Culture Vulture

Eight years later

2009-09-11T23:25:53Z

An eighth anniversary of an event is not one of those traditional "milestone" years that we often use to measure the passage of time. Five, 10, 25, 50: these are neat round numbers or slices of time that fit better into a retrospective framework. But the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks should be no less important than than the first one was, and the milestone years still to come will be.

In truth, the potency of all historic dates, like the anniversary of Pearl Harbor or D-Day fades with time as those who directly experienced the events age and pass away. But we are still close enough historically, and sadly, still embroiled in a conflict in Afghanistan that has a direct line to 9/11, so that it would be worth taking a moment to pause and reflect on what that day meant, and still means.

Almost 3,000 people died in the series of coordinated attacks launched by Islamic jihadist militants that day, the first time, it may be fairly said, that war came to the American homeland on that scale since the Civil War of the 1860s. It was shocking, tragic and its reverberations are still being felt today and will for years to come, as we try to wrestle with an increasingly sticky mess in Afghanistan, surely one of the world's least hospitable places for a force of outsiders -- this time it's us -- to impose order. The Russians tried, the British tried -- even Alexander the Great tried, and they all failed. It would be worth our leader's time to think deeply about what our goals really should be there before we ratchet this up another few levels.

But by then, more than 1,000 members of the Vermont National Guard, some of them from right here in Bennington County, will be deployed there. Hopefully, they will all return home safely after completing their nearly year-long mission.

It's easy to forget the fear and paranoia that swept the country in the initial few weeks and months after 9/11. That al-Qaeda would strike again was almost a given, and the country looked shockingly helpless to defend itself against suicidal terrorists. Then came the anthrax scare. The Patriot Act. Domestic surveillance and constitutionally dicey wiretapping. Guantanamo. Torture.

Let's also remember the courage and heroism of the firefighters and police who were the first responders to the attacks, both in New York and Washington D.C. We should remember the quiet heroism of thousands of people whose names will be probably be lost to history if they haven't been already, who did something, even if only in a small way, to help out in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.

The feeling of national unity and the sight of flags fluttering from cars may no longer be so prevalent as it was eight years ago, but it did remind us of what the bedrock virtues of this nation -- the eternal America -- is all about, and its worth remembering again today, even if only for a little while.

Comments? You can add to this by going to the Journal blogsite "Culture Vulture" found at www.blogsouthernvermont.com.

Sonia's got it with baseball, what about the rest?

2009-06-04T00:26:09Z

Let's start with the good news - apparently Sonia Sotomayor is a New York Yankees fan.
Bronx-born and bred, how could she not be?
Her continued loyalty to the home team speaks volumes about her sense of judgment and clarity of thinking, and goes a long way towards relieving doubts that might creep in when you take a slightly closer look at her judicial record.
Sotomayor, who is currently a federal appeals court judge, has been nominated by President Barack Obama to replace retiring Justice David Souter. Her nomination has already received widespread coverage in the media, which will only grow in depth and intensity as the Congressional hearings on her qualifications approach and get
underway. But since Vermont has a seat at the table in the form of Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee which will recommendation (or not) Sotomayer for her spot on the nation's highest Court of Law, we'll throw in our two cents for the fun of it.
All Supreme Court appointments are political to some degree or another. That's simply a fact of life and it's been that way for a long time. With luck, we also get a qualified jurist as well, and the track record, overall, hasn't been bad. If you reach that level of
being on the short list for a Supreme Court nomination, you can't be that incompetent.
Unfortunately, competency and qualifications for the post aren't the only factors that come into play. For at least the past 20 years, and maybe longer - certainly since the shameful decision not to approve the nomination of the highly qualified Robert Bork to be a Supreme Court Justice on highly partisan political grounds - politics and
ideology have come into play as never before. One of the leaders of the charge against Bork was none other than the current Vice President, Joseph Biden. From the left and the right, both sides have been obsessed with how nominees would vote on the abortion issue and whether or not they would uphold Roe v. Wade. It's hard to imagine
that once upon a time, nominations for the Supreme Court were so low key that the nominees rarely even showed up in person to testify, nor were expected to.
Sonia Sotomayor seems on the surface to be a well-qualified jurist and certainly has the requisite experience one would expect for a candidate for the nation's highest court. We think that should really be the central issue. It's all well and good that she will be the
first Hispanic justice, and the third woman, but those facts are distinctly secondary to whether or not her judicial track record to date is solid.
We're a little troubled by the notion of "empathy" that has surrounded Sotomayor's appointment, played up by the President himself. It's fine that judges should have "empathy." It's even better that Sotomayor has stated she is concerned about the
practical, real-world consequences of her decisions. But in the end, it's about interpreting the Constitution and arriving at legal decisions based on precedents.
We're highly troubled by one decision Sotomayor had a role in that involved a discrimination suit by 18 firemen from New Haven, Conn against that municipality. It grew out of a decision by that city to void the results of a job promotion exam because no African-Americans had scored high enough to qualify for a promotion. The 18 firemen
argued they had passed the test fair and square and their qualifications were being thwarted because the right outcome, by the city's estimation, hadn't occurred. The case went up the appeals ladder, and Sotomayor was a member of a three-judge panel that upheld a lower court ruling that found in favor of New Haven, and against
the firemen. In one of those delicious ironies of history, the case in now before the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard arguments last month.
We're sorry, but we live in a meritocracy, or we should be, and if the 18 firemen were the best qualified for the job promotions, then that should have been the end of the story, unless someone could prove the test was blatantly slanted to disadvantage minority groups, which to the best of our knowledge, has not been alleged.
Sotomayor may have had an "inspiring" life story, an up from the ghetto journey that saw her rise through sheer native intelligence and hard work to the top of her classes at Princeton University and Yale Law School. She may well deserve a seat on the Supreme Court.
But we hope that before she is finished testifying before Leahy's Judiciary committee, the honorable Senators quiz her a bit about her thinking in the case involving the 18 New Haven firefighters, and make sure that she is clear that it's about more than just "empathy."

