For background, on this story, I’ve tagged all the related stories at Green Mountain Daily (GMD), so they can all be accessed via this link.

The short summary: VT state police went to at least three pharmacies in the state, and asked them for large scale data dumps of patient records.  Green Mountain Daily found out, and a team effort brought this whole thing out into the open.

That said, I will once again quote the fourth amendment, but marked up the way I think that it’s seen by some individuals:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This, on the other hand, is how I think it applies in this case:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Before I continue, I want to note again that none of this would have hit the way it did if not for the work at Green Mountain Daily.  

So here’s what’s happened since I wrote yesterday morning:

Late Friday (trash day), an article showed up in Vermont’s Rutland Herald: State police admit to improper search.  A few choice excerpts:

MONTPELIER – The Vermont State Police admitted Friday that detectives recently asked three pharmacies to hand over all their information on patients’ use of powerful painkillers.

The actions came despite a directive from state law enforcement officials not to use indiscriminate searches.

Lt. John Flanagan said three state police detectives requested that information from three pharmacies in Vermont during the last two weeks, but that supervisors have now put a stop to that effort.

“Mistakes were made,” Flanagan said. “From our perspective this is a training issue and we have taken steps to remedy it.”

Now… this is really quite interesting, because the day before Major Tom L’Esperance, was saying things that were a bit different.  Green Mountain Daily’s John Odum offers his own perspective:

This directly and completely contradicts what Major Tom L’Esperance was desperately spinning saying on Mark Johnson’s show. In that appearance (and you should listen to the podcast – it would seem to be a complete fantasyland account based on what we now know), he insisted it was an isolated misunderstanding at one pharmacy, and proceeded with an elaborately detailed counter-history of the incident. I’m not saying he personally made it up – but somebody sure did. Circling the wagons doesn’t work when the wheels all fall off.

I will pause to give a brief nod to Air America’s Rachel Maddow here, because my next point is relevant to an issue she frequently discusses.  “Trash Day” is political jargon for Friday afternoon.  It’s generally considered to be the best possible time to dump information that you’d prefer not get out there, but is going to get out one way or another.  By issuing a press release about something on a Friday afternoon, it tends to get lost in the news cycle and disappear over the weekend, hopefully (from the point of view of the releaser) to fade under the importance of other stories.

I strongly suspect that’s what happened here.  First they defended it while pretending it wasn’t going on:

Calls to Sleeper’s office Wednesday were forwarded to the State Police’s criminal division in Waterbury. When asked about the allegations, Major Thomas L’Esperance would not directly answer if troopers had attempted to collect mass amounts of patient information.

“If they have, it was with the goal of stopping the potential spread of deadly drugs on the street,” L’Esperance said.

Then they pretended it wasn’t as bad as was said (url is mp3 download link):

It’s not happened across the state.  Has it happened at other pharmacies?  Absolutely… it’s not happening… uh… like the article would want people to believe…

and, in the same interview, called it a “communication” problem:

communication is the key and I just want to be sure that your listeners are at ease… Anthony describes two now.  I only have information about one.  It was a communication issue between the trooper and the pharmacist.

Then, last night, provided a new story:

Mistakes were made,” Flanagan said. “From our perspective this is a training issue and we have taken steps to remedy it.”

So here’s what it boils down to, at least for me: I don’t know which version(s) of the story are true, but I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this.   The reassurances by the state police (once again from the Rutland Herald) aren’t of major comfort to me (emphasis mine):

The admission from the State Police came late Friday afternoon after the agency issued a two-page press release that detailed the new efforts to stop the illegal sale of prescription drugs, but did not admit any errors.

“Specifically, the allegations in these cases are that the Vermont State Police requested Schedule II prescription records from three particular pharmacies without a nexus to specific criminal activity,” the press release read. “Such conduct, if true, would not be in violation of state law but would be a deviation from the directive given to the Vermont State Police by the commissioner of public safety.”

Flanagan clarified later that these situations did occur. In the future, state police would only ask for prescription information when investigating a specific criminal allegation, he explained, as had been the process for years.

The absurdity at this point would be funny if not for the fact that these our our civil rights we’re discussing.  For all I know, this could have been a genuinely good faith effort to try to stem the tides of drugs, but if that’s the case, why the slow bleed of news and the changing of stories throughout the week?  Why the contradicting stories?  Why the spin cycle?  Why not just say “we tried something that we thought was the right thing to do but it’s clear that this is causing confusion and frustration, so let’s work to come up with a plan for approaching this from a public safety issue that still lets everyone feel as though their rights are being respected?”  

