In 1956, when I lived on Chicago’s North Shore (and the only place whiter was Vermont), my mother took my sister and me downtown to see the Christmas tree at Marshall Fields Department Store.  On our inevitable visit to the public bathroom, I encountered the very first person of color I had ever seen.  She was about my mother’s age and similarly dressed, but the unexpectedly deep hue of her skin had me fascinated.  My mother, who was a little more sophisticated than I, hastily distracted my attention and sent me into a cubicle to attend to business. I remember the stranger smiling briefly at me and then my mother.  She seemed unperturbed by my rude display of curiosity.  The anger and incivility that was to erupt throughout much of the country, just a couple of years later, was still in the unimagined future.

It wasn’t until I was in high school that I actually had schoolmates of ethnic diversity.  We were swept up into folk music, Viet Nam, the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. Martin Luther King. I assumed, from all I knew in the shelter of my teen years, that life moved on a continuous trajectory of improvement.  Peace would be restored, equal regard for all men and women would become the norm, and justice and enlightenment would soon prevail everywhere.  I, of course, would achieve some unspecified personal triumph, dazzling all doubters, particularly my long-suffering parents.

Here we are, more than forty years later, and I can’t help but wonder what’s been accomplished since.  True: the North Shore of Richard J. Daley’s buttoned-up Chicago has been transformed into a rainbow of diversity, pulsing with color and music from a thousand other worlds.  Some of that color has even crept into the alabaster halls of the new “super-rich.” But, for the most part, the mission of peace, hope and charity that we inherited from the troubled 60’s was rather too quickly abandoned in easier times;  and now we find ourselves mired in  violence, injustice and poverty on a scale never anticipated forty years ago.  Income inequity in America has reached epic proportions and African Americans still predominate on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.

Statistics predict that the white majority soon will be surpassed in number by the tide of diversity; but rather than embracing this refreshment of the gene pool,  the ignorant choose to hunker down in hostile bands of special interests, hurling insults, lies and paranoia over their crumbling walls of resistance while the real power, the money,  is further consolidated in the hands of less than 1% of the population, most of whom still are white and male. Once again, we face an uncertain future in which the poor and middle class do not seem likely to get an even break and violence is our biggest export.

Were he alive today, even Dr. King might find the prospects discouraging.  

It appears that Tom Salmon is not content with his role as State Auditor and would like to reach further into other branches of government, as was recently demonstrated with his odd foray into agricultural policy.

This time, as reported by Seven Days,  it’s the judiciary he’d like to influence.  Perhaps still chafing at the release of his drunk driving arrest video, Salmon took the unusual step of e-mailing Judge Geoffrey Crawford about a case that was currently under his consideration.  The issue in question was who should bear the cost of access to public records.  Judge Crawford, you may recall, is the jurist whose ruling made Mr. Salmon’s arrest video available for public viewing.

In his e-mail, Mr. Salmon apparently took the position that, in the case concerning a fee in excess of $1,300. that was levied against the Vermont State Employees Association for  the privilege of inspecting public records, the Judge should rule against the workers:

“I hope as you consider the issue with public records requests, ample consideration can be given to those in state offices which undergo political and insincere requests for information,” wrote Salmon in his Dec. 29 email. “Such requests need to have boundaries.”

Un-bloody-believable.  So much for the transparency and accountability that Salmon insists he brings to his office.  These comments demonstrate remarkable tone-deafness and a total disrespect for the state workers at the center of the case.  It seems that it’s all about him.

Salmon noted several records requests of his office, one from a Middlebury attorney Mitch Pearl, another from Seven Days and a third from his Democratic challenger in the 2010 election, Doug Hoffer. In all, his office produced more than 1500 pages of records in response to these various requests

Doug Hoffer offers this explanation of his requests:

In my case, I requested information about a number of items dealing with his official activities including 1) his office calendar to determine, among other things, if he had met with officials from Vermont Yankee before writing to legislators criticizing their efforts to make Entergy fill the decommissioning fund (he did, but he didn’t inform legislators); 2) travel expenditures for Mr. Salmon’s staff (very questionable); and 3) Mr. Salmon’s half-baked effort to “solve” the dairy crisis (a waste of taxpayer resources).

