Per Peter Shumlin:

Unity PicToday we announced that I will be embarking on a United Vision for Vermont Tour with the 4 other Democratic gubernatorial candidates on Tuesday, September 7.  Over the course of 2 days we will criss-cross the state highlighting our unified vision to get Vermonters back to work and continue to make Vermont a great place to live, build a business and raise a family. Please come join us at any of the below stops!

Schedule of stops is here.  Stops include St Albans, Rutland, Shelburne, Bennington on the 7th and then on the 8th, Brattlebor, WRJ and Montpelier.

A sixty-four-year-old California resident named Peter McFarland fell and injured his leg on his way into his home. His wife called paramedics, who arrived, treated him and left. He happened to jokingly remark to them that he was in so much pain that if he had a gun he would just shoot himself.  Shortly afterward Marin County Sheriffs arrived and entered his home uninvited.  

Although he explained that he was in pain and the remark was hyperbole, the sheriffs attempted to force him to go to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation. McFarland and his wife can be seen in the disturbing seven-minute video (filmed by a deputy) repeatedly asking them to leave. Totally fed-up and angry, he finally tried to leave his living room and was tasered three times.

He is now suing the county.

The Sheriff's department defended their actions stating, "the decision to resort to the use of force is never taken lightly."

Vermont is not immune to taser incidents: in March of this year a homeless person was tasered in Barre in an incident that is ‘under investigation.’

And in 2009 the State of Vermont paid an out of court settlement of $40,000.00 for a State Police tasing incident that took place in 2006.

 

I imagine that many of us here on GMD are planning to volunteer for the Democratic Primary recount beginning on Wednesday at 9:00.

Would anyone be interested in carpooling?

More beneath the cut.

I am going to the recount on Wednesday in Chittenden county, and although I can take the bus, it would be nice if I didn’t have to get up quite as early as I will have to to walk down to the nearest CCTA station and wait for the bus to arrive. If anyone lives or goes by the Essex Junction area and would be willing to give me a ride, I’d be happy to give them some gas money or buy lunch or something.

It also occurs to me that other GMDers may be interested in carpooling, and if so, this thread could work handily for those also wishing to save gas (and polar bears!) and wanting to carpool to the Chittenden county or other recounts.

( – promoted by odum)

Presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee Peter Shumlin and other Democratic leaders, including Sen. Doug Racine, will begin a Unity Tour across the state in St. Albans Tuesday. They will start from Cosmic Bakery on Main St. in St. Albans, hosted there by Franklin County State Senate candidate Mike McCarthy (Hey, that’s me.).

I’m really excited by this opportunity and I want to invite anyone who is interested to come and join us in a show of support for our candidates. We must beat B-Dubs in November! They are slated to be at Cosmic (30 S. Main Street) from 10am-11am on Tuesday morning.

Other events will be announced across the state, so please get out and support the Dems when they are in your neighborhood.

(Crossposted at Huffington Post, where nobody reads this kinda airy, esoteric crap either…)

It wasn’t the collective gasp, followed by the sigh of relief I expected. Instead, the response among those I spoke with to the news of another oil rig disaster in the gulf, along with the follow-up report that its impact appeared to be minimal, was something more akin to a collective deer-in-the-headlights episode. Casual observers – as well as the media – seemed not to know what to do with the news.

Call it “disaster saturation,” perhaps, but the response was strangely dulled – almost slack-jawed. Not in an apathetic or disinterested way, but in a way that suggested a profound sense of powerlessness and confusion, and maybe just a hint of fatalistic resignation. “Now what?” seemed to be the message in the eyes of my neighbor.

“Now what,” indeed.

As any historian or philosopher will tell you, human society has progressed in lurches, rather than in a steady, manageable growth pattern. Working against a pronounced (and understandable) tendency toward personal and cultural inertia, the human world tends to change when crises are thrust upon it. As much as intellectuals would love to see us develop ourselves along a considered path of collective self-actualization, it’s large scale changes in the status quo that get us moving. Perhaps an aggressive neighboring warlord amasses an army and invades our land. A large scale viral epidemic impacts the population. An economic collapse reveals the weaknesses of the financial system and displaces the established social structure.

