Peter Hirschfeld, now chief of the Times Argus and Rutland Herald’s Vermont Press Bureau is a nice guy, easy to chat with, seems to be a hard worker, doesn’t seem to have an agenda when you talk with him. That’s why it’s so maddening that he seems almost to create opportunities to subtly inject right-wing engineering into his reporting. Case in point, today’s front page piece about the evolution of the much-maligned Challenges for Change. Here is the second sentence (emphasis added):

“[Challenges for Change] has been criticized by members of both parties as a disingenuous scheme to shore up budget deficits without making difficult spending decisions.”

So the public outcry against Challenges happened because it wasn’t cutting state programs enough? Seriously?

I live in Montpelier. I – and several other front pagers who live across the state from Franklin to Windham Counties – reported on the Challenges kerfuffle from our own experience and involvement. Of the roaring objections that consumed the Statehouse like a tsunami, shattering trust between many Vermonters and their elected lawmakers, I never heard one that could be characterized as objecting that it was a way to avoid cuts. I believe, as the program’s star started falling over the following days and weeks, I did read a smattering of complaints to that effect in some of the newspaper coverage, but it sounded more like right-wing rats leaving the sinking ship, quite frankly.

So it wasn’t the issue. The issue was quite the opposite. Draconian cuts were being offered out of the blue. Advocacy groups were blindsided and not allowed into the process. It was being fast-tracked in such a way to grease it through with little-to-no scrutiny and public input. Additional agenda-driven elements, such as the complete dismantling of the environmental permitting process – were included. Tempers flared, as many lobbyists and activists felt that their allies in the legislature had taken a policy baseball bat to the back of their heads when they weren’t looking to fill the budget gap in a way Governor Jim Douglas preferred. And that’s the reason you didn’t hear the kind of objections Hirschfeld suggests drove the pushback – because the GOP Governor was driving the process, and had his troops well in line.

This is the criticism and anger that derailed the Challenges freight train. There were no objections of the kind characterized by Hirschfeld to be found, early on.

But consider how – in one sentence – Hirschfeld has rewritten history, informing not simply the rest of his piece, but the ongoing understanding of the political dynamics in Vermont.

In one sentence, Hirschfeld retroactively rewrote history, re-branding the grassroots public rage that scuttled Challenges from a progressive surge, to a conservative one.

In one sentence, Hirschfeld has married the political dynamics of Vermont to the tea-party-driven political trends sweeping much of the rest of the country.

In one sentence, Hirschfeld has potentially impacted future debate over these issues by suggesting lawmakers need to be ignoring the left and placating the right.

In one sentence, Hirschfeld has attempted to shift the center of the entire political debate over the budget.

Words matter. I don’t know why Hirschfeld so often does this, but it’s gotta stop. If it’s to be “advocacy journalism,” please start labeling it as such.

Just a follow-up on the commitment to democracy demonstrated by the Republican regime in Madison.

First off, if you haven’t already seen it, read our coverage of the arrest of Burlington filmmaker Sam Mayfield for covering the Wisconsin State Legislature.

Second, why would Republicans in Wisconsin work to get Republicans to run in Democratic primaries?

Pretty simple, actually. Right now six Republican state senators are facing recall elections this year, due to their undemocratic practices in this year’s budget/union-busting fiasco. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is reporting that, fearing a strong Democratic campaign, the Republican Party is running fake Democrats in the primary, with the idea that if they get on the ballot they will squeeze out any real Democratic candidate.

When it comes to running fake Democratic candidates in this summer’s recall contests, top state Republicans have one thought:

Sources tell No Quarter that state Republican Party officials are aiming to line up spoiler Democrats – loyal Republicans who run as Democrats with no intention of winning – in all six recall elections for incumbent Republican senators.

Finally, a court in Wisconsin has granted a permanent injunction blocking enforcement of Scott Walker’s illegally passed union-busting bill.

Patrick DePula reports at Mudflats:

In what is seen as a win for public labor Unions, Governor Scott Walker’s controversial Anti-Collective Bargaining law was struck down.

