In a timely manner, the Sunday Free Press carried the story of ANR's largely ineffectual efforts to regulate and clean-up illegal junkyards all over the state. I went to a presentation about this last fall at the Toxic's Action Workshop in Randolph; and I really felt for ANR's John Brabant, the guy charged with this Augean stable clean-up task. It was clear that even though the state was girding its loins to finally take action, those loins were a little too lean to adopt a really hopeful stance. This is not about the good intentions of people like him over at ANR; it is about the conspicuous lack of resources and a sense that upper management may be a little out of touch with the mission. Following the presentation, I sighed a little and whispered an invocation for the 2010 gubernatorial election. Clearly, most of those junkyards weren't in danger of clean-up anytime soon. For Douglas and his minions to propose gathering all permit and regulatory control under the jurisdiction of ANR is like rescuing a drowning man by tossing him an anvil. They must be goofy.

I never thought I’d do this, but I’m about to quote USA Today, which is a truly craptacular news source.  They did, however, get this quote (don’t go to the link yet):

“They’re hippies from the ’60s who want to be against something.”

So, here’s your quiz for the day: who said this and to whom was he referring?  Think you got it right?  Post your guess in the comments, then click on the link to find the answer.  You’re on the honor system here.  (This is referenced in the comments in another piece on GMD, so some of you may already have the inside info)

I have to admit, I was surprised by this.  

These two pieces cover the same story, but in very different ways.  Just the headline itself presents a significantly different picture, and the lead paragraphs are significantly different.  They both cover so much in common, referencing VY Communications Director’s comment that they agree with the NRC’s assessment of their program.  They reference the voluntary nature of the program, but the Reformer jumps right on pro-VY spin, leading right away with hey, lucky us, no one’s in danger, whereas the Herald addresses some major shortfalls in VY’s response.

There are reasons that I read more than one paper.  This is a big one.

I decided to hold off on this cross-post from Rational Resistance because there was so much other good content here this week. I think it's still relevant.

A favorite theme with conservatives is that rich people are overtaxed. You know, 47% of people pay no taxes (false), the percentage of income tax that rich people pay is too high, blah, blah, blah.

Courtesy of David Corn we have a chart that dispatches these claims handily.

I think we now know why most people, including a lot of teabaggers think they're taxed fairly: it's because they are.

In early 2007, a group of entrepreneurial souls in the Tunbridge area decided to try something different. They knew people could save money and energy, and reduce CO2 in the atmosphere by using solar energy to replace (or at least preheat) their conventional domestic hot water.

So, they devised a challenge [PDF file]: get 50 families to install solar hot water. It was a big challenge. It required helping people leap some pretty big hurdles – cost being one of the biggest.

They worked with banks to arrange for “energy efficient loans” with a reduced interest rate, they gathered information on federal and state rebate programs, and then then they set to work.

They set up an educational event (or two, or three) to teach people about the economic reasons to go solar: for example, you’d save $500/yr on a $700 propane bill for heating water for a family of 4. Once the cost of the system – after rebates – had been paid for by savings, then the system would be providing all that hot water for free … for decades. The payback period, depending on your site, can be as little as 5 years, but is almost always less than 7 years. This means a greater than 10% return on your investment. When was the last time your savings account, or even your 401k did that?.

Anyway, it was a great success, and now, another challenge is set to launch NEXT SATURDAY, April 24 in the Upper Valley. If you live in the area or want to learn more (perhaps start one in your area?), it’s going to be worth the trip.

This is the kind of challenge Vermont needs in order to create the real changes that will help all Vermonters – bringing green jobs, saving scarce money, and helping keep the air clean for our children.

Details below the fold…

If you could save more than $50,000 over 25 years by installing a new solar hot water system on your home or business, would you do it?

The Upper Valley Solar Hot Water Challenge will take place on Saturday, April 24 at 10 a.m. at the Bradford Academy building on North Main St., Bradford, VT

During the event, a moderator will present a slide show about solar hot water — how it works, what to expect from the technology, how much it can cost, and available rebates and tax incentives – then the floor will be opened up for questions.

Several area solar technology vendors will be available at The Challenge, and visitors to the event will have opportunities to meet individually with them to learn more about their products and services.

This free public event is co-sponsored by the Bradford & Newbury Energy Committees  and Conservation Commissions, and Hills 5 & 10.  Organizers hope that 50* homeowners and businesses will take the challenge and replace conventional hot water systems with solar in the coming months.