This is when things really change. Some might see this as mere collective short-sightedness, but I’ve always seen us as more of a “when the chips are down” kind of species. We are nothing if not adaptable, and when you combine that adaptability with our inherent social nature and the associated evolutionary imperative of altruism, it seems clear that we are at our proudest moments in these times of crises.

And that is what makes this moment in history so uniquely frightening.

Consider: the only way we know how to make dramatic, systemic changes for the better is when disaster is upon us. It’s what we do. Sure, we fritter around the edges in the meantime, but it only amounts to so much. Like children, we learn from experience first, not so much through foresight.

But consider also the economic, industrial and environmental scale of modern human society – when one oil rig disaster can threaten to turn a vast swath of ocean into a dead zone and potentially collapse an entire region’s economy.

The fact is, that technology and population have raised the stakes of our mistakes to such an unprecedented level, that our species and our very planet cannot necessarily sustain our old way of evolving as communities. Learning-by-disaster is not a sustainable pedagogy when the disasters now take place at such a scale, they may be catastrophic for entire ecosystems and the human cultures that depend on them.

But how do you change a pattern so fundamental to human history?

The climate change debate is a crystalline example of this dilemma. Any intellectual analysis of the changes already underway due to planet-warming pollutants – even a passing analysis – should elicit enough concern to generate meaningful action, and yet what have we been seeing? On the one side, adamant denial despite incontrovertible evidence. On the other, an increase in conspicuous, emblematic “green” commodities, but very little decrease in the conspicuous consumption that feeds the crisis (and in the context of an economic downturn that is having relatively little impact on the wealth of the upper middle and upper classes in this country). And all the while, both sides spend most of their energy being frustrated with the other, rather than fully engaging (either intellectually or materially) with the actual crisis.

But the problem isn’t stupidity on one side or greed on the other, so much as it is the fundamental way we learn and evolve as a species. Human history can be seen as a process of fault response, and fault response is inadequate. This is why those that advocate stepping away from social and technological progress and returning to “simpler” times are misguided. To survive into the next century, we need to fundamentally shift from a fault response society to a fault tolerant one.

Ironically, this means looking to the model offered by the most “cutting edge,” even radical, sector of society – technology; the very sector that many might be simplistically inclined to blame for the inevitable situation we find ourselves.

IT systems are defined by their fault tolerance. Since fault can be catastrophic, it has become simply unacceptable in complex, enterprise-level operations. A hospital, public infrastructure or large corporate operation can be irreparably harmed by a systems failure – and systems failures can come in unanticipated ways. What makes an IT infrastructure sound, then, is it’s ability to continue operating in the face of the unanticipated. Back-ups, secure servers, and drives operating in parallel in such a way that allow for the catastrophic collapse of any one discrete system without the accompanying collapse of the entire infrastructure.

In this way, the Information Technology field has countered this human paradigm by working around it in an uncharacteristically forward-looking way. Critical errors inevitably occur, but the greater system is structured to accommodate them so that these problems can be addressed as inconveniences – or even as urgencies – but not as catastrophes. Generally speaking, the stakes are simply too high to allow for any other approach.

How to translate this concept to the world at large and build the Fault Tolerant Society? Obviously, as with any high-sounding theoretically notion, it’s the application that’s the hard part. We are so used to looking at social change in a polarized way; driven from the top down or the bottom up. Building the Fault Tolerant Society will take a little of both. In a democracy, fuel for change obviously emanates from the electorate, but it’s just as clear that there’s a need for visionary leadership in making any abstraction into a reality. The currency of political debate can’t continue to slide backward toward warring views of religion and cosmology, it needs to be about building a world that will allow us to continue disagreeing about religion or oil or whatever without suddenly having it all collapse out from under us as the result of our next big mistake.

As clear that this is all easier said than done, it’s just as clear that the current administration in Washington has neither the interest nor the vision to approach such a challenge. It’s simply not in the portfolio of a President who, for whatever reason, seems incapable of appreciating the full implications and urgency of the very campaign rhetoric that swept him into office.

But the first step is clear; it’s well past time for the citizenry to start asking our would-be-leaders what systems they intend to put in place, not simply to prevent disaster, but to deal with disaster – and their answers to those questions should be the among the first criteria used to judge those would-be leaders worthiness of our support.