Give him a break

2009-04-22T21:35:56Z

President Barack Obama has come in for some criticism during the past month or so, as the nation attempts to recover from a steep economic downturn, for trying to keep his eye on the long term big picture. We think he and his administration are right to stay locked onto that focus, and hope the admittedly enormous array of problems the nation is facing, both foreign and domestic, doesn’t overwhelm their ability to separate the forest for the trees.
The worst economic slump in at least a quarter century — and while it’s the Great Depression that our current malaise is often compared to, so far the recession of the early 1980s is still statistically the sharper one in terms of unemployment and inflation — would tax most administrations when the world was a calm place. But with Pakistan leading the way, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea and the issues they are presenting in different ways, the world is hardly calm. Did we forget about Iraq? Next year at this time, assuming continued outward tranquility, the role of U.S. military forces are scheduled to shift to more of a background mode. That period will be a real test of how well the “surge” and political reconciliation among the Iraqis has really gone. It remains an open question.
Then we have the cranky Russian bear longing to be on the prowl again, eager to reassert its former Cold War power and influence. Meanwhile China is seeking a role in global affairs to match its growing financial clout The Chinese at least want to become pre-eminent players in their own backyard. A crisis in the Straits of Formosa, should one erupt, would pose a massive problem for the U.S., dependent as we are on the Chinese soaking up all that American public debt that is our short term way out of our economic difficulties.
So while all this is going on, President Obama is trying to say that reforming the health care system, insisting on meaningful improvements in the nation’s public education system and pushing forward on a "green” agenda on energy use must be part of the program. He’s right. The economy might rebound for awhile as a result of the massive injection of public money into the financial structure and some key industrial corporations like General Motors that are deemed too big to fail, but if we don’t stop wasting it on an amazingly inefficient healthcare and health insurance system, if too many of our elementary and secondary students are subpar compared with students elsewhere and if we don’t — 35 years later than we could have — finally get serious about energy use and our dependence on foreign oil, the one or two trillion dollars we’re borrowing from future generations will be a one-off fix. We just can’t afford to be stupid about this stuff anymore.
The President, who’s unfortunately got to work through a fantastically complicated set of difficulties with the help of some partisan political hacks like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-California and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D—Nevada, deserves some support for trying not to get bogged down in the crises du jour and to look for a fundamental overhaul of what’s dragging the creative entreneurial energy of the nation backwards. Congressional Republicans, increasingly a pathetic one note band on taxes and the stimulus, need to get a life — or maybe a time out — and start offering intelligent alternatives if big picture solutions aren’t part of their way out of the box. They have an important role to play, but right now, they seem stuck in the Potomac mud, irrelevant. They remind us of the Democrats during the Reagan era, when it was the GOP who had the leading guy who resonated with the American public.
Reagan too, had a few big ideas — cut taxes, an appropriate stategy at that time, rebuild the U.S. military, and topple the Russians. He suceeded on all three counts, and that’s why he is remembered as a successful president. In the end, it’s the big picture that counts.