Thursday Morning, Dane County Judge MaryAnn Sumi issued a permanent injunction against the bill, effectively killing it until the Supreme Court is able to act. Sumi’s 33 page decision said there was “clear and convincing evidence” that Republicans who control the Legislature violated the state’s open meetings laws. This referred to GOP actions at March 9th committee meeting where the measure was passed without providing proper notice to the public.  Also at that time, the Capitol building was locked down tightly keeping many members of the public away.

“

That’s the good news: At least one branch of government in Wisconsin still believes in the rule of law.

 Might there be a video arms race of sorts underway?    

A free trial offer by Taser has enabled Burlington police to begin testing shoulder mounted video devices that can, at their discretion record incidents and encounters. It’s just another tool Taser makes to protect us. So relax. The Free Press reporter notes at the start of the article that one possible use

[officers]…can use the tiny camera mounted on his shoulder to record his interactions with drunks and loiterers along Burlington’s Marketplace.

At least he sounds convinced that only those already guilty of something will be videoed.  

The camera’s default mode continuously captures and then overwrites 30 second loops of video. At any time, an officer can either turn off the camera or start recording video.

Usage policy advises sensibly that:

Officers “will try to avoid recording videos” of naked people, or in places where people would reasonably expect privacy

and a nod is given to respect First Amendment rights

“unless an obvious violation of criminal law is occurring, or if the officer is in the same vicinity for other legitimate law enforcement purposes.”

( – promoted by odum)

Dramatic footage of Burlington Filmmaker Sam Mayfield and another reporter being arrested today, (seemingly) for reporting on the people of Wisconsin speaking out on Governor Scott Walker's attempt to end public employees collective bargaining rights.

Please call and email Scott Walker and tell him “Hands off the press!”

Email: govgeneral@wisconsin.gov

Phone: (608) 266-1212

Yes, it’s a game of ping pong with our unusual Republican Auditor Tom Salmon, who had reportedly all-but-decided to run against Bernie Sanders for his Senate seat in 2012, before backing off when even he had to realize he would get absolutely massacred at the polls. Salmon had gone so far as to grab the “SalmonforSenate” domain names for his campaign website.

So what’s the plan now? Well, he was making noise about simply running for re-election as Auditor, and the Montpelier conventional wisdom has since followed that noise.

But according to GOP media activist Rob Roper, “some of the top names on the Republican side of the aisle (Lt. Governor Phil Scott, Sen. Randy Brock, Mayor Thom Lauzon, Brian Dubie and Salmon) met this week to discuss potential match-ups for the election a year and a half away”. Since then? On his Facebook page today, Salmon sez:

Salmon v. Shumlin would be a “thrilla in Montpilla”

Did Salmon draw the Shummy straw? Would that put Lauzon in the mix as the Auditor candidate?

Or is this just more of the Salmon Short Attention Span Theater? Somebody should start a “Draft Salmon for President” site and see how long it takes before he decides to hitch his wagon to that train.

He’s gonna have to shell out for “salmonforgovernor.com,” though, as squatters are asking over $1000 for the domain.

“Today, my fellow Armenians, we almost celebrate the almost 70th anniversary of the American landings in North Africa which broke the German-Arab hold on the nations of Egypt and Palestine, and made America’s victory, two years later, over Japanese controlled Red China and Tibet, the beginning of the end of the beginning again once and almost for all.

I’m here today, wherever it is, to say to you that, had it been for those brave Americans who joined the National Guards in 1942 to march across the endless frozen and bitter cold wastelands of those North African deserts to insert our flag inside the Suez Canal, we’d be at the mercy of the Japanese oil barons who still taboo atomic power after the accidents, in 1945 and 1946, at their nuclear power plants in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Bikinis.

Today, we see again in North Africa, a conflict enfluxing the world in more nonstableness and disability, and blocking the establishment of a free democratic and kosher Jewish state in Iraq.  Those Americans who fought under our great general, Ernie Rommel, would remember that, had it been for them, Hitler, Stalin and Fellini would have taken over the entire automotive industry in the Middle East, forcing us to buy itty-bitty cars made in Japan by itty-bitty Japanese eating itty-bitty fish heads.

So leave us always to remember history, because, if we don’t, someone else will remember where we left it when we forgot it.  And that someone will probably be a Jap.  