Seven Days correctly refers to Salmon’s attempt to influence Judge Crawford’s decision as being “ex parte” in nature.  As such it was, at the very least, inappropriate, bordering on unethical behavior for an elected official.

Once again, the loosey-goosey nature of legal definitions regarding conflicts of interest and related issues in Vermont make it almost impossible to hold Salmon accountable for his presumptions.  Judge Crawford, in any case, was not swayed by his arguments and ruled in favor of the State Employees Association.

Still, you’ve got to wonder in what direction Mr. Salmon’s attention will wander next.  Who knows?  Maybe the chair in the Auditor’s office is simply too small for him and he gets the fidgets.

I was in Toronto when I caught the news of the Arizona shootings.  Coincidentally that evening, a Pakistani cab driver wiled away a few moments in heavy traffic by directing my attention to the new CAMH mental health facility that was still under construction in the city center.  He commented on the huge number of residential  patients it was expected to house and then added that it was a good thing because so many more people are in need of mental health services in these difficult times.

This got me to thinking about what must be the state of Arizona’s  mental healthcare preparedness.  There is a mental healthcare crisis in most states, and having heard about patients dropped from transplant lists under the hard-nosed penny-pinching of Jan Brewer’s Arizona, it was unsurprising to find the following in the June 2010 newsletter of the American Psychiatric Association:

In Arizona-which, according to the report, has the highest likelihood that a severely mentally ill person is in prison rather than a hospital-TAC reports that there are 47,974 prisoners and 827 individuals occupying inpatient psychiatric hospital beds. Assuming that 16 percent of inmates have a serious mental illness, that means that 7,676 individuals in Arizona jails and prisons have a serious mental illness-or 9.3 times more than are receiving hospital treatment for such an illness.

So, Arizona seems to have come to the conclusion that the best way to deal with mental illness is to wait until the patient triggers the law by harming himself or someone else. Jared Lee Lougher will now join that warehoused population.

There are a lot of take-aways from this latest incident of senseless, preventable violence.  Most will center on the angry political rhetoric directed at Tea Party outliers and other unstable individuals.  Some will focus on the complete absence of gun regulation in wide-open Arizona. Unfortunately, little attention will be paid to what this illustrates about  the crisis in mental healthcare throughout the country.

Even that Toronto cabdriver, transplanted from a country full of it’s own horrific troubles, readily recognizes the urgency of the mental health need and the value to be had in addressing it effectively.  What is the matter with the American public who will tolerate their elected representatives intoning the text of  the sanitized Constitution and referring to it as “sacred” (yes, I heard a Democratic House member actually use that word twice), while they still refuse to face the fact that so long as both the mental and physical health of their constituents is not regarded as a right, solemn references to the document meant to uphold the values of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” represent the most grotesque kind of travesty?

It would appear, at least anecdotally, that the majority of Americans would choose the broadest popular interpretation of “the right to bear arms” over the narrowest insurance of those seminal values in our Declaration of Independence.  It’s no wonder we have become such a dangerous cipher for much of the world beyond our borders.

‘Ever wonder what sort of New Year’s Resolutions Vermont’s politicos might be making this year?  Here are a few suggestions:

Frank Cioffi and the”Democrats for Dubie:”  to finally call themselves what they really are: Republicans.

Outgoing Governor Jim Douglas: to apply for that coveted job as a Walmart Greeter.

Tom Salmon: to enroll in a remedial English Composition course.

Paul Beaudry:  to apply for that coveted job as a Walmart Greeter.

Larry Smith and the entire cast of the Vermont Yankee Follies:  To pack light.

Outgoing Public Service Commissioner Dave O’Brian: to give Larry Smith a call.

Bob Kiss: to get an unlisted number.

Brian Dubie:  to finally make it to those anger management classes.

Bernie Sanders: to not quit his day-job for a run at the presidency.

Peter Welch: to be more assertive.

Incoming Governor Peter Shumlin: to find six useable synonyms for the word “plan.”

Feel free to add lots more!  

Year-end syndrome is upon us.  Everyone feels a little hung-over whether or not they’ve indulged. The holidays tend to be defined by how the whole year played-out, for better or worse.  In good years we kill ourselves constructing the “perfect” celebration, embrace hordes of friends and relatives with our hospitality, then sigh with relief when it’s all over.  In bad years we hunker down, turn a partially blind eye on grim reality and determine to maintain a brave face of cheer until the last visitor is wished well. Then we sigh with relief when it’s all over.

