They do; they get it.  Profiled in today’s Free Press, B&J’s new CEO, Jostein Solheim took the opportunity to reaffirm the company’s commitment to Vermont with some very well chosen words:

And to you, Governor Douglas: as you prepare to grab your golden parachute please do us the courtesy of leaving the vessel that was entrusted to you intact rather than consumed in the fire of your unrealized agenda.

An interesting appeal from Sen. Bartlett found its way to my inbox yesterday, effectively closing the book on her candidacy for me.  I wanted to include a link here, but unsurprisingly, the message does not appear on Bartlett’s website.  Instead, I have chosen a few quotes to share:

Since Howard Dean we have had to choose between a liberal and a conservative. Douglas and Racine. Douglas and Parker. Douglas and Clavelle. Douglas and Symington or Pollina. This time moderates have a choice for governor that reflects our values. Fiscal responsibility and balance.

Moderates have a choice in the Democratic primary. Susan Bartlett is the standard bearer for people who believe we need to thoughtfully make changes to improve life in Vermont. She cherishes our traditional Vermont values and seeks to build on them. She is the only choice for people who want an affordable government that provides the services we need.”

If you want a governor that reflects your values you will have to help… Get your friends to vote in the democratic primary… You will have to help or you will have to choose between the lesser of two evils.

There’s more, but you get the gist. The text is laced heavily with references to “Vermont values” and a Greek chorus of donation links repeats the phrase, “It’s time for the middle to rise up!” We get the code, Susan.  Really? “Vermont values?” Isn’t that the old stem-winder for the “Take Back Vermont” crowd?

I invite Senator Bartlett to tell us why any progressive-minded voter should not take this as a doorslam of resounding finality.

Turn over almost any rock these days, and you’ll find some local-office holder freely exercising a conflict of interest. Right now in Highgate, the rock seems to be the source of the conflict. Here’s what we know so far:

Highgate Selectboard member Brian Rowell has been accused of impropriety with regard to the sale of a quantity of stone to the Town for reconstruction of a road (Mill Hill) washed out by heavy rains. The Town was the recipient of a Town Highway Emergency Grant from the state to address the problem, and apparently Mr. Rowell saw nothing wrong with writing the check to himself.

Details of the controversy were provided in two news stories that appeared in the St. Albans Messenger on Saturday, March 13 and Monday, March 15.  Mr. Rowell and his brother Bill are the owners and operators of Green Mountain Dairy in Highgate. Through their other business, Green Mountain Forest Products, the brothers sold the Town of Highgate a quantity of “riprap” stabilizing stone for $14,600.  The stone had been removed from their property in the permitted installation of a methane digester; but it appears that the stone was sold months before the permit was issued.  The brothers claim that they assumed the permit allowing installation of the digester also allowed sale of the stone but seem to have offered no explanation for the timing discrepancy.

At issue is not just the permit status of the stone sale, but also the price and apparent absence of a competitive bidding process.  According to the March 13 article:

The Messenger examined the Mill Hill project records at Highgate Town Hall and could find no record of any competitive bids or quotes for any aspect of the project.

While  acknowledging that obtaining quotes from multiple suppliers “would have been good practice,”  Alec Portalupi of the Agency of Transportation told the paper that this does not necessarily place the transaction in violation of the law.  Apparently it is up to the individual towns to establish rules for procurement, and Highgate has neither a purchasing policy nor one governing conflicts of interest!

However, that was not the end of Selectman Rowell’s problems; nor indeed, of the Town’s:

The Messenger reviewed all of the Highgate Selectboard  minutes for 2006 and could not find a record of a single vote in which the selectboard moved to hire any of the companies involved in the project…Depending on when and how those decisions were made, the town may have violated the state open meeting law which requires that all votes be taken in open session and recorded in the minutes.

Mr. Rowell might yet find himself in the running for the “Stinking Salmon Award” for 2010.

(This was a nice piece of investigative reporting on the part of Messenger staffer Michelle Monroe.  It’s a shame that the Messenger does not see fit to offer either article on the internet, but we will follow developments with interest; so look for updates.)

Just in time for St. Patrick’s day, there’s a new player in the marketing trend that has notorious corporate offenders energetically painting themselves green in order to entice the growth sector represented by environmentally concerned consumers.  Walmart, it seems, wants its piece of the green pie.

In a new blog-post Stacy Mitchell (The Big Box Swindle), Senior Researcher for the New Rules Project scolds environmental groups for failing to take a closer look at  Walmart’s recent attempts to green-up their corporate image:  

So, on the one hand, you have Wal-Mart’s sustainability program, which proposes to reduce the emissions associated with some of the products it sells. And, on the other hand, you have Wal-Mart’s core business model, which ensures that we have to replace those products far more often.  This is where some of our most prominent environmental groups have really failed us. They’ve loudly cheered Wal-Mart’s every green announcement, but have done little to help us understand or prod the company to confront the deep sustainability issues that are at the heart of its business model.

