After what they describe as a successful test period the Vermont State Police want Tasers, two hundred and sixty of them at a “range” of about one thousand dollars a piece,which would come from the state.  

Vermont State Police Captain Robert Evans said “It has been a successful testing and evaluation period, and we’re now looking at purchasing Tasers for all of our uniformed troopers at the rank of lieutenant and below,”

The study commission talks about a successful test period but the Times Argus forgets and fails to mention a $40,000 dollar pay-out in 2009 made quietly the day after Thanksgiving as a result of State Police Taser misuse incident from 2006.

Recently some towns and cites have had Taser related incidents.  

Evans noted there will be a significant amount of training and education for both the public and police officers if the Tasers are funded.

I hope they provide specific details and define what significant training and education the public needs.

But for now always remain compliant,obey all commands speedily and make certain to avoid being Tasered in the chest, face or neck: we note that the Taser Company issued a training bulletin warning that 50,000 volt Tasering could cause an “adverse cardiac event” when the target person is shot in the chest. Avoiding the chest, face and neck is now strongly advised. Suggested shot placements currently include back, abdomen and thighs.

From the Vermont NEA:

WINOOSKI – The members of the Winooski Education Association have called off their planned strike in the wake of a tentative agreement with the city’s school board.

“From the beginning, we said that we wanted to reach a negotiated settlement with the board, and, tonight, we believe we have reached a deal that is fair to us, good for the school and good for students,” said Brent Litterer, a WEA negotiator and spokesman. “We are pleased that the board came to the table with the same goals we had: to reach a settlement.”

Details of the agreement are being held back for now. Hopefully this will continue to play out positively.

The real shame is that the teachers had their hands forced like this in the first place. It shouldn’t have come to a strike threat, which is an extreme course of action. We should be able to expect school boards to be good faith representatives of the community who should respect the work of the teachers.

I ask because of this:

Will the Vermont gubernatorial race between Republican Brian Dubie and Democrat Peter Shumlin be all about missteps and mudslinging?

The tone and tactics Monday both during and following their first debate suggested voters should expect a lot of rough-and-tumble politicking from these rivals for the state’s top job.

I listened to that debate.  It was civil, polite and issue oriented.  The only personal comments were positive, with Shumlin talking about what a great guy Dubie is and Dubie talking about how great it was that Shumlin loved his kids.  

They challenged one another on issues and made their points of view clear.  They also challenged one another on facts.  To be fair, the Free Press piece did eventually address the substantive aspects of the debate.  It just waited thirteen paragraphs to do so after the headline “Dubie, Shumlin grow testy in first debate.”  Contrast this with the Rutland Herald coverage, which focused primarily on differences between the two campaigns, and only spoke to personal issues towards the end of the article.

It’s not as though the Free Press doesn’t have the opportunity to report the facts of the debate in a fashion which is helpful and of value.  They just, apparently, prefer to push the narrative of nasty squabbling, despite the extremely tame debate that was just held.

Maybe we should all just listen for ourselves.

At EcoFest, Peter Shumlin spoke for a few minutes on the solar powered stage.  He tells how he was once asked, what is the most important issue facing Vermonters.  His answer may surprise you.

Once again, the St. Albans Town Selectboard is attempting to have its cake and eat it too.  In May, we learned that the Town joined Swanton in refusing help from the Conservation Law Foundation who were awarded  a $25,000. federal grant from Clean and Clear to develop a comprehensive plan for stormwater management for the area. According to the May 15 Messenger, Town Manager Christine Murphy feared that:

Any plan for the Exit 20 area had the potential to grow ‘regulatory legs’ because of the likelihood that the town will be required to obtain a Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) permit.

Now we learn, also through the Messenger (no link available, of course), that the Town has denied the U.S. Geological Survey’s request  to install a gauge to measure stormwater run-off into Stevens Brook.  

Town manager Christine Murphy expressed concern that the gauge might detect a stormwater impairment…If a stormwater impairment was detected and the town is required to get an MS4 stormwater permit… the town could become liable for the $15,000. a year in maintenance costs on the guage under the permit, according to Murphy.

Oh, really? And is that the only concern here?  As noted in the Messenger piece, it has just been revealed that there has been an increase in erosion in Rugg Brook along Nason St. below the site of some recent development.  The town has apparently “asked” engineer Sam Ruggiano to come up with a plan to stabilize the bank, at a cost estimated to be at least $20,000.  Mr. Ruggiano can be found connected with just about every major development in the area and always seems to be the go-to guy for the Town Selectboard as well.  Whatever happened to competitive bidding?  

