’nuff said.

Let's look ahead to just how the H.520 fight could play out in the coming weeks. As I've said, the big mistake of the announcement was twofold; one, that it let many of the supporters feel left out in the cold scratching their heads (and greenvtster is mistaken, only in that leadership had up to that moment, very much been in coordination with the base on this), and two; that the timing was premature and gave the appearence of capitulation, and therefore – weakness (and you never want to show weakness at a time like this).

Still, it was a strategic move, and if you still doubt that – consider how this could now play out.

Leadership holds the veto vote and comes up short. They then do what they've suggested; vote to suspend the rules and modify the bill, putting off the funding schema until January. This bill – a new bill – passes with a simple majority.

Then we go through it again – the new bill goes back to the Governor's desk where he can sign it, veto it, or allow it to become law without his signature. WIthout the funding scheme, the pressure will be a lot greater than it was before -especially since his “unfunded mandate” and “bureaucracy” excuses are so thin, they're falling completely flat.

But let's say the Governor vetoes it again. The Dem leadership then has the option – even the responsibility – of calling another override session. When? Check your calendar, folks, we're talking September again, when we can have all hands on deck – and with a bill that, in theory, many of the opponents have indicated they'll support. With all its policy provisions intact. And the whole thing keeps the issue alive and active in the public debate leading up closer to the election season.

The problem is we've become conditioned to see every move of the leadership as a failure (and the anti-Dem crowd gleefully exploits that), and in this case – at least in the big picture – it's just too early to tell.

I tend to look at a lot of things in life from a process perspective, and politics is certainly no exception, and from that perspective I am deeply disappointed by what has happened on the Energy Bill, even more so than regarding the fate of the actual bill in some ways.

What I saw at first was encouraging. This was an issue that was very easy to support, with a bill that had a lot of positives going for it and an opposition that was a relatively easy mark. I mean, c’mon, who’s NOT for reducing energy bills, reducing carbon emissions and creating new high-tech jobs, right? Well the Gov, that’s who. He’d rather create jobs in China.

So this environment created a lot of political frustration, and not just for the same old usual suspects. I attended a meeting in Norwich a while back where there were about 25 people ready to lend a hand to support the override cause. That’s a pretty good turnout. There were other meetings around the state. This cause was a rallying point around which Vermonters were engaging, and they were engaging on the side of Dems. This seemed very hopeful for developing into a surge of support for the next elections. There was a real opportunity to build an expanded grassroots network, drawing people from VPIRG, Sierra Club and the Step It Up campaign, among other contingencies, onto a Dem bandwagon.

Alas, I’m afraid that opportunity has been at least partially squandered, and this is where my biggest disappointment arises. Unfortunately, no VT politician saw the possibilities in this moment. Nobody from the Leg rallied the grassroots troops. Nobody connected with the budding “movement” and engaged them. This was an opportunity for a Howard Dean, People-Powered moment, but that lesson from that campaign seems to have been swallowed back up by the politics-as-usual school of thought.

Instead, the volunteer movement was left out to dry. Letter writers now have their contributions to the movement in local papers supporting the energy Bill, including the VY tax adjustment. How do they feel now? See them hang in the breeze below?

This letter writer from South Royalton

“Currently, Entergy only pays one-third the tax rate of what is proposed for other power generators in Vermont. There is nothing unfair about requiring Entergy to pay the same tax as other generators, especially because they have upgraded the facility and increased its output by 20 percent.

Another from So Burlington

“Vermont Yankee currently pays a property tax rate of only .001 cents per kilowatt-hour. Other energy generators, such as wind farms would be required to pay a rate three times as high. While most Vermonters are paying more in taxes, Vermont Yankee’s tax bill has actually gone down since 2001.”

Newfane…

“The governor’s continued use of IBM’s name as a concern about the tax, as though a parity tax on the nuclear power plant is somehow going to carry over to all large corporations in Vermont, is simply deceptive. The last I checked, IBM wasn’t producing energy or plutonium.”

and Richmond…

“All H.520 proposes to do is to tax Vermont Yankee at the same rate applied to large-scale wind projects. No more, no less. Seems more than fair to me considering we will still have to deal with Yankee’s nuclear waste for millennia.”

I have a hard time picturing a progressive or even a moderate Democratic Gubernatorial victory in 2008 given the vacuum of leadership evidenced by this affair (and others).