But this sort of approach that they’re using?  It is so not working.  

From my own point of view, three things need to happen at this point:

1. the Vermont state legislature has to announce (soon) that it will be holding hearings on this issue and revising the loopholes in the law which allow for it;


2. Vermont Governor Jim Douglas needs to address this and clarify whether any of this approach was signed off on by the Governor’s office and what actions he will take to assure us that no such abuses will take place in the future;


3. an opinion has to be issued by the Vermont attorney general as to whether or not the actions taken by the police in this case were legal under Vermont law and a similar one needs to be issued from the Federal level about compliance with HIPAA.

I’m not saying anyone needs to be arrested over this.  I’m not even saying anyone needs to be fired over this.  But I need something to happen that tells me that this is something being taken seriously as a real issue, not just something that gets taken out with the trash on late Friday afternoon.

Deja vu? The Washington Post is now reporting:

House Democratic leaders could complete work as soon as Monday on a half-trillion-dollar spending package that will include billions of dollars for the war effort in Iraq without the timelines for the withdrawal of combat forces that President Bush has refused to accept, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday.

In a complicated deal over the war funds, Democrats will include about $11 billion more in domestic spending than Bush has requested, emergency drought relief for the Southeast and legislation to address the subprime mortgage crisis, Hoyer told a meeting of the Washington Post editorial board.

If the bargain were to become law, it would be the third time since Democrats took control of Congress that they would have failed to force Bush to change course in Iraq and continued to fund a war that they have repeatedly vowed to end. But it would also be the clearest instance yet of the president bowing to a Democratic demand for more money for domestic priorities, an increase that he had promised to reject.

Getting tired of this yet? More below the jump. 

Mitch McConnell is behind the deal, in which there wil be 20 billion more dollars than the Dems initially agreed to in their latest short-term funding bill. The article goes on to mention that both Reid and Pelosi have vowed to oppose any additional money for the Iraq war that does not come with a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. So who's calling the shots here, Pelosi or Hoyer?

Apparently, this one's a bit different, because along with the Iraq money, Dems have included $11 billion more in domestic spending than Bush requested, which is sure to raise the ire of certain conservatives who, now that they're no longer in power, want to come acros as so-called “fiscal conservatives”, except of course, when it comes to the war.

This one's a rather convoluted deal, and its passage is far from certain. It says that certain House members will not vote for any Iraq spending without a change in policy? Will Congressman Welch be one of them?

The worst thing about this is that through all this, with his about as popular-as-Vanilla-Ice approval ratings, Bush is still calling the shots, and he knows it. It' sreally fantastic how House Minority Whip Roy Blunt is all but telling the Dems what they will do, and why bother even putting those domestic spending things in there? (emphasis mine):

Blunt said yesterday that Democrats will give in on war funding, with or without additional money for domestic programs. “There's no reason to make a bad bargain,” he said. “The president holds all the cards.”

And Hoyer, showing the steely resolve and determination we've come to expect from him:

“Everybody knows he has no intention of signing anything without money for Iraq, unfettered, without constraints. I think that's ultimately going to be the result.”

I've seen this so many times, I'm running out of things to say. Perhaps that's what they want to happen.What do we do now?

You may remember the story about the governor and the prosecutor. Once upon a time there was a dedicated State’s Attorney, elected and re-elected by his county, who decided to take a different approach to drug law enforcement. When the big, bad Governor heard about this different approach, he got so mad he told his state police not to play with the State’s Attorney.

After all, the Governor thought the marijuana law was so important that it would never be okay to let someone caught with lots and lots of marijuana to go through the diversion program, so the only right thing to do was to keep marijuana prosecutions away from Bobby Sand, because he can’t be trusted to throw the book at pot smokers.

“This is not a small amount. It’s a very substantial amount,” Douglas told WPTZ-television, which reported the order on its Wednesday news broadcast. The governor said no other county prosecutor agreed with the way Sand handled the case.

“We have to make sure our drug laws are taken seriously and I think this step will ensure that in all counties of this state, they are,” Douglas said.