For more information, contact BCC Energy Committee Chair, Ed Wendell

802-222-4657 or at info@hillsofvermont.com.

*An average residential solar hot water system can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by over three tons per year. Replacing 50 conventional hot water systems with solar hot water systems could reduce carbon emissions by up to 150 tons per year.

‘Just a brief shout-out to Messenger reporter, Michelle Monroe for her outstanding coverage of Republican Senatorial challenger, Len Britton’s appearance at a local St. Albans Senior Center Thursday. ‘Girl did her fact-checking and caught Mr. Britton telling tales, several times. Deftly combing through the talking points and aided by the good offices of FactCheck.org, Moody’s and other sources, Monroe put the lie to Britton’s claim that the new health care law in Washington will add 16,000 IRS officers for enforcement, and other favorite righty refrains about the state of the economy under Obama.  Definitely worth a read, if you can get your hands on a copy of Friday’s paper (not available online).

Monroe’s stellar journalism puts the independence back in this independent newspaper and gives me new reason to subscribe, despite some considerable differences of opinion with the editor.  He has a gold-mine in Monroe and I have a hunch he knows it!  Imagine that: real honest to goodness fact-checking in a Frankling County paper!

I even appreciated the featured quote from Mr. Britton (describing the Constitution):

The greatest document mankind has ever created, next to the Bible.

I’ll add a link if, and when, one becomes available.

Disclaimer: I know many of the people and/or organizations I reference in this piece.  Nothing about this is personal about any of them.

Today’s Brattleboro Reformer has a nice, acceptable piece about early childhood educators struggling with budget cuts, but it misses some key elements.  I’m not going to quote from it here, because there’s very little in the piece which goes beyond the surface treatment of the issue.  

The two people they chose to talk to weren’t bad people to talk to, but they present a limited picture.

I also want to say that I don’t know what the version of the piece the reporter submitted looks like.  This may be criticism of his work or the editing or some combination.  I just don’t know.

But, really, the concern I have is with the people they didn’t talk to, or at least who didn’t make it into the printed version.

As I’ve posted before, there’s an effort to unionize child care workers in Vermont.  A comment from them would have been great here.  

There are people in Waterbury who are responsible for administering these cuts.  Why not ask them about where we’re headed?

There are local Resource and Referral Agencies.  They weren’t available for comment?

There are individuals who work as child care providers who aren’t members of the legislature and have no power base.  Are none of them available to talk?  

I guess I just read that piece and felt kind of empty after.  I think we can do better than that.  This issue is important enough that I’d like to see more than “cuts to early childhood are bad, and here are two people we talked to with some knowledge who can tell you why.”

Tonight’s news: equality for same-sex couples in hospital visits.

For all hospitals that accept Medicare or Medicaid. In other words, for almost every hospital in the United States.

WASHINGTON – President Obama on Thursday ordered his health secretary to issue new rules aimed at granting hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners, and making it easier for gays and lesbians to make medical decisions on behalf of their partners.

“So what?” you say? He’s just responding to pressure?

Well, that’s our job, isn’t it?

McCain sure wouldn’t have done it.

I am pleased to finally be able to reproduce Marilyn’s letter here. Because of its length I placed it at the end of this diary, after the fold; but it’s well worth the time to read it!

_________________________________________________

There’s a lonely one-woman campaign for justice being waged in Franklin that I think deserves recognition on an annual basis.  I’m referring to Marilyn Hackett and her ongoing protest against the invocation of prayer at Town Meeting.  Today’s Messenger carried an articulate two-column letter by Ms. Hackett placing her position in the context of history and constitutional law. I can’t find it online anywhere; and my attempt to reach Ms. Hackett by phone was unsuccessful. From the public letters I have seen addressed to Ms. Hackett in local newspapers, I can well understand why she might be unreachable by phone. Nevertheless the letter is remarkable, and deserves a timely read; so I am taking this opportunity to publicly ask for a link which I will add to this diary.

To refresh the memory of anyone who has somehow managed to miss this annual bit of personal heroism, here is a link to the Messenger story that commemorated this year’s confrontation in Franklin;  and here is a link to her previous letter of March 27, 2009 in which she civilly attempted to explain her position to her neighbors

I’ve gotta tell you; I admire her guts.  Now, I was raised a Catholic and have my own issues; and even though “some of my best friends” truly are Methodists, it is no secret that I am largely in agreement with Bill Maher when it comes to viewing religion as an overarching menace.  This may well be due to a human inclination to appropriate, obsess over, mutate and ultimately pervert even the purest of spiritual pursuits; but there it is.  We can’t seem to help ourselves. Still, when it comes right down to it, I wouldn’t dream of taking on my neighbors on this ticklish topic.  I’m raising hives just broaching the subject here, among my fellow progressives.  

