpopuplemonade

 

The “magic” usually takes the form of weary long distance hikers stumbling upon a cooler with ice cold sports drinks on the Appalachian Trail or a water cache in dry areas of the Pacific Crest Trail. Merrel Magic representatives have even cooked [?] beef tartare with duck egg for backpackers in Providence Canyon State Park in Georgia and thrown a pizza party for a Mount Rainier National Park trail crew.

That’s right. Vermont — the state that in 1968 (fifty years ago) banned highway billboards and has strictly enforced it to the point of challenging a town’s “vintage” style painted roadside mural (painted on a barn no less) — will now have businesses “popping-up” lemonade stands on state trails “… where they least expect it!”

It isn’t clear what, if anything is “in this” for the state to allow  Merrell and Backpacker Magazine’s lemonade stand to “pop-up” on a rural trail. Rob Peterson, regional manager of the state’s northwest parks, said : “[…] the lemonade stand proposal is an appropriate use of state trails because the wooden stand is “low impact” — it’s carried up on a backpack — and will only stay in place for a short period of time.

But what does it look like? Well, here’s a 23-second Merrell promotional video of their company lemonade stand popping up at Corona Arch in Utah https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IuJ9c9GD2U (picture the Pepsi Generation or Coke’s Teach the World to Sing commercials )

Now called “branding” not too long ago something like this was simply called advertising stunts. But, for Vermont  it is just a little “low impact” commercialization of part of our state parks this summer. What product branding stunts could be next?

Makes me wonder if Governor Scott can or wants to keep a lid on this kind of thing — is this a  state promotional he wants to make? I mean some people carry branding to an extreme and cover every available inch with signage for a business sponsor.govscottsponsoredby

Opening up Vermont parks and trails for commercial promotion  could be a tough one to limit or stop once businesses start their  “pop-up trail magic” branding (aka advertising) stunts and cooked beef tartare is served on our trails.

Maybe Merrell should take the hint and make this ad-fest like steak tartare: exceedingly rare.

ICE, huh, good god y’all…what is it good for?

International, National, ,

 

“Abolish ICE” has been in the news big-time for a  week or more. Democrats started using the line and it became shorthand for putting the brakes on Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies. The administration’s policy has horrifically separated thousands of immigrant parents from their children at our order from their families in the months since it began

Trump counter-punched “Abolish ICE” as a slogan in a manner he must have hoped might cause jittery Democrats more jitters: said Donald the baby-snatcher-in-chief: “I love that issue if they’re gonna actually do that.” He also said that to support abolishing ICE is supporting “open borders”

peoplencages

But: it is a different U.S. agency enforcing his own “zero tolerance” border policy—Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol—is responsible for policing the country’s borders. And it is agents patrolling the US-Mexico border who have been enforcing the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, by arresting adults who illegally enter the US, and separating them from their children.

This isn’t to say what ICE does isn’t just as cruelly problematic. And both unions that represent ICE and CBP workers/officers endorsed Trump for president early in his GOP primary race. Each agency has expressed a desire to have the “shackles taken off” and be turned loose on immigration enforcement.

So, what does ICE do exactly?

Well, Govexec.com has provided a handy little explainer worth taking a look at:  ICE ( sister” agency to CBP) is 20,000 people strong and operates in all 50 states. It was created in 2003 by Congress and granted unique civil and criminal powers to defend the U.S. borders. The agency largely focuses on immigration enforcement and works predominately within the US. This means apprehending and deporting immigrants who don’t have the right to live there.

In recent months, ICE carried out a number of high-profile raids. In June, it arrested nearly 150 meat plant workers in Ohio. In April, the agency raided another plant in eastern Tennessee, arresting nearly 100 people. As a result of that raid, more than 500 kids missed school the next day. Critics warn these raids could lead to long-term trauma within these communities.

In Vermont ICE has conducted a large scale raid in January and has been accused of targeting farm worker clients of the aid support group Migrant Justice for arrest.

The Homeland Security Act that created ICE was passed as part of the Homeland Security Act in 2002 with record bi-partisan support in both the Senate and House. In that vote  Vermont Senators Leahy voted Yes and then former GOP Sen. Jeffords, newly Independent after bolting his party was a No and in the US House Independent Bernie Sanders was No.

Under Trump both ICE and CBP are treating immigrants and their families cruelly on a daily basis and should be brought under control. It wouldn’t make a bumper sticker but the Washington Post’s Plum-line blogger Greg Sargent wisely pointed out that a good response for Democrats and progressives to the Trump-induced chaos at the border would be something along these lines: Trump’s cruel and incompetent policies just ripped more than 2,000 children away from their parents, and there are no indications when he’ll be able to reunite them, even though a judge has ordered him to do so. It’s time for him to show some leadership and clean up the immense humanitarian catastrophe he has created, rather than wasting all of our time with his petty little tweets and lies.

I particularly like that last bit: “[Trump]clean up the immense humanitarian catastrophe …rather than wasting all of our time with petty little tweets and lies”  That might not be comfortably squeezed onto a bumper sticker but it would look sharp on a billboard.

Re: Huh,what is it good for?

Requiem for the Soul of the Republican Party

National, Uncategorized, , ,

Today is the United States’ traditional birthday, and pollsters are scrambling to take the patient’s pulse even as we feebly attempt celebration amid record heat induced by unchecked fossil fuel consumption, and try not to notice the cries of refugee mothers and their children separated by “baby jail.”

According to CNBC, which could never be mistaken for a liberal source, less than half (47%) of U.S. adults call themselves “proud to be American.”  That number has dropped 10 percentage points in just the last five years.  

That’s despite our supposedly booming economy and all the “greatness” Donald Trump insists he is bringing back to the nation.

A CNN poll reports that half of all Americans view Donald Trump as a racist.  Is it any coincidence that, also according to recent surveys, close to 90% of Republicans approve of  the policies of Donald Trump while almost no one else does?

One can not resist reflecting on the other half of Americans who apparently do NOT see him as a racist.  In order to subscribe to that position, one must either have never read any of his own comments on brown and black people; or must themselves be racist.  Both possibilities are inescapably damning for the future of the democracy we attempt to celebrate today.

Every single day since and including his inauguration, another demonstration (or three) of his willful ignorance, epic narcism, unabashed dishonesty or pure unadulterated abuse of power has turned the nightly news into a spectacle not for the faint of heart.

Even today, as the Senate Intelligence Committee finally delivered its verdict in agreement with all of the nations intelligence agencies, that Putin’s Russia did indeed interfere in the 2016 election for the purposes of getting Donald Trump elected; Republicans, from Mitch McConnell on down to the last man standing, are doing all they can to avoid acknowledging the truth.

Such a demonstration of unquestioning allegiance to a complete scoundrel like Donald Trump pretty much confirms for me that they share all of his most odious positions, and that includes racism. 

He’s their sick puppy; whether he plots to invade Venezuela, sleeps with our enemies, chokes our allies, maintains the most corrupt and incompetent cabinet in recent history, and ultimately destroys ten years of economic growth; he is aided and abetted by the party of Lincoln.  Now isn’t that the greatest irony?

Let it henceforth be agreed that the Republican party is not only the party of Baby Snatchers and liars, but it is also the party of racists.  Sorry, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and John McCain.  I appreciate your heroic efforts to save the soul of your party, but if you lie down with dogs, you’re going to wake up scratching.

Happy Fourth of July.