You may be aware of the effort to boycott Exxon-Mobil products because of their grossly irresponsible environmental practices. It is true that even in the slimy world of oil companies, Exxon-Mobil stands out as a bad actor, and it doesn’t start or end with the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

This is an especially important effort in Vermont, where Exxon and Mobil stations seem to dominate most local markets, but the effort to reform the company doesn’t have to end with consumers.

Democratic State Treasure Jeb Spaulding has joined with other institutional and governmental shareholders to push Exxon Mobil to adopt more responsible environmental policies.

In a letter addressed to the Exxon-Mobil board of directors the investors, who together manage $525 billion in assets, calling on the company to meet to discuss the challenges raised by global warming and the worldwide addiction to petroleum products.

This is a big thumbs-up to Jeb and the other money managers for taking action on this vital issue! It’s hard, if not impossible, to be in the market and have perfectly clean hands, but that doesn’t mean we have to sit back and let the companies use our money to keep ruining the environment.

For more on Exxon-Mobil, take a look here

You’ve heard of the imperial presidency, but right here in Vermont we have the imperial governor.

This past legislative session one of the fights was about the so-called deliberative process privilege, a phony legal principle that the Douglas Administration has used to block citizen access to important state agency documents relating to environmental safety. The legislative response was to propose H. 615, a bill with tri-partisan support that was signed into law on May 4 as Act 132, and explicity excludes the deliberative process privilege in Open Records Act cases against the executive or legislative branches of state government. It goes into effect July 1.

But guess what?

Apparently getting a new law from the Legislature, and signed by the Governor, isn’t good enough for some of Douglas’ political appointees. The Boston Globe reports that Thomas Torti, Secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, is still sitting on a buttload of documents requested by the Conservation Law Foundation. They say they’re “reviewing [their] options.”

How about this for an option: don’t wait until you have to be ordered by a court to release the records. Do the right thing, comply with the letter and the spirit of the law, and make the information public.

Oh, and have you noticed one other thing? They never seem to have any trouble releasing information when they think it will make them look good, do they?

John Berkowitz came to speak to the Washington County Democratic Committee tonight to talk about his organizationVermonters for a Fair Economy and Environmental Protection. I think the message is very powerful, if a bit diffuse. The top line of their full-page newspaper ad is Invest In Vermont, and the message is to raise taxes on the wealthiest Vermonters and use the revenue to fund human needs. Their three-point plan would raise personal income taxes on the top 5% of Vermonters, end the capital gains tax exclusion, and create a financial assets tax, and would raise over $80 million a year.

The obvious question to me is this: where was this agenda during the just-concluded legislative session?

We have majorities in both Houses of the Legislature and plenty of need for the money, but I don’t recall seeing a big push to generate needed revenues from the people who benefit the most from what government does: the rich.

Let’s take education as an example. Douglas proposed a $15,000,000 scholarship program but it didn’t pass  because he wanted to raid the tobacco settlement fund to do it. My reaction is, why do we need the scholarship program? The state is now contributing about $38 million to UVM each year: how about using the fair tax program and dedicate $20 million to the  university? Other potential uses for the money could be transportation, affordable housing, low income energy assistance, or restore the Medicaid dental program.

There are benefits to having Vermont’s income taxes coupled to the federal rate, but we pay a terrible price when the feds slash taxes on the rich. Governor Snelling agreed to raise the top rate when we needed the money back in the 1980’s and I don’t see why we can’t do the same now.

Let’s fight for a stronger Democratic majority in the Legislature and make it happen.

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

Cross-posted from Rational Resistance

The rap on the Democrats is that we’re pusillanimous. From what we see happening in Congress there is some justice to that. We’ll never get anywhere unless we stand up to the power, even if we pick up a majority in Congress in November. As I’ve said before, the function of the opposition party is to oppose, and we need to be electing candidates who will do that.

In New Jersey’s Fifth Congressional District, where I grew up, there is an important primary race to decide who will oppose incumbent Republican Scott Garrett. The party bosses in the county have annointed Paul Aronsohn, who seems to take pusillanimity to a new level. He likes to describe himself as a “pro-defense, pro-business, moderate Democrat.” He says he would have voted for the so-called PATRIOT Act if he’d had the chance, and his idea of solving health care is to have a little sit-down with the insurance companies and drug companies that are the problem, not the solution.

Oh yeah, he’s also used his muscle squeeze his political opponents off the Democratic Party line on the ballot all across the county, although when he was caught doing it he backed down.

