From the NYT Sunday wedding announcements:

Rose Cheney Friedman, the daughter of Denny Partridge and Steve Friedman of Bellows Falls, Vt., is to be married this afternoon to Justin Leonard Lander, a son of Anne Lander and Lynn Lander of Harrington Park, N.J. Carolyn W. Partridge, the majority leader of the Vermont House of Representatives and an aunt of the bride, is to officiate as a justice of the peace at the farm of the Bread and Puppet Theater in Glover, Vt.

Congrats to all, even if one part of the announcement made me wince:

Mr. Lander, who was raising chickens as part of the communal life at the (Bread & Puppet) farm, said a raccoon was eating the animals. “I caught the raccoon and ate it,” he said, “and that made her mad. She was a vegetarian at the time.”

Uhh. Raccoon? You can't tell me that tastes like chicken…

I photographed the following, posted by the entrance to Brooks Pharmacy in Montpelier:

“Will do anything legally permissable” to hinder a union. On the one hand, I suppose there's something refreshing about the honesty. On the other hand, is this the type of corporate citizen a progressive town like Montpelier wants in its midst?

Brooks was recently bought out by Rite Aid nationally. It will be interesting to see if the signs stay after the transition is complete. On the one hand, Rite Aid struck a deal in the late nineties to be the preferred provider pharmaceuticals to the National Health and Human Service Employees in New York in exchange for opening their stores up for unionizing (many already were at the time). On the other hand, there's this report from only a year ago in L.A. County:

The warehouse workers at Rite Aid’s distribution center in Lancaster need our support. They sweat and vomit on the job all because the warehouse where they work lacks air conditioning. In fact, one worker died on the job. Many attribute his death to heat stroke. Now these workers are trying to organize themselves for better working conditions by joining the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 26, but Rite Aid has not been supportive. In response, they have slammed these workers with firings, suspensions, harassment and threats.

In any event, if the sign doesn't come down, there may be an opportunity for local activists to work in solidarity with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which absorbed NHHSE about ten years ago. SEIU has a strong New England presence and is a very activist-oriented union. Since this sign amounts to a spitting-in-the-face of those of us who consider the labor movement a good thing and the right to organize as fundamental, a little pushback would seem to be in order. Stay tuned.

( – promoted by odum)

[cross-posted from Norsehorse’s Home Turf, here]

Associated Press (AP) Photo caption:

Democrat Cheryl Rivers, left, stares at Liberty Union party candidate Peter Stevenson, who wore a Halloween costume, as Stevenson speaks during Vermont Public Television’s Lieutenant Governor candidates debate Sunday, Oct. 31, 2004, in Colchester, Vt. (AP Photo/Alden Pellett)

via Mike Hicks, here, who — within his blog post on the subject — opined:

Political debates should always be held on Halloween

[by the way, for the sake of full disclosure, having met him sometime after the 2004 election cycle through a mutual friend — Patricia Henjy (Pat Political), deceased December 13, 2005  — whom wanted me to help him with some Blogging 101 coaching so he could get started with blogging a blog of his own, I happen to know Peter Stevenson (Illuminati Slayer) and consider him a friend. In fact, he has recently informed me that once he is able to do so, he hopes to get his blog going once again as it has been somewhat dormant for a little while now. — mwb]

[cross-posted from Norsehorse’s Home Turf, here]

If you live or work in Vermont, please read and consider signing onto the VCDR Letter of Support, here [via Vermont Protection and Advocacy (VT P&A) Website]

About VCDR
The Vermont Coalition for Disability Rights (VCDR) is a cross-disability advocacy organization that seeks to increase awareness of disability issues and effect systemic change through legislative and administrative processes. VCDR staff work closely with member organizations to empower people with disabilities, thus enabling them to directly participate in legislative decisions which will expand their civil rights.

Originally established as the Vermont Coalition of the Handicapped (VCH) in 1974, VCH changed its name to the Vermont Coalition for Disability Rights in 1990. VCDR is comprised of 28 member organizations including local and statewide organizations of Vermonters with disabilities, parents, advocates and service providers.