Or, as he told the Valley News last month, “This is a message to people who want to possess a large amount of controlled substances that you can go to Windsor County and get a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

Well, apparently that isn’t quite true. The Valley News had the story yesterday: NEWS:   No Criminal Charge for 110 Pot Plants; No Problem for Douglas The print edition goes on to say:  

“But just days before Douglas’ rebuke, a case involving 110 marijuana plants in neighboring Orange County was also sent to diversion. That case, and the Republican prosecutor who declined to seek criminal sanctions, escaped Douglas’ scrutiny.”

There’s more tonight on WCAX: CHELSEA, Vt. (AP) – A marijuana suspect allegedly caught in possession of 110 pot plants has been referred to court diversion, but Governor Jim Douglas – who intervened in a similar case because he considered the move too lenient – says he’s OK with it.

So why the change of heart? Yesterday in the Valley News, “Douglas spokesman Jason Gibbs said the two cases are not comparable.” Why not? Because of the appearance of preferential treatment to a lawyer in the Windsor County case, and the fact that Sand is known to disagree with Douglas’ opinion on how marijuana should be dealt with.

In other words, he decided to attack Bobby Sand and not his counterpart in Orange County, Republican Will Porter, for purely political reasons.

So how important is it to prosecute pot smokers, and how important is it to pick out a political enemy to attack?

I’m just wondering.

Just up from the VT Press Bureau (h/t DB):

The Vermont State Police admitted Friday that detectives recently asked three pharmacies to hand over all their information on patients prescribed powerful painkillers, despite a directive from state law enforcement officials not to do so.

Lt. John Flanagan said three State Police detectives requested that information from three pharmacies in Vermont during the last two weeks, but that supervisors have now put a stop to that effort.

“Mistakes were made,” Flanagan said. “From our perspective this is a training issue and we have taken steps to remedy it.”

This directly and completely contradicts what Major Tom L’Esperance was desperately spinning saying on Mark Johnson’s show. In that appearance (and you should listen to the podcast – it would seem to be a complete fantasyland account based on what we now know), he insisted it was an isolated misunderstanding at one pharmacy, and proceeded with an elaborately detailed counter-history of the incident. I’m not saying he personally made it up – but somebody sure did. Circling the wagons doesn’t work when the wheels all fall off.

But the word that this was all just a “training issue” needs a bit more explanation. Is that to say that three full Detectives spontaneously across the state had some sort of rookie-mistake breakdown? Please. And what is the third pharmacy in question? We currently know that pharmacists at Fairfax Pharmacy and Wells RIver Pharmacy were approached. Who else?

The State Police need to come clean about the full extent of this program, and what specifically the plan was for implementation. There’s still an email out there, supposedly sent last Friday when pharmacists started pushing back, that is likely going to be incriminating when it finally surfaces (and it should be a matter of public record).

No doubt there’ll be more in tomorrow’s paper.

(Over the last week, Rep. Warren Kitzmiller of Montpelier has been a punching bag over at Vermont Tiger for daring to speak against the GOP mantra that Vermont is an abyssmal place to do business. I invited him to offer his response here. – promoted by odum)

A recent editorial about me in The St Albans Messenger said, “A Vermont legislator stood before a meeting of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce this week and told attendants that if profitability was their sole concern then, well, that was a pretty “myopic” view of life.”

That is not altogether true. I spoke quietly to a single reporter, unheard by any of the audience. I never spoke to the gathered crowd.

The quote, though, is close to accurate even if incomplete in its context. My actual words as quoted in the original article were, “If the only thing you’re looking at is profit . . . that’s a very myopic view of life.”

Based on that quote, The Messenger’s editorial continued to say, “we have legislators who do not understand the importance of profitability.” Where did that come from? Did any of my words imply that I do not “understand the importance of profitability”? I am amazed that so much can be read into a single phrase, and I’m saddened so many inaccurate assumptions were made from it without speaking to me.

That is not what I speaking about at all. I was speaking to the reporter of the many benefits of doing business in Vermont; the quality of life, the value of community, the strength of our schools, the recreational and cultural opportunities, etc. Then I said that if the only concern of any business was profit, that was a myopic view of life.

I stand by what I said.  

I have been a small businessman my entire life. I have struggled to meet payrolls, suffered through bad seasons . . been there, done that.  I served three different terms as President of the Vermont Retail Association. To imply that I do not know the value of profit is incredulous!

I believe if profit is the only concern of a business, that means the business does not value anything else, not the community in which they work, the schools their children attend or their customers. When business generally whines about the high tax burden, the burdensome regulatory environment, whatever, it concerns me by sending a signal that they care less than they should about being good corporate citizens.