Mystery Train

2009-04-06T18:03:06Z

Restoring passenger rail service to Manchester and the surrounding region is one of those hardy perennials, that much like the spring flowers we hope to soon see blooming, pops up out of the ground every so often to beguile us with thoughts of accomplishing two things at once — giving our local economy a boost and doing the right thing environmentally.
Last week a group of area officials and businesspeople went to Montpelier to urge the State Senate Transportation Committee to look favorably upon extending passenger rail service south from Rutland, through Manchester and Bennington before veering west toward Albany. To do that, the quality of the railroad tracks between Rutland and Manchester need an upgrade and other improvements made.
Like magic, a portion of the money coming to Vermont from the federal government’s economic stimulus plan may be available to grease the wheels. The $25 million or so officials estimate would be required to bring the tracks up to snuff, along with other needed investments, might fold neatly into a larger sum of money intended to help expand passenger rail service elsewhere in the state.
Bennington County officials and businesspeople were motivated to jump into the haggling over how the rail money might get divvied up because of the possibility that the county could be shut out of passenger rail upgrades altogether. State officials could opt to expand passenger rail service south only from Burlington to Rutland, which could then link up with the already established Ethan Allen Amtrak Express — recently spared from the state budget ax — and move passengers over to Albany that way. Or they could start from the south and build north.
But before we all get excited about the prospect of bringing passenger trains back to Manchester, we’d like to see a fair, objective study or analysis of how many passengers are really likely to ride the train. These sorts of decisions really need to be based on as much hard factual data as possible. Let’s not make investments based on wish-fulfillment or overly rosy scenarios. Because the fact of the matter is, the economics of passenger rail service, both coming and going, are highly problematic and far from an obvious necessity.
It would be one thing if the feds were simply happy to shower some overdue pork barrel spending here, but that’s not the whole story. Right now, the ridership on the Ethan Allen Express requires a federal and state subsidy of about $65 per passenger, on top of the price of the train ticket. The cost to the state treasury amounts to nearly $5 million per year.
We’re not sold yet that regular passenger train service is a panacea for local business, tourist-oriented or other. If it turns out it would be, great. But right now it takes longer, and costs more, for the typical visitor from downstate New York to arrive here by train, who is then faced with getting around a rural area with either a rented car, a van service or maybe, a bicycle. Until train service gets much faster, or the price drops significantly, or the price of gas shoots back into the $4-5 range (or higher), train service simply isn’t competitive. It may be fun, it may even be romantic, But until it’s an equitable dollars and cents match, it’s hard to see passenger rail being even close to a break-even alternative.
Here’s an idea we think does make some sense and may be worth exploring — light commuter rail. For much less money, upfront or otherwise, you could have a small two or three, highly automated passenger train car link from Manchester to Albany. Potentially, if the ridership were there, run several times a day. It wouldn’t require the level of track upgrades a full-blown heavy passenger rail service would, and would be sufficient to transport local residents who might want to travel to New York for the day or weekend and bring visitors to our neighborhood. People could live here and commute to work in Albany.
Train service is wonderful in the right places. Along the heavily populated Boston to Washington D.C. corridor, it makes an awful lot of sense. We don’t have the density of population here, which is part of what makes this area attractive, but it undercuts the case for passenger rail service.
We’d rather see the $25 million being discussed here invested in a super-fast “bullet” train for the Albany to New York run. That’s another way you could bring train service closer, and link with this area through a bus. That idea was advanced by Gov. Douglas earlier in legislative session before it died a premature death, but it had a lot of merit, and would have filled a public transportation gap. But legislators weren’t interested, apparently.
Here’s another idea that would be a nifty use for the existing rail bed — a Rail Trail. Cover the existing tracks with a tarpaulin and gravel and convert them into a 50 mile round trip bike and hiking path between Manchester and Bennington. It would be a unique drawing card for our area. It’s pretty level. It would probably draw hundreds, maybe thousands, of hikers and bikers — and their disposable income. If it flopped, or we needed the tracks again because of a national emergency, you could pull up the covering and have the railroad back. People would likely find their way here to experience it, and they wouldn’t need a train from Albany or Rutland.
We have nothing against trains. They are fun. Let’s also have some common sense and look at the big picture. Restoring passenger rail service to Manchester and the surrounding region is one of those hardy perennials, that much like the spring flowers we hope to soon see blooming, pops up out of the ground every so often to beguile us with thoughts of accomplishing two things at once — giving our local economy a boost and doing the right thing environmentally.
Last week a group of area officials and businesspeople went to Montpelier to urge the State Senate Transportation Committee to look favorably upon extending passenger rail service south from Rutland, through Manchester and Bennington before veering west toward Albany, where passengers could board trains to New York City and elsewhere. To do that, the quality of the railroad tracks between Rutland and Manchester need an upgrade and other improvements made.
Like magic, a portion of the money coming to Vermont from the federal government’s economic stimulus plan may be available for transportation initiatives such this. The $25 million or so officials estimate would be required to bring the tracks up to snuff, along with other needed investments, might fold neatly into the larger picture of expanding passenger rail service elsewhere in the state.
Bennington County folks were motivated to jump into the haggling over how the rail money might get divvied up because of the possibility that the county could be shut out of passenger rail upgrades altogether. State officials could opt to expand passenger rail service south only from Burlington to Rutland, which could then link up with the already established Ethan Allen Amtrak Express — recently spared from the state budget ax — and move passengers over to Albany that way. Or they could start from the south and build north. The latter approach has the merit of being closer to the major population centers further south, and so ensure a higher level of ridership, but Burlington and Chittenden County have the political clout in the Legislature to make the northern extension of rail the first priority. If that happens, passenger rail from Rutland south through Bennington would probably be doomed, because our guess is that ridership on that link won’t be great enough to justify the cost.
But before we all get excited about the prospect of bringing passenger trains back to Manchester, we’d like to see a fair, objective study or analysis of how many passengers are really likely to ride the train. These sorts of decisions really need to be based on as much hard factual data as possible. Let’s not make investments based on wish-fulfillment or overly rosy scenarios. And let’s enter the “green” factor when that is more precisely quantifiable — not just a nice, moral virtue. We’re all for getting green, but sustainable decisions need an economic foundation. A component of rail service may be a gas tax — which would make for an incentive to travel by train. But that’s another issue.
Federal dollars may help upgrade the track, but they won’t pay for the train’s operation forever. That will be borne by state money — our tax dollars. Right now, the ridership on the Ethan Allen Express requires a federal and state subsidy of about $65 per passenger, on top of the price of the train ticket. The cost to the state treasury amounts to nearly $5 million per year.
We’re not sold yet that regular passenger train service is a panacea for local business, tourist-oriented or other. If it turns out it would be, great. But right now it takes longer, and costs more, for the typical visitor from downstate New York to arrive here by train, who is then faced with getting around a rural area with either a rented car, a van service or maybe, a bicycle. Until train service gets much faster, or the price drops significantly, or the price of gas shoots back into the $4-5 range (or higher), train service simply isn’t competitive. It may be fun, it may even be romantic, But until it’s an equitable dollars and cents match, it’s hard to see passenger rail being even close to a break-even alternative.
Here’s an idea we think does make some sense and may be worth exploring — light commuter rail. For much less money, upfront or otherwise, you could have a small two or three, highly automated passenger train car link from Manchester to Albany. Potentially, if the ridership were there, run several times a day. It wouldn’t require the level of track upgrades a full-blown heavy passenger rail service would, and would be sufficient to transport local residents who might want to travel to New York for the day or weekend and bring visitors to our neighborhood. People could live here and commute to work in Albany.
Train service is wonderful in the right places. Along the heavily populated Boston to Washington D.C. corridor, it makes an awful lot of sense. We don’t have the density of population here, which is part of what makes this area attractive, but it undercuts the case for passenger rail service.
We’d rather see the $25 million being discussed here invested in a super-fast “bullet” train for the Albany to New York run. That’s another way you could bring train service closer, and link with this area through a bus. That idea was advanced by Gov. Douglas earlier in legislative session before it died a premature death, but it had a lot of merit, and would have filled a public transportation gap. But legislators weren’t interested, apparently.
Here’s another idea that would be a nifty use for the existing rail bed — a Rail Trail. Cover the existing tracks with a tarpaulin and gravel and convert them into a 50 mile round trip bike and hiking path between Manchester and Bennington. It would be a unique drawing card for our area. It’s pretty level. It would probably draw hundreds, maybe thousands, of hikers and bikers — and their disposable income. If it flopped, or we needed the tracks again because of a national emergency, you could pull up the covering and have the railroad back. People would likely find their way here to experience it, and they wouldn’t need a train from Albany or Rutland.
We have nothing against trains. They are fun. Let’s also have some common sense and look at the big picture.

Is this trip necessary?