[…]

[excerpts via About VCDR page; logo via VCDR Website]

If you are interested in disAbility issues, especially within the state of Vermont, visit the VCDR Website for more information.

Yet another statewide disability organization Website to check out as well is the Vermont Center for Independent Living (VCIL).

I take two of these daily as part of the handful of pharmaceuticals my doctor has me on for my various frailties. I only just noticed what they actually say on them…

Funny prescription for a blogger, eh? Wonder if Markos knows he's available in pill form.

( – promoted by JulieWaters)

“Nuclear Plant”
“Emergency Shutdown”
“Scram”

Per the Rutland Herald article “Failed valve triggers Yankee shutdown:”

[…]
Workers at the Vernon reactor had “flagged” a large troublesome steam valve when it failed to shut off during testing Wednesday. When they returned Thursday to further test the troublesome valve, all four steam line valves started to close, throwing the plant into an emergency shutdown, or scram, according to State Nuclear Engineer Uldis Vanags.
[…]
Vanags said the plant remained in “hot” shutdown rather than “cold” shutdown. Such a shutdown is usually an indicator that Entergy Nuclear believes the problem can be fixed quickly.

But Vanags said he didn’t know what the original problem with the first valve was at this point and he was waiting for additional information from Entergy.
[…]

Well, that’s comforting.

UPDATE– Bearing Blamed in Yankee Outage…

Lack of grease in a bearing in a large motor-operated valve is being blamed for Thursday’s emergency shutdown at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.

And the plant’s staff may have made things worse during their troubleshooting and actually caused the shutdown, a state official said Friday.

Uldis Vanags, the state nuclear engineer, said it appears that the bearing was inadequately lubricated during the last refueling outage at Yankee.

“There was insufficient grease applied in the last outage,” Vanags said. “They’ve put in a new bearing and lubricated it really well.”

Vanags said that federal regulators were investigating the possibilities that actions by Entergy Nuclear staff during troubleshooting of the sticky valve is what actually caused the reactor to shut down, rather than the valve itself.

“The way the troubleshooting was conducted could have caused the trip,” he said.

ENVY had an unexpected, automatic shutdown today.

“Plant officials said the shutdown occurred at 3:12 p.m. EDTduring routine testing of steam valves. Plant technicians are trying to determine the cause of the automatic shutdown.”

I believe this is known in the industry as a “scram”.

Well, the other shoe just dropped.  Vt Yankee had an emergency scram today (Thursday) from 62 percent power.  All four main steam stop valves “inadvertantly” slammed closed during a test.  That left 1.6 million horsepower with no place to go.  (At full power, it would have been 2.5 million horsepower.) The resulting scram shut the reactor down.  Why did it happen?  Stay tuned for Mr. O'Brien's next press release supporting the Entergy management team. 

(Beth Robinson, for those who may not know, was “co-counsel to the plaintiffs in Baker v. State, Vermont’s landmark case involving the rights of same-sex couples, and she helped lead the lobbying effort which led to the passage of Vermont’s civil union law.” (from her firm’s website) – promoted by odum)

When Gaye Symington and Peter Shumlin launched a blue ribbon commission to study Vermont’s marriage laws, I expected opposition from gay-rights opponents.  I wasn’t prepared for the push-back from some on the left, wrongly assuming that the broader progressive community would appreciate both the moral rightness and the political wisdom of Symington’s and Shumlin’s actions.  As leader of Vermont Freedom to Marry, I take personal responsibility for failing to lay the groundwork within this community.  I hope you’ll indulge me now.

Symington and Shumlin didn’t pull this issue out of thin air.  Freedom-to-marry advocates have stepped up our advocacy considerably in the past couple of years, and have been pressing them hard.  Recognizing that it wasn’t right to back-burner an important civil rights issue indefinitely, but understandably cautious about their broader legislative agenda, these leaders chose a path that would nudge our struggle forward by facilitating a public conversation, while keeping it outside of the statehouse for the balance of this biennium.  They made it clear that the Legislature would not be taking up the issue in 2008, but agreed to set in motion a grassroots-level process that would provide a forum for Vermonters to discuss the issue.  It was really a modest, though critically important step.