Okay, it's been a week. The ad should be gone soon. By tomorrow. Yeek, how embarassing.

Again, I promise to may more attention to what I'm approving next time. At a glance, I just thought it was some groovy herbal thing. HA!

Cross-posted from Beyond VSH: 

A new reported shows that the Vermont Department of Corrections may administer antipsychotic drugs to more of its prisoners than any other state. A study done by the Associated Press shows that 46% of all prisoners held by the Department of Corrections were prescribed antipsychotics.
 Even the Department seems to admit that these drugs are overused. For instance, Dr. Susan Wehry, the medical director for the Department of Corrections, admitted that some powerful drugs, such as Seroquel, are given to help prisoners sleep, and that sometimes doctors prescribe antipsychotics for prisoners who request them rather than have to deal with a grievance from a prisoner who wants them. “Quite frankly, I think docs get worn down,” she told AP.”

Given that the incidence of schizophrenia worldwide is estimated at 1%, the adminstration of antipsychotics to 46% of Vermont prisoners seems very difficult to justify.

Aside from whether all this use of antispychotics is justified, it is important to consider the impact of this news on the VSH Futures effort. As you know, this has been going on for years in an effort to design a replacement for the Vermont State Hospital. Naturally, one of the big questions has been the size of any new facility, which, of course, entails an understanding of the need. For years, mental health advocates have been arguing that the State has sytematically understated the number of Corrections inmates with severe mental illnesses, and for just as long the State has been reporting laughably small numbers for these prisoners.

Here's an excerpt from the minutes of one meeting earlier this year:
Hospital Futures Plan from February 4, 2005, that the VDH/Division of Mental Health
prepared for then Secretary
of AHS Charles Smith. She distributed excerpts of the plan.
Discussion of the group’s charge stimulated discussion around several issues:
o Given a number of different populations currently served at VSH, should we
create multiple inpatient programs to address each population?
o How do we meet the needs of people in Department of Corrections custody?
o How would we estimate the inpatient capacity needed for Corrections?
The
February 2005 Futures Plan reported the Department of Corrections’
estimate of four to ten persons in DOC custody needing psychiatric
hospitalization for whom no appropriate inpatient service site was
available.
The
inpatient mental health needs of Corrections is required for capacity
planning for the Futures project.

So tell me: if the mental health needs of DoC prisoners are so high that almost half of them need antipsychotics, what should we be doing to plan for their mental health needs in the future?

( – promoted by odum)

<><>Has anyone by chance seen the article about the Dyncorp merc in Free Press (I can't get the weblink to function, but it on the front page of the website)?   It is appalling that the paper treats the guy like a human interest story and fails to raise a single point about the implications of what this guy was up to. 

<>A few years back (shortly after 9/11) a friend was working on her thesis for her grad degree.  She was, at the time, the CFO of one of the largest private security firms in the world – Group 4/Falck.  Her thesis was on the privatization of military and intel capablity and its negative implications for US foreign policy and civil liberties (quite a stand given where she was sitting at the time – no wonder she was later fired).  At the time, I thought she raised an interesting point, but a bit overblown.

<>I didn't realize how prescient she was until a few years later I was sitting at Dubai airport waiting to catch a rickety Ariana 727 for Kabul.  Instead of the usual NGO – humanitarian types waiting at the gate, most of the passengers were clearly ex-military.  Past their prime, but still sporting tight white wall hair cuts, tucked in polo shirts and Wrangler jeans.  On the flight to Kabul I struck up a conversation with one of these guys and he told me a story very similar to the Freep article.

<>When I got to Kabul, I was stunned at the omnipresence of the private security firms.  The US embassy is not guarded by Marines, but by contractors – consisting primarily of Nepalese Ghurkas and South African supervisors.    Even most of the NGOs  operating there are forced to hire these firms.  While I was in Kabul, the Dyncorp office was blown up by a warlord (whose kid was ran over by a Dyncorp convoy, so I suppose he had a beef).  

Anyway, I digress.  The point I am trying to make is that one of the greatest worries I have about the Bush era is the privatization of military force and intel capability because it will be very hard to ween these companies off of their fat contracts.  Unlike the traditional defense contractors (Boeing, Lockheed Martin) which can thrive in peacetime (provided there is a threat justifying huge expenditures) – these guys need active conflicts to make money.  Do we expect Dyncorp and Blackwater to simply give up their contracts and go home when the war in Iraq ends?  How do we turn these swords to plowshares?   