2009-03-22T15:19:07Z

We’ve been following the whole debate about same-sex marriage along with everyone else, mulling over the positives and negatives. On balance, we think there are far fewer reasons to oppose it than support such a change, but it’s one of those subjects that raises a lot of passions on both sides of the question. That’s why we think the best way to sort this one out is to leave it to a public referendum, as has been suggested by Kevin Mullin, a state senator from Rutland, and who showed us a real “profile in courage” moment when he supported the bill when it got voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. He may pass a political price for that vote from disgruntled former supporters. A referendum would be the one true way of finding out what the real will of the state is on this question.
It’s quite clear that if it’s left to the Legislature, there will be a same-sex marriage law for Governor Douglas to sign. That would make Vermont the first state in the nation to have a same-sex marriage possibility that was passed by an act of the Legislature, as opposed to a judicial decision by a court of law. Douglas will then be placed in the position of having to sign it, veto it, or let it become law without his signature. None of those options are winners for him, which may be part of the whole idea.
Our first reaction to this issue is one of tolerance. Life is short, and if marrying a partner of the same sex is what works for two people, we’re inclined to give it a wave and a “God bless.” If it’s not harming somebody else or the people directly involved, then so what? Live and let live.
That’s still our basic feeling, but we wonder if there is another way to go about this. We haven’t seen any “Take back Vermont” movement emerging yet. We don’t think we will. We’ve all come a long way on this issue over the past decade. But it’s clear there are still strong feelings about this under the surface veneer of liberal, tolerant Vermont, and those voices deserve a hearing too. It would be fascinating to see what an actual poll of Vermonter’s feelings were on this issue. Our guesss is that opinion is pretty evenly divided.
In a perfect world, we wish the Legislature hadn’t chosen this moment to distract its attention from focusing on the very serious economic problems of the state. We know legislators think they can do two things at once — economic problem-solving and same-sex marriage — unfortunately the track record shows that they have a tough time even getting one thing right at a time. Every minute that state legislators aren’t focused on fixing the many problems the state is facing is hard to justify at a time when unemployment rates are high and people are worried about losing their jobs. The highest and best use of our lawmaker’s time would be spent hacking through the difficult knot of problems surrounding downsizing the state government so that it is sustainable — i.e.; the government runs roughly in balance in terms of what it spends and what the financial capacity of the state is to support it. If you want to re-grow the government, first help to grow the pie that it feeds off of. So let’s not get too diverted from that task by the culture war of same-sex marriage, please.
We would feel better if lawmakers had decided to take this up at nearer the end of the session, after they had grappled with the economic and government reform issues. But that’s water under the bridge now. What makes more sense would be to put this to a public vote. Ordinarily we aren’t always fond of this approach — it has wreaked havoc in California, a referendum-happy state —but this is a case where it may make some sense. It would make for a more accepted result by the losing side.
For two people of the same gender who find themselves in a committed, loving relationship that has endured for at least a few years, we don’t see the harm in going forward from a civil union to a formal marriage. Nor is there any evidence that a same-sex couple can’t be terrific parents, and the harmonious household they can craft is probably a better place for children than that likely to be supplied by unhappily married “traditional” husbands and wives. We don’t buy into the Biblical interpretation that a marriage can only be between a man and a woman, and we don’t see where the institution of traditional marriage between a man and a woman is under any kind of threat from the relative handful of people who might want to opt for a same sex marriage. In the same breath, let’s also be aware that traditional marriages play an important role in gluing a society together. A good deal of our major social issues today, from educational underachievement all the way along the spectrum of anti-social, lawbreaking behavior is heavily influenced by family. It’s just something to think about before we move on.
We don’t think there’s any major downside risk to the economy of the state should Vermont become the first state to have its legislature craft a law which sanctifies same-sex marriage. For every potential tourist who skips Vermont because of that we’ll probably pick up other visitors who will be excited by it. Certainly the tourist economy didn’t suffer because of the divisive civil unions debate of 2000. It because of 9/11, but not because of civil unions.
We urge the legislature to get through this quickly. The senate Judiciary Committee got things off to a good start last week. But if it should become bogged down in a lot of rancor and debate when the bill goes to the House, the public referendum option deserves a serious hearing.

Wait 'til next year, Pat

2009-02-27T20:43:54Z

Senator Patrick Leahy would be doing everyone a favor if he took his poorly thought-out proposal for a Truth Commission to investigate wrongdoing in the Bush Administration and shoved it back into the dark recesses of his desk.
That questionable conduct and activity occurred during the previous administration when it came the politicization of the Justice Department and wiretapping of U.S. citizens, to say nothing of the manner in which the war in Iraq was sold to the American public, has been reasonably well-documented. What Leahy is hoping to accomplish beyond scoring some partisan political points is another question.
The track record of such commissions is decidedly mixed. The hearings held during the mid-1970s on the CIA’s alleged misconduct during the previous decades may have uncovered wrongdoing that deserved seeing the light of day, but also wreaked enormous institutional harm on the agency that had repercussions all the way to 9/11. And the other parallel, the truth and reconciliation commission held in South Africa as a means of helping that nation come to terms with its Apartheid past, is also one that led to results that, at least in terms of reconciliation, would have probably happened anyway. Meanwhile, south Africa remains a less than shining example of political courage and leadership. Look no further than neighboring Zimbabwe.
Voices on both the political left and right have decried Leahy’s idea — the right sees a partisan witchhunt and the left fears a sell-out. We’re in agreement with President Obama on this one. Rather than going backwards and re-hashing the bitter feuds of recent years, let’s move forward.
The nation and its leaders have a lot of work to do right now, getting our economy back on track and winding down the Iraq War in a responsible way. Then, it’s on, unfortunately, to a prolonged engagement in Afghanistan, one which shows all the earmarks of being a long-term Korea-style involvement. Plus, we’ve got all those other put-off-for-too-long problems, like fixing healthcare, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and moving towards a greater degree of energy independence through renewable sources, a transition that will be much more difficult than many seem to think.
The big problem with Leahy’s idea is one of context. If wrongdoing occurred, it should be punished, but that should come through the court system. Should former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales go to jail for agreeing to illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens without first securing the proper warrants? Should Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — or even President Bush himself — be prosecuted for the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? Perhaps, but then a great deal of testimony on the justification of these extreme measures should also be allowable, which will take us back to the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when no responsible leader or politician wanted to be on the wrong side of an incorrect guess about where the terrorists were going to strike next. It gets complicated very quickly. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, the chief architects of the misguided war policy on Iraq, probably should undergo some sort of de-briefing on what they thought they were doing, but historians and journalists have begun that already. Meanwhile, they thought they were doing what they needed to do to protect the country. It’s a tough call. It’s also safe to say that it will be a long time before any future administration goes down the same road as Bush, Cheney et. al — unless there’s a really good reason.
The possibilities for excessive politicization of a commission along the lines of what Leahy is proposing are enormous, and to most members of Congress, at least those who sense a winning hand, perhaps irresistible. If the idea goes forward, kiss away for good all that happy talk about bipartisan cooperation to solve the serious problems facing the nation, which we kind of like to think most people are ready for. It’s a big part of how Obama got elected, after all.
Maybe it’s all in the timing. If Leahy could have simply found it within himself to wait a little bit and let some dust settle, it might seem different. Right now, let’s move on. We think maybe Senator Leahy has been drinking too much Kool Aid from Brattleboro.

Save the rest areas

2009-02-16T21:06:04Z

We understand that in these difficult financial times, the state has to look under every rock, nook and cranny to find potential savings. One area of cutting back that seems counterproductive to us, however, is the proposal to close down all the state’s rest areas, at least for the time being.
Tourism, as we all know, if one of the state’s biggest, if not the biggest, industries. Unlike other places where the state spends money with no direct financial return, investment in tourism, which is already at a pathetically low level in relation to the economic activity it generates, creates jobs and wealth. Frequently, these are jobs that are critical to the financial well-being of typical, ordinary Vermonters.
We understand that in times like these, everyone has to take their lumps, but there’s a difference between cutting crudely and cutting intelligently. Closing rest areas, where family-run tourist businesses have a chance to display brochures and attract patrons, is an example of the former. There are surely other places where the state spends taxpayer dollars without any prospect of a monetary return on investment. Keep the rest areas open.