Civil Rights Are Important 

I’ve been most surprised by the suggestion by some on the left (many of whom claim to support same-sex marriage, and most of whom enjoy (and have exercised) their own legal right to marry) that even a volunteer commission with no power to take any action is too much attention to devote to considering our exclusionary marriage laws.  This notion is shocking.  They may just be focusing narrowly on the trees, ignoring the forest that many progressive visionaries usually understand.  The freedom to marry issue in Vermont is not just about moving us closer to securing for same-sex couples all the vital family protections that our heterosexual counterparts take for granted.  It’s not just about making the dignity and history of civil marriage available to same-sex couples who choose it.  It’s not even just about committed same-sex couples who want to marry.  Rather, it’s an essential component of a broader civil rights movement. 

The NAACP didn’t take on the unpopular cause of eliminating the ban on interracial marriage in the 1960s because interracial couples were lining up in droves to marry.  Nor did the NAACP focus on interracial marriage primarily because they were concerned about health insurance or social security survivor benefits for interracial couples.  They tackled the issue because they understood the power of our marriage laws to perpetuate and reinforce racial division.  They understood that a successful civil rights movement must tackle all the central spheres of our collective lives—including commerce (Civil Rights Act ), political access (Voting Rights Act), education (Brown v. Board), and laws regulating marriage and family—like the ban on interracial marriage (Loving v. Virginia). 

The main civil rights struggle of this generation involves gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (glbt) Americans.  And, once again, all the pieces are connected.  What we can do here in Vermont to help the effeminate kid in Kentucky who has no legal protection from homophobic bullying on the playground, or the employee in South Dakota who’s at risk of losing his job because he’s gay, or the lesbian mother in Georgia fearful of losing custody of her child if she comes out, is to continue to lead.  Vermont has the opportunity, and responsibility, to make a critical difference by doing what we can to push the envelope of this civil rights movement to it’s necessary conclusion:  genuinely equal rights for glbt citizens.  It’s our contribution to the pressing civil rights movement of our time. 

The Commission Is Politically Wise 

Symington and Shumlin’s creation of a commission wasn’t just the right thing to do; it was a politically wise thing to do.  They created a way to move the conversation along in Vermont’s communities without spending a single tax dollar and without diverting any legislative time.  The alternative would have seen freedom to marry advocates back in the Statehouse next year pressing for action—a much more distracting scenario.

Those who suggest that the commission plays into the hands of Symington’s and Shumlin’s political rivals forget just how much times have changed since 2000.  We’re bordered on two sides by jurisdictions in which same-sex couples can marry.  Opposition to Vermont’s civil union law has receded to a small, albeit vocal minority.  Most Vermonters aren’t bothered if the two men or two women who live next door make a lifetime commitment to one another, and they’re fine with the law treating their neighbors as equals.  That’s not to say that we won’t face opposition, but most Vermonters—including a strong majority of self-identified independents– believe that same-sex couples should be allowed to legally marry.  And many Vermonters are committed to working hard to support political leaders who support our civil rights— far from detracting from other issues, the conversation about the freedom to marry has the potential to strengthen and broaden a progressive coalition in this state.

The beauty of the commission and the incremental approach that it represents is that it will enable all of us to see where the opposition is coming from, and how strong it is, as well as where most Vermonters are.  Many peoples’ reactions to the resurgence of the issue are grounded in conventional wisdom based on events from seven years ago.  The commission process, and the public reaction to it, will give us all a better picture of where Vermont is today as we consider our options moving forward.

The Time Is Right 

Some folks have criticized the timing of the commission– another way of asserting that the issue isn’t important, or the politics are disadvantageous.  For those who fear the politics of the issue so much that they don’t want to even restart the conversation, or those who don’t value the civil rights advance we seek, the time will never seem right.  There will always be a legislative majority or super-majority to build or protect, there will always be an incumbent Governor to protect or oust (or perhaps an open seat), and there will always be an election on the horizon.

