…And in the spirit of crediting our elected officials when they get it right, I just want to briefly mention how proud we should be that our “DC three” (Leahy, Sanders and Welch) is the only state delegation that has received a perfect score from the League of Conservation Voters for their voting record on environmental issues in 2010!

In these days of economic anxiety and hair-trigger paranoia, it takes courage to stand-up for that singularly important but non-voting constituent: the natural environment.  It may sometimes seem like a thankless job, gentlemen; but we and our fellow life-forms salute you!  May your vision always be greater than the sum of your days on Capitol Hill.

I see Donald Trump wants us to tax other countries, including much of Europe and South Korea (for hosting U.S. troops on their soil); and China, which holds a double handful of U.S. debt. His hair-brained logic doesn’t really merit elaboration, but the “audacity of (this) dope” begs the question: how has the Ugly American evolved since 1958, when the bestselling novel which coined the purjorative was first released? A character in the book explains it this way:

Many of us recoiled from the waste, greed and human suffering…but not all. There was a growing anger on the far right; not so much with Bush and his folly for invading Iraq.  This anger turned back on the very people who opposed the war domestically, and on the overwhelming majority of our traditional allies who shared in this opposition.  The far right dug in their heels and ratcheted-up the pseudo-patriotic rhetoric, adding a healthy dose of “Christian” self-righteousness for good measure.

The candidacy and then election of the first “black” president, with all of his cross-cultural chops, showed every promise of turning around America’s tarnished reputation, but it only served to inflame the defensive anger on the far right for whom all pretense of tolerance and engagement was cast aside as a new wave of xenophobia swept the land.  Now, after several decades of Republican excess and obstructionism, our financial system is in ruins, our children are falling behind in education, our jobs have been off-shored, and our governance is in danger of being reduced to corporate colonialism with a dash of tribal lunacy thrown in, just to keep us guessing.  We have one of the highest levels of income inequity in the industrialized world.  Notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary, characters like Sara Palin and Michel Bachman prattle on about American exceptionalism, without a touch of irony.  This sort of mindless nationalism looks uncomfortably familiar to the rest of the world.

If, in 2012, we were to revert to type (god forbid), electing the guy with the most name-recognition, lowest I.Q., and biggest pair of clown-shoes; that Bush might well be Trump.  I can just see the Donald extending an open palm to China, demanding taxes.  Having a smorgasbord of emerging  economies with which to do business, China to Trump might well reply with a smile, “You’re foreclosed.”

If you’ve ever wondered what Republican reps from Franklin County do with their time in the Statehouse, your puzzling days are over!  Judging soley from a resolution that recently came to my attention, it would seem that they pretty much concentrate on the work of getting themselves re-elected.

Now before I go any further with this, I am obliged to remind you that I am an active member of the Northwest Citizens for Responsible Growth.  We’re the grassroots group that has, for almost eighteen years, diligently maintained opposition to the proposed location of what would be the state’s largest Walmart on a tract of agricultural land, near the border of St. Albans Town.



Appearing in the Tuesday, January 18 Journal of the House,  J.R.H. 7, the “Joint resolution in support of the construction of a Walmart store in St. Albans Town,”  must be a high priority for sponsoring representatives Dickinson (St. Albans Town), Branagan (Georgia), McAllister (Highgate), Pearce (Richford), Perley (Enosburg), Savage (Swanton)…and my own local rep and new next-door neighbor, Dustin Degree.  With all the serious budgetary, healthcare, education, energy and infrastructure issues that the Legislature faces this term, the best use this bunch could find for their elected office was to advocate on behalf of an out-of-state retailer in a vainglorious attempt to…to do what exactly?

The issue of whether the store will or will not be permitted is currently under consideration by the Supreme Court of Vermont.  No other official entity has any say in the matter at this point, so their resolution is utterly meaningless…just a red herring they can wave at their Walmart-deprived constituents come re-election time.  “End the wait for Walmart” is a favorite Republican campaign theme in these parts.  In a letter-to-the-editor a couple of years ago, Lynn Dickinson even went so far as to imply that electing her could somehow clear the way for Walmart!  I remember responding that she should familiarize herself with the way the legal system works in this state.

