There’s a message in the 2010 elections in Vermont that is surprisingly not being truly talked about. In the days following the election, political analysts and newspapers repeated the very real point of the elections that Vermont “was just about totally immune from the wave that swept the country“, according to Chris Graff, former journalist and political commentator (VT Digger: GOP Losing Ground in Vermont). While it’s true that Vermont elected a democratic governor for the first time in eight years, and the “supermajorities” of both Houses were returned to the Democrats, the concept that the Republicans and Tea Party activists in Vermont made no substantial ground is unfortunately wrong.

For example, take the one senate seat that was lost to a Republican. In Caledonia county the race was defined with two democratic incumbents, Senator Jane Kitchel and Senator Matt Choate. Senator Kitchel came in the race as a heavy favorite, but her freshman colleague, Senator Choate, was seen as potentially losing the seat he won two years ago. For their opponents, Charlie Bucknam and Joe Benning each had felt like they would have a chance at knocking off Senator Choate and were hoping to high hell that they would manage to take Senator Kitchel’s seat. And they would have, if it wasn’t for that meddling Bud Otterman.

Two years ago, longtime House Republican for the Caledonia-Orange 1 district lost his race to a political newcomer. Not content with spending nearly 40 years in public service, the popular former Representative, Harvey “Bud” Otterman, decided to run as an independent for the Caledonia senate. In his run, he muddied up the waters a bit. Democrats felt like they had a better chance since a popular, kitchen-table name had jumped in on the center-right vote. Whatever happened, town-by-town, the hopes were dashed. Bud Otterman’s campaign was a blessing in disguise, but it wasn’t as effectual as it was hoped. Jane Kitchel won re-election by four-hundred or so votes, (the now Senator-Elect) Joe Benning took second place by edging incumbent Choate out by 137 votes, who beat Charlie Bucknam by only 215. And where is Bud Otterman in all this? Dead last, of course. His campaign never had the energy behind it that the other campaigns had (not to mention, the Tea Party support from the same group in Orange county that hosted statewide candidates like Len Britton, Paul Beaudry, and Ken Stern), but being dead last saved the leading democratic candidate, Jane Kitchel.

When all the votes were certified, Bud Otterman came in with 1,798 votes. It is not unrealistic to imagine that the votes an extremely popular former Republican like Otterman received were siphoned off of the republican candidates. Had Otterman not run, Caledonia county could have very well seen the rise of two Tea Party republicans, not just one.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a lone situation. Although they didn’t take very many seats, the Tea Party and Vermont’s “new” GOP (or whatever it is, it isn’t the Snelling/Jeffords GOP that used to exist in New England), isn’t dead. It is far from dead. Yes, a state as blue as Vermont re-elected a legislature that is truly blue, and while the state did elect a democratic state Senator as governor (only so, in my opinion, five-thousand votes isn’t a huge margin), there are signs in the state that show that the GOP and the TP aren’t dead, but one election does not a pattern make, so I guess we’ll have to see what 2012 brings for our tiny state.

(By the way, I do know that this example only extends itself to Caledonia county, I’m currently pouring over the results posting on the Secretary of State‘s website for other examples, but I might have to wait until recounts are done to be sure.)

In the new Republican controlled congress Democrat Henry Waxman the current Energy and Commerce Chairman will be leaving that post. The House Energy and Commerce Committee oversees legislation related to issues including the supply and delivery of energy, public health, and air quality and environmental health.

Republican Congressmen John Shimkus (Illinois), Joe Barton (Texas), Fred Upton (Michigan) and Cliff Stearns (Florida) are all vying for the chairmanship.All four Republicans are clinging to their old familiar light bulbs just as ferociously as their retrograde views.

Here is a quick look at some remarks that the candidates have made which offers some insight to each congressman’s views on energy issues.  

Rep.John Shimkus has said that

"Greenhouse gases are not toxic – every time we exhale we emit carbon dioxide; does EPA propose we stop breathing,"

He also made clear he is not worried about global climate change because

"The Earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over.  Man will not destroy this Earth.  This Earth will not be destroyed by a Flood."