Today, as our troops gather in Afghanistan for the long awaited penetration of the Japanese mainland, I want us to offer prayers for victory over a people who crash their planes discrimatorically and terroristically into the fabric of the heritage that our Found Fathers wrote in blood on their hands at Gettysburg.  Had it been for our Founded Fathers, I don’t know how we could have stopped the Japanese from making the fish head, as opposite the bald egret, our National Anthem.  And making us play banzai instead of baseball.

We are a nation united by an uncommon and yet untoward history of resisting the aggression of those who would seek to make us think every other way.  And, as you all know over there and out here, we have not yet begun to think.  

So, think about it, today, on this Day Of Infamy, June 6, 2011.  As another great general of ours, Bob Hope, once said: ‘Thanks for the memories,’ because without memories there can only be peace, and that’s not what we’re fighting for.

As I tour this Nation Under God, I promise to take my own memory in hand to think of things unthought of and to speak of things unheard of, so that all of you can be free to remember what I said and left unsaid, and know that you’re not thinking about remembering any where near as much as me or as much as you think you remember you are thinking you were, and to thank God you live in a nation where there will always be great Americans to help do your thinking for you.  I think.

There are those that would make fun of our history and our remembering of it and our thinking of it, but they will never forget nearly any where near what we have forgotten that I can remember to think of.  So don’t let them think we don’t know what they’re thinking, lest we find ourselves living under the Swastika of Japan, driving itty-bitty cars to fast fish head restaurants all over the hollow ground where our Funded Fathers found the handwriting on the wall and sent men on horseback to gather the arms of the hands in was written on forever in gory.

Thank you.  God Bless The USA!  And Remember The Alamo!–I love that team!”

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.

This week, Arnie Gundersen of Fairewwinds Associates discusses emergency planning around nuclear plants.

Experience gained from the Fukushima disaster should now inform our own emergency plans in the U.S.  At Fukushima, the U.S. and the NRC took the position that the population should be evacuated from anywhere within a 50-mile radius.  

Why is this not the plan in case of a U.S. nuclear emergency, where 10-miles remains the established perimeter?

Arnie discusses the origin in law of evacuation guidelines, which specify no perimeter but establish 25 R.E.M. as the maximum permissible dosage to which the civilian population may be exposed before they must be evacuated.  He explains how the current 10-mile evacuation radius was an assumption based entirely on untested speculation; speculation that has since been proven wholly inadequate by the volume and duration of releases at Fukushima.  

Furthermore, existing emergency evacuation plans assume no disruption in power or communication to the population, as could logically be assumed to occur with the kind of events that might trigger a nuclear accident, and with the generation failure that would accompany any nuclear accident.  They also assume that escape routes would remain uncompromised by infrastructure failures and panic, throughout the evacuation.

If, despite the overwhelming public hazard potential that has been demonstrated at Fukushima,  the Obama White House remains committed to a nuclear energy future, shouldn’t they at least demand that workable evacuation plans and safe perimeters be a part of that future?

White House & NRC Recommend 50 Mile Fukushima Evacuation, Yet Insist US Safe With Only 10 from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

You've probably heard the story of Peter Shumlin's preference for a justice to replace Associate Justice Denise Johnson, who has announced her retirement from the Supreme Court.

Justice Johnson has been a giant, and a model for many of us, especially lawyers, for her commitment to civil liberties and social justice, even if it hasn't always made her friends or landed her on the winning side of split decisions.

Now that she's leaving, Governor Shumlin's first appointment to the Supreme Court is the most important choice he's had to make so far. For this reason, it was very interesting to hear what he had to say about what he's looking for in a justice.

If you talk to lawyers around the state, they will say that the smart money for a new Supreme Court justice is governor's counsel Beth Robinson. She is widely recognized as smart, and she was the leader of the push for same-sex marriage, an issue that has been central to Shumlin's policies and values for years.

According to Bob Kinzel on VPR, Shumlin says he wants to name a person who is “smart, understands the law, and is tough on crime.” This news will probably be disappointing to Shumlin's liberal supporters.

It's worth thinking about what “tough on crime” means.