To our Republican reps I have this piece of advice:   If you have so much free time on your hands, when next the county is embroiled in a controversial permit debate that goes on for years, you might show up at one or two of the hearings before you start drafting resolutions on topics you know nothing about, as is evidenced by the text of your resolution, which shows a fundamental ignorance of the factual evidence and of how the project lines-up with the ten criteria of Act 250.

C’mon Franklin County Republicans, is this the best use you can make of your time in office?

Well, look at that; the Republicans squeak into control of the House, largely by exploiting the complete ignorance of much of the country with regard to the Healthcare Act; and immediately they set to work trying to find the most harmful way in which to use their “mandate” in order to ensure that the dysfunction of the Bush years be fully reinstated and even exceeded.  

I invite everyone to pitch their candidate for “worst idea” proposed by Republicans in Congress; but the big winner for me is the push reported on today to defund or even eliminate the EPA.

Ever since we learned, courtesy of a 2008 presidential debate, that the most influential Republicans do not even believe in evolution, we knew this day was coming.  Cocooned in their own little fiefdom of faulty science, the new Republican brain-trust calls itself “conservative,” but indulges in revisionist fantasies that are anything but.  Throwing caution to the wind they have embraced, with gusto, the opposite of what the rest of the world considers to be settled science with regard to climate change and the need to “conserve” both our exploitable resources and the finite environment of the planet.

These so-called “conservatives” have allowed the superstitions of their fringe to seize control of the agenda, so that policy is being driven by people who believe that a supreme being gave them permission to use-up the planet’s resources and atmosphere in a single lifetime after which he will deliver them, magically and without consequence, to Valhalla.  If I saw this plot in a movie I wouldn’t believe it.

What worries me most is that our president, elected in 2008 by an overwhelming majority to move this country forward in so many ways, has lately been showing signs of handing the whole operation back to the same corrupt forces who brought us to this unfortunate juncture in our democracy.  Two days ago he was schmoozing those arch-enemies of environmental and social responsibility, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who have recently gained even more power to influence elections, courtesy of the Supreme Court decision on campaign finance.  Yesterday, we were treated to the news that he proposes to slash heating aid for the poor, a sure-hit with Dickensian partisans on the right.  One has to wonder what sort of bouquet of “compromise” he plans to offer the Climate Change deniers.

I was gratified this morning to read an op-ed by Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, taking up the neglected mantle of moral high-ground on behalf of the left.  It has long puzzled me why we progressives folded so easily to the conservative grab for moral superiority and the Tea Party’s appropriation of the Constitution.  Conditioned as we are, by our embrace of tolerance, to bending over backwards in the name of equanimity; it is, ironically, this very moral dichotomy that seems to have kept us from claiming the high-ground that should so rightly be ours.

Marcus focuses on a portion of President Obama’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast as the inspiration for her own reflections on the progressives’ dilemma.  Observing that the resources of private charities are limited in their ability to help all of the desperate and deserving among us, Mr. Obama concluded:

“…And that’s why  I continue to believe that in a caring and and in a just society, government must have a role to play; that our values, our love and our charity must find expression not just in our families, not just in our places of work and our places of worship, but also in our government and in our politics.”

Says Marcus

“Obama’s remarks resonated because I’ve been bristling recently at conservatives’: dual hijacking: morality and the Constitution as the domain of small government conservatives.  I’d like them back.”

Me too.

