You’d think so. But there’s at least one significant issue where at least one media outlet has completely failed. I speak of utility-scale wind, and I speak of the usually admirable VTDigger.

Since the beginning of this year, Digger has posted (by my count) 16 opinion columns whose primary focus was support for, or opposition to, large-scale wind farms.

13 were opposed to wind. Three were in favor.

That’s the kind of score that invokes the Mercy Rule in softball games.

Not to pick on VTDigger; its organization makes an archive scan simple and free. This isn’t true for the Mitchell Family Organ (or the Freeploid), or I’d be able to verify my strong impression that the opinion pages of the Herald and Times Argus have been similarly slanted against wind. Anecdotally, I recall a recent Sunday issue which presented two opinion pieces under a header that said “The Wind Debate” or something to that effect. Both pieces were against wind.

Heck of a debate, Brownie.

I suspect that what’s going on here is not a conspiracy, just the simple need to fill space.  

This is why you often see the same opinion column showing up over and over again in different outlets. I doubt that our news operations pay for opinion pieces, and I think they have to (at least some of the time) print or post or broadcast whatever is offered to them. And, of course, the small but extremely determined Windy community is very prolific.

Some of the blame must go to the pro-wind community, especially the environmental groups that held a well-publicized January news conference in which they promised to fully engage the public debate over wind. They have, by and large, failed to do so. You’d think that someone at VNRC or Sierra Club Vermont or 350VT or VPIRG or the Conservation Law Foundation could whomp up a few pertinent essays.  

But still, I’d think that Digger and other media outlets should feel responsible for ensuring some measure of balance on current issues of wide interest. Maybe even solicit a few pieces from the other side, if there’s an imbalance.

That would seem to be the responsible thing to do. VTDigger isn’t doing it.  

Ah, this must be what Rowley was referring to as “making me accountable”:

[T]wo time Vermont legislative candidate in Franklin County, Todd Pritsky Pritsky was a member of what was thought to be a super secret listserv where some Vermont seceshers, including a neo-Nazi, could engage in racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, seditious and abusively misogynistic “chat,” while other invited members, like Pritsky, remained largely silent.

For the record, N. Todd Pritsky ran ONCE for the House. I am now a member of the Fletcher Selectboard.

And, of course, I publicly called out SVR racism on Rob Williams' own website a few weeks before the 2010 election.  Interesting that Rowley also failed to note that I largely remained silent on the list in general (which he would do if he were intellectually honest since he can search the archive) because I was kinda busy trying to campaign in Fletcher, Fairfield and St Albans Town as an independent with a 6-month old child and didn't think it worth my time arguing with Denny M et al on a private list where it would have no impact.

The funny part of all this is between my sparring with Odum here on GMD, Rowley's own writing over the years, and my personal experience being on the periphery of Free Vermont from March to November of 2010 (when I was blackballed for calling out conspiracy theories), I soured on folks associated with a movement I obviously was never a part of in the first place.  But now Rowley would rather attack me personally because I dare to back up a popular idea that Vermont was an independent republic for 14 years with citations from the historical record and elsewhere.

It's disappointing coming from somebody who has done yeoman's work in exposing the racist underbelly of SVR, and not something that bolsters Rowley's credibility. 

ntodd

PS–I triple dog dare Rawley to try suggesting I ever advocated secession.  Perhaps he could start with this post and then work backwards.

For fun, I emailed the State Archivist, Tanya Marshall:

My question is deceptively simple: was there ever a Republic of Vermont?

Her answer:

My reply is deceptively simple as well: yes, there was a Republic of Vermont.

My philosophy is to use definitions and logic, and therefore I offer the following (simplified) response:

“Republic” by definition is a “form of government in which the people or their elected representatives possess the supreme power” (Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition).

The preamble to the 1777 Vermont Constitution (available on our website: http://vermont-archives.org/govhistory/constitut/constitutions.htm) clearly states as follows:

“Therefore, it is absolutely necessary, for the welfare and safety of the inhabitants of this State, that it should be, henceforth, a free and independent State; and that a just, permanent and proper form of government, should exist in it, derived from, and founded on, the authority of the people only, agreeable to the direction of the honorable American Congress.

We the representatives of the freemen of Vermont, in General Convention met, for the express purpose of forming such a government, confessing the goodness of the Great Governor of the Universe (who alone, knows to what degree of earthly happiness, mankind may attain, by perfecting the arts of government), in permitting the people of this State, by common consent, and without violence, deliberately to form for themselves.”

“Supreme” by definition means “superior to all others.”

Between 1777 and 1791, supreme power rested with those elected by the citizens of Vermont to represent them; Vermont had its own Governor, Council and laws. When Vermont was admitted into the union in 1791 it did so as “state already formed.” (Letter from Nathaniel Chipman to Governor Chittenden, Vt. Ms. State Papers, Vol. XXIV, page 37). Yet, with statehood, supreme or superior power subsequently shifted from Vermont to the United States. While each state is autonomous, the superior power of the United States — and adherence to its constitution and laws, but with representation — is addressed as each state joins the union.

Our reference room staff would be more than happy to assist with records concerning the status of Vermont prior to statehood and upon statehood. They can be reached atarchives@sec.state.vt.us or 802-828-2308.