I believe that the vast majority of Vermont businesses are not so myopic in their views, are happy to be here, want to be good members of our communities, and they enjoy the lifestyle that Vermont offers. Certainly, they want to earn a decent profit . . . but profit alone is not what motivates them. They are fully willing to bear the shared burden of life here in Vermont.

A couple of visionary folks with a good idea will find fertile ground here. Vermont understands small business . . we are small . . . and those folks will find it easier to begin a new business and succeed in Vermont than they will in many other spots around the country.

We have a Department of Economic Development that works hard to attract business to Vermont. When people spend their time constantly bashing Vermont’s business climate, they seriously diminish recruitment efforts and run the danger of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. How can economic development happen when business is saying, “Goodness, don’t come here! Things are awful!”

I firmly believe that the business climate in Vermont is not awful, and people who enjoy living and doing business here are not wrong . . . we simply have many of the same challenges that every other state has. However, Vermont offers benefits that many others states can’t begin to match, and we should be willing to recognize them.

I challenge each of you to read the article in which I was quoted. It appeared in the Times Argus on December 2, 2007. Get the overall sense of the article from the beginning, and I think you will see what I mean.

Surely we have challenges. I am sympathetic to the needs of our business community. We must work on the challenges, and I will do my part in the Commerce Committee.

Yes, I believe we would have invaded Iraq even with a President Gore. Why? Well here’s just a taste of what can easily be found regarding Gore and Iraq:

For a Man of Peace, Gore has plenty of blood on his CV. Looking back through the 1980s, we find that on every relevant issue, whether it was supporting the contras or Reagan’s bombing of Libya in 1986, shilling for the Pentagon’s latest weapons systems, voting for nerve gas or backing the Reagan/Bush position on NATO deployments in Europe, Gore’s hawkishness was unflagging. In the course of his career he voted for the neutron bomb, the B-2 bomber, the Trident II missile, the MX missile and the Midgetman. He also backed the mini-Star Wars plan. The defense contractors always loved Al, the same way the nuclear plant manufacturers do today.

(The Real Al Gore, The Nation, 10/18/07)

More follows below the fold

So let’s continue a bit more …

When it came to Bush Senior’s attack on Iraq, Gore’s antics astounded even his hardened colleagues in the Senate as they debated the war resolution. Of course he had long since decided to vote aye on war, having been a hardliner on Iraq since 1988. But on January 12, 1991, he spun out his supposed travails in coming to this decision in prime-time posturing, speaking of his “heavy burden of conscience” and the lonely weeks “questioning, probing, searching for the truth.” Saddam, he proclaimed, “has more troops than Hitler did in the early years of World War II.” In the New York Times he wrote, “We can no more look forward to a constructive long-term relationship with Saddam Hussein than we could hope to housebreak a cobra” and that the Iraqi dictator is not “an acceptable part of the landscape.”

In Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign Gore was told to earn his keep with constant pummeling of George Bush Senior for having been soft on Saddam. Gore duly crisscrossed the country yoking Saddam and Bush in fervid denunciation. “The cover-up of Bush’s arming of Saddam was,” Gore shouted, “bigger than Watergate ever was.”

In January 1993 Vice President-elect Gore announced that there could never be normal relations with Iraq so long as Saddam remained in power. He reiterated the call for a coup, if not by the Iraqi military then by the CIA. Vice President Gore was then given authority in the Clinton Administration for Iraq policy. In this capacity he presided over the sanctions that led to the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, many of them children. The mid-1990s saw Gore as a major voice urging NATO’s bombing of the Serbs. In his 2000 presidential campaign he publicly distanced himself from the Clinton Administration on Iraq policy, reiterating that Saddam had to fall and pledging support for Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress.

On May 27, 2000, Gore laid out his foreign policy and military strategy in a commencement speech at West Point. It was a neocon manifesto. He said he would pursue a more robust form of Clintonism, highlighted by quicker interventions, less diplomacy and more firepower against the “rogue states…that represent the emerging threat to our country.” He called this approach “forward engagement,” a phrase redolent of his fellow Peace Prize winner Kissinger’s “constructive engagement,” which meant backing brutes like Suharto, Somoza and Pinochet.