Even though she does have some local supporters, Ms. Hackett must have a pretty tough time of it in Franklin, year-round.

After promising that this year’s Town Meeting would include only a moment of silence rather than the usual prayer,  Town Fathers reneged at the last moment, provoking another confrontation.  In the past, some of her neighbors have suggested that she should simply leave the room while a minister recited the invocation.  When she found this solution somewhat less than satisfactory, they accused her of being unreasonable and disrespectful of their “traditions.”  What about the Constitution, countered Hackett?  Doesn’t that represent a tradition older than Town Meeting itself? Her neighbors were unmoved, being convinced that the true intention of the Constitution was to protect religious expression, not to exclude it from public events.  The arguments go back and forth like this every year, establishing something of a new “tradition” themselves.

I have to say though, that Ms. Hackett may have finally had the last word.  This latest letter is a thing of beauty… a tour-de-force of reason and history.  It touches on all of our favorite themes: Jeffersonian humanism and its ultimate failure to quell religious zealotry in the New World;  suspicion against Catholics, Jews and Mormons that flourished in the soil of America’s preference for Protestantism; McCarthyism; the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment; the odd overtone of “holy war” that has come to cloak the current conflicts in the Middle East; and so on.  I really hope I’ll get that link!  Meanwhile, her closing paragraph is worth repeating in toto:

Only the vigilance of thoughtful and courageous common citizens insisting on government neutrality can save us from ourselves.  Citizens who take patriotism to the highest legal level, fighting back in the courts, are the ones who protect both freedom of religion and freedom from religion.  Neutrality – not Christianity, Judaism, Islam, secular humanism, or atheism – protects citizens freedom of conscience.  The side benefit – preventing the abuse of power by over-weaning religious organizations – can also not be underestimated.

Here is Ms. Hackett’s letter in its entirety:

   

    “We are not yet a theocracy.”

     That is what an astute citizen at a Franklin Select Board meeting said in early February. The speaker – who clearly believed that government by divine guidance is not yet our kingdom on earth (at least not in the United States of America) – opposed prayer at the upcoming March Town Meeting.

    A few Franklin citizens had tried to convince the board to direct the town moderator not to call for the usual Christian invocation. A compromise calling for prayer at church, a civil invocation, and/or a moment of silence was proposed. In the end, the select board, which said it had authority to direct the moderator, didn’t. The omnipresent, Trinitarian, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” Christian version of religious reality was foisted on Christians and non-Christians alike – U.S. Constitution, separation of  church and state, civil rights, court law, and common consideration be darned.

    In the ensuing month or more of abuse by religious patriots, it has become clear that the question really isn’t whether we are a theocracy, but how much of a theocracy we are. Americans, like people all over the world (that we should have learned from by now), suffer  temptations to be selfish, sometimes aggressive, about their religions or philosophies. Catholics and Protestants have killed each other in Northern Ireland, Sunnis and Shia in Iraq, Hindus and Muslims in India, while Buddhists committed suicide in Vietnam. The irony lies in the fight over religions first developed to improve life. Religious culture and politics have overwhelmed good intentions, with bloody long-lasting results, in country after country.

   Despite our Constitution, Americans are far from immune. We act out in everything from subtle  proselytizing, like that at Franklin Town Meeting, to (so-called) religious war – what jihadists believe we are waging in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. history has seen endeavors to convert people called savages followed by their calculated genocide, KKK crosses burned on lawns augmented with mob murder backed by police, Biblical reasoning and governmental action oppressing suffragettes, and a Senate committee which ran kangaroo courts, imprisoning artists and labor activists as Godless Communists. More recently we saw a Christian, American President on TV informing viewers God told him to go to war. Is it a wonder Islamic extremists believe in the second coming of the Crusades? When we fail to stick to our principles, there are horrible consequences.  

    Religion is so often misused that our founding fathers, and hopefully the mothers who supported them, made well-grounded efforts not to lend it the power of government.  Religious institutions still attempt and succeed in political power grabs. Right from the first this nation has been backsliding from the original, humanitarian intent of the First Amendment. The motives have always been political and have produced not only a standing hypocrisy, but many of the United States’ greatest moments of shame.