This scandalous secesh conspiracy runs deep, probably started by former Archivist, Greg Sanford, who not only refused to dispel the myth of a Republic of Vermont when given ample opportunity, he also failed to correct the Secretary of State back in 1986, and on at least two (2) occasions explicitly referred to this fiction (here and here) as though it were fact!  I'm sure because of Sanford's nefarious secesh plot,Governor Snelling bought into the Potemkin Republic scam and even historians who should know better called Vermont “the only true American republic.”

What's more, the Archive and Records Administration has clearly been systematically altering records so it would appear, for example, that Alexander Hamilton asserted that Vermont was a republic just like New York.  Worse yet, the Lt Governor in 1790 never could have thought this tiny state was a free republic, so a lot of editing has obviously been done!

I call on all right-thinking people to denounce this official agency and demand that Governor Shumlin remove the secesh agitators who have infiltrated our fair, non-republican government.

ntodd

Playing a little catch-up on a couple more items concerning FryRiceGate, because, well, we are the Blog of Record for embarrassing wingnuttery. And it’s so much fun, also, too.

When last we visited the Cal-Rec’s intensive CYA operation, publisher Young Todd Smith was frantically defending his turf and blaming his accusers in a Saturday editorial covered in these parts by our NEK correspondent, kestrel9000.

But wait, there’s more. As you may recall, this story went national after GMD tipped off Jim Romenesko, noted journalism blogger, and he posted it on his widely-read website. In his initial post, Romenesko noted that he’d put in a call to Mark Smith, Cal-Rec publisher, and was awaiting a call back.

Well, here are two more notes from Romenesko.

First, Romenesko had a brief chat with Dana Gray, Cal-Rec editor and (apparently) a practicing journalist. Gray noted that the “Go ‘Toppers, Fry Rice” poster was the work of “the production side,” not the editorial side. And when Romenesko asked Gray what he thought of the poster, the reply was:

“I’d just as soon stay out of it.”

Yeah, I bet you would.

Second, Romenesko got a very snippy reply from Big Poppa Mark Smith:

As a trained journalist, University of Missouri School of Journalism, 1972, Newhouse School of Communication, Syracuse University, 1973, it is basic to have accurate information before you start asking questions.

As a trained journalist, Mark, it is basic to write complete, grammatically correct sentences. But do go on:

I am NOT publisher of the Caledonian-Record and have not been for 3 years.  …I am also semi-retired and a resident of Bulverde, Texas. I will adress [sic] any issues you may have with any of these publications when I return to Vermont in late June.

Oh, snap!

Trouble is, Romenesko had the goods on Mr. Smith of Bulverde, Texas:

Dear Mr. Smith: I’m sorry I interrupted your semi-retirement with my email, but I went to your newspaper’s Contact Us section yesterday and this is what I found: Mark M. Smith, publisher.

Oopsie. Yeah, sport, you ought to update your damn website every three years or so. (The Cal-Rec did so, very very quickly, after Romenesko posted the above exchange.)

One more note. In his editorial, Young Todd Smith says “next year, we might try “Cook Rice.”

No, Todd, I’d stick with the original. Except this time, spell it “Fly Lice.” You know, because them Chinese talk funny. And maybe attach a couple of pieces of reusable tape to the poster, so readers can tape their eyes in the slanty position. You know, because them Chinese look funny. And don’t worry, it’s not racist, it’s just a li’l joke.

And when, as GMD commenter HSTGonzo pointed out, Bill Stenger starts bringing in busloads of Chinese EB-5 investors to help him revitalize the NEK’s economy, I’m sure they’ll appreciate a local newspaper with a good old-fashioned sense of humor.  

(The title is an homage to one of the worst movies of all time.)

Joe Benning does not like utility-scale wind. Not even a little tiny bit. The Caledonia Republican is one of the more vocal members of the anti-wind cadre in the Senate, and he’s a co-sponsor of S.30, the late unlamented wind moratorium bill, as well as the retooled S.30, which is on its way to the Senate floor without the moratorium.

But even though the retooling was entirely the work of the bill’s sponsors, it still sticks in Benning’s craw. He vented his frustration the old-fashioned way — in an opinion piece published last Thursday in the Mitchell Family Organ. (Paywalled, sorry*.) A piece that’s so unhinged and over-the-top, it’s almost funny. How funny? Let me count the ways…

(UPDATE 3/13: Benning’s piece has just been posted at VTDigger, where it’s available without paywall. Digger, BTW, has now posted 17 opinion pieces on wind this year; 14 were anti-wind.)

He starts slow with a first paragraph that does nothing more than set the scene. But then it’s blast-off time, with a second paragraph that masterfully compresses all the standard lies and exaggerations of the Windies into a few concise phrases:

How did we get to become so obsessed about developing an electric generating facility that blasts away the tops of iconic mountains, attacks heretofore protected wildlife, imposes known health risks on people living too close, fails to generate enough power to meet predictions, makes us pay far more for power than we have to, makes us give up the right to locally govern ourselves, has a limited working life span of about 20 years, and yet leaves us with concrete pyramids for unknown millennia? Seriously – whose nightmare is this?

Let’s take these in order. First, nobody’s obsessed but you, Joe. Wind advocates see it as one viable part of a sustainable energy mix. Even those detestable folks at VPIRG only want to build four more wind farms in the entire state.

Second, “blasts away the tops of iconic mountains.” Yes, there’s some blasting and some rock removal, but not enough to change the profile of a mountain. As for “iconic mountains,” I think they’re safe, unless you think every ridgeline in Vermont is somehow “iconic.” Nobody’s calling for wind turbines on Camel”s Hump; just for a few more wind farms on appropriate sites.  