Gore also denounced George W. Bush’s recent call for deep cuts in the US nuclear arsenal, cuts that Bush said the United States should consider making on its own. “Nuclear unilateralism will hinder, rather than help, arms control,” Gore said. “Reductions alone don’t guarantee stability…. If you’re not careful, you could have a reduction of missiles and a more dangerous world.”

(ibid)

This has been crossposted to Daily Kos.  Note: I wrote the diary intended for both audiences, GMD and Kos, so I apologize if I spend too much time explaining Vermont politics or history, but wanted to be thorough enough for both audiences without having a radically different document from one to the other –julie

On Tuesday, I blogged about a breaking story in Vermont: Kiss your 4th amendment goodbye: VT State Police collect medical data.  Since then, a couple things have happened:

1. the press finally hit this, and it’s broken big in Vermont’s Rutland Herald and Times Argus;
2. we’ve done some research of our own, and have learned a bit more;

After the fold, I’ll summarize some of what we at GMD (Green Mountain Daily) have learned, and what we learned from the Herald article as well.

First, a very strange update from the December 6 Mark Johnson show (the url links to downloadable mp3 of the interview).  What I’m transcribing below starts about 1m10s into the audio, from Major Thomas L’Esperance, during which he stumbles through his words quite a few times.  This is after Mark Johnson asks “Major, Anthony says here that there are a number of other pharmacies:”

I’ll have to find out more about exactly what he’s saying… I’ll need to speak with the people that were involved…

Johnson later interjects “you were saying earlier that this sort of practice wasn’t happening and Anthony seems pretty convinced that it is.”  (“Anthony,” is Anthony Otis, a lobbyist for Vermont pharmacists).  Again from L’Esperance:

It’s not happened across the state.  Has it happened at other pharmacies?  Absolutely… it’s not happening… uh… like the article would want people to believe…

Then later in the interview, again from L’Esperance:

Communication is the key and I just want to be sure that your listeners are at ease… Anthony describes two now.  I only have information about one.  It was a communication issue between the trooper and the pharmacist.

This was an astonishing interview.  If you listen closely enough, I think you can hear the guy flailing about in the wind.  In the context of some of the other information we’ve got here, this could get quite interesting.

Next, an update on the story I posted a few days ago, originally posted by John here:

UPDATE: Based on confirmation from law enforcement sources, pharmacies that were approached by the State Police on Friday November 30th and from legal sources representing people affected by State Police conduct last Friday, GMD can add the following to the reporting that has occurred already.

• The Department of Public Safety was planning last weeks pharmacy checks (“Fishing Derby Friday”) for several weeks.




• The State Police visited multiple pharmacies on Friday November 30th.




• At least two pharmacies were told to by the State Police to turn over patient profiles for every patient who received a schedule II prescription from that pharmacy.




• At least one pharmacy was told it would be required to update the patient profile information with the police every two weeks.




• At several pharmacies the police merely introduced themselves to the pharmacist, gave their business cards and asked the pharmacist to call the police officer if they encountered any suspicious behavior such as indications of “Doctor shopping” or prescription fraud.




• Late Friday, due to intense push back and complaints from pharmacists who were concerned about requests from the Vermont State Police that they reveal confidential and federally protected medical information about their customers, State Police management sent an email to all State Police involved with the pharmacy checks throughout the state instructing them to cease the pharmacy checks. After the email went out, Fish Derby Friday ceased (for now).

Kudos to Dan Barlow who published a well-balanced and thorough article about Fishing Derby Friday. – odum

Next, some choice excerpts from the Rutland Herald:

Officers with the Vermont Department of Public Safety appear to have the authority to request and search through pharmacy databases under a 1967 law. But Commissioner Kerry Sleeper told lawmakers last year they would only use that authority for specific criminal investigations.

I’ll add a little context here: with respect to this specific law, legislators actually considered removing the police seek and grab provisions from the law, but were assured in testimony by state officials that the law would never be used for such a broad-based information grab.  It’s that testimony that generated the report referenced in the next paragraph:

“(The law) is not used in an unfettered manner to search randomly through records looking for possible crimes,” according to a Vermont Department of Health report, based on comments made by Sleeper, that was given to the Legislature in December 2006.

This testimony is documented in the VT legislature’s “Report on Act 205, Sec. 3 Relating to 18 V.S.A. § 4218” (link to pdf download per GMD’s archive).  Here’s an excerpt:

Commissioner Sleeper reports that during his 29 years of service at DPS he is not aware of one example when law enforcement used section 4218 as a means of randomly, and without cause, examining pharmaceutical records.²…  he is not aware of any complaints or expressions of concern indicating that the sought information was improperly utilized.