Mitchell points to Walmart’s relentless practice of consuming vast tracts of farmland and wildlife habitat to site it’s supercenters, accessible only by automobile, and the seas of parking lots that accompany them.  By effectively smothering local competitors that customers might access on foot, Walmart’s ultimate success hinges on forcing consumers to get into their cars to purchase even a carton of milk.

Wal-Mart has carefully defined the parameters of sustainability to avoid running up against the basic formula of how it operates and grows. Glaringly absent from Wal-Mart’s recent sustainability report, for example, is any mention of sprawl or land use. There’s no discussion of how much undeveloped, carbon-absorbing habitat its big stores consume each year, even as the nation’s supply of both developed retail space and abandoned “greyfields” mushrooms to epic proportions.

I am forever opening the paper to some new head-scratcher of a disconnect.  A couple of days ago it was Bunning yowling that not one more cent should go to the unemployed until Congress had a plan  (presumably one of which HE approved) to pay for it.  This morning, it was a tiny afterthought on the weather page about the Marines landing (again) on Iwo Jima that caught my eye.  It seems that, this being the 65th anniversary of that immortal bloodbath/victory, someone at the Pentagon thought it would be a good idea to throw a party:

Both my Mom and Dad served in WWII; and I understand and appreciate the sacrifice those men made at Iwo Jima, but is this an entirely appropriate use of taxpayer dollars when there are people living in their cars in America because the country has fallen on hard times and all of the safety nets  are failing?  How much does it cost to fly all of the celebratory paraphernalia and personnel to Iwo Jima, and how much did the staging of the event cost?   I think this is a legitimate question as well as why this was necessary on the 65th anniversary of the battle?  What happened on the 50th anniversary, the 55th anniversary and the 60th?   Will the 75th bring a full-scale reenactment of the battle?

How many other similar commemorative enterprises, toasts and roasts, flying beneath the radar of taxpayer indignation, go undetected every year?  In my humble opinion, that sacrosanct Pentagon budget needs a much closer look.    How many people did they say die every year in the U.S. for lack of healthcare?  If we can’t find the means to care for the living in this country that our forefathers fought to preserve, it is an insult to their memory when we pile any of that desperately need coin on their graves.

Listening to a recap of Republican obstructionism during Thursday’s healthcare “summit,”  I was struck by how many times gentlemen of the opposition insisted that “the American people don’t want this” or “the majority of the American people oppose this bill.”  These and similar assertions refer to polling that, as far as I know, has never been publicly vetted for choice of words or for selection of participants.   Try as I would to find a statistical analysis on the web of the poll that supposedly shows a majority of Americans opposing healthcare reform, I failed utterly.  Like most people, I often ask myself who exactly are they polling. No one I know was officially queried regarding this healthcare bill.  If I were polled, the phrasing of the questions would be extremely significant to the manner in which I would respond.  I think this is especially true now that so many Americans identify themselves as “independent,” and so are disinclined to simply ratify one party line or the other.  

Realizing full well that I am speaking into a vacuum, I want to propose some new ethical guidelines for citing policy polling results in a public forum.  I know the American public is thought to have an extremely short attention span, so media outlets always want to cut to the chase before their audience tunes-out; but it is simply irresponsible to report the results of a poll, even from a supposedly non-partisan source, without identifying the process for selecting participants, size of the representative group, and their geographic distribution.  That information should then be posted prominently on the websites of all news organizations so that it is easily accessible by the general public.   It should be demanded of any pundit or politician who cites poll results, that they “footnote” the citing with a link to the data regarding that particular poll.  I know this sounds unreasonably burdensome, but when we can’t trust even the people we send to Congress to tell the truth anymore, what choice is there other than to mandate disclosure, much in the way networks require stock analysts to reveal their holdings?  By the way, that was a neat trick performed by the Sunlight Foundation, streaming a tally of the worthy members’ healthcare industry contributions as they squared-off live in the healthcare summit. ( I couldn’t access it, myself. because my poor old eMac can’t be upgraded, but that’s the subject for a different rant.)  Don’t you just wish that feature could be repeated every time an elected official appeared on  television to make his/her case regarding policy of one sort or another?

That’s all I’ve got.  It was Sunday, and I found myself going to that place where we all tilt at windmills from time to time.