Third, “attacks heretofore protected wildlife.” A sensible approach to wind-farm siting would protect key wildlife habitats. And that’s what we want: a sensible approach.

Fourth, “known health risks.” Here’s the rub. Windies allege a cornucopia of health impacts including Wind Turbine Syndrome, shadow flicker, subsonic vibrations, and God knows what else. However, study after study shows no actual medical/scientific evidence of any health effects. Three sources: the Sierra Club Canada’s report, “The Real Truth About Wind Energy,” the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection’s “Wind Turbine Impact Study,” and a review of scientific literature by Public Health Professor Simon Chapman of the University of Sydney, “Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Classic ‘Communicated’ Disease.” In the latter, Prof. Chapman points out that there have been at least 17 reviews of the available evidence about wind farms and health, and that each of them has found no evidence that turbines make people ill. The closest thing to an actual “Wind Turbine Syndrome” is that people who don’t like turbines are far more likely to be affected by their proximity.

Fifth, “fails to generate enough power to meet predictions.” Wind energy is a widely-used source of sustainable energy with an established track record of performance. If it was really a failure, nobody would be building turbines. They’re not doing it just to annoy Joe Benning.

Sixth, “makes us pay far more for power than we have to.” Well, if by “have to” you mean we could save money by continuing to burn fossil fuel or letting Vermont Yankee keep on wheezing, then you’re right. The problem with fossil fuels (and with nuclear power) is that the market fails to factor their real costs in pricing. Wind and solar and other renewable sources may be more expensive now because of flaws in the market, but (a) we can’t afford to go on paying the hidden cost of carbon emissions, and (b) the more we develop renewables, the more competitive they will get.

Seventh, “makes us give up the right to locally govern ourselves.” Nope. The energy regulatory structure has been carefully crafted and has been in place for years. There is no brand-new giving up of local rights. And wind supporters want to take local opinions into account. If a community really doesn’t want a wind project, with all its financial benefits (just look at the local tax rates in Lowell or Sheffield, and tell me there aren’t a hundred communities that could use the same kind of help), then it can be built elsewhere.

Eighth, “has a limited working life span of about 20 years,” I will consider with: Ninth, “leaves us with concrete pyramids for unknown millennia.” Completely untrue. Wind farm developers are responsible for decommissioning turbines, removing structures, and even re-landscaping. The money for restoration has to be put in an account before construction begins. Joe Benning is either ignorant of this, or he’s lying.  

In the next paragraph, Benning goes nutzoid against wind supporters:

A group of us decided not to be deluded with visions of grandeur about Vermont’s single-handed ability to reverse climate change using this particular nightmare as our tool.

There are so many lies in that sentence, it’s hard to keep count as they go whizzing by. No wind advocate believes that Vermont can single-handedly affect climate change; we simply believe that Vermont is responsible for doing its part. And unfortunately, no sustainable energy technology can “reverse” climate change; all it can do is keep climate change from worsening. Finally, Senator Benning, if you’re going to call wind supporters as “deluded” and wind energy as a “nightmare,” I suggest you’ve abandoned the kind of useful, cogent argument that could actually convince people of your viewpoint.

After congratulating himself for co-sponsoring S.30, he portrays wind advocates as “aghast” over the word “moratorium.” No, not at all. Nobody was “aghast,” and it wasn’t the word “moratorium” that set anyone off. We simply opposed S.30 and didn’t think that a moratorium is needed or wise. We still oppose the revamped S.30, even though it’s been stripped of the dreaded word.

Then, Benning characterizes his opponents as “gripping fiercely to the concept that Vermont should lead the world on addressing climate change.” No, and no. I don’t think Vermont should lead the world; as I said above, I simply think we ought to do our part. The “gripping fiercely” is an unnecessary piece of rhetorical brimstone. If anyone here is “gripping fiercely,” it’s Joe Benning and his extreme opposition to wind energy.

Benning asserts that opponents of S.30 “failed to pause long enough to either read or understand the bill.” Well, again, no. We understand it; we simply oppose it. It’s one of the most popular canards among the Windies: those who support wind power just don’t understand. Our eyes have not been opened to The Truth.

Benning then lets fly with a double howler: “Blogs and public opinion polls followed suit.” Aha! The reason the Castleton poll found two-thirds of Vermonters support wind is that somehow the “poll followed suit.” As if the poll had a mind of its own. And speaking for this blogger, I considered both sides and joined the one with more credibility and better evidence.

And now for another load of hysteria:

Opponents, frightened by that scary word “moratorium,” pulled the covers up over their heads and trembled with fear in the belief Vermont was suddenly on the road to disaster. It would be comical, if it weren’t so sad.

Joe, Joe, Joe. You’re not even trying to convince anyone, you’re just stewing in your own juices. Opponents are not frightened by the word; they just oppose the concept. We see no need for a moratorium because (a) climate change needs to be addressed as quickly as possible, and (b) study after study after study has found no significant problems with appropriately-sited wind farms.

But then, the whole “study” thing is just a red herring anyway. The only people who supported the moratorium are those already convinced that wind is a terrible thing, and they don’t want any of it in Vermont ever at all. If Vermont’s study followed in the footsteps of at least 17 other scientific reviews, it would give wind power a clean bill of health. And no opponent of wind would be convinced in the least.