    The shut-up-and-sit-down-until-it’s-over, Christian contingent in Franklin is part of the scary mainstream moving towards theocracy. Members have made rousing, roundly-applauded speeches against individuals who believe in separation of church and state. They’ve voted to have their prayer in willful ignorance of minorities’ civil rights. Officials and townsfolk remain baffled as to why Constitutionalists don’t just leave if they don’t like it. Come back when the prayer is over.

    Of course, the answer is it never will be over. When there is prayer at Town  Meeting, “under God” in every school day’s Pledge of Allegiance, “In God We Trust” on U.S. money, town council invocations, jury and inaugural oaths, religious statues and sayings carved in government buildings; a pervasive, subliminal, status-quo message gradually infuses our culture. People get to believing we are a Christian nation. Electing even a non-Protestant President (John Kennedy) created a furor. Election of members of other faiths – never mind someone with the courage to claim no faith as relevant in a bid for public office – is barely conceivable. Politicians pander, exploit, even cower in the face of religion.

   The competition between the outward signs of patriotism and the reality of freedom has never been more apparent than it is today. The hundreds of Hatriot groups – patriotic people who claim to love America but hate most of the people in it – in the United States foreshadow another McCarthy Era. They  are part of a theocratic tradition Americans have both embraced and battled for centuries.

In our nation’s first inauguration, for example, George Washington – a signer of the very Constitution which forbids establishment of religion – added the words “so help me God” to the Presidential oath. He was looking for something to unite a nation of religious outcasts, anti-authoritarian ruffians, and stubborn tax evaders.  Not ironically, many Americans now use deity to mow over religious dissidents, flaunt the Constitution, and complain about paying taxes on property which is the owner’s God-given right to use as s/he pleases.

       The writer of the Declaration of Independence, our third President Thomas Jefferson, responded when Philadelphia’s Christian clergy in the City of Brotherly Love campaigned against him. This “godless” Unitarian was an infidel, according to his political opponents.  Jefferson’s encompassing semantics – “Nature’s God,” used by many deists of the time – did not suffice to quell religious detractors. Unfortunately, in his response, he wrote, “I have sworn on the altar of God, every hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Politicians to this day cannot resist the temptation to swear on the altar of religion any more than religion can resist the temptation to co-opt the power of politics.

    Jefferson did make an effort to keep history from repeating itself. He knew that “Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.” He, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin – all familiar with Europe’s never-ending, violent, religious wars and all strong proponents of separation of church and state – wrote a secular national motto  “E Pluribus Unum” or “One from many,” hoping for American unity.

    The campaign to change the motto to “In God We Trust” surfaced during the insecurity of the1830s Depression, following Jacksonians’ destruction of the National Bank. Use of the motto on U.S. money abated and resurfaced continuously until the Civil War when the phrase was used consistently on coins to remind citizens the Union was on God’s side of the slavery issue. In 1861 Lincoln, who appointed religious zealot James Pollock director of the Mint, needed a nation united with a national currency to fund the war between the states. Christian ministers called for replacing coins’ Goddess of Liberty with “In God We Trust.”

    By the time the Pledge of Allegiance was adopted in 1892, the official God was apparently no longer entirely in favor of equality for former slaves. Author, Baptist minister Francis Bellamy,  painfully pressured out of his own church in 1891 for alleged socialist views, proposed his amended pledge the following year. Chairman of a state school superintendents committee and a savvy politician, Bellamy took the word “equality” out of his original version. The superintendents had expressed fear that liberty, equality and justice might be enough to rouse movements for women’s and African Americans’ equality. By removing equality, Bellamy got the pledge into public schools.

    “In God We Trust” came and went on money until its institutionalization in 1908. President Theodore Roosevelt disapproved calling it a “cheap” political motto. The pledge was toyed with, as well. In 1942 it was adopted into the U.S. Flag Code without the “under God.” Then, in 1943 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public school children could not be forced to recite it. By 1954, after a campaign by the Catholic Knights of  Columbus and during the Red Scare, the religious/political pendulum swung the other way. The words “under God” were inserted in the pledge during this disgraceful period.

    It would be easy to revert to the childhood mantra that sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never hurt you. Names, sticks and stones all hurt and usually come together, however. Real harm is caused.