Even as we contemplate the grim prospect of a glow from the Connecticut River illuminating both our homes and our livers; even as the Vermont “brand” twists in the winds of VY indecision, there is at least one thing to celebrate about environmental initiative in Vermont.  The League of Conservation Voters just released the latest results from their National Environmental Scorecard, and our DC delegation came up smelling of roses:

Senator Leahy – 100%

Senator Sanders – 100%

Representative Welch – 93%

 From the Vermont League of Conservation Voters own press release:

Montpelier, VT – Today, the Vermont League of Conservation Voters joined the national League of Conservations Voters in releasing the 2009 National Environmental Scorecard, revealing scores for the Vermont delegation in the first session of the 111th Congress. For 30 years, the National Environmental Scorecard issued by LCV has been the nationally accepted yardstick used to rate members of Congress on environmental, public health and energy issues.

“We applaud those members of the Vermont delegation who fought in 2009 to bring clean energy jobs to the state and reduce our national dependence on foreign oil, such as Senators Leahy and Sanders as well as Representative Welch ” said Vermont LCV Executive Director, Todd Bailey. “The 2009 Scorecard clearly exposes Vermont’s entire delegation for what they really are: willing to put corporate polluters and other special interests ahead of a cleaner, more secure energy future for Vermont.”

The 2009 Scorecard includes 11 Senate and 13 House votes dominated by clean energy and climate but also encompassing other environmental issues such as public lands, water and wildlife conservation.  In Vermont, both Senator Leahy and Sanders earned a perfect 100 percent score in 2009. Representative Welch, Vermont’s lone House member, score in 2009 was 93 percent with an average Senate score of 100 percent.

“The 2009 National Environmental Scorecard illustrates the extent to which the Obama administration and the 111th Congress began to move our nation towards a clean energy future that will create new jobs, make America more energy independent and curb global warming pollution,” said LCV President Gene Karpinski.   “However, it also makes clear that there is still much work to be done, first and foremost to finish the work started in the House by swiftly passing a comprehensive clean energy and climate bill in the Senate.”

Representative Welch voted for the landmark American Clean Energy and Security Act, which would help bring more than 4,270 clean energy jobs to Vermont.*

I opened my Free Press this AM to see the AP story about a new plan for economic recovery in Haiti that would harness the devastated Haitian population as a cheap labor pool for the garment industry.  The workers would earn $3.09 for eight hours of toil, allowing the factory owners a profit of 22%.    Under the plan, which would expand an existing sweatshop industry in Haiti, the goods would then be imported to the U.S. for resale at substantial profit to the corporate beneficiaries. The example given in the AP story was a $500. suit sold by Jos. A. Banks.  Nice; really nice.

Apparently, our esteemed President Obama has endorsed this plan and proposes that U.S. retailers commit to obtaining at least 1% of the clothing they sell from Haiti(as opposed to other sweatshop economies.)  The plan is the brainchild of Oxford University Professor Paul Collier and is getting a boost from that perennial friend of “free” trade (as opposed to fair trade) Bill Clinton. Am I the only one who finds this idea the least bit disturbing?

I cannot dispute that it will, in the short-run, create jobs for people who do not currently have them; but I can’t help wondering what are the long-term consequences for workers everywhere of officially reinforcing the loathsome practice of labor exploitation.  There have been countless studies documenting the “race to the bottom” that has resulted from the unrestricted “free trade” practice of chasing the most desperate workforce from island to island in the relentless pursuit of cheaper goods and greater profits.  “This will not end well,” they all seem to say; and yet, the first economic recovery model that even our U.S. Democratic leaders put forward for this desperately poor population is to further reinforce the pattern of exploitation that has held them powerless in their own country almost since its inception.

Surely there is something else that could employ all those people without extending the local impact of their poverty to all the other exploited labor populations throughout the world!  How about getting all of those resort, cruise ship, and luxury vacation venues, as well as the corporations that have historically mined Haiti for cheap labor,  to pony-up for some serious infrastructure and land-improvement work that could employ as many people as the expanded sweatshops and leave them with some real value for their labor? Stabilization of agricultural lands, further development of tourism and expanded markets for traditional  products should be the goal rather than systemic reinforcement of impoverishing practices.

When did we become so callous as a nation that we simply accept sweatshop labor as the solution to any kind of economic problem?

Does somebody tell these kids to wrap themselves in the U.S. flag when they win a medal?  Is that somewhere in the handbook? Around my house, we joke that they should be wrapping themselves in one of those novelty beach towels that have a gigantic dollar bill printed on one side.

Now, I don’t want to take anything away from the individual achievements of the athletes, or from the pure pleasure of watching the human body perform at its outer limits; but a little perspective is definitely warranted every time this particular circus comes to town.  Probably even before Germany attempted to use the 1936 Olympics to “sell” its population and the world on a certain brand of racial superiority, marketing has been the underlying agenda of the Olympics.  In the 2010 Olympics, we are looking at a multi-billion-dollar global marketing engine with many corporate drivers.  Nationalistic sentiment is simply a branding device, cooly superimposed on the product vehicle in order to speed consumption.  