Next, Benning asserts with no evidence whatsoever that “the winds of public opinion are changing.” Not according to the two Castleton surveys taken ten months apart. The first had wind support at 69%, the second at 67%. That’s within the poll’s margin of error, and does not at all show a drop in support for wind. The second poll simply validated the first. The fact is, two-thirds of Vermonters support ridgeline wind. And two-thirds would support ridgeline wind in their own community. That’s bad news for Joe Benning, so I’m not surprised he’s trying desperately to spin the results.

Finally, after all this ranting against the obsessed, deluded, frightened, trembling activists who torpedoed his beloved moratorium, he suddenly changes gears and declares that we don’t need the moratorium after all, because the new S.30 accomplishes everything he wants. Well, gee, Joe, shouldn’t you be thanking us for “improving” S.30 by forcing you to discard the deadwood of a moratorium?

In a way, I’m glad Joe Benning is so inept at the fine art of persuasion. As long as the anti-wind case is characterized by lies, exaggerations, and overheated rhetoric, wind energy will continue to enjoy broad support among Vermonters.  

It's come to my attention that some folks don't subscribe to the idea that Vermont was ever an independent republic.  While I certainly can appreciate that position, I take issue with it for a number of reasons, about which I will drone on in a bit.

But first, I need to address something that may or may not be the sum total of the argument against what seems to be a prevailing delusion: You can see the text of Vermont's first constitution here at the Secretary of State's website. (Spoiler Alert: The word “republic”appears nowhere in it.)

Yeah, it's true 'republic' appears nowhere in any version of the VT constitution.  As I noted elsewhere, it also doesn't appear in the US Constitution (though Article IV, Section 4 does guarantee a republican form of state government).  I'm fairly certain that lacking this word doesn't mean we don't live in a republic, which might otherwise come as a surprise to Benjamin Franklin and James Madison.  So, to solve the Case of the Missing Republic, we need to dig a little deeper than a superficial parsing of a single document.

I think the only facts not in dispute are that Vermont did declare itself independent in January of 1777, had a constitution several months later, and was not admitted into the Union until 1791.  I'll add that it also appears non-controversial that Vermonters in general wanted to be–and tried to be–part of the United States, but various obstacles regarding the Vermont Question prevented it for 14 years.

Now the question remains: was Vermont a republic?

It appears to be a long-held view, at the very least.  Rowland Evans Robinson referred to The Republic of the Green Mountains in his book on Vermont independence back in 1892.  The Vermont Historical Society published an article on Vermont's coinage by a numismatist in 1870:

The Latin legend on the obverse is, in English, “the Republic of the Green Mountains ;” that of the reverse is, “the fourteenth star.” The legends are variously abbreviated…
…
The symbols and inscriptions of the first coinage were peculiar to Vermont. They had already accomplished their purpose. The announcement that Vermont was to be the fourteenth state in union with the old thirteen, and that it was already an independent republic, was proclaimed far and wide on thousands of these little coins. No repetition could render these declarations more emphatic. 

More recently, our State Archivist referred to Vermont's status thus:

The mountain rule existed in various forms from the days of the Republic when it was originally observed to assure political balance between western Vermont and the then more populous east.

And in at least three rulings, the Vermont Supreme Court has stated its own belief that we were a republic before we were one of the States of the American Union: State v Badger (1982); Baker v State(1998), which was a fairly significant case; Brigham v State (1997), which tossed out our educational funding system.  I'd like to dwell on the latter for a moment:

[Ira Allen explained]:

The greatest legislators from Lycurgus down to John Lock[e], have laid down a moral and scientific system of education as the very foundation and cement of a State; the Vermonte[rs] are sensible of this, and for this purpose they have planted several public schools, and have established a university, and endowed it with funds … to draw forth and foster talents. The effects of these institutions are already experienced, and I trust that in a few years the rising generation will evince that these useful institutions were not laid in vain; … our maxim is rather to make good men than great scholars: let us hope for the union, for that makes the man, and the useful citizen.

In thus characterizing education as the “cement of [the] State,” Allen was expressing “a central tenet of republicanism: no democracy can survive without a virtuous citizenry … 'and to inspire it ought to be the principal business of education.' “…

Because human nature was not viewed by the framers as naturally inclined to virtue, Allen and his contemporaries “saw education as the state's tool to insure self-preservation.”

As Moses Mather concisely observed in 1775: ” 'The strength and spring of every free government … is the virtue of the people; virtue grows on knowledge, and knowledge on education.' ” …

Thus understood, the Education Clause assumes paramount significance in the constitutional frame of government established by the framers: it expressed and incorporated “that part of republican theory which holds education essential to self government and which recognizes government as the source of the perpetuation of the attributes of citizenship.” 

The epoch of the American Revolution and framing of State and ultimately Federal governments was steeped in the language of republicanism.  Allen naturally cited republicans Lycurgus and Locke in a manner common amongst our various founders, with no apparent need to identify them explicitly with the label of 'republican' because it was obviously understood.  Similarly, nobody would feel compelled to use the word 'republic' in a constitution that established a republican government because it was unnecessary and redundant.

Which is why so many writers and historians assume Vermont's status as an independent republic.  It declared independence and operated separately from Britain, New York and the various incarnations of the United States for 14 years.  It had a republican form of government.  I'm honestly surprised that anybody would argue that this is, oh, say…delusional.