Now, note: that segment comes with a footnote.  Here’s what’s enclosed in the footnote (emphasis mine):

Years ago, diversion investigators did occasionally conduct a general search of pharmaceutical records when they were aware that controlled substances from pharmacies were being diverted into a particular community, but did not know who the source of the drugs was or what pharmacy dispensed the drugs. DPS would argue that such access was with cause. In such cases the investigators were able to review paper records looking for a pattern that would point them to a suspect. Even then however, the investigators began their search with relevant pharmacies (i.e., pharmacies in communities affected or nearby by geographic area of concern). With the demise of paper records and the creation of HIPAA such a search is either no longer possible or extremely difficult to conduct. See… pages 7-9 for a discussion on the impact of HIPAA and the obligation of health care provider to make sure that HIPAA permits disclosure for a particular health record.

What’s on pages 7-9?  Well, this paragraph for one:

In the event the pharmacist determines that HIPAA does not permit the disclosure, he/she is required by HIPAA to refuse disclosure. Since HIPAA would preempt state law in this case, section 4218 of Title 18 would not control and the pharmacist would not be in violation of section 4218 for refusing to disclose.

More from the Herald:

Calls to Sleeper’s office Wednesday were forwarded to the State Police’s criminal division in Waterbury. When asked about the allegations, Major Thomas L’Esperance would not directly answer if troopers had attempted to collect mass amounts of patient information.

“If they have, it was with the goal of stopping the potential spread of deadly drugs on the street,” L’Esperance said.

Okay.

Let’s pause for a moment.

Now let’s try that again:

When asked about the allegations, Major Thomas L’Esperance would not directly answer if troopers had attempted to collect mass amounts of patient information.

“If they have, it was with the goal of stopping the potential spread of deadly drugs on the street,” L’Esperance said.

So let’s think about that again.

He didn’t want to say whether or not it was happening, but he said, quite directly, that there was a good reason for them to be doing it.

I don’t know about you, but that rings a few alarm bells for me.

So where are we with this?  We’re still learning.  My own experience is that it’s common for state agencies who have done something they know is going to cause them grief (even if they’re sure they’re justified in having done it) to release in dribbles.  It starts with “it was an isolated incident” and evolves into “it was a few isolated incidents” and eventually becomes something like “okay, we did come into all your homes and steal your puppies, but it was for a good reason” and, of course, the eventual “oh, no, we never approved the stealing of the puppies– it was something taken on by a few subordinates at the local level.”  

So, really, we don’t know how extensive this was or was intended to be, but it appears as though we’re at the point where we can all take a breath and get this brought in front of the legislature to get some real clarity about the law, the obligations of the state police, their compliance with both federal AND state law and push hard to make sure the legislature takes this seriously in the next session.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m incredibly happy with the work that came out of GMD on this, not because we necessarily stopped or prevented anything, but because we:

1. shined a bright light on actions which may very well have violated privacy rights;
2. scooped a story several days before any other Vermont media did;
3. alerted a lot of Vermonters and people across the country about a potential abuse of rights on the part of the police;
4. did all this with no special equipment, money or resources: we made phone calls and sent e-mails.

In other words, anyone can do this.  

A quick vlog on how Racine has turned the race for Governor on it’s head, and whether or not the Progressives would see fit to judge him a “bona fide” top tier candidate…

Now that I’ve had time to process the same-sex marriage discussion in Brattleboro, I have a few thoughts that I’d like to share.  There is no wisdom or special insight in this article, just a few thoughts that seem to me to be the right thing to say.

First, to get the political thing out of the way: I’m still pissed off at Governor Douglas for saying that same-sex marriage is “divisive” while, at the same time, using the issue to fundraise.

That said, I want to talk about the hearing itself.  I don’t think anyone went into that hearing expecting to change their mind, and I doubt anyone did change their mind.  What happened, however, at least from my point of view, was transformational in a very different fashion.

People who had supported civil unions at the time now feel as though they’re inadequate and now think that they’re helping to perpetuate an unjust system.  People who had been willing to accept civil unions as an incremental step have simply moved beyond that and if that room was any indication, we’ve got the real energy to say “this is absurd.”  The people who support full legal rights for same sex couples were so vibrant and clear last night.  The people who oppose them?  They didn’t show.  Not a one.