Texas Rep.Joe Barton famously called  Obama’s proposal for the oil company to establish a $20 billion escrow account for oil spill remediation  a “shakedown” and   apologized to the oil giant. He did back track afterward but he remains a recipient of large oil industry contributions.  

Rep.Cliff Stearns supports  drilling in ANWR and has claimed that this alone would reverse the decline in the US oil supply in a decade. Doubts about climate change science. In 2007 he gave a speech on the house floor saying the experts were wrong about global cooling in the 1970’s and that “…does not necessarily mean that they are wrong about global warming today, but it does at least show that experts are sometimes incredibly, incredibly wrong”.    

What is happening with Rep.Fred Upton’s effort to gain the chairmanship is interesting.

In 2007, Upton suffered an apparent spasm of reason and supported and co-sponsored bills aimed at phasing out incandescent light bulbs and establishing efficiency standards for light bulbs. Although he has established his retrograde credentials by questioning the science of global warming and says the Democratic-controlled congress has let the EPA run wild and that the EPA must be held accountable.

Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh  have attacked Upton as a socialist and supporter of the nanny-state for his ideas on light bulbs.  

In case you haven’t heard yet. From the Guardian:

The Burmese military junta has released pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest. The Nobel laureate, who has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years, was greeted by jubilant crowds who had gathered in Rangoon in anticipation of her release.

[…] “If we work in unity, we will achieve our goal. We have a lot of things to do,” she said.

[…] Thousands of people wore T-shirts bearing her image and the words, “We stand with Aung San Suu Kyi”. It is a T-shirt that would have landed them in jail a few weeks ago.

I’m going to second what President Obama said: Aung San Suu Kyi has long been a personal hero of mine, and I’m thrilled beyond belief that she’s free from house arrest. It still bears mentioning, though – she’s been released before under the condition that she stop speaking out and organizing against the military junta. She has always refused to do so and landed back in house arrest. It should also be noted that the junta doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. International actions haven’t moved them from power, but it is clear that the military rulers would like to be able to fully rejoin the community of nations (just as they’ve been afraid to move against Aung San Suu Kyi in a more aggressive way than the muzzle of a house arrest).

The next weeks will be telling, but regardless – for today, this is truly, truly wonderful news.

On Burlington’s much-discussed free weekly, 7 Days: the thing that happens when you produce weird, Beck-esque blog rants, or “bogus polls” that are in-kind contributions to Republicans (followed by the publisher digging in when called out on it) is that people start missing the good stuff you may also be doing.

And the thing that happens when this site has a history of receiving flailing name-calling, being called liars (with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge, rather than using the L word), having potential front page contributors intimidated out of participating, and more along those lines over the years, it becomes easy to miss the really good work that continues to be done over there. Ken Picard, for example, is someone I’ve repeatedly referred to as one of my favorite journalists in the state, and that shows again in his piece this week on the St. Albans-based federal unit that assists immigrants who are abuse victims.

But the real score this week is an article by Andy Bromage which is, frankly, a public service to Vermonters, and is especially relevant now that we’re on the cusp of a firmly Democratic controlled Montpelier. Bromage looks at the growing problem of homelessness in Burlington and comes up with this stunner of a statistic:

Every January, Vermont service agencies participate in the Winter Census, also known as a point-in-time survey, that counts the state’s homeless population in shelters and encampments across the state. In 2008, the number was 2286; today it’s 2782.

[…] That gives Vermont the highest homeless rate per capita in New England

That’s appalling. I suspect one of the reasons we don’t hear more about this is the same reason seemingly groovy Vermont types get all twitchy when racism comes up; its not consistent with the largely non-native driven mythology of what Vermont is supposed to be – and the white, upper-middle class groovy liberal crowd can get pretty worked up about defending that mythology. Of course, in doing so, they allow problems like this to fester.