His opponent is Camille Abate, a civil rights lawyer who is committed to standing up to the lies and illegallity of the Bush Administration. In the interest of full disclosure I should say that my brother Mark is her campaign manager, so you can take this comment for what it’s worth. Still, I think she’s worth a look, and any support you can provide.

Now here’s a group that shows they have no remaining sense of decency, and probably no sense of how their actions will look in public. A month after settling a sex abuse–that is, child rape–case for almost a million dollars, the Catholic diocese of Burlington has announced it’s going to start hiding its assets in “charitable trusts” to protect them from other abuse victims and their lawyers.

Yes, that’s right. We now know what’s causing all the problems the Catholic Church has had: it’s these litigious times and the “unbridled, unjust and terribly unreasonable assault” coming from these greedy and unscrupulous former altar boys and other rape victims. Got that? What would be a “gross act of mismanagement” would be not their decades-long practice of covering up and transferring known child molesters so they could do it again, but allowing the victims a chance at reasonable compensation for their injuries.

Just what is wrong with these people?

I want to pass along some information about a public forum happening next Monday night. It’s right after the Washington County Committee meeting, so if you are a member, or even if you aren’t, you should come for both.

  Public Forum: “Should Vermont raise taxes–but only on its wealthiest citizens– and use the revenue to  fund health care, housing, education, and other essential public services for all  Vermonters?”

When: Monday, May 22nd, at 7pm.

Where:  Barre’s Aldrich Library, Milne Community Room, following the monthly meeting of the Washington  County Democratic Party

The details:

The speaker and discussion leader will be John Berkowitz, director of Vermonters for a Fair Economy and Environmental Protection (VFEEP).  VFEEP recently ran a series of full-page ads in the Times Argus and other daily papers titled “Invest in Vermont”, which called for fairer tax and budget priorities.

Specifically, the ads called on the Governor and legislature to take back some of the large tax cuts given to America’s and Vermont’s wealthiest taxpayers by President Bush and Congress during the past five years, and to provide more adequate funding for health care, housing, education, transportation, and other public services.

VFEEP is seeking to build a broad grass-roots coalition of human service, religious, labor, low-income, environmental, and other organizations, called the Vermont Fairness Alliance, to promote these policies.

North Carolina and New Jersey passed a “Millionaire’s Tax” in recent years, which helped them increase funding for health care, housing, education, transportation, and other important public services and programs, while at the same time easing some of the burden of property taxes.

California voted in a referendum in 2004 to increase taxes only on the richest citizens, in order to help fund expansion of community mental health services.  Another referendum is scheduled for June, ’06, which would raise taxes on Californians with annual income over $200,000 in order to fund a voluntary, universal preschool program for all the state’s children.

Each of these states has an active coalition, such as the New Jersey Fairness Alliance, consisting of organizations from the low-income, health care, elder care, education, religious, business, labor, non-profit, environmental, civic, and other sectors of the community.

Vermont is facing a $100 million deficit in Medicaid funding next year, plus chronic underfunding of public service programs and pension/retirement commitments.  With the Bush Administration and Congress giving huge tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and reducing domestic spending to all the states, it is time for Vermont to ask its best-off citizens to give back some of their windfall tax cuts to help maintain or even increase funding for our essential public services.

For more details about this campaign, with photos and articles of our Tax Day ’05 Statehouse press conference, and the text of our full-page newspaper ads, go to our website at vfeep.org.

If you’re like me, you’re pretty sick of Richie Tarrant’s soft-focus, feel-good commercials on TV, te ones he’s been dumping so much money into. Somehow,his jump shot doesn’t seem like an important qualification for Senate, but maybe that’s just me. On the other hand, they don’t affect me too much because I hit the “Mute” button as soon as they come on.

Anyway, he’s finally started running issue ads and wouldn’t you know it? He starts lying to us in the very first one. He’s talking about health care and he wants to emphasize the differences between him and Sanders, and here’s what he says:

“Sanders wants the federal government to run your health care. I want all Americans to have health care coverage, yet I want you to be able to choose your doctor and ensure that you get the hightest quality health care, no matter how old you are.”

Let’s cut him a little break and assume that he’s fudging just slightly when he talks about the federal government “running” your health care. I know it’s not true, but the language is vague enough that you can almost let it pass.

But what about the key phrase: “I want you to be able to choose your doctor.”

Has Bernie Sanders ever said that people shouldn’t be able to choose their doctor? No.

Is there any health care proposal in play that would take away people’s right to choose their doctor? No again.