“Good” year or not, the season brims with guilt and regret; and with the certain knowledge that time is racing us all to one final Christmas, one final New Year.  Perhaps that is why some families do nothing but bicker over the holidays.  Perhaps that is why, statistically, so many lives end at this time of year…sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.    Both of my parents passed away in the week between Christmas and the New Year; one in 1986 and the other in the final hours of the twentieth century.   I couldn’t help but feel that this was somehow intentional on a deep interior plane.

2010 was rough.  Resources have been short in my household, but thankfully we have work now at the end of the year. Others have not been so lucky and face the new year with no relief in sight.  A plague of personal crises among friends and extended family tempers the forced gayety of the season this year, as each one silently reflects on the loss and challenges that lay ahead.  There is no gift that will ease grief, loneliness and desperation.

There are things to celebrate about 2010; but much of that has to do with circumstances not being quite so bad as they might have been.  So raise a glass (if only one) to 2010 as it fades into the acrid mist of memory.  Innocent of the future, we’ll tumble into 2011 and simply take what comes our way.

There has been much hand-wringing in the media about the results of the U.S. census that show Vermont’s population growth slowing.  Some, like Douglas spokesman Jim Coriell, choose to receive the statistics as validation of Jim Douglas’ doom and gloom prognostication for “business unfriendly” Vermont:

Coriell pointed to Vermont’s relatively high taxes and cost of living as key factors in limiting growth. “The numbers do reflect the need for a continued focus on these issues,” he said.

We know that whole song and dance pretty well at this point, as it has largely driven the out-going administration’s arguments for gutting environmental regulation as well. But at least one group of Vermonters is not embracing the census results as representative of a half-empty cup for the state.

George Plumb, director of a group called Vermonters for a Sustainable Population, saw some hope in the state’s slow population growth. He said ultimately, a steady population would help the state avoid over-using resources and help Vermont plan for future problems, such as the effects of global warming or environmental damage due to expanding land use.

Well finally!  Given the lack of media interest in this extremely valid viewpoint, I was pleasantly surprised to see at least a nodding recognition of its existence in the Free Press.

What Vermonters for a Sustainable Population have hit upon is the rational argument that “growth,” as the generally accepted model for success, carries a huge and erroneous assumption about the world we live in and the extent of its ability to support perpetual enlargement.  It is this model that drives American business, and makes her success dependent on ever greater consumption by ever greater numbers of people.  We have only to look at other places in the world where population growth has already outpaced the ability of resource renewal to accommodate it, to see where this model will inevitably lead if left unchecked or accelerated.

As Plumb points out, Vermont doesn’t need to have a continually growing population to ensure economic prosperity; and he cites, as an example, the fact that the state’s unemployment rate is significantly less than the national average.  What is needed is a fresh, positive perspective on what the demands of the current population are and will be; and how those can best be served by a Vermont workforce.  If the population is demographically older, healthcare supplies and services should join energy efficiency products, green technology and local foods as high on our “to do” list. Coupled with the stimulus provided by “green” enterprises, high quality jobs and education in healthcare and related services to the elderly will inevitably attract enough younger workers to replenish and rebalance the population without overtaxing our resources.

One can only hope that the Shumlin administration will not be seduced by the same faulty arguments of the “growth lobby” (read: big business) that compelled Jim Douglas to overlook the opportunities inherent in a stable population of local consumers, no matter what its median age.

At the risk of being extremely dull at this liveliest of seasons, I think it might be time to revisit Vermont’s Open Meeting Law.  This is the very important rule that protects the public’s right to know, and ensures that no decisions are made in secret by City Councils or Selectboards.  

An example of a likely violation was mentioned in today’s Free Press:

South Burlington City Council Chairman Mark Boucher said Monday that he gave retired City Manager Chuck Hafter a laptop computer and printer after Boucher privately polled the rest of the council in April.  The council at the end of its regular meeting was asked to re-affirm the private deal of giving away a taxpayer-owned computer to Hafter.