But is it safe to assume that contemporaries referred to Vermont as a republic?  Well, I'm not sure that really matters, but here's what one of the original settlers of my little town of Fletcher wrote in 1784:

The Vermont Gazette of Oct. 18 [1784] contained the following, which was communicated by the retiring Secretary, Joseph Fay: To the Printers of the Vermont Gazette. GENTLEMEN,

By inserting the following extract of an official letter received last evening, you will not only gratify the public by giving early knowledge of the choice of their rulers for the year ensuing, but sting the ears of our enemies with the unwelcome news of the uniformity of the people by continuing in office those Gentlemen, who have been the guardians and faithful servants of the public, during a bloody war with Great Britain, and contest with several of the neighbouring States, for eight years past. Such a steady firmness does honour to the people, and by a continuance, with the due observance of good and wholesome laws, cannot fail to render this little republic happy, important and the dread of her enemies. 

[Jonas Fay to Joseph Fay.]  

He went on to report who won the elections.  Then there's the Council of Censors, who were responsible for safeguarding and amending our constitution, and reported in 1786:

The ungranted and confiscated lands seem to have been a boon conferred by providence, for the support of our republic in its infancy, while its subjects were unable to pay taxes…

So I think it's glaringly obvious that at least some of the governing elites at the time viewed Vermont as a republic, even though it uses words like 'state' and 'commonwealth' (none of which are mutually exclusive) in the constitution. I certainly wouldn't want to commit the fallacies of appealing to authority or popularity, but given a plain, textual reading it feels way more natural and credible to believe in a Vermont Republic from 1777-1791 than to, um…not.

At the very least, calling so many jurists, historians and early Vermonters drinkers of koolaid strikes me as unwarranted.  Just sayin'…

ntodd 

Voices of Fukushima to commemorate 2-year anniversary of disaster

by Press Release | March 5, 2013

NEWS RELEASE – VOICES OF FUKUSHIMA

March 4, 2013

Contact:

Leslie Sullivan Sachs contact@sagealliance.net

Details: www.safeandgreencampaign.org/action-center/voices-of-fukushima

As the heartbreaking stories of the victims and evacuees surface, the SAGE Alliance is coordinating a three-day series of events to honor the people and acknowledge the horrific Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear facility explosion that began on March 11, 2011. Citizens are determined to make sure a similar disaster does not happen in New

England. “Voices of Fukushima,” three days of events, are being coordinated by the SAGE Alliance, a collective of citizen groups organizing to close Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee through nonviolent direct action.

Soon after the disasters on March 11, 2011 a solemn vigil of 600 people gathered at Vermont Yankee in solidary with the people of Japan. Last year, hundreds of residents walked six miles in a mock evacuation from Vermont Yankee to Brattleboro, to honor the Fukushima evacuees. This year, a solemn vigil at the gates of Entergy Vermont Yankee (546 Governor Hunt Rd, Vernon, VT) will take place on Sunday March 10th from 11am-Noon.

In addition, we are taking to our own town greens, farmers markets, and street corners to say: “We are the voices of Fukushima. Fukushimna ghost towns could be our ghost towns.” Six towns are adopting a Fukushima sister city for a day and will share the evacuation stories that are being suppressed by the US media. Putney and Brattleboro, VT, Hanover, NH, Amherst, Greenfield, and Wendell, MA will honor towns like their own in Fukushima’s exclusion zone.

Press release includes some stories and additional info-too much to post here. Sorry this is so late, it dropped off the PR list @ VTDigger & I forgot. Still activities for Monday though.

http://vtdigger.org/2013/03/05…

Safe & Green:

http://www.safeandgreencampaig…

More:

My knowledge of  Rhode Island politics doesn’t extend much beyond headlines about the high unemployment, state pension reform, and of course former Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci. So I am likely not the best person to wonder about this, but there’s an interesting intersection with Vermont’s gov …

As head of the Democratic Governors Association Governor, Peter Shumlin followed the lead of Rhode Island’s Democratic congressional delegation and former US rep. Patrick Kennedy in urging Independent Governor (and former Republican Senator) Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island  to join the Democratic Party.

DGA Chairman Gov. Peter Shumlin, of Vermont, this week described Chafee as "a very thoughtful person" with strong ties to Democratic governors and President Barack Obama. Shumlin told The Associated Press, "We would welcome him to the Democratic Party."  

This effort at conversion seems a simple and expected conclusion to Chafee’s long slow slide away from the National Republican Party. Way back in 2004 Chafee was a VIP at Bush’s 2004 RNC Convention. Yet just few years later he supported Obama for president and eventually bolted the party to become the Independent governor of Rhode Island in 2010. By 2012 he spent “a couple of nights” as a welcomed guest at the Democratic National Convention. At present there are 19 Democratic governors, 30 Republicans, and one independent. So bringing Chafee on board means maybe Dems can pick up a state house, right?  

Well maybe not. Independent Chafee’s 2014 hopes for reelection currently look pretty grim with recent polls showing an approval rating of just 26 percent. Other polling in late 2012 showed that

Overall 57% of voters don't want Chafee to seek reelection next year. 20% want him to run as an independent and 18% think he should run for election again as a Democrat

Two Democrats Chafee might face – either in a reelection battle or perhaps as opponents in a three-way Democratic primary race – both poll much better approval ratings by a substantial margin: Mayor Angel Taveras of Providence polled at 64 percent approval rating, and State Treasurer Gina Raimondo showed a 56 percent approval. (Of course, approval ratings in the current office have limited application to judging future face-offs for the next job up the ladder.)