Does Tarrant really think that people can’t understand the difference between the system of paying for health care and the professional relationships between doctors and patients? I think voters know better than that.

I also think people might feel better having their intelligence insulted than being lied to, alghouth it’s a hell of a choice he’s given us.

You can hear Neil Young’s new album free online tomorrow. Here are the details.

We’ve heard that the Douglas Administration plays the game hard. Gloves off and all that. Still, you expect a certain modicum of honesty and integrity, even from your political adversaries.

This week the Douglas Administration sank below the level of decency we should hold our public officials to.

It all has to do with Medicare Part D, health care, and the health care fight in the Legislature. Some of the people who are now signed up for Medicare Part D are called “dual eligibles”, because they are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. They have to be in a drug plan just like everyone else, but Medicaid pays their premium. The Rutland Herald carried a story yesterday about one of the prescription plans and how they got in trouble with the state for billing about 200 people whose premiums had already been paid by Medicaid. In fact, this situation was so bad that the state had to demand that the insurer call everybody immediately to make sure they knew they didn’t have to pay. And they even had to threaten them with Medicaid fraud unless they did it:

“We would like to see a commitment that AARP contact each of these 200 Vermonters, who were understandably incredibly concerned, as are we,” said Heidi Tringe, spokeswoman for the Agency of Human Services. “We would like them to contact them before this has to be turned over to the Medicaid fraud unit.”

And isn’t it outrageous that the culprit here was AARP, that huge nationwide organization that’s supposed to be looking out for our retirees?

Lucky thing the Agendy of Human Services was there to look out for the little guy, huh?

Well, it turns out that it’s not so simple.

First off, did United Health Group (UHG), the prescription plan endorsed by AARP, actually double bill anybody?
No.

Second, how many of the eleven prescription plans sent out the same kind of notice to their beneficiaries that UHG sent?
Several, possibly all of them.

Third, how many of those prescription plans were singled out by the Administration, threatened with fraud charges, and called out in the press?
None.

So why single out the AARP-endorsed plan?
Could it possibly have something to do with the fact that the AARP is pushing for real health care reform, and they’re giving Douglas a hard time about his position?

Well, you tell me.

Oh yeah, and there is one other question:
Why isn’t the press asking these questions?

Cross-posted at Rational Resistance

I’m passing along a message I got from the ACLU on illegal spying today. Naturally, I think it’s very important to stop Congress from doing nothing about it in the guise of pretending to do something, so please take the opportunity to contact Senator Leahy today.

In addition to using the phone numbers listed you can comment directly by using this link

To Our Friends in Vermont,

This week the Senate Judiciary Committee is considering two bills that would reward President Bush’s illegal actions by allowing the National Security Agency (NSA) to continue spying on Americans in violation of our laws. These bills are being pushed through even though Congress has failed to learn key facts about the program.

Senator Leahy sits on this committee and can stop both of these bills dead in their tracks.

We need you to call Senator Leahy right now.

In Burlington: (802) 863-2525
In Washington, DC: (202) 224-4242

  * Tell him to oppose both Senate Bill 2453 and Senate Bill 2455. Congress needs to get the facts about the NSA spying program before making it legal.
  * Both bills would have the effect of whitewashing the illegal NSA domestic spying program. Conservatives and progressives agree that this program should not be made legal.
  * Congress has a duty to get the facts, not help the Bush administration cover them up. The Senate Judiciary Committee must uphold its responsibility to the Constitution and the American people by opposing these misguided bills.
  * Tell Senator Leahy to get the facts about the warrantless NSA domestic spying before making it legal.

Calls are needed to several members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Please take a moment and forward this email to your friends and family who live in Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, California, Ohio, Iowa, South Carolina, Kansas, Wisconsin, Delaware, Oklahoma and Illinois. They can look up their member’s phone number here.

ADDITIONAL DETAILS FOR YOU:
S. 2453, a bill written by Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), would supposedly restore judicial review of wiretaps, but the law already requires judicial review and the president has ignored it. Senator Specter’s bill would allow the courts to approve programs of surveillance, diminishing the Constitution’s requirement there be probable cause that an American is doing something wrong before their communications can be seized. 

S. 2455, a bill written by Senator Mike DeWine (R-PA), would also attempt to rewrite probable cause to allow warrantless surveillance of Americans’ calls and emails without evidence that they are conspiring with suspect terrorists. It would make judicial review of wiretaps optional and would reduce the amount of information the president is required to give Congress about the program. 

Sincerely,
Signature
Caroline Fredrickson
Director, ACLU Washington Legislative Office