What’s wrong with that, you might ask?  The value of the used computer was relatively little and the City has a full back-up.  The problem is that, by law, City Council members are not permitted to “privately poll” themselves about a matter concerning City property:

Whenever a quorum (a majority) of a public body meet to discuss the business of the board or to take action, the open meeting law will apply. This means that if a majority of a board find themselves together at a social function they must take care not to discuss the business of the board!

The exclamation point is actually there in the law for emphasis.

A couple of weeks ago, a similar issue was raised in the St. Albans Messenger (not available online) following a meeting of the Town/City Fire Advisory Committee.  The Advisory Committee includes individuals who also sit on the Town Selectboard.  The other members of the Selectboard apparently decided to attend the meeting as well, providing, by default, a quorum capable of decision-making for the Town Selectboard.  By law, this obligated the Selectboard to formally “warn” the meeting so that the public would be aware that a quorum would be present.  Several of the Selectboard members have been serving in that capacity for enough years that they can not claim ignorance of the law, and the City Manager shares responsibility for this over-sight.  As Michelle Monroe mentioned in her Messenger coverage of the meeting, if a member of the public were to complain, the Town would be liable for a fine of $500.

It would appear that such a small fine is insufficient penalty, as City Councils and Selectboards seem to be pretty casual about observing the law.  And this returns me to my other complaint about the laws governing conduct by Vermont’s public officials: the lack of adequate definitions and meaningful penalties for the exercise of conflicts of interest.   Both conflicts of interest and open meeting violations are byproducts of the traditional intimacy and informality of Vermont’s institutions of government.  While this intimacy has it’s upside in terms of unique opportunities for public involvement, we must not allow the nature of this relationship to obscure the fact that allowing violations of open meeting and conflicts of interest to go unchecked will ultimately corrupt the process.

Right next door, in the “Live Free or Die” state of New Hampshire a Christian couple is seeking to remove a book on social economics from their son’s school curriculum because they don’t like the way the author represents Christ as having been a poor man on the fringe of society.

The book that Aimee and Dennis Taylor object to is “Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America,” (2001) by Barbara Ehrenreich, who documented her experiences and reflections on our economy based on time spent actually trying to get by on minimum wage.  Ahead of its time in many ways, this award-winning book is pretty universally recognized for its seminal importance in drawing attention to the realities of American lives trapped in the economic race to the bottom.

In Nickel and Dimed, Ms. Ehrenreich briefly describes a tent revival meeting, recounting how it caused her to reflect on the emphasis that is placed on the crucified Christ rather than the exemplary life he is said to have led, teaching about social justice and choosing to live a common life among the poorest of the poor.  

“Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say,” she wrote.”

That view of the legendary life of Christ is apparently objectionable to some tightly-wound Christians; and rather than courageously stand-up for the value of a thought-provoking education, Bedford School Superintendent Tim Mayes took the low-road:

“I thought we could seek better balance in terms of covering multiple topics in personal finance, and maybe we were spending too much time on the one topic of working as a minimum wage employee,” he said Monday.

I’m very glad that he is so optimistic about the future of his students as to conclude that the topic of working as a minimum wage employee doesn’t even merit a single targeted reading assignment.

There is also the Taylors’ objection to the book’s “foul language,” of which there of course is none in other twentieth century literature of merit, not to mention most of popular culture everywhere.

I  went to “The Immaculata” Catholic high school for girls; and when I was a senior there in 1967, we were assigned The Catcher in the Rye  by Sister Mary Catherine. You’ve really got to wonder at the detour in pedagogical progress since then!

Be careful what you wish for.  The Taylors might not be so happy with the trend they are in danger of creating.  What if Muslim parents begin objecting to assignments that discuss 9/11, because some Muslims figure in that story in a less than flattering light?  Some might take the popular and flawed fundamentalist position that this is a Christian country; so, in their view, constitutional “waivers” and protections should go only one way.  

If school boards routinely cave to the widespread efforts by the Christian right to impose revisionism on their curricula, what hope is there for the future of American excellence on the world stage?  Where are the objections to this festival of ignorance, on the part of the Christian left; the ones who continue to live by those principles of social justice and tolerance that I was taught?  I know they’re out there and didn’t all die-off with the good sisters at “The Immaculata.”