If you follow the bouncing ball, you will discover that both Rugg Brook and Stevens Brook are currently classed as impaired by agricultural run-off.  This has been raised as an issue with regard to the proposed Walmart at Exit 20 of I-89, another project for which Mr. Ruggiano is the engineer.

The Walmart project neatly skirted the stormwater permitting process, largely because Stevens Brook, located in its watershed, is currently classed only as impaired due to agricultural run-off. Should there be an official measurement of stormwater run-off, as would be yielded from the USGS gauge, it would almost certainly indicate significant impairment due to development and potentially be a limiting factor for future development in the Town’s “designated growth center” at Exit 20.  

C’mon, Town Selectboard, sooner or later this will all catch up to you or to your children.  How about doing the right thing right now for a change?  Instead of turning your back on planning and just winging-it in the hope that the tax revenues from sprawling development will somehow make despoiling our environmental heritage worthwhile, why don’t you take the opportunities extended to you, and look before you leap?  On the one hand we have seen how committed the Town Selectboard is to maximum exploitation of their “designated growth centers” and on the other, how unwilling they seem to be to shoulder the responsibilities that go with that exploitation.  Witness how reluctant the Town has been to install sidewalks in one of the most rapidly expanding residential communities in Vermont.  They want the rapid growth and the tax revenues they smell on that horizon, but somehow they don’t like the idea of having to maintain infrastructure like sidewalks and monitoring stormwater to ensure the health and sustainability of the local environment.

This is a great example of why we need effective statewide environmental protections.  The federal efforts may be frustrated so easily at the local level where special interests take the field in a sort of regulatory equivalent of the wild west.  You think the engineers that work with developers can be depended on to “do the right thing?”  Why should they, when failure to properly identify erosion potential can mean a $20,000.+ opportunity to do some repairs!

 

Pastor Terry Jones Might Not Have Carried Out His Planned Burning of Korans, But a Gay-Hating Kansas Cult Went Ahead and Did Just That — and So Did Other Christian Extremists, a Sure Sign That Paranoid Religions Fanaticism Is No Longer Limited to Radical Muslims and Potentially Poses the Greatest Threat to World Peace Since the Cold War

A member of the rabidly anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church holds provocative protest signs during the 2006 funeral in Minnesota of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. Westboro made good on its promise Saturday to burn copies of the Koran and the American flag outside its headquarters in Topeka, Kansas. There was also a Koran burning in Tennessee and an unidentified man  ripped out pages of the Muslim holy book and set them afire during a protest rallies both for and against a proposed Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero in New York. (Photo courtesy Minnesota Public Radio)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, September 14, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

As America marked the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks over the weekend, the solemn remembrances of the more than 3,500 people who lost their lives were overshadowed by a raging global firestorm sparked by a disturbing rise in anti-Muslim sentiment.

Ceremonies at New York’s Ground Zero to mark the destruction of the World Trade Center took a back seat to massive demonstrations both for and against construction of an Islamic community center and mosque to be located two blocks away on Park Place — during which an unidentified man ripped out pages from a copy of the Koran and set them afire.    

A Florida pastor who drew international condemnation after he announced plans to burn copies of the Muslim holy book backed off at the last minute. But that didn’t stop a gay-hating cult in Kansas from staging its own Koran burning. Members of the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church burned not only a Koran, but also an American flag outside their headquarters in Topeka.

Westboro, made up entirely of relatives and in-laws of its iron-willed leader, Fred Phelps, has generated nationwide outrage in recent years — including a lawsuit that will be heard before the Supreme Court later this fall — over its viciously homophobic protests at the funerals of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cult believes that U.S. troops are dying as “God’s punishment for America’s tolerance of homosexuality” and attacks Muslims as following a “false religious system with a pedophile as its prophet.”

TENN. MINISTERS, N.Y. PROTESTER ALSO BURN KORANS — FLA. MOSQUE FIREBOMBED

Westboro wasn’t alone. In Springfield, Tennessee, two local Christian ministers  held a private Koran burning Saturday in the backyard of their home. The Rev. Bob Old and the Rev. Danny Allen denied that they were holding their Koran burning to protest the Park 51 project in New York.  “It’s about faith, it’s about love, but you have to have the right book behind you,” said Old, as he held up a copy of the Koran before setting it aflame. “This is a book of hate, not a book of love.”

Meanwhile, an unidentified man tore out pages from a copy of the Koran and set the ripped pages aflame during a massive protest against the proposed Park 51 Islamic center, the New York Daily News reported Sunday. He was not arrested. A second man also tore pages out of a Koran and offered them to anyone in the crowd as “toilet paper,” according to the newspaper.