Judges, and especially appellate court judges, don't get to decide what happens to criminals. The Legislature defines the crimes. The Legislature decides the range of sentences that convicted criminals get.

Over the last fifty years or so, when politicians have talked about judges being tough on crime or soft on crime what they've mainly been talking about is not crime at all, but constitutional rights, and specifically the constitutional rights that people charged with a crime–in case you're wondering, the technical description of those people until they are convicted is “innocent”. These people are you, me, and everyone else who might be accused of doing something against the law, but is entitled to the full panoply of constitutional protections, protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, against self-incrimination, and all kinds of other protections, until we are convicted.

It was his stands in favor of protecting innocent people's constitutional rights that stimulated the “Impeach Earl Warren” movements in the 1960's.

The last time we had a Democratic governor it was Howard Dean, but the old Howard Dean, before he remembered that he was a Democrat. He was also tough on crime. In fact, it was somewhere between a rumor and an open secret that he had a litmus test for his judicial appointments.

Back in 1994 the Vermont Supreme Court reversed the murder conviction of a woman named Rebecca Durenleau, who had been tried and convicted of getting her boyfriend to murder her husband. When the case went up to the Supreme Court, the court held not only that the evidence of her guilt was entirely circumstantial, but that the evidence, even if you believed every bit of evidence the state put on, wasn't enough to prove her guilt.

Howard Dean hated this decision, and the word was that if you were a lawyer, no matter how smart you were, and how well-respected your accomplishments, you couldn't get a judicial appointment from him unless you disagreed with the Durenleau decision.

I've never been in that position, so I have no direct knowledge, but it was common knowledge at the time. 

That was Dean's version of being “tough on crime”.

What's Peter Shumlin's version of “tough on crime”? We don't know. I do know that in these times, when constitutional rights have been under assault by the Nixon/Reagan/Bush court for decades, state constitutional rights are more important than they have ever been.

I also know that constitutional rights aren't just something we read about in books. They protect every one of us, but only if we have judges and justices who will stand up to protect the rights of one of the most unpopular segments of society: people who have been accused of committing a crime, but who are presumed to be innocent until the government, observing all the constitutional rights the defendant has, proves to a jury of their peers that they are guilty.

 Oh, and there's one other thing I know. One of the lawyers who represented Rebecca Durenleau in that appeal that drove Howard Dean up a wall, was Beth Robinson.

So whatever Peter Shumlin means by “tough on crime”, I hope he also realizes how important it is for the courts to protect the rights of everyone who is accused of a crime, but is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

From Front Porch Forum:

SUPPORT SMALLER CSA’S BASED IN CHITTENDEN COUNTY

By David Zuckerman, Germain St,

Fri, 03 June 2011

With 29 CSA’s selling in Chittenden County, I hope that folks will buy from some of the smaller ones that have been really suffering from the big money competition from farms like Pete’s Greens and the Intervale Food Hub.  While our farm has managed to hold our own (through greatly increased marketing, and new pick up sites), the smaller farms like Samara and Open Heart Farm (both in the Intervale) and Farmstand at The Cobble and Stony Loam Farm (in Hinesburg and Charlotte) have seen their share numbers greatly reduced.

Pete’s Greens certainly suffered a tragic loss with the barn this winter, but his business grosses over $1,000,000 a year and he had no debt (according to Pete in a business article 2 years ago).  The Intervale Food Hub has spent over $200,000 of grant money to market their CSA.

I hope folks will consider what a CSA really is.  Community Supported Agriculture.  The smaller farms really depend on the local community to make the model work.  Those that ship food all over the state and who have connections to famous people (through their employees) to raise money, and those that use non-profit grant money to compete with these smaller farms are moving away from the soul of what CSA really means.

For a complete list of your CSA options in Chittenden County, please go to the NOFA-VT website http://nofavt.org/find-organic…  Those that have an * next to their name are certified organic.  But those that sell pastured pork or pastured poultry are feeding a diet that is 60-90% GMO industrial corn and soy (unless those products are certified or they explicitly state that they feed organic grain).  So please consider all of your options and know where your money is going.  Often organic is now less expensive than non-organic.