Live from New York, it's Saturday night

2009-02-09T14:17:03Z

Back when I lived in New York City, one of my favorite pleasures was getting the Sunday New York Times on Saturday night.
Back in that now-quaint pre-digital era, it seemed so neat, on the back end of a night of socializing or movie-going about Manhattan, to pick up a copy of tomorrow's paper that night before boarding the subway for a ride back to one of the "outer boroughs" as they were called - Brooklyn in my case. Whatever you didn't finish reading late Saturday night or early - as in very early- Sunday morning, would be waiting for you later that day. No need to get dressed to head out to the newsstand to get the day properly launched before you had the requisite amount of coffee.
Now I realize that poring over the Sunday Times isn't everybody's idea of a capstone of a thrilling Saturday night on the town, but it worked for me, most of time.
So awhile back I informed the Journal's readers that I was finally going to take the big plunge and experiment with modern day equivalent - online newspaper reading - to see if it cured me of a 40-year-old addiction to print journalism. Things took longer than I thought - the Internet connection on my home computer flaked out - and I got knocked off course for a few weeks, but now, about a month later, I've tested the waters sufficiently and have come to some conclusions about it all, just in time, it seems, to join in a growing chorus of writers and journalists who have made a not-so-small cottage industry out of analyzing what's to become of old-style newspapers you hold in your hand in the era of electronic web-based ones.
Not that concerns about the future of the printed paper are anything new. For the past couple of years at least, those in the industry have been aware of two disturbing trends - circulation was falling, and advertising revenue was sinking along with it.
It wasn't hard to figure out what was going on. Readers were migrating to the Web-based versions of newspapers, where the content (most of it, anyway) was being offered for free, instead of the 50-75 cents the traditional newspaper sold for. Blogs and other entirely new sources of news were emerging to challenge the newspaper's role as the gatekeeper of information. Advertisers, convinced that this was were the eyeballs were headed, and where the advertising costs were less, responded accordingly, and have cut back on advertising in the newspaper.
In this week's issue of Time Magazine, Walter Isaacson, a very distinguished writer, historian and former managing editor of Time addressed the issue of long term survivability for newspapers when they are in effect competing against themselves - expecting their readers to fork over $5 to $7 ($14 in the case of the Times, if you buy it daily) a week for a paper they can read for free on the Internet. Even Isaacson admitted he doesn't buy the New York Times anymore. Makes me feel like a bit of a dope for still doing so.
Here's the big newsflash for all you readers in this piece - sooner or later, you are going to be asked to pay for this content that we in the newspaper business have been happy to give you for free. We've taught you that, by golly, it should be free. It's not of course. It costs money to have reporters go out and cover stories, and to have photographers shoot pictures and even have editors like me edit them. We prefer not to eat grass anymore than you do. But we've treated the online versions of our newspapers like a financial throwaway, while falling over ourselves to figure out better ways to keep you from buying a newspaper.
Even blogs or other online news sources, sooner or later, need a person to go out there and ferret out the news, just like the good old days.
There's all kinds of creative things going on in the newspaper world to stave off the death of a document you can read while holding it in your hands, but all of these technological marvels are still a few years off. So what did I find I liked about the online papers?
I stuck mostly to my favorites - The New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post. I also read the Rutland Herald and Burlington Free Press. The Web sites of the Bennington Banner and the Manchester Journal I was already very familiar with. I already look at them everyday.
So here's what I loved - you got the news when it was happening. Stories were being uploaded to the Web continuously, and I'd often have a sense of deja vu when I'd read the headline of a story the next morning that I read the night before. And there is all this extra content - blogs, opinion stuff, opportunities for reader interaction, video and audio interviews. It was like Dorothy being swept out of black-and-white Kansas and waking up in technicolor Oz.
Hands down, the Times's Web site is the best. I didn't bother with the Wall Street Journal, although I bet theirs is pretty good too. That's because the Journal charges you money - $103 a year or $1.99 per week to subscribe - a total bargain compared to the printed version. If you worked in financial services or in some heavy duty business environment, it would be indispensable. For my purposes right now, I'll stick with reading the print version a couple of times a week. The Journal (the other Journal, that is, the one published on Wall Street) has some great editorial and opinion pieces that come at things from a conservative slant, rare in mainstream media today, so I like the diversity with the Times's liberal bent. And anyway, the Wall Street Journal, like every other newspaper it seems, is losing money, so they need the $4 or so I spend on them each week. Rupert Murdoch may be a strange guy, but even he's worth $4.
So I loved all this cool content the big boys were able to get on their sites. The Free Press and the Herald - well, they weren't bad, but it was pretty much an electronic regurgitation of the print paper, with the occasional spot of breaking news. All well and good, but not enough to make me want to throw their newspapers under the bus, because despite all that cool content, one thing was still missing.
You've already guessed it, if, like me, you're of "a certain age." I spend a significant chunk of my day staring at a computer screen, and reading a paper online just isn't the same relaxing experience as flipping through a newspaper on my couch or easy chair with a cup of coffee close at hand. Plus, with reading a paper, I tend to read more of the story. Online, I read headlines, and if a story interests me, I'll click on the link and read it. It makes getting through the paper a lot faster an experience, but less complete. It's like I'm searching for the things I already know about. When I flip through paper, I might read a story about some off-the-beaten track place or situation that I never would have read online. It takes longer but I get more out of it.
It doesn't feel like work, either. It's a break in the action that feeds the mind and the soul.
And here's a tip for all you advertisers out there - I really, really don't look at the ads online that much either. Print advertising - it works. That's why you are being asked to pay more for it.
So I'm not ready to give up the old-fashioned newspaper just yet. But there's no doubt where the future is coming from. I realize I'm way behind the curve here, even as I've tried to make upgrading the Manchester Journal's Web site a priority. Here, we've been trying to load more stories faster, particularly during that yawning gap of time between issues. A week is a long time in this business. Time is our currency. A story that is cutting edge on Friday is old news by the following Tuesday. So we've been trying, and will go on trying, to push stories onto our Web site as soon as possible, along with the photo journals, the poll questions and the blog. Video and audio are beckoning. I continually find myself thinking about all the possibilities the technology presents.
I did all my online exploring without the obvious tool that makes news reading off of the Web a lot easier, I would think, anyway - the venerable laptop computer. It sure looks like fun to be surfing the Web wirelessly from some coffeeshop, anyway. I'm still desktop bound. Maybe that's the sequel to this.
I'm sure the guy who sold me the Sunday Times on Saturday night 30 years ago in New York never contemplated a virtual, electronic newsstand would put him out of business. They were hard to psyche out anyway, as they wordlessly made change and shoved the bulky paper with all those sections I never read (Travel? Where was I going to go? Real Estate? I could barely keep up with my monthly rent ). That's the other nice thing about the electronic paper - no pile of newsprint to recycle. But when they do finally go under, it will be sad - one more piece of life as we knew it that seemed eternal will be no more. Hopefully a way will have been found to replicate the sense of relaxation on the easy chair. We're not there yet.