A Vermont judge reversed course Friday and agreed with two candidates who asked to speed the recount of the Democratic gubernatorial primary ballots, saying the process would continue through next week’s Jewish holiday, if necessary.

(Vermont judge says he’ll expedite Democratic gubernatorial recount, Burlington Free Press, 09/03/10)

Having just read about Brian Dubie’s plan to redirect federal funds intended to support education into a property tax boondoggle, I received with great interest the latest news that, Senators Leahy and Feingold are introducing two bills to reform the notoriously underfunded and ill-conceived “No Child Left Behind.”  A legacy of the Bush years, “No Child Left Behind” has only succeeded in obscuring the very real issues that public education faces in a world of dwindling resources and growing need.

According to a press release:

The Improving Student Testing Act would:

o   Increase competitive grant funds for states to create higher-quality, authentic measurements of student performance. Examples include computer-based adaptive tests and innovative performance-based tests that can incorporate formats like science experiments and written essays and that require students to demonstrate their knowledge.

o   Clarify that existing federal funds for assessments can be used to develop better assessments and train teachers in the use of those assessments.

The Flexibility and Innovation in Education Act would:

o   Reform NCLB’s testing mandates and reduce its focus on high stakes testing.

o   Provide states and local districts with more power over the day-to-day decisions in classrooms by allowing states to use multiple measures of student achievement in classrooms in addition to reading and math tests and provide states with the flexibility to lessen the testing burden in their schools.

o   Revise the one-size-fits-all approach and provide states with flexibility to develop alternative accountability models such as growth models where schools receive credit for the growth students make throughout the academic school year.

o   Improve the Department of Education’s peer review process to ensure states have the ability to interact directly with peer review teams.

o   Include important measures to help ensure the privacy of students’ personal information contained in state education data systems.

With regard to funding concerns, we are assured that both bills are fully funded through offsets and will not represent any additional burden to the taxpayer.

The bills have the support of a number of educational peer groups:

the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the NEA, the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, the Association of Wisconsin School Administrators, the American Association of School Administrators, the School Social Work Association of America, the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the Vermont Principals Association.

You can count on this drawing out all the usual suspects who believe public education is a “waste” of public monies, promotes a “liberal” (read: informed) agenda, and undermines the stability (read: defacto class system) of America.

Vermont’s Republican candidate for governor, Brian Dubie, was recently on WDEV’s Mark Johnson Show. If you’re even remotely into Vermont politics, you must listen to this interview. It is, at the very least, very fine entertainment.

You know, kind of like the Rocky Horror Picture Show and all.

Dubie’s just whacked. And I mean that in a good and bad way. Sure, he might be fun to “have a beer with,” but let’s face it, the man is just off when trying to play politics.

Listening or watching Brian Dubie is like being forced to endure a bad imitation of George W. Bush. It’s just awkward.

But Dubie – like Bush —  seems to just chuckle his way through life, stalling and bobbing his way around anything that feels “off script” for him. And “off script” for Dubie has quite an expansive definition, including (so far in this campaign): Engaging in debates, answering the media’s questions at length (Dubie gave them 11 minutes at his last news conference), and taking talk radio phone calls.

Hmm. What’s that about Dubie and talk radio? According to Gonzo Vermont’s sources, when Dubie was scheduled to appear on Johnson’s radio program, the campaign had two major concerns: 1.) The length of the interview, thus the amount of time to force Dubie to think and talk on his own, and 2.) The callers.

The Dubie campaign handled the “two issues” by implementing a strategy that even Brian could understand: Stall/evade and have your friends call in.

Cool, as Dubie would say.

Dubie implemented the stall with near perfection. The campaign arranged it so Dubie’s appearance on Johnson’s show would be “just before” the release of the campaign’s much-touted “economic plan for Vermont.” By having the release of the report scheduled in another part of the state at about the exact time the Johnson radio show was to end, Dubie got to say something like this about four dozen times in the course of the interview (read: stalling): “Our economic plan will be released later today, and the details are all in it.  And I don’t want to steal its thunder here with you on the radio.”

Listen for yourself. And count how many times Dubie uses the release time/date of the report to evade any specifics about his economic plan and/or to dodge most anything he found to be politically uncomfortable.