As a U.S. senator, Chafee  did occasionally side with Democrats, and he supported Obama, so the welcoming solicitation from the DGA may be a nice big thank you note of sorts. Early positioning and general pre-election subterfuge are perhaps a larger factor.

But I gotta wonder: isn’t courting a centrist Republican with a 26 percent approval rating outside the job description of the DGA – to support Democratic governors and candidates across the nation?

Or is Shumlin just looking for more like-minded govs in supporting some social issues (marriage equality) and protecting himself and other one percenters from pitching a fair share into the budget pool?

If you choose to spend some of your time blogging, you learn to ignore the occasional snorts of derision from the legacy media. The “Mom’s basement” canard that’s seldom uttered but still colors perceptions. The dismissal of news that breaks in these parts until or unless it’s confirmed by “real media.” Their reluctance to follow up on that news, and their even greater reluctance to give credit where credit is due.

But sometimes it just piles up a little too high to ignore. And at the risk of sounding like a Whiny Blogger, I’m going to complain a little, and then explain why we deserve more credit than we usually get.

First, we had Kathryn Flagg’s little piece of secessionist hagiography in this week’s “Seven Days.” Thomas Rowley did a fine job of filling in all the missing information, but I want to focus on the story’s casual blogosphere-belittling.

See, according to revisionist historian and Keeper of the Secessionist Flame, Rob Williams, it wasn’t Thomas Naylor’s well-documented ties to neoconfederate seshesers that did him in. It wasn’t his angry outbursts against the widely-respected Southern Poverty Law Center. It wasn’t his appearances on overtly racist radio programs. No, it was that dastardly blogosphere what killed Naylor’s movement.

And by “blogosphere,” of course, he meant Green Mountain Daily, which tirelessly exposed the seamy underbelly of the Second Vermont Republic. And, for its trouble, came in for vicious attack by Naylor and his cohorts. But heaven forfend that Williams or Flagg should deign to utter our name.

After the jump: Windy Joe Benning and the “Fry Rice” controversy.

Next we turn to Senator Joe Benning, ardent Windy, who wrote a particularly spittle-flecked commentary this week in the Mitchell Family Organ. (Paywalled, sorry. But it’ll probably show up on VTDigger soon enough.)

A full recounting of Benning’s lies, distortions, and shrill attacks would fill up a lengthy post on its own, but for now I’ll mention how the mean ol’ blogosphere helped to kill the three-year wind moratorium that Benning supported.

Aghast over the word “moratorium,” a host of environmental groups lined up with author Bill McKibben and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders to oppose the bill. Gripping fiercely to the concept that Vermont should lead the world on addressing climate change, they failed to pause long enough to either read or understand the bill. Blogs and public opinion polls followed suit.

That paragraph alone contains more whoppers than your average Burger King, but my favorite is the last sentence: “Blogs and public opinion polls followed suit.” As if the Castleton poll had a mind of its own that was influenced by Bill McKibben.

I’ll take full credit for the “Blogs” part of that. I’ve written extensively on the importance of wind energy as one tool in the fight against climate change, and on the exaggerations and misstatements of Windies such as the good Senator. But it’s not because I’m ignorant; it’s because I’ve studied the evidence and the science, considered the issue, and come to a conclusion. But there are only two camps in the Windies’ worldview: The enlightened (anti-wind) and the ignorant (pro-wind).

So, Joe, go right ahead and disparage “blogs” as simpletons. Doesn’t make it true.

Finally, we come to a story uncovered by GMD’s own kestrel9000: the ignominious “Fry Rice” poster published by the St. Johnsbury Caledonian-Record.

After kestrel’s original post, we forwarded the story to Jim Romenesko, proprietor of a widely-read national blog on news media issues. He posted an item within an hour or so, and it quickly spread across the country.

And, after that, it even spread across Vermont, where the legacy media is loath to criticize its own; but when the story went national, they couldn’t ignore it.

They could, however, ignore the original source. None of the stories published or posted or broadcast anywhere in Vermont give credit to GMD for breaking the story.

Because, I guess, it’s not news until a “real media” source reports it.  

Okay, look. I am very much aware of my limitations and those of GMD. We are not a news organization. We are a bunch of volunteers with no staff and no resources. We don’t cover all the news, nor can we. Sometimes we get stuff wrong. (When I do, I post a correction.)

But we do play a significant role in Vermont’s media ecosystem. GMD has a lengthy history, dating long before I ever washed up on this shore, of providing insight and analysis — and yes, even actual news — that’s not available anywhere else. The only currency we have is our credibility, built up slowly over the years. And it’s only because of our credibility that we attract about 25,000 site visits and 50,000 page views per month.

So no, we’re not the Burlington Free Press or the Mitchell Family Organ or VTDigger or Seven Days or even Channel 3 or Channel 5. What we are is Green Mountain Daily, and we are proud of that.

And we deserve an appropriate amount of credit for that. And too often, we don’t get it.  

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

Perhaps the most important thing I should point out from the get go with regard to the puff piece published last Wednesday (3/6/13) in Seven Days by Kathryn Flagg is that the "new" book based on a compilation of articles published during the short life of a "news journal" that never broke a story in six years, Vermont Commons (VTC), is that it is largely a work of fiction, based on the false premise that there is or ever was a meaningful Vermont secession movement.