Let’s Work Together

I hope we can work together as part of a broader progressive agenda.  Freedom to marry advocates are Vermonters, too.  We care about the environment, health care, education, energy, taxes, and the quality of life here in Vermont.  We see the marriage commission, and the conversation it will engender, as reinforcing these values.  What will undermine all of our collective goals is if we splinter and divide, or if we misdirect our frustration with a Governor who doesn’t share many of our values toward Democratic leaders who trying to do the right thing, and the wise thing.

Thanks for reading!

There was a break in at a property owned by Montpelier gadfly Gary Schy over this last weekend. Property was stolen, smashed and defaced. The Times Argus gave it front page treatment, though. Why?

A pair of swastikas were left at the site of a destructive burglary in Montpelier late last week, transforming the break-in into a hate crime, according to police.

Property owner Gary Schy discovered the anti-Semitic symbols amid the aftermath of a destructive rampage when he checked in on his teenage children's East State Street “clubhouse” early Thursday morning. The burglars, according to Schy, took two expensive guitars from the small barn before ransacking the premises and spraying the interior with a fire extinguisher. Schy said the swastikas were traced into the layer of white residue deposited by the extinguisher.

“I saw it on my kids' face, they know what hatred feels like,” Schy said.

A lot of folks on the left like to echo the right wing on hate crimes. Hate crime laws evoke strong negative feelings from the damndest people, and to a person they use the same arguments. That its somehow penalizing thoughts. That all crimes somehow involve hate already, so what's the point? That its some sort of fallacy to prosecute a random assault differently, and with a different set of punishments, than an assault based on a persons race, creed, color or sexual orientation. And they always go straight to angry that anyone would suggest otherwise, throwing around accusations of “political correctness.”

Often when somebody goes straight to angry like that, it's a sign that there isn't a lot of rationality to their argument to waste any time with.

First of all, lets do away with the two least developed arguments. No, not all crimes involve hate, and even if they did – that's not the point. Call them bias crimes if you want, it hardly matters. A rose by any other name, and all. This argument is a straw man at best.

Second of all, there's no penalization for thoughts. You don't get charged with a hate crime for thinking bad things about people – you get charged when you do bad things to people, and as is the case with any violent crime, intent matters. We prosecute criminals differently for reckless homicide vs. intentional murder. We prosecute differently for premeditation. We let people off completely if they can prove they weren't in their right minds. This is all common sense. Throwing out the “thoughtcrime” canard is, after a second of thinking about it, clearly a way to suggest that bias and ethnic, racial or sexual identity motivations should be specially singled out as beyond consideration (so now who's making special allowances?).

Finally, there's the argument that an assault that is motivated by bias-hatred should simply be prosecuted as an assault. That it's no different.

And that's a load of crap.

First of all, there's – again – the argument that we don't treat all assaults or attacks the same in other ways, as I mentioned before. Why single out the consideration of bias motivations as specifically arbitrary or inappropriate?

And the fact remains that a garden variety break in or vandalism and one motivated by bigotry are NOT the same crimes. Not even close. Need proof? There are break ins all the time in central Vermont with comparable damage and theft. Generally, you'll find them in the police reports. Sometimes a blerb on the sidebar in the B section. This particular break-in, however, was front-page-above-the-fold. What was the difference?

The swastikas.

Surrounded as we are by a disturbing complacency on such matters, fed by a media that considers those that gleefully associate themselves with dangerously fascistic bigots to be “quaint,” we have a special responsibility to call this sort of thing out and tell it like it is. By defacing Schy's property with swastikas, the peretrators were not simply trashing the place and stealing a few items, they were dropping a fear bomb into Montpelier's Jewish community – and by extension, all of us with friends and family among the Jewish community. It's the same when someone targets a gay man for a beating specifically because they're gay. Sure there's an assault, but there's also a violent, loud threat to the entire gay community, and an intent to terrorize them.

If you doubt that there's something much than in a garden variety act of violence when bias is the motivation, simply look at the ripples made in the community and you'll have little choice but to admit there's something more in play.

And that something is what makes it a hate crime. They're a form of terrorism, and should be treated as such.