Flat tax redux

2009-02-04T22:03:51Z

Bruce Springsteen asked in "Radio Nowhere," the lead off song on Magic, his last album, if there was anybody still alive out there. I have a better question. Are there still any accountants still able to add (out there)?
You have to wonder how many times a politician who discovers, on the eve of nomination to high office - like being appointed Secretary of the Treasury or Health and Human Services Secretary - has to explain away some embarrassing tax problem with some variation of "my accountant messed up" before the obvious solution kicks in. That involves a vast simplification of the tax code.
Steve Forbes, the failed candidate for president back in 1996, clearly got it right. The answer is a flat tax.
A flat tax is so basic that even a former Senator (Tom Daschle) or a Federal Reserve Governor (Timothy Geithner) can probably get it.

You take all your income - salary, stocks, bonds - that part should be really easy because over the past few months there won't be much to count there - trust fund money, rental income - ANY KIND OF INCOME - then multiply that by a number. Ten percent? That sounds about right. Taxes are what we pay for civilization, someone once said. Civilization is worth at least 10 percent.
Presto - your tax liability magically appears, neat and simple.
Who knew that all along, those of us who sweated it out over our tax forms, worrying about all those deductions and itemizations we never really understood, but assuming we were somehow doomed to come out on the short end, were really the geniuses, at least when you compare yourselves to the accountants the big shots were able to hire. No matter how hard you try, apparently, there's always some annoying little Nannygate hand grenade threatening to go off, or some perk that you forgot to declare, like the use of a car, in Daschle's case.
You'd like to think it's just arrogance. If it's stupidity, we're in big trouble. These are, after all, the brain trusts we are pinning our hopes on to get us out of this unholy mess we're in.
I always liked the philosophy of a flat tax, because it treats all money the same. No more corporate loopholes and socialism for the wealthy. No more nonsensical deductions for the politically well-connected. Just a simple honest tithe to the government.
No more politicians squirming in the klieg lights trying to say it wasn't really their fault.
All we can hope is that the next time the IRS calls you on the phone and threatens to ruin your day with vague hints about an audit if you can't explain some discrepancy in your tax return, you'll have as much success with the line Geithner used to get off the hook during his confirmation hearings - that -Gasp! - he should have read the instructions more carefully.
The Wall Street Journal nailed it - "Millions of Americans have said the same thing during an audit, earning less forgiveness."
At least we won't have to worry about that anymore. If the guy who now runs the IRS can't figure out his taxes, why should we?
It's time for a flat tax - seriously.

]]>

When is a recession a depression?

2009-01-21T22:38:19Z

Some say economic hard times are viewed as a recession when your neighbor loses his or her job. It becomes a depression when you lose yours.
For about 40 employees of the Orvis Co., one of the pillars of the Northshire economy, recession became a depression over the past few weeks, as the venerable firm, more than 150 years old, laid off employees in two installments over the past few weeks. They were by no means the first to get pink slips around here and they unfortunately in all likelihood won't be the last.
The economy of the Northshire has been bleeding in a quiet way for the past three or four months. But without many large employers who, with their backs to the wall and their very survival at stake, have to let go of large numbers of employees in one painful round of layoffs, it's been more a case of one or two, or five or six, people punching our for the last time here and there. Collectively, it starts to become worrisome, but we've been spared the stunning thunderclap of 500 or more workers joining the ranks of the unemployed overnight, as has happened elsewhere. Farther north, there is plenty of reason to worry that the still large IBM plant in Essex Junction could indeed make such an announcement. That would be a bad day for Vermont. IBM pumps a lot of money into this state.
Unemployment is like a right cross to the head for workers. Not only does your earnings outlook darken, but for many people, what we do for work also plays a huge part in defining who we are as people. It's important to re-join the workforce as fast as possible, not only to keep up with the mortgage and put food on the table, but for self-esteem.
In a dynamic economy, layoffs are going to be a fact of life from time to time. Many would argue that the right to a job should be a guarantee. It can't be. Old skills get overtaken by new ones, industries rise and industries fall. Without that push and pull, societies stagnate.
The trick is to get the economy moving again and offer the needed training for those who need it to get new jobs in potentially whole new industries and businesses making new, cutting edge products. There's no reason why some of those 21st century industries can't be right here. It's not easy for government, be it state, local or federal, to wave a wand and magically create new jobs. All government can really do is create conditions to attract and lure private sector entrepreneus into taking a risk. they in turn also have to find financing, and the tightness in the nation's credit markets is at the heart of why it's hard to expand and create jobs now.
Unlocking the credit markets is the federal government's job, but here at the state and local level we can do things like make the permit process simpler and less time consuming, and even take a pro-active view of what types of industries might make a good fit with a given locality.