Part of the reason that the movement never really got off the ground in any significant way here (and, no, running a small lackluster slate of quirky losers in one election does not a party make nor does the staging of statehouse stunts with puppet people pass muster as a groundswell of interest) was because the whole endeavor was much more Potemkin-like than Vermonters first realized it to be. It was based on a scam that neo-Confederates like Kirkpatrick Sale (a South Carolina based representative to the secessionist Southern National Congress) and fellow Southerner, Thomas Naylor, co-founders of the mistakenly named (I'll get back to this.) Second Vermont Republic (SVR), had been working for years. It goes like this: fill a small room with a group of self-proclaimed "scholars" and conjure up a fantasy world that the rubes (as the seceshers thought of many of the public when communicating on what they thought was a super secret listserv) can buy into; issue a press release; self publish a few pieces at sympathetic neo-Confederate and anti-Semitic websites; rinse and repeat. The mainstream media does the rest. Presto! You're treated as a (and this word has been improperly used so often in conjunction with Naylor and SVR that it's lost all meaning) "prominent" movement based in Vermont.

Flagg's piece is a perfect example of the sort of sloppy reporting that glides by the large, steaming piles of secessionist bullshit and even goes so far as to minimize inconvenient facts. Flagg never mentions the numerous conspiracy theories promoted by SVR and VTC principals and bloggers like the anti-Semitic 9/11 Truther nonsense about Mossad involvement with the World Trade Center attacks, the US's involvement with aliens mining on the darkside of the Moon in exchange for advance alien military technology and, perhaps most despicable and disgusting of all, one SVR leader of Vermont Senate takeover effort and past blogger for VTC, Dennis Morrisseau, who believes that Sandy Hook parents of the murdered children faked their emotions as a part of governmental conspiracy to create a climate necessary to take away guns from Americans. Maybe those kids aren't really dead; they must all be just sleeping in a lot.

(jump below the fold for a rather extensive look at the movement and what Flagg missed)

Flagg wrote, “the idea of breaking free from the United States struck many Vermonters as worth considering.”  Really?  How many?  10?  20?  200? 2,000?  Their gubernatorial candidate, Dennis Steele, received fewer than 2,000 votes in 2010; 99.26% of Vermonters voted for someone other than the secesher.  Percentage-wise, many seceshers have done worse in their communities than Steele.

Flagg’s piece seems to want the reader to believe that there once was a time when the seceshers may have been relevant.  But by what measure? A singular float in one July 4 US Independence Day parade (there’s an irony for you) gliding by a captured audience isn’t an achievement; it’s a stunt.

Grandstanding and theatre do not make for relevance.  Relevance is achieved by solid accomplishment and impact in the target area.  For years, Rob Williams promised to have secession articles on 200 Vermont town meeting warrants to advance secession discussion by 2012.  He hasn’t gotten one town to pay attention in years of supposed attempts according to the AP, so how’s that for relevance?  Williams can’t even get his wife to support secession; likewise for SVR co-founder Ian Baldwin.  If the SVR honchos are unable to achieve  relevance on the home front, should they have been surprised when the vast majority (and in this case that’s actually something of an understatement) of Vermonters took a pass on their electoral offerings in 2010.  After their shellacking in 2010 the seceshers declared their rump capitol to be down the road from Montpelier, in Hancock, VT at a small B&B. Since their first “plenary” session in December of 2010 (and you know it was important since there’s a YouTube vid of the dozen or so attendees in largely empty room – it made for quite an appropriate hollow sound on the vid) there hasn’t been another publicly announced meeting in “the Capitol.”

The 2012 electoral plan was to run seceshers for all 30 Vermont Senate seats. The seceshers only ran three senate candidates and the each came in last.  Really, really last.  They had no impact on any of the races, were never a threat to any incumbent or challenger or the outcome of any of the races and did not put forward any issues that interested the voters. In short, they were irrelevant.

Flagg’s representation of Vermont as having once been a republic reads like a badly written Wikipedia entry or talking points from the seceshers themselves.  Her “proofs” of Vermont’s independent status fall far short of convincing – all of the states had their own militia and Vermont’s served under the command of the Continental Army while it received its pay from New York who from 1777 to 1791 never abandoned its claim of title to all of the land west of the Connecticut River; every state produced its own currency; Vermont’s postal unit was but one spoke of the system that emanated from Philadelphia to all of the states that did not formalize its organization as the Post Office Department until 1792.  Moreover, Vermont based its own constitution on that of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the hope that such a template might further their admission to statehood.If Flagg had bothered to check she might have learned that:

“From 1777 through 1790, Vermont’s government continually requested and expected admission into the United States as an equal partner.  Despite several solemn promises, Congress consistently drew back from union at the last minute because of heated opposition from New York.  But after Ethan Allen held Vermont aloof from Shay’s Rebellion, in early 1787, the New York legislature dropped its opposition to Vermont statehood, as long as Vermont reimbursed those New Yorkers who lost their lands in the region. Over the next several years representatives of the two states worked out the details that culminated in the treaty of 1790, and New York vacated its claims to the Green Mountains upon Vermont’s admission into the union.”

– A More Perfect Union: Vermont Becomes a State, 1777-1816; AnticipatingAmerica, Michael A. Bellesiles, pg. 95, footnote 47. Support for Bellesiles’ research came from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

It was after I came across the above while doing research, as well as a number of other references to primary documents of the period that I began to question in my own mind the whole notion that Vermont had ever been a republic.  Proof of such as provided by Flagg and the seceshers is so uncompelling that it can’t be treated as serious scholarship.  Tie that to the fact that there is no written record of Vermont’s supposed status as a republic until suggested by a shopkeeper and an armchair historian in the mid-20th century and there is more than sufficient reason to doubt the republic myth.