There has been an impassioned outcry for Muslims to “do the right thing” and speak out against the terrorism of jihad fundamentalists.  We should be asking as well for Christians to rally against the fundamentalist Christian crack-pots, ginning-up hatred and ignorance from their platforms of self-serving righteousness.  Jesus must be spinning in his sepulchre!

Hope springs eternal in the breast of Vermont Yankee supporters who maintain that, even after countless leaks, squeaks and outright collapses; even after the legislature voted to let it go, and even after the man who led that vote is seated as Governor, there still could be some way to keep the infernal thing in operation.  In today’s Free Press, VY spokesman Larry Smith and Brad Ferland of Vermont Energy Partnership both expressed the hope that the Legislature could somehow be persuaded to take up the matter again; and Steve Costello of CVPS says

“If it could be shown to be safe, we want it,

But there’s the rub.  Every story coming out of VY over the past two years has provided more reason to believe that it is definitely unsafe to operate the plant beyond it’s predicted closure date.

Apparently, supporters think that the sale of VY to a different entity could somehow put things right again; but simple commonsense predicts that any new owner of the antediluvian facility would most likely be regarding it as a strategic liability to be minimally maintained and mined for whatever tax credits or incentives might be available before an unceremonious death- dump on Vermont’s front stoop.   And a couple of years of marginally cheaper power are supposed to be enough to keep us on the hook? Please... we may be a rural state but we weren’t born yesterday!

Some, like Orleans Senator Vince Iluzzi envision a scenario in which the sale of VY to a different entity might allow the NCR (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) to overrule Vermont’s Legislature and renew VY’s license unilaterally.

“Vermont may not have jurisdiction over Vermont Yankee,” said Illuzzi, who voted against the plant in the Senate this year and said if there were a new vote, he’s not sure how he would vote.

Now that would be really well-received by fiercely independent Vermonters.

Arne Gundersen, who advises the Legislature on all things nuclear, doubts that the NRC would intrude to such a degree, although he can well see Entergy courting any legal maneuver that might further delay the inevitable shut-down.

That’s a little like sending the Lusitania in to rescue the Titanic,” he said.

One thing is certain, before that glow-farm on the banks of the Connecticut River is finally shutdown, VY and her owners will have milked every opportunity available for delay.

In a week scarred with personal and public bad news, what a joy it was to follow the heroic exploits of Bernie Sanders on the Senate floor.  Our own “Mr. Smith” did us proud once again, fighting the corruption of power and defending the little guy.  I am sure he will now be smugly relegated by the right to Poster-Boy-in-Chief of left-wing crazy.  That was to be expected.  With all the irresponsible wing-nuts the Republicans have steering their agenda these days, they’ll point to any demonstration of independence on the other side as somehow being equivalent.  They’ll say, “There goes Vermont again, getting too big for its britches.  Remember Howard Dean?”

But that won’t sell much beyond the filthy rich and “take-back” right.  This country is bleeding fast, filled to the brim with the walking wounded, as Wall Street and the banks divvy up the spoils from their economic empire-building.  If Congress doesn’t listen with empathy to the words of the Independent Senator from Vermont, the vast majority of Americans who are looking at a future of diminishing returns for their toil in the bleeding classes will.

The tired old arguments for extending the Bush Tax Cuts for the rich are so lacking in economic merit and substance that it is only the arcane gymnastics of Congressional deal-making that have allowed extension of these entitlements to get serious consideration at all.  Resigned to their lot as insignificant place-holders in an increasingly unjust society, most people are too busy just treading water to invest time and energy in closely monitoring the senate process.  So they simply accept that, once again, the rich will get richer and the poor will get the shaft.

It may just be a glorious tilt at the windmill of inflexible power,  but Bernie’s eight-plus hours of scorching rhetoric yesterday cannot help but reach the minds and ears of the suffering masses…and that is a start.  It’s what every one of us would do if we found ourselves in his position, but how rarely does that happen in “real life.”

Have a good lie-down this weekend, Senator Sanders.  You’ve earned it.  I’m not one of those who hope Bernie runs for President.  I hope he stays right where he is and continues to do what he does best, bringing truth and justice to the seat of power.  One bruised and busted hero in a generation is enough for me.