Most disturbing was an incident that happened in Jacksonville, Florida in May, but didn’t become national news until last month: A mosque was firebombed while worshippers were inside for Friday prayers. A surveillance video released by the FBI showed a middle-aged white man believed to be carrying a can of gasoline walking in the courtyard of the Jacksonville Islamic Center of Northeast Florida on the night of the incident.

The FBI is investigating the incident as a possible hate crime and act of domestic terrorism, a bureau spokesman told radio station WOKV. “It was a dangerous device, and had anybody been around it, they could have been seriously injured or killed,” said spokesman James Casey. “We want to sort of emphasize the seriousness of the thing and not let people believe that this was just a match and a little bit of gasoline that was spread around.”

ANTI-MUSLIM INCIDENTS IN U.S. SPARK ANTI-CHRISTIAN VIOLENCE OVERSEAS

The Koran burnings in the U.S. triggered an outbreak of anti-Christian violence by outraged Muslims in India, Afghanistan  and Indonesia.

In India, violence erupted in the Kashmir Valley and in two towns in Punjab state, the New Delhi-based Indo-Asian News Service reported Monday.  At least three people were killed  and several people were injured when rioting mobs burned a Christian missionary school to the ground in the Muslim northern Kasmir town of  Tangmarg.

Indian authorities imposed a round-the-clock curfew throughout the territory, but angry Muslims continued to stage protests in the Pulwama district of southern Kashmir, shouting pro-Koran and anti-American slogans, IANS reported. Similar  protests erupted in the city of Srinagar in Punjab state, which borders Pakistan. There were conflicting reports about the fate of a Christian church in Srinagar. Some reports said the church was torched, but others said that only its wooden cross was set afire by the protesters.

In Afghanistan, two people were killed and half a dozen injured as protests held against the event on Sunday turned violent, the Los Angeles Times reported. Hundreds of protesters in Lowgar province, south of the Afghan capital, Kabul, tried to storm the provincial governor’s headquarters.  Afghan police responded by firing on the crowd.

And in Indonesia, a Christian worshipper and a minister were attacked by assailants as they headed to Sunday morning prayers at a church in the city of Bekasi, 25 miles east of the capital,Jakarta, according to Catholic Online, a Catholic news and information Web site.

The worshipper was stabbed in the stomach and the minister was hit on his head with a wooden plank.  Neither victims’  injuries appeared to be life-threatening. No one claimed responsibility for the attacks, Catholic Online reported, but a group of Muslim hard-liners are suspected.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous majority-Muslim country with 220 million people, is a secular democracy with a long history of religious tolerance. But Islamic militants have been been agitating in recent years for the imposition of Sharia law. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the attack and vowed to bring the assailants to justice.

FLASHBACK TO 2006: THE CONTROVERSIAL PROPHET MOHAMMED CARTOONS

Those who burned Korans over the weekend had to have known that they would provoke strong and even violent reactions among many Muslims. One only has to look back four years, when a Danish newspaper, the conservative Copenhagen daily Morgenawisen Jyllands-Posten, published a series of highly unflattering editorial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

That the cartoons depicted any image at all of the prophet — which is strictly taboo in the Muslim world and considered even by moderate and secular Muslims to be the ultimate blasphemy against their faith — is bad enough. That they depicted Mohammed in an unflattering, even mocking, light — including one cartoon showing the prophet wearing a turban the looked like a bomb — made the outrage among Muslims even more heated and ultimately, it boiled over into violence.

Thousands of enraged Muslims rampaged in Beirut on February 5, 2006, setting fire to the Danish Embassy, burning Danish flags, lobbing stones at a Maronite Christian church and ransacking a Christian neighborhood in the Lebanese capital.

Troops fired bullets into the air and used tear gas and water cannons to push the crowds back after a small group of Islamic extremists tried to break through the security barrier outside the Beirut embassy. Flames and smoke billowed from the building. Security officers said that at least 30 people had been injured in the violence.

When other European newspapers republished the cartoons, the violence spread across the Middle East, as angry mobs torched the Danish Embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, stormed and ransacked European Union buildings, and desecrated the Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, French and German flags in Gaza City.

In an editorial published on january 30, 2006, the editors of Jyllands-Posten, while defending their right to publish the cartoons, nonetheless apologized, stating that “they have indisputably offended many Muslims.”

A DANGEROUS NEW COMBUSTIBLE ELEMENT: CHRISTIAN EXTREMISTS

While the motivations of the newspapers’ printing of the Mohammed cartoons remains a subject of debate, there’s no doubt about the motivations of those who burned the Koran this past weekend: Sheer anti-Muslim bigotry. They did it deliberately, fully aware that it would be extremely offensive to Muslims and knowing that it would provoke a violent response from Muslim hard-liners.