Chittenden Corp, Vermont’s banking Goliath, has announced that IT will be sold to an out of state bank.

The issue of loss of control lead me to spend a little time at the website of “Local First Vermont”, in an attempt to see what this might mean for Vermonters.

Cross-posted at Rip-and-Read

Thursday’s big news was that Vermont’s biggest bank was going to be bought by an even bigger bank from out of state. In a $1.9 billion dollar deal, Chittenden Corp is going to be sold to United Financial Inc. of Connecticut.

I don’t think the Chittenden Bank sale is the end of the world, but I do think it is worth keeping an eye on.

One obvious reason for concern is the potential loss of white collar jobs here in Vermont; both the Burlington Free Press and the Rutland Herald report that although officials from both banks expect layoffs to have minimal impact, there will be layoffs.

But there is something else to consider…the headquarters of Vermont’s largest banking presence will no longer be located here on Vermont soil. Vermont’s citizen’s will have lost a measure of local influence over an institution that plays a very important roll in the lives of many, many, many of our fellow citizens.

It may not seem important that the top officers of the bank may no longer reside in Vermont neighborhoods, belong to Vermont civic organizations, or send their children to Vermont schools, but there are studies that show that it might.

A trip to Local First Vermont’s website yields the results of several studies which illustrate the point. For example, Local First Vermont cites one study by the National Federation of Independent Business that claims that:

Small firms give an average of more than two and a half times the amount per employee than do medium or large firms (small firms give $789 per employee, medium-sized firms $172, and large firms $334)

It is of course more than community involvement or charitable giving…in the end, it comes down to the basic strength of our Vermont Economy….

The Economic Impact of Locally Owned Businesses vs. Chains: A Case Study in Midcoast Maine – September 2003
By Institute for Local Self-Reliance
This study tracked the revenue and expenditures of eight locally owned businesses in Midcoast Maine, as compared to big box stores.Key findings:

* Locally owned businesses spent 44.6 percent of their revenue within the surrounding two counties, and another 8.7 percent elsewhere in Maine, largely on wages and benefits paid to local employees, goods and services purchased from other local businesses, profits that accrued to local owners, and taxes paid to local and state government.

* Big box retailers return an estimated 14.1 percent of their revenue to the local economy, mostly as payroll. The rest leaves the state, flowing to out-of-state suppliers and back to corporate headquarters.

so I’ll leave you with one more thought and then urge you to to visit Local First Vermont’s website.

Bloggers, Pols, Wannabes to meet for good company and loose behavior!

Mark your calendars for the Political BBQ and Hamburger Summit, coming up Sunday, July 15, at North Beach in Burlington.

 I missed the shindig last year, although I had a good excuse–basking on the beach on Martha's Vineyard. I'm all over it this year, though, and you should be too.

See you on the beach! 

Yes, you read that right. Even in these times of Bush's packed court there is the occasional bright spot, and this time it's because of a decision they decided not to make.

You may remember the case of Zach Guiles, a high school student from Williamstown who was suspended for wearing a T-shirt critical of George W. Bush, referring to him as the “chicken-hawk-in-chief”. The ostensible reason for the suspension was the presence of drug paraphernalia on the shirt, but the context made clear that the whole incident was prompted by a parent who didn't like the message. With the help of the Vermont ACLU Zach sued the Williamstown school board and won his case in the Second Circuit, so the school board asked the U.S. Supreme Court to grant a writ of certiorari to reverse the decision.

Although the denial of a writ of certiorari does not necessarily state that the underlying decision is correct, it terminates the litigation and finalizes whatever relief the winning side won in the appellate decision. This is great news, especially in light of the Court's decision earlier this week in  Morse v. Frederick, which upheld a school's decision to punish a student for speech that the principal thought was disruptive, even though it did not even take place on school grounds. Although new Chief Justice Roberts pretended to honor the principle that political speech is protected, possibly most chilling was Clarence Thomas's statement that,  “As originally understood, the Constitution does not afford students a right to free speech in public schools. “

Congratulations to Zach Guiles and the Vermont ACLU!