Cut the income tax in half

2009-01-05T16:49:45Z

It’s a well known fact that Vermont’s population growth is stagnant. Those of us who are already here aren’t reproducing ourselves in sufficient quantities and unlike the 1960s and 1970s, when Vermont was considered a cool place to come to and live, contemporary twenty and thirty-somethings aren’t following in the footsteps of their Baby Boomer antecedents and moving here. Why that’s so is an interesting question. Getting back to the land isn’t quite the draw it used to be.
It may be a sign of the times – as in the Age of Aquarius is definitely over – but a new inducement might be a dramatic cut in the income tax rate.
Right now Vermont ranks as one of the top states in the nation in terms of per capita tax burden — eighth, to be exact, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group based in Washington, D.C. More than 10 percent of Vermonter's income goes to pay state and local taxes.
The flip side of a steeply progressive tax structure, such as we have in Vermont, is that while it pleases many to make the rich pay a disproportionate share of their wealth into the public till, easing the burden on those at the lower end, it also means the state becomes more and more dependent on fewer and fewer people. These are the very folks with the means to leave the state and re-locate somewhere else where the tax code doesn’t discriminate quite so blatantly in terms of wealth – a place like New Hampshire, for example, although Florida apparently has its charms as well.
Before everyone trips over themselves to sputter that Reagan-style supply-side economics is so last century, think about it – if Vermont were to cut its income tax in half, would more people want to move here? More to the point, would fewer people want to leave?
Ah yes, there’s that little matter of a more than $60 million deficit in the state budget this year, coupled with the prospect of a much bigger deficit in the next fiscal year. Presumably, some of that will be taken care of by Uncle Sam, but not all of it, and it would be a bad idea to wait around for the federal largesse which won’t come without some kind of string, or strings, attached.
So if we were to cut the income tax rate in half, do you think more entrepreneurial people who are high achievers and already fairly wealthy would want to move here and spend a larger chunk of their disposable income here? We wouldn’t have to attract a whole lot of people to make that happen, offsetting the initial drain on the state’s treasury and neutralizing the financial impact. Meanwhile, they’d still be buying local and pumping more money into the state sales tax ledger.
And hey, those of us who are already here, and have been living life in Vermont, making $40,000 or so — or less — a year — would also stand to benefit a little, wouldn't we?
It’s an interesting idea. Too bad it probably stands no chance of passage in this session. Or does it?

Sweet Caroline

2008-12-22T15:58:37Z

Our apologies to Neil Diamond, but the parallel between one of his many classic tunes and the situation with Caroline Kennedy was a natural match up.

With the financial crunch so severe in Montpelier these days - the Governor and the Legislature are struggling to come up with about $37 million in immediate cuts to the current budget to offset lower than expected revenues – it’s tempting to take a break from state politics here in Vermont to reflect on one of those wonderfully complex situations that only our neighboring state of New York seems capable of producing. It’s tempting, and so we will.

Illinois, of course, is running a close second in that regard right now, with its Governor, Rod Blogojevich, in much legal hot water over his apparent inclination to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder. Happily, for fans of a good political fight tainted with a whiff of corruption in the good, old-fashioned, bare knuckles style of politics we occasionally worry has gone completely out of style in our new age, feel good era, the good Governor is digging in and vowing to fight the allegations “to his last breath.” Go, Rod. That will make the ultimate disposition of that Senate seat even more interesting. Clearly, if Rod were to throw down the gauntlet and nominate somebody that would give the term “poisoned chalice” a whole new meaning. But Rod could turn the tables on everyone and nominate someone such as Tammy Duckworth, a crippled Iraq veteran and state politician, who would command a lot of support. Or we could have a special election to insure clean hands at work. We’ll see just how craft the not-so-good Governor turns out to be. But we digress.

New York, New York. Only someone who has spent a certain amount of time living there can truly appreciate the delicious twists and turns the saga of who will be named to fill Hillary Clinton’s unexpired Senate term, but for the rest of you, we’ll try.

Hillary, wife of former President Bill Clinton has been nominated by Obama to be our next Secretary of State. That appointment, pending confirmation by the full Senate (a foregone conclusion) will have its fascinating dynamics as well – it reminds one and all of the old expression “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” But who knows – she may be great at it. Her management performance shown by her attempts to shepherd a much-needed health insurance bill through Congress in 1993-4 and more recently, the floundering of her unsuccessful presidential campaign lead one to wonder how she’ll master the sprawling bureaucracy over at Foggy Bottom, but that’s a story for another day.

Meanwhile, back home in the Empire State, Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the late President, has thrown her hat in the ring for Hillary’s former seat. She has all the name recognition anyone could want and presumably a network of financial backers ready and willing, despite all the recent turmoil on Wall Street and elsewhere in the “real” economy, to finance not one but probably two necessary races. She’ll need to run again in 2010 and then again in 2012, assuming she wins the first one. The only Republican with a ghost of a chance of knocking her off might be Rudy Guiliani, who ran a pretty pathetic campaign himself for the Republican nomination for president, but in certain circles is still widely respected for his 9-11 work.

Caroline has kept a low public profile for most of her adult life, opting, and understandably so, given her father’s tragic death and her mother’s lightning rod-like attractiveness for the new media, both of the gossip and so-called “serious” news gathering crowd. What qualifies her, all of a sudden, to be a U.S. Senator, is a good question. She seems like a reasonably sharp lady who has probably followed politics up close and personal for all these years, and she might not be a bad choice. There’s simply nothing in the public record that is there to give us a clue one way or the other. She had the incredibly good judgment to come out early for Barack Obama, when her endorsement carried some real weight and value. So maybe there is some of the Kennedy political DNA kicking around, and she’d have Uncle Teddy, assuming his brain tumor doesn’t force his retirement, around to help show her the ropes.

But, Caroline isn’t the only one with an interest in the Senate seat. Andrew Cuomo, former governor Mario Cuomo’s son and presently the state’s Attorney General, has also been mentioned as a future Senate possibility. Andrew, who is said to be happy for the moment in Albany, where he’d have a good chance of unseating the present New York governor, David Patterson, who himself was appointed to fill out former governor Elliot Spitzer’s term when Elliot, as we all remember, made an unfortunate choice of tryst mates while on state business in Washington, D.C. last year. Andrew is said to be keen to step into his father’s former office at the statehouse, but the allure of a Senate seat could be too powerful to resist. That would suit Gov. Patterson handily, avoiding a potentially divisive and expensive primary fight and ensuring him an easier time at the polls in 2010. And to make everything even more delicious, Cuomo used to be married to one of Caroline’s cousins, another member of the vast Kennedy tribe, but isn’t anymore. You can’t make this kind of stuff up – no one would believe it if it were a movie or a TV show.

And those are only two of five Senate seats that will require special appointments or elections to fill, as President-elect Obama has culled from his former colleagues to fill Cabinet posts in his incoming administration. Stay tuned for more fun and games.

From military bases to school closings

2008-12-05T14:06:14Z

One of the best ideas we’ve heard so far for trying to right-size our educational infrastructure – the number of school buildings in particular along with consolidating the number of supervisory unions – is one pioneered a few decades back when the federal Department of Defense was in the early stages of cutting back on the excessive number of military bases it had accrued coming out of World War II and the Cold War that followed.

]]> Newer technology and a diminishing threat from the Soviet Union made having so many airbases or military facilities of some sort or another unnecessary and costly after a time. But justified or not on national security grounds, such bases were politically and economically significant to the communities they were located in. They meant jobs and a sense of vitality for those communities, many of who feared they would turn into ghost towns if the air force or the army moved out.