Why, particularly during the health-care debates weren’t our leaders all over the moral superiority of providing for the needs of the poor and disadvantaged?  Why did all of the arguments have to center on the economics,  a gnarled and arcane discussion that few understood at the time and that leant themselves so easily to defeat in the public forum by conservative truisms.  Why didn’t our progressive champions in Congress stand shoulder to shoulder and loudly proclaim that we must begin to provide universal proactive healthcare for all Americans because it is the right thing to do; because healthcare is a human right?  Why aren’t they making those arguments right now, to put Republicans on the defensive as they try to take back the little progress we have made toward fulfilling that moral obligation?

And what about reclaiming the Constitution for the left?  It isn’t just about protecting people’s right to be selfish, greedy, bigoted and threatening.  In equal parts, it is about protecting the weak, the unpopular and the vulnerable.  It has in it’s framework the intention to champion an enlightened tolerance and the common good over cynical opportunism.  As Marcus says,

“It’s my constitution as much as it is Michele Bachmann’s.”

It bears repeating here and everywhere else progressive opinion is expressed, as often and as loudly as possible. Social responsibility and tolerance are the moral high-ground.  By upholding them we serve the true values of our Constitution.

“Wow,” I thought, as I read the Messenger piece about Roger Stockham, who is accused of plotting to blow-up a Michigan mosque.  “This guy used to live in my neighborhood.”  He might have been any one of the angry eccentrics who wander muttering but unmolested through small towns and big cities on any given day in America; but apparently he was one of our own.

Now a California resident, Stockham resided on Congress St. in St. Albans in 2002 when he was charged with making threats against the president and against veterans’ facilities at Fort Ethan Allen.  Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and personality disorder, he appears to have led a life of violent delusion ever since returning as a veteran from Viet Nam.  Despite repeated scrapes with the law for his erratic and threatening behavior, Stockham seems to have been sort of  a catch-and-release project, his dangerous profile never engaging the system long enough in any one place to defuse the ticking time-bomb in his mind.

I’ll admit it was the local connection that caught my attention and caused me to think a little deeper about the system’s persistent failure to effectively deal with Mr. Stockham’s disease.  His is just one particularly sensational story among who knows how many tens-of-thousands of troubled individuals who have fallen through the cracks of a seriously under-valued and under-funded public mental health system.  And the incidence of “Roger Stockhams” in this country’s future is likely to grow exponentially over the coming decades.

It has been estimated that one in eight  soldiers suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder; and I remember reading anecdotally that perhaps as many as one in five returning veterans from the Middle East wars will manifest some form of mental trauma in the years following their return home.  As those wars and “engagements” drag on, year after year, the potential grows for a true mental health crisis in the coming years.

Add to the ranks of mentally battered soldiers the vast number of adults beaten down and ravaged by our disabled economy, and the children who inevitably suffer abuse and neglect under the pressures of that same broken economy.  We are facing a future in which mental illness could very well become the number one health issue in this country; and because the existing infrastructure for serving public mental health needs is primarily reactive rather than proactive, we cannot even trust the statistical evidence to predict how great our future need may be.

The survival of our democracy depends as much on our ability to keep its citizens mentally fit as it does on defense of the Bill of Rights, to which we devote so much high-minded rhetoric.  When will we finally give mental healthcare the public priority it so urgently demands?  

Good for Governor Shumlin: for recognizing that warehousing substance-abusers and the mentally ill in prisons does not serve the best interests of the state, both from economic and social standpoints. Good for him for championing universal healthcare and for promising a new state hospital to serve Vermont’s mental health needs.  But a word of caution goes out to the well-intentioned new governor:  don’t underestimate what those needs may be.  We’re going to have to do a whole lot better than just treading water on mental health if we truly want to provide a better future for the next generation of Vermonters.

The casual reader of today’s Free Press headline:

EPA scraps 2002 Lake Champlain Cleanup plan

might get the alarming impression that efforts to clean-up Lake Champlain are simply being abandoned.   Nothing could be further from the truth.  Federal regulations dictate that failure to clean-up the lake is not an option.