Flagg continued, “Naylor, and the group he championed, suffered a tough blow after critics pointed out SVR’s loose ties to the League of the South (LoS), a neoconfederate secessionist group with white-supremacist undertones. Naylor lashed out at critics, and the secessionists found themselves, as Williams recalls, “dragged up and down the Vermont blogosphere.”

“A bunch of folks began to intimate that if you were a Vermont secessionist, you were a racist,” says (UVM professor and then SVR advisory board member, Frank) Bryan…”

First, SVR did not have “loose ties” to the League of the South; one LoS director sat on SVR’s advisory board, as did the past director of LoS’s Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History who later went on to form another of these phony “institutes” naming it after the slave plantation, Abbeville, of the notorious John C. Calhoun, who in a speech before the US Senate in 1857, called “slavery a positive good”; as well as others with strong ties to the LoS and its institutions.  One SVR advisory board member was a member of the Italian racist group Lega Nord.

Second, LoS doesn’t merely suffer from racist undertones; it is explicitly racist.  As a matter of policy it views slavery as “God ordained,” opposes “race mixing” and sees segregation as necessary to preserve the “integrity of the races.”  More about the LoS here.

Despite what Frank Bryan said about being a Vermont secesher getting you tagged as being a racist, I know I never said that on my blog or suggested that, nor did I ever read or hear it come from others I know who had blogged extensively on the matter.

What in fact happened was that the powers that be at SVR dismissed concerns about racist associations in a particularly repugnant way.  

In two exchanges with reporters/investigators for the Southern Policy Law Center (SPLC) who were pursuing the reports of Naylor’s racist connections, he responded,

“Naylor told the Report for Beirich’s story that the (League of the South) was “not racist,” adding that he didn’t “give a shit” what the Report wrote. He appeared twice on a Tennessee-based radio program called “The Political Cesspool,” a white supremacist show that specializes in interviewing neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Holocaust deniers and the like. When the Report first published its story, Naylor described it as an attack by “the well-financed, hate-mongering, witch-hunting, left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center.”

And in another exchange with the SPLC, the founding father of SVR and the Vermont secesher movement revealed what a truly classy wouldbe ruler of the Vermont said,

“Reached by telephone at his home in Vermont, Naylor declined to discuss the state of his relations with the neo-Confederates. “This has nothing to do with race,” he said. “It’s the SPLC that’s the hate group. Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

Must be a style Tommy Reb picked up at the Cheney School of Dickishness.

Rob Williams, then co-chair of SVR with Naylor, said,

“Is (Donald Livingston, founder of the LoS Institute For the Study of Southern Culture and History and founder of an institute named after a famous slavery proponent’s slave plantation and who has said that segregation was a Northern invention) a racist? I don’t know. And frankly, it is none of my damn business, at a personal level.“

And so began Rob’s longstanding policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Care” when it comes to the extremist, racist views of he and Tommy Reb’s neo-Confederate allies.

And then, as if their tone deafness to valid concerns of Vermonters about a completely unnecessary partnership with a racist group, the League of the South, couldn’t have been worse, Naylor and Williams doubled down and launched a purge of SVR members who express displeasure with the racist association.  Any “tinge of racism” acquired by the Vermont secesher movement was entirely self-inflicted and continues to this day, no matter how much they’d rather that Vermonters not take a close look at their history.

As recently as a year ago Williams contributed a chapter to the Abbeville Institute director Donald Livingston’s most recent secesher literary effort to slap a whole lot of lipstick on their racism tinged pig.

Flagg also failed to tell readers that only two months ago the White House spokesman, Jon Carson, put out this, a definitive statement on the issue of secession, saying that,

“Our founding fathers established the Constitution of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union” through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. They enshrined in that document the right to change our national government through the power of the ballot — a right that generations of Americans have fought to secure for all. But they did not provide a right to walk away from it. As President Abraham Lincoln explained in his first inaugural address in 1861, “in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual.”

Nor did Flagg disclose Seven Days own early distribution agreement with VTC that fell apart as news of racist associations of SVR and the increasingly troubling statements that came from SVR’s leadership, the purges and the vicious personal attacks launched by Naylor and his flying monkeys minions against individual Vermont bloggers.  Yes, yes, I know that the statement that came from Seven Days famed Red Room said that it was really about potential confusion over which publication was which but that never came up before the racism stink attached itself to VTC and SVR.  It wasn’t believable then and it isn’t today.  Little wonder then that Flagg didn’t bring the matter up.

At the outset of Flagg’s piece she wrote that Frank Bryan said,

“I think that the Vermont secessionist movement is over. Has been for a long time.”

If she’d ended her piece there, rather than repeating secesher talking points and advancing some pretty crappy history about Vermont and the secesher movement, she might have written a decent piece.  Which leads us to the question, where were the Seven Days editors who pride themselves on their critical journalism, some of whom must have journalistic memory of the period, and why didn’t they raise the standard of the piece to something more than a reiteration of the meme that Rob Williams has been promoting for years that flies in the face of the known facts.  Once Flagg had criticism from Williams and Bryan regarding bloggers, the blogosphere or whatever other artful way that they could come up with to allude to three of the most well known critics of their enterprise, she had the obligation to pursue the facts further rather than just accept, and thus endorse, their self-serving point of view.