So the piece is an important read, but it’s not perfect; quite unfortunately, it frames the “problem” in terms of landlords having their houses infested with pesky squatters, rather than the problem of people who are homeless. Still, I suppose that’s writing to the 7 Days audience, so I won’t get too perturbed. It’s still an important journalistic service to get the story out there.

When I was in college, I worked on a report on the differing perspectives on homelessness on the political left and right. It was eye-opening to simply not be able to find any material on the Republican right on the topic. To them, it’s simply a non-issue. With a Democratic Governor, maybe it can become the issue it needs to be.

In part two of the GMD interview with Shap Smith, the Speaker of the Vermont House takes on the prickly topic of last year’s “Challenges for Change” budgetary process (and the conflicts it created), prospects for “permit reform” in the next session, and volunteers his favorite website for staying plugged into the national progressive community.

A battle will soon be fought that may well determine the economic future of our country.  Is the United States a country by and for its rich people or is it a country for all its people?  

We can provide, once again, massive tax benefits to the wealthiest people in the US while many suffer, or we can decide that the maximization of the super-wealthy class is not in the best interest of the country.

We have all seen the numbers about how the wealthy in the US have seen an enormous expansion of wealth while wages have been stagnant.

What’s new is that President Obama seems to be wavering on the extension of the tax benefits to the wealthy.  

We need to demand that our President, Senators Leahy and Sanders and Congressman Welch strongly oppose any attempt to extend those benefits. They need to hear from us on this issue.

Speaker of the Vermont House Shap Smith sat down to talk with Green Mountain Daily about the upcoming legislative session and the implications of the new House, new Senate leadership, and the first Democratic Governor in 8 years. Part one that follows is a bit wonky, and deals with the new lay of the land and the upcoming redistricting process.

Part two will get into the tougher topics of upcoming budget demands, permit reform prospects, and last year’s “Challenges for Change” process which so strained the relationships between the Legislature and the Democratic base.

I was in The War To End All Wars

and the Big One–WWII

then there was Korea

and Vietnam–what a bastard

that one was

barely had time to rest

and recuperate before Reagan

started things up again

now it’s Afghanistan

and Iraq

sweet Jesus

as the GI said

in that movie A Walk In The Sun

next it’ll be The Battle Of Tibet

I wish you folks would

Do Something about all this

I could really use a break

I mean a Long Break

like say for 92 years at least

maybe by then we’ll

have figured out a better way

to live with each other

instead of killing each other

anyway I got your letter

I feel real sorry for

all you civilians suffering

with the economy and healthcare

and letting the nitwits

run the country

yeah I feel like Real Sorry

for you

I’m still over here

maybe if I were back home

I could help you fix things

think about it

think Hard about it

I’ve got to go now

92 years of this shit

it’s getting old

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.

So we’re going to start with Lauren Ober writing in the 7 Days blog:

The Associated Press reported that Aldrich’s refusal to barber the patron – Dr. Darryl Fisher, of Taos, N.M. – sparked a demonstration by people who claimed his denial of service was racially motivated.

Except that… it didn’t.  The piece she links doesn’t say anything at all about those of us who were at the demonstration making any claims, and there was actually a lot of fairly careful discussion about that at the demonstration itself.  Most of us were very clear that we weren’t accusing the barber of racism, but were concerned about someone having developed the sense that the town was racist and trying to figure out how best to address that.  But hey, why stick to the facts when you can just make stuff up as you go along, such as:

It is entirely possible that Aldrich is, in fact, a racist who didn’t want to cut Fisher’s hair because he doesn’t like people of color. If that’s the case, I best not be defending the guy. But let’s assume for the sake of argument that Aldrich is a stand-up guy who loves all people regardless of color, creed, political persuasion or sexual proclivity. Then this story makes a lot more sense.