So we had dozens of speakers, one after another, saying why civil unions aren’t enough and why marriage rights are so necessary.  And no, my mind was not changed– I agreed with every one of them.

But I was really moved by this, in a major way.  The stories were so personal and I’ve heard so many of these stories that I really thought I was beyond being moved by them.

I’m not.

I listened to people talk about history, about love, about commitment, about their children, about their parents, about their spouses and their ex-spouses and everyone in that room was just such an important part of that.

Something changed for me last night.  I’m not sure what it was, but for the first time, I think, I see same-sex marriage as inevitable.  Not “likely in the next 20 years,” not “possible in the next decade.”  

Inevitable.

And it’s really simple why: it’s true.  it’s real.  There was a time when I thought the law was a way to propel society forward, that having same sex marriage will make people recognize it.  That may still be true, but now it’s the law that’s behind the people.  Same-sex marriage is real and it’s happening today and it’s the law that needs to catch up with it.

We, in Vermont, are better than to have second class citizens.  A law which specifically and intentionally carves out a place for some of us to be second class diminishes all of us.  Laws which are designed to “protect’ marriage are laws based in fear and they, instead, demean marriage, making it seem to be something weak, brittle and frail.

Laws which treat Vermonters as though we need to be protected from same-sex marriage, as though it is a threat to us?  These are laws that should embarrass us all.  

We are better than this.

We are stronger than this.

And when same-sex marriage finally does come to the state of Vermont, just as will happen when it comes to the United States as a whole, the reaction will not be one of shock or dismay.  It will, quite frankly, be five short words:

“What took you so long?“

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

Here's an invitation to add your thoughts on the current unraveling of the mortgage crisis. Today the Bush administration took a first step toward alleviating a worst-case, somewhat likely scenario. But some leading financial institutions don't believe today's action goes far enough:

Barclays Capital … estimates that only about 12 percent of all subprime borrowers, or 240,000 homeowners, would get relief. 

Things get intriguing below the fold: 

What's intriguing to me is how careful the administration describes the steps they are taking in order to hold off a huge economic disaster as, loosely paraphrased, “not a government bail-out for speculative investors.”  A bail out?  Isn't that when the federal government throws money at the problem?

What's intriguing is how American consumers — almost as a group — are being depicted as speculative investors who acted with fraudulence against loan providers.  As if they were savvy to the ins and outs of some of the most speculative, financially esoteric, and predatory loans that even the banks wouldn't hold as a liablity for very long.

What's intriguing is how American consumers are being attacked as if they had access to the same type of financial and lobbying power corporations and banking institutions wield on Wall Street and K Street.

Someone made an interesting comparison to the Banking & Loans bailout not so long ago, when these institutions made some very, very poor speculative decisions.  Not only did the federal government step in, they also applied American taxpayer dollars to bail out the industry.  Today's steps to negotiate with mortgage holders to freeze interest rate hikes doesn't come anywhere near in scope to this type of bail out.  That's intriguing, isn't it?

Then there's the post dot com era with corporate and accounting scandals.  The government didn't bail out Enron, but once again it was American consumers in the form of investors and employees who footed the bill for corporate chicanary.  What's intriguing about responses to today's actions includes this one:

In some ways it's worse than a taxpayer bailout,” said John Berlau, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the institute. “It pressures an industry to essentially alter the terms of millions of contracts, and it's going to make investors think twice about investing in America again.”

So now the corporate think tanks are worried that an interest rate freeze is going to inflict worse investment damage than the Enron meltdown,  America's national debt, the declining dollar, or even the sudden lack of liquidity American consumers will have to invest in the stock market.  Remember, most of the real estate investment dollars that went into real estate starting in 2000 was being pulled or diverted from the stock market's burst bubble.

Yep, it's those darn American homebuyers.  They're out to wreck America once again.  The same folks holding up Home Depot, the auto industry, the insurance industry, and a good chunk of the global economy.  Don't let them off the hook because they bought into an ultra-complicated predatory home loan that even most professional finance officers would have a hard time deciphering.  

What do you think?  Is it time for American consumers to form a Wall Street corporation of their own?  And maybe a K Street lobbying firm, too.

I'll bet 220 million modest united against this kind of malarky in the form of corporate and lobbyist representation could muscle together enough money to take on big business and corporate funded policy makers.  

Open discussion.  The forum is yours.