At a time when there is widespread poverty among U.S. children, marginal education for most of them and very little left in the way of social “safety nets” to offset their complete lack of opportunity; why do we embrace the fantasy that the U.S. Olympic team represents the most talented and motivated young people in the country?  There is absolutely no acknowledgment anywhere in the mainstream media of the social inequities which guarantee that the vast majority of young people in this country are simply eliminated from the performance pool before they even take their first steps. Corporate sponsors are there only for the few who already have a demonstrated potential to sell product.  They aren’t reaching into the ghettos and slums to offer training to untested youngsters, no matter what heart-warming fiction the public is willing to believe.

Olympic athletes are largely the spawn of affluent families who can afford to devote the time and resources necessary to produce a world-class athlete. I have no problem with that.  It’s a simple reality.  I’d just like a little truth in advertising.

Well, that is very interesting. Once again, for the sheer devil of it, I tried posting  a response to the “Happy Is…”piece.  It had not had any new comments in a day or so, so I thought I’d test the waters.  My first comment went from “pending” to posted in about half-an hour, so I posted a second comment adding that I didn’t think this sort of material did much for Huff-Post’s credibility.  Now I have just discovered that both posts have been removed! Is anyone else game to test the gatekeepers themselves? If so, let me know how you fare.

I just have to share something that completely cracks me up.  A couple of days ago, I was scanning through Huff-Post and came upon a curious post entitled “How Happy Is…How I Met My Life Partner.”  Don’t ask me why; maybe it was the curious nonsequitur, but I went ahead and read the post by one Sophie Keller, identified as a “happiness expert;” and it was a doozy!   How exactly did Ms, Keller acquire this remarkable expertise? The article says that she began her journey in high school by taking up a life of self-help experimentation that ran the gammut:

So through my teens, while my friends spent their money on drinking and clubbing, I spent my money on self-development.  I started at 14, when my best friend and I learned to do TM (Transcendental Meditation) and religiously meditated twice a day until our late 20’s.  At the same time, I started to experience all different types of therapy: hypnosis, NLP, Gestalt Therapy, Transactional Analysis, Alexander Technique, Rebirthing, Psycho synthesis, Body Mind therapy, Pilates, Shamanism, Life Coaching, Reiki, Rolfing, etc.  Additionally, I took part for years in numerous group personal development trainings, as well as many other body works. (Believing deeply, as I do, in the mind-body connection.)

Drinking and clubbing weren’t exactly options in my teen years; and you couldn’t buy much therapy with the proceeds from baby-sitting; so it’s safe to assume that we didn’t exactly move in the same social circles. But hell-bent on her path to Mr. Right, Ms. Keller, apparently, still had her work cut out for her:

After 18 years of working on myself, I knew that I had cleared all the past issues that were stopping me from making my life work completely. I had dropped all masks and was completely authentic in who I was. And then, just when I was least expecting it, my husband, Oliver, came along. That complete letting go meant that I was ready for him.

The remainder of the piece is sort of an infomercial about how she has used a “conglomeration” of what she learned to create her own practice and is now about to share that happiness expertise with readers of Huff-Post in a weekly feature on how to find one’s “ideal partner.”  I honestly thought it might be a sly humor piece.  No comments had posted yet, but two were pending; so I sent my own:  “You’re kidding, right?  How could eighteen years of compulsive navel-gazing make you better prepared to share someone else’s life?”  I checked back a little later and found that there were now NO comments, pending or otherwise!  Interesting.  Electronic glitch?  I posted again and checked back after another hour or so.  There were a small number of innocuous responses up, many with encouraging replies from Ms. Sophie; and none pending.  I checked my profile page for clues.  It showed that I had posted to Ms. Keller’s article, but the actual postings  had been expunged from my  list of comments.  I tried again, for the sheer devil of it; each successive attempt was less barbed than the one before.  I wanted to see if there was a threshold for acceptance or if I had been permanently banned from the happiness guru’s inner sanctum. Looks like I’m on the outs for good.  I notice, however, that as time went by and comments were few, she finally began to allow not just the odd wry remark, but even some more blistering than my own, to stand unexpurgated.

I had heard of people’s comments being blocked, but never experienced it myself.  I assumed you had to say something REALLY bad to get the boot from HP!  Now I’m not so sure.  Can someone please tell me if Huf-Post bloggers each moderate their own response forums?  If so, it certainly seems like Sophie Keller truly has found the secret to happiness after all her years of self-discovery: Don’t let anyone say you’re wrong!