What this EPA ruling means is that the federal Agency is agreeing with the Conservation Law Foundation’s (CLF) long-standing arguments that the TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) for phosphorous adopted under “Clean and Clear,” a plan that was approved by the EPA in 2002, was built on faulty models that did not allow a margin of safety in its projections for phosphorus loading scenarios.  To put it simply, run-off control requirements for both farms and development were inadequate under “Clean and Clear,” and no significant progress in phosphorous reduction has therefore been made anywhere in Vermont since the plan was enacted eight years ago.  The EPA ruling means that a new plan must be developed using better models that take into account the numerous variables, such as the potential impact of climate change, that were overlooked in the inadequate Clean and Clear plan.

News of the EPA’s decision will inevitably be met with mixed reviews.  The new Secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, Deb Markowitz, welcomed this decision as an opportunity to work with the Feds to craft a newer, more effective standard, so that the decline of Lake Champlain might finally be reversed.

Some developers and farmers will be less enthusiastic.  So will some willy-nilly local development boards, who see unlimited growth as the single overarching goal, regardless of the ability of infrastructure and the environment to absorb such growth.  These special interests have argued that, even though standards adopted under “Clean and Clear” have not succeeded in reducing phosphorous loading in the lake, levels have not increased proportionate to the new development that has occurred in the area since 2002.   Under the Douglas administration, this argument was accepted by the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR), and the Conservation Law Foundation was frequently vilified as a bunch of  troublemakers undermining the governor’s rapid-growth agenda. Missing from that agenda was adequate attention to sustainability issues.  

The EPA mandate was to significantly reduce phosphorous loading in the lake, not merely to prevent its increase.

Lake lovers can be glad that the new Markowitz-led ANR, under Governor Shumlin’s administration, is poised to restore the balance of sustainability in development decisions.

Despite all the inevitable grumbling from the farming and development sectors, a new and more effective plan for Lake Champlain cleanup will inevitably be crafted, most likely with the assistance of federal funding. Those who drag their feet may be left behind, and the economic rewards will go to those communities and entrepreneurial visionaries who respond most nimbly to the winds of change.

In 2000, the University of Vermont School of Natural Resources conducted exhaustive research on the Environmental and Social Effect of ATVs and ORVs, upon which the ANR based it’s 2001 recommendation that public lands not be made available for ATV use.  This study cited numerous environmental impacts beyond those that might be controlled by “good behaviors” on the part of the riders.  Without the benefit of contradictory evidence, and despite objections from both the general public and the environmental community, in January 2010, former Governor Douglas (aided and abetted by a more submissive ANR) went ahead and opened the door for ATV use on state lands.

Then-Senator Peter Shumlin never made a secret of his opposition to allowing ATV trails to cross state lands. He expressed this opposition even before announcing his candidacy and never wavered.  Why then does it come as such a surprise to some that one of his first moves as Governor is to rescind the limited permit for this activity ?

In today’s Free Press Danny Hale, chief executive of VASA, the Vermont All Terrain Vehicle Sportsman’s Association, is quoted as saying of Shumlin:

“This is just political payback for the people who voted for him,”

Say what?  So now it’s wrong somehow to live-up to your campaign positions…because the majority, who supported you based on your principles expect you to do so?  Not the best argument to make, Mr. Hale!  

Overlooking the unlikelihood that supporters of ATV use on public lands voted for Shumlin in the last election, ATV rider, Lloyd Church of Townsend, threatened political retribution of a different stripe:

“Two percent of the people put the governor in, so when he runs next year, talk to your neighbor. A three percent change could take him out,” Church told the meeting.

Governor Shumlin has expressed his willingness to meet with VASA to discuss the issue, and that’s all well and good; but 3,000 VASA members insisting that they have a “right” to use state lands for recreation, should not be overly indulged.  Of course they have a right to that use, but that right is subject to the same limits observed by all the non-ATV-riders in the state.  If my idea of recreation is to build the perfect campfire, that doesn’t give me the “right” to build one in the middle of the Missisquoi Valley Rail Trail!