The piece I just quoted was posted yesterday (Wednesday, November 10th) at 8:30 am.  Let’s take a moment and enter the Wayback machine to go back two days to the Brattleboro Reformer, reporting on Aldrich’s own comments (since Reformer writer Jaime Cone actually talked to people involved and did some actual work here):

He also seems angry that Fisher spoke out about what happened.

“What does he have to go stirring this up for?” he said, adding that he believes black people are more racist than white people.

But yes, even though Aldrich is on record making a bigoted comment about blacks, the story “makes a lot more sense” if we just “assume for the sake of argument” otherwise.

If you think I’m done with this, you’re sadly mistaken.

Ober, not satisfied with making mocking comments about those of us attending the demonstration (“Oh, you gotta love Vermont and its knee-jerk PCness. Well done, white people, for making a fuss about something you know nothing about – black hair.”), also decides that in order to support her position, she’ll just make some stuff up:

Aldrich, like 99.9 percent of white hair stylists, doesn’t know how to cut black hair.

99.9%?  So if we randomly pulled out 1,000 white hair stylists, only one of them would know how to cut black hair?  Why not 99.93%?  Why not 97.24%?  Why 99.9%  Because that’s the number you use when you are making things up out of whole cloth to express a vast majority.  

Oh, and:

That’s understandable, since he lives in Bellows Falls, a town of 3000 white people and 11 black people.

Let’s back that statistic up for a moment.  The source she uses for it is here.

It’s accurate that Bellows Falls is estimated to have had around 3,000 residents in 2009.  But the number of blacks listed is from ten years ago.  If you’re reporting on demographics that small, you should probably, for accuracy’s sake, indicate the age of your numbers.  But I will give her credit for not just making the number up.  It’s true that in y2k, the census did report 11 black people in Bellows Falls.  I just don’t know that that number is quite so accurate in 2010 and would think it would be useful to include the fact.

If at this point, you think I’m being picky, you’re right.  I’m annoyed at this piece which attempts to simplify and dismiss something serious and I’m  particularly not fond of white people trying to pretend that racism is irrelevant, meaningless or that responses to it are just PC.  

So yes, I’m being picky.  I’m also doing something that Ms. Ober clearly chose not to do in this case: I’m being thorough.

It’s clear from the accumulated evidence that Aldrich doesn’t know how to cut the hair of black people and, it seems clear, that he doesn’t care to know.  But that doesn’t mean that others are equally ignorant.  If Ms. Ober had bothered to do some research before writing this piece she might have learned from the Brattleboro Commons (in which Allison Teague actually learned some facts about the situation before choosing to write about it):

Lori Brown, owner of Boccaccio’s hair salon in Bellows Falls, said, “We are all trained to cut any kind of hair whether you’re African American, Caucasian or Indian,” she said.

I guess that, given Lauren Ober’s statistics, that’s probably it for the state of Vermont for white stylists who know anything about black hair.  But hey, she knows more about this than we do, because even though she didn’t attend the demonstration, didn’t talk to anyone involved with it, doesn’t know what actually happened, and feels comfortable just making things up out of whole cloth, she did have a black roommate in college.  

So forget everything I said.  I’ll just defer to her on this.

I recently took the time to list the number of family members that have been in the military. I was surprised at how long and varied a list it is.  

Veteran’s Day, my grandparents always called it Armistice Day, "a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as ‘Armistice Day’.

What follows is part of a 93-year-old letter I found in some family papers. This letter was written in reply to my great grandfather living in the USA from his brother Amos, fighting with the British Expeditionary Force in France March, 1917.  One final winter still remained in that war.    

A letter from the war to end all wars…

I am hoping that this terrible war will soon cease & I can settle down again, I think the news are looking fairly well soon [sic] & I sincerely hope this summer will see the close, for I’m sure I don’t want to spend another winter out here, the people here say it is the worst winter they have witnessed for many years & I can tell you what with the hard weather & the conditions we have had to put up with has been terrible, but still we must keep smiling & hope, we long to come out victorious.  

I think I must now close for this time with fondest love & best wishes from your loving brother, Amos