Thank you-

David Zuckerman

Full Moon Farm

Interestingly toned- not simply a pitch, but something with an edge, suggesting Pete’s Greens and the Intervale Hub are the new big bad corporations, competing (perhaps) unfairly and squeezing out the little guys who represent the real “soul” of community agriculture.

Fair? Not harsh enough? Too harsh, but with a grain of truth? Should all the community support of Pete’s Greens have gone to small-scale CSAs instead? Discuss…

Oh, Sarah:

“I didn't mess up about Paul Revere,” replied Palin, a paid contributor to the network.

“Part of his ride was to warn the British that were already there. That, hey, you're not going to succeed. You're not going to take American arms. You are not going to beat our own well-armed persons, individual, private militia that we have,” she added. “He did warn the British.”

And Jesus' Sermon on the Mount was a warning to the Romans, right?

Anyway, she really should revere what actually happened in 1775:

The story of “Paul Revere's ride” needs not only correction but perspective.  One hundred twenty-two people lost their lives within hours of Revere's heroics, and almost twice that number were wounded.  Revere's ride was not the major event of that day, nor was Revere's warning so critical in triggering the bloodbath.  Patriotic farmers had been preparing to oppose the British for the better part of a year.  Paul Revere himself had contributed to those preparations with other important rides…

Paul Revere was one among tens of thousands of patriot from Massachusetts who rose to fight the British.  Most of those people lived outside of Boston, and, contrary to the traditional telling, these people were not country cousins to their urban counterparts.  They were rebels in their own right, although their story is rarely told…

In truth, the country folk…staged their own Revolution more than a half a year before.
…
The Massachusetts Revolution of 1774 was the most successful popular uprising in the nation's history, the only one to remove existing political authority.  Despite its power–or possibly because of its power–this momentous event has been virtually lost to history.
…
The very strengths of the Revolution of 1774 have insured its anonymity.  The force of the people was so overwhelming that violence became unnecessary.  The handful of Crown-appointed officials…when confronted by 4,622 angry militiamen, had no choice but to submit.  Had opposition been stronger, there might have been violence; that would have made for a bloodier tale but a weaker revolution.
…
The United States owes its very existence to the premise that all authority resides with the people, yet our standard telling of history does not reflect this fundamental principle.  The story of the revolution before the Revolution can remind us of what we are all about.

And about that successful, bloodless revolution in Mass the year before:

For ordinary citizens, the most visible sign of direct British rule under [1774's Coercive] Acts was to be seen in each county’s Court of Common Pleas. These courts, in session four times a year, heard hundreds of cases, most involving the nonpayment of debts. The courts, with their power to foreclose on property, would now be presided over by new judges, appointed by the royal governor and answerable only to him. Understandably, the county courthouses became the focus of the colonists’ resistance to the new regime:

    * When the governor’s new judges arrived at the Worcester County courthouse, they were met by a crowd of five or six thousand citizens, including one thousand armed militamen. The judges, sheriffs, and lawyers were forced to process in front of the crowd and repeatedly promise not to hold court under the terms of the Acts.

    * In Great Barrington, 1500 unarmed men packed the courthouse so full that the judges literally could not take their seats.

    * In Springfield, a crowd of about 3000 forced the judges and other officials to resign their positions.

In addition to closing the courts, crowds throughout the colony forced the resignations (or escapes into Boston) of all thirty-six of the governor’s councilors, including Thomas Oliver, the lieutentant governor of the colony. They also ignored the prohibition against nonapproved town meetings; they not only met, they held elections, and began to assemble an armed colonial militia. In short, they simply ignored the royal government and proceeded to set up their own.

In a period of about thirty days, from mid-August to mid-September of 1774, the ordinary people of rural Massachusetts, mostly farmers, ended British rule over themselves and their countryside forever. With no real organization, no official leaders, no fixed institutions – and no bloodshed – they went up against the most powerful empire on earth, and won. Their victory resulted from the sheer force of their numbers, along with their unshakable determination to be their own rulers. As one British loyalist unhappily put it at the time: “Government has now devolved upon the people; and they seem to be for using it.”

No warning shots needed to kick out the British.

ntodd