Impacts to the natural environment aside, the vast majority of Vermonters do not wish to ride ATV’s on state lands; nor, I’d wager to guess, are they particularly happy about encountering ATV’s as they hike or stroll through state lands.  The argument made by VASA that the elderly or disabled cannot access state lands unless ATV’s are permitted is simply disingenuous.  There are channels available by special permission for these populations to be transported onto state lands, on a case-by-case basis. Once there, most elderly and disabled users would find the experience much more pleasant without the threat of ATV’s bearing noisily down upon them.

So quit yer whining, VASA.  It’s not all about you.  The rest of us have rights, too.

( – promoted by Sue Prent)

Thanks to my intrepid colleague, BP, for alerting me to this development.

Just a month to the day since we talked about it here on Green Mountain Daily, the Times Argus (paywall alert!) reports that the infamous lamp is back on the Governor’s desk.

How many folks remember the former governor banishing a certain lamp featuring the work of celebrated Vermont-born sculptor, Hiram Powers?  The classical sculpture in question was created in the mid-nineteenth century and represents  a nude Greek slavewoman in chains.  Though it created something of a stir way back then, it has since become arguably the most popular example of American neo-classical sculpture. The figure of the Greek Slave was a fixture in the Vermont Statehouse for more than  a century, prompting many lively discussions, as it had become a symbol of the anti-slavery movement in America.  Vermont was rightly proud of it’s native son.

Fast-forward to the dawn of the 21st century when Friends of the State House were in the midst of carefully restoring Vermont’s jewel to its earlier glory.  Among the features of the restoration was the creation of a lamp fashioned from the famous statue, that would proudly illuminate the Governor’s desk.  All well and good as planned during the Dean administration, the Friends’ thoughtful enhancement ran afoul of the new Governor when it was installed on his desk in 2004.

Governor Douglas had the lamp removed because, as press-secretary Jason Gibbs told inquirers, he didn’t want to have to explain it to a visiting third-grader.  Gibbs hastily added that there was a fear that the lamp might be knocked-over and broken.  I guess there must have been plans for a lot of arm-wrestling on the Governor’s desk top.  Gibbs clearly hadn’t gotten up-to-speed yet since it didn’t even occur to him to go for the excuse that representing a woman in chains might be objectionable from some stand-points.  

Governor Douglas didn’t want to have to explain a symbol of the anti-slavery movement to curious schoolchildren!  Wow!  Word quickly got around that what the Governor actually objected to was the “dishabille” of the statue.  She was naked! Welcome to the revisionist and thoroughly air-brushed world of the Bush Republicans.

My household of artists, having had more than one scrape with censorship, followed this charade with great interest.

Some of you habitues of  the State House can probably tell me whatever happened to that infamous lamp.  I’d love to know if Governor Shumlin has restored her to her intended domain. Given her history, she would be the fitting symbol for a new and  enlightened administration.

In the course of my reading on this MLK morning, I happened upon something that caught my attention. On Talking Points Memo,  at the top of the front page was a Google banner ad for three unrelated entities, one of which is “Rockets Red Glare,” a site that boldly proclaims that it is selling “Republican Bumper Stickers.”  This is an odd enough placement for Republican advertising, so I clicked over to look at the inventory.  As you can read from the link, it’s pretty unattractive stuff, but doesn’t go much beyond borderline incendiary.  There are, however, several offerings invoking prayer for Obama with a biblical reference that bears closer examination.  All of these “prayerful” novelties refer to Psalm 108:8, which reads as follows:

“May his days be few; may another take his office.”

Harmless enough, one might suppose; until you read what follows that slyly truncated text.  As The Christian Science Monitor observed back in 2009,  the cited passage takes on a sinister significance when the thought is completed:

If the Republican Party would argue its complete lack of culpability for the atmosphere of menace that wafts in from the trigger-happy fringe, perhaps they would be wise to have their name removed from this “humorous” novelty company’s advertising.