That the Koran burners were Christian extremists who, like Pastor Terry Jones, believe that “Islam is of the Devil” — or, in the case of the virulently homophobic Westboro cult, believe that Muslims “follow a pedophile prophet” — introduces a dangerous new combustible element in this age of the Internet that, if left unchecked, could threaten world peace to a degree not seen since the 40-year Cold War between the United States and the now-defunct Soviet Union.

In the nine years since 9/11, religious extremism can no longer be seen by Americans — or the world — as the exclusive province of Islamic radicals. There are also radical Christians among us, some of them all too eager to re-launch a crusade against “the Islamic devil.”

For centuries, religious leaders have perpetuated and reinforced this “us-versus-them” mentality by preaching that there is only one true pathway for humans to relate to God, that all other pathways are false and that those who follow those other pathways are wrong — even “evil” — and must be opposed by whatever means necessary.

If it’s not put in check, this “us-versus-them” mentality will ultimately destroy us all.

# # #

Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. all rights reserved.  

Though it’s clear that Brian Dubie would like to walk this statement back, a bit, I’d like to suggest a different approach:

We’re going to have to look at our programs and target the most vulnerable… it’s basic economics.

Brian Dubie, economist, would like you to believe that cutting services for the most vulnerable is “basic economics.”  What he doesn’t understand is that these benefits come with a stimulative benefit.  Though his campaign manager claims that the intended intent was to say “protect” and not “target,” the “basic economics” that Dubie fails to understand are that benefits for poor people encourage people to spend:

Giving money to the wealthy doesn’t increase spending and doesn’t improve the economy.  Giving money to the poor has a tremendous impact on the economy and can improve it dramatically, increasing state revenues as a result.  This is not the time to be taking a knife to benefits.  This is a time to be analyzing what benefits produce the most economic benefit overall and finding the best possible way to implement these benefits.

That is “basic economics.”

One of the nicest things about the Dem nomination being settled is the start of debates. More importantly, hearing Brian Dubie, without the shelter of his handlers, have to go out and make his case can not only work well for the Dems, it’s just so entertaining. The vague ambiguity as we witness him trying to grasp what he’s saying. The Palinspeak. And the Freudian slips.

Well, we didn’t have to wait too long, as the first guv debate took place today, on WVMT in Colchester:

Dubie said he would shrink middle management and act on recommendations offered but not yet pursued by Gov. Jim Douglas’ “tiger teams,” groups of employees and administrators who studied how to save money. He also said, surprisingly, “We are going to have to look at our programs and target the most vulnerable.”

Corry Bliss, Dubie’s campaign manager, said later the candidate got a little tongue-tied and what he meant to say was while looking at all programs, he would protect the most vulnerable.

Now, it’s not at the level of something like Bush’s “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we,” but he’s off to a good start, finally offering specifics on how his “Pure Vermont” is gonna work its magic.

Keep ’em comin’, Brian.

Over the next few weeks, there will be a series of candidate forums focused on:

• Developing a health care system that works for everyone


• Affordable childcare and access to quality early education


• Access to jobs and the impact of cuts to public services

These forums focus on local (house and senate) candidates.  The full schedule is:

The forums are sponsored by the Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign – Vermont Workers’ Center,  Vermont Early Educators United – American Federation of Teachers and the Vermont Center for Independent Living.  

My hope is that some of us will be able to live blog these forums as they come up, so if there’s one you’re interested in or available to live blog, please comment and I’ll see what I can do to help set it up.  If you’re not a site moderator, I can still bump your live blog to the front page when it’s happening.  Both Sue Prent and I have had experience doing live blogging of these forums and though I can’t speak for Sue, I’d be glad to give suggestions and advice on how to do a live blog while still keeping (relatively) sane.

( – promoted by GMD)

2010 Vermont general election gubernatorial candidates’ responses to homelessness and affordable housing questions (here):

Five-Part Question Posed to Vermont 2010 Gubernatorial Candidates:

If the voters were to elect you as Governor of the State of Vermont, when it comes to addressing homelessness and affordable housing across the state, please answer the following five-part question:

1. What priority would both of these matters hold within your administration?

2. What concrete steps would your administration take to address these matters?

3. What are the expected outcomes by which your administration would measure the effectiveness of such proposals?

4. What timelines would your administration set for addressing such?

5. How would your administration fund such proposals?

[…]

Read responses received thus far*(1), here.

*(1: With the Vermont Democratic gubernatorial primary only recently decided or confirmed after the recount, not all the candidates have responded as of yet; however I followed up in one manner or another with the other campaigns who have not done so in order to ask and remind them once again about the questions submitted to each of the candidates for Governor via e-mail earlier this Summer)