    In the last half century or so, Catholics, Mormons, The Christian Coalition, and Protestant fundamentalists, to name a few, have controlled Americans’ reproductive rights, defeated the Equal Rights Amendment for women, organized churches to elect conservative Republicans, backed faith-based initiatives, promoted parochial schools, and censored textbooks, respectively. The Christian Coalition alone claims to have sent voter registration packets to 250,000 churches. Ronald Regan’s and George W. Bush’s  election victories are attributed by many analysts to the work of Republican-Party, Christian-Fundamentalist organizations. Washington’s faith-based initiatives, used to buy votes in the 2004 election, were a quid pro quo to churches which stuck to the party line. The Christian Right is a well-financed, fearsome foe on the road to political power and theocracy.

    We cannot pretend that the intrusion of religion into government is not part of the  conservative agenda. The U.S. Supreme Court, currently controlled by conservatives, is supposed to uphold the Constitution. Sporadically, over the years, it has, more often than not.

    It is almost 50 years since school prayer was outlawed by the court (almost as long as “under God” has been in the pledge). Attempts have been made to chip away at the protection, but now even extracurricular school events may not force religion on participants or  spectators. By 1985 the court ruled that not so much as a moment of silence “where the motivation is encouragement of prayer” is constitutional at a government-sponsored event. An exception was made for the Nebraska Legislature in 2004 (perhaps explaining why the Vermont Legislature disregards its own constitution), but its invocation must still remain non-denominational. Town Council prayer has finally been tested and restricted in the last couple decades, as broad-minded citizens win Supreme Court cases again and again against the new, non-denominational, establishment prayer.

   A few local thinkers, in attempts to deal with establishment of religion, have suggested rotating invocations among various clergy. However, if one wrong doesn’t make a right and two wrongs don’t make a right, why would three, four, five or more? In practice this ecumenical effort has usually stretched only as far as a variety of Christian  denominations. At least 75 percent of invocations at government meetings were rotated among Protestant ministers. It is a moot point. The Supreme Court addressed rotational prayer by noting that when any one prayer is used, by the very nature of its exercise,  all others are excluded. It would be impossible to have a prayer or philosophical treatise fitting the views of every meeting attendee, including the 17 percent of Americans who claim to be atheist or agnostic. Furthermore, that is not the purpose of a Town Meeting or any other government assembly. Prayer is simply not Town Meeting business.

   Only the vigilance of thoughtful and courageous common citizens insisting on government neutrality can save us from ourselves. Citizens who take patriotism to the highest legal level, fighting back in the courts, are the ones who protect both freedom of religion and freedom from religion. Neutrality – not Christianity, Judaism,  Islam, secular humanism, or atheism – protects citizens’ freedom of conscience. The side benefit – preventing the abuse of power by over-weaning religious organizations – can also not be underestimated.

                                                                     Marilyn  Hackett

                                                                        Franklin                                                    

Cross-posted from Rational Resistance.  

Notice anything different?  

I did.  I got done with preparing my taxes kind of late, and I filed them electronically. (Just the feds. For some reason that's free but it costs $19.95 to electronically file my state taxes.)

For years I've been doing my taxes electronically using a commercial program. I'm not convinced that it does a better job than I would do by myself, but it seems to be faster, and it gives me a chance to spend some quality time with my computer, so that's how I do it.  

One of the things that my tax program had this year is a two-year summary. It gives me the chance to compare all the pertinent facts about this year's tax return with last year's, and I learned some interesting facts.  

Pretty much as long as Obama has been president, we've been hearing the wingers complaining about how Obama is raising our taxes. It's gotten even worse since they started working on health care, and since they passed it it's been pretty extreme.  So I thought I'd be interested to see what happened to my taxes. We're making more money than I ever thought we'd make; as a friend used to observe, sometimes our checking balance threatens to skyrocket into the three figures. I think it's a good thing that two people working in the public sector, and doing socially beneficial work can make a living, but we're far from rich.  

But wait, what happened to our taxes this year? Did they go up, the way the teabaggers have been telling us?  

Actually, now that you ask, they did not. In fact, our income went down a little bit and our taxes went down by a lot. I can tell exactly why this is, and it is due in large part to changes in the law pushed through by resident Obama. So even though we're squarely in the middle class, and we work hard for everything we have, the result of over a year of Obama's presidency has not been that he's been in our pockets, taken everything we have, and left us wearing barrels to work.  

What about you? Did your taxes go up this year? Down? Stay the same?