Dubie’s little game of dodge ball continued when he met the members of the Vermont media at the plan’s official release and gave them exactly 11 minutes to ask questions about what he called (over and over again) a “very detailed plan.”

Well, certainly worth every bit of the 11 minutes he gave to the Fourth Estate to ask about it.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet “The Dubie Dodge.”

And it’s government funded! At least for the last eight years that Dubie’s been doing something – no one’s quite sure what – as our Lt. Governor.

Unless you drink the Red-State-Kool-Aid, it’s just weird. I mean, does Brian Dubie think we’re stupid enough to NOT notice his constant Dubie Dodges? I guess so. Over and over again.

But, then again, Paul Beaudry won the Republican nomination for Congress in Vermont. That should tell us a sweet something about the Vermont Republican crowd: Wrong & Proud! And the wronger, the prouder and the louder, baby – as Beaudry might say.

So Dubie stalled and evaded through the interview, embarrassingly so, killing time with his breathless proclamations about the release – oh the mighty release! – of his soon-to-be-released – OMG he said release again! – report. Got it.

And then the always-perky Mark Johnson (unless, of course, you dare to broach the subject of media sloppiness in Vermont) declared that it was time for listener phone calls.

The first caller was something like this: “Brian, you are running against the devil. Do you think that will be hard?”

Okay, okay, I’m paraphrasing. But I did run it through my Red-State-Voter-Translator.

But then the second caller had a probing question that went something like this: “Brian, your opponent is the devil. Does that scare you?”

Again, paraphrasing.

They were, of course, calls planted as firmly, deeply, and happily as the begonias on your porch. Which is fine, I guess, given the level of absolute ninniness of modern mainstream politics. Par for the course, as they say.

I’m still the idiot who believes there are other people out there like me who can smell the skunk that has settled so comfortably upon our body politic. Probably because I’ve always had a crush on Pollyanna. I was once certain, for example, that everyone was laughing hysterically like I was while watching a Bush debate. Any Bush debate.

The need for the Dubie campaign’s Mark Johnson strategy became apparent when Dubie went “off script” with his comments about the mechanically and politically bedeviled Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

“I’ve got two words for that,” Dubie said. “No, make that four words: Safety, trust, and jobs.”

Well, I guess if we let him count “and” as a word pertaining to Vermont Yankee, he got to four. Good luck with that.

And now we know why stalling and evading is important to the Dubie campaign when they let the Loose Cannon (aka: Dubie) roam into the scary waters of having to think on his feet.  

Brian Dubie will be the gift that keeps giving this campaign season. Or, as Brian would say, there are four words for why you should vote for him: Laughter, entertainment, and amusement.

Cool.

[Cross-posted at Broadsides.org]

Doug Hoffer is fully engaged in his campaign against the hapless Tom Salmon; and he isn’t sparing Brian Dubie any slack either:

“It is disingenuous to talk about Vermont’s ‘income tax’ for the simple reason that Vermont does not have one income tax,” Hoffer wrote, in a press statement. “It has a progressive tax system so residents pay at very different rates depending on their income. I am certain Mr. Dubie knows this so it makes me wonder why he would use such language.”

Dubie’s recent claim that Vermonter’s income tax rate is higher than that of Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island is just plain misleading, says Hoffer.  As evidence, he offers a breakdown of income tax in Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts (excluding RI, for which equivalent information was not available), which demonstrates that, for instance, a married homeowner with two kids who earns $80,743. pays roughly half as much in income tax as he/she would in either Maine or Massachusetts.

In the world of facts and figures that the Auditor’s role entails, Tom Salmon must be having serious misgivings about his relationship to the vaporous Mr. Dubie who’s oddly disloyal mantra of “Vermont is bad for business” adds little luster to his own weak performance on the job.

Seems tritium levels continue to rise, with more monitoring wells on the way:

Levels of tritium continue to rise in the well closest to the Connecticut River and within the mapped plume. Smith said that well, GZ14-S, was shallow and about 60 feet from the river. Tritium was measured at 370,000 picocuries per liter last week, up from 353,000 picocuries per liter on Aug. 16. That level of radioactivity is similar to water inside the reactor.

From the Times Argus

http://www.timesargus.com/arti…