Many of those facilities were successfully transformed into industrial parks or put to other uses, even if a few years of painful adjustment came first. That’s easy to say, but not easy for the people who lost jobs in the short term. But in the long run, it was the right thing to do.

One of the techniques used to decide on which bases would be shut down was through a bi-partisan, blue ribbon commission that studied the options and came up with a recommendation that Congress had to endorse, straight up-or-down. No wiggle room for backroom politicking by influential legislators to save the base in their home state or district. All or nothing.

As has been repeatedly said in recent years, Vermont has an unsustainable trajectory in education spending going on. We are spending more money to educate fewer students and employing more teachers to do that. At more than $1.4 billion in expense, that soaks up about half of all tax revenue in the state. That was a bad deal two years ago, and it’s a worse one now. We need to find another way to deliver high quality educational services at an affordable price.

Expecting communities to voluntarily give up a local school is a pipedream. Because of Act 68, this is a state problem. The state should take the lead in determining which schools make sense to run and keep open, and offer some kind of carrot to those communities whose schools will be shut because they aren’t needed anymore or because other alternatives are available. A respected commission of credible citizens, educators and experts should be able to explore, county-by-county, which schools no longer make sense to run. They should be tasked with preparing a list of schools the state no longer needs, and the legislature should vote that in or not as a total package.

Such a strategy takes the poisonous local politics out of it, whereby a majority of the legislators can take a “big picture” view of what is right for the state as a whole. And if in its wisdom the legislators vote such a package down, voters will know who to punish at election time for taking money out of their pockets.

Such a commission could also take a look at Vermont’s excessive number of supervisory unions with an eye towards trimming them down from a ridiculous 63 to something more like 14 or 15. Maybe Chittenden County has a big enough population to rate two SU’s, but the rest of us should be able to survive nicely on one per county, and reap a few million dollars in savings on salaries, supplies and heating fuel, for starters. That may not seem like a lot of money, but right now the state is looking at a $66 million budget shortfall. A million here and a million there adds up to something, eventually.

The wind cries Mary

2008-11-20T20:39:12Z

We can understand the reluctance of the Select Board to get drawn into a thornbush about harnessing commercial wind energy on Mount Equinox. Endless Energy, the Maine-based wind company that wanted to and evidently still does have designs on installing five or more large wind turbines atop little Equinox, seemed to lead only towards Endless Argument.
Given the tortured history of the failed effort by that company to get the town to go along with their proposal more than two-and-a-half years ago, it’s not surprising that the select board sought a safe, neutral course between opposing and supporting a much different and vastly more benign request to install an 80-foot tower for two small Vermont-based alternative energy start-up companies to test some of their equipment.
We would have preferred to see the board adopt the position articulated by the one dissenting Select Board member instead. Wayne Bell argued that the latest proposal was a completely seperate issue from the proposal townspeople rejected at the 2006 Town Meeting, when a war chest of $150,000 to use if push came to shove at the state’s Public Service Board, which ultimately issues or denies such permits. That directive from the town applied to the large five-turbine proposal, not a minor project such as a solitary 80-foot tower, on a site that has already seen several towers built and where a taller one is already present. This new concept is different, and it merited the select board’s support, if we are serious about actually doing something to move the region and the state towards greater reliance on renewable, alternative energy and away from fossil fuel-based energy — you know, the stuff that comes from often unfriendly nations overseas and allegedly contributes to global warming. Mr. Bell, you nailed it. At least, the position the Board ended up with has the merit of not doing any harm, we hope.
As it turned out, Endless Energy never made a formal application to build the five wind turbines, and the issue vanished — until now.
What really, of course, has nerves rattled among those opposed to ever seeing any kind of wind-related activity on the top of Equinox is the notion that the smallish test tower is but a precursor of the much larger project voters thought they turned thumbs down on in 2006. It’s worth remembering though, that the decision to set aside the $150,000 and direct the Select board to oppose the wind project came after an extended debate and many votes and amendments to the original article. That said, the town is on record as not in favor of such a project, and the select board is right to bear that in mind, but only if the discussion were about a comparable project — which it’s not, in this case.
There are plenty of reasons to oppose a five turbine or larger wind project on Equinox. By no means are we sold on the idea that Equinox is a good location. A much better one would have been the abandoned Air Force radar station in Sheffield, Vt., but that didn’t pass muster with the Public Service Board either. Too many hikers would have had their walk in the woods blighted by having to see four large wind turbines, one can only assume.
There are downsides to wind power on Equinox. There’s the aesthetic factor, first and foremost. Mother Nature did some nice work up there when the retreating glaciers from the Ice Age carved out the valley we know today a few millenia ago. There’s the question of direct benefit to the town and the area in the form of lowered electric bills — how much would that be, really? There’s the question of who pays for dismantling the towers if ultimately they prove not to be commercially viable. There’s the impact on migrating birds, bats, and the (potential) noise issue.
But on the other hand, Vermonters talk a green streak about environmental values but when push comes to shove really haven’t shown a willingness, on a commercial scale big enough to actually make an impact, to adapt to changing times or make sacrifices. Plenty of people have made smallbore lifestyle changes to live more lightly on the world and that is all to the good, but that’s a far cry from what is needed if some of the ambituous carbon reduction goals set forth in the Kyoto Treaty and other fine-sounding international agreements are actually to be achieved. Some complain endlessly about Vermont Yankee as a health hazard, but are blind to what would happen if the nuclear plant was mothballed and suddenly we had to find one-third of our electric power from somewhere else. We find reasons to oppose commercial wind projects at every turn. It’s not like wind is the end-all and be-all of the alternative energy scene, but as has often been said, it’s a piece of the puzzle.
In the wake of the volitility of the energy markets over the past two-plus years since the 2006 Town Meeting, it’s not a stretch to say that should a new proposal for wind towers on Equinox come forward, it would behoove the town to greet it with an open mind and explore the pluses and minuses. The forums the town sponsored prior to the town meeting vote that year were terrific exercises in civic engagement. Whether we’d need to go through that all over again is debatable, but hopefully, there are enough sincere environmentalists among us to treat a fresh proposal with fresh eyes, and not simply point to a nearly three year-old vote and say that vote settled the question now and forevermore.

Towards a succesful Republican Party

2008-11-07T21:43:51Z

The votes are in and the people have spoken. While the early returns indicate that the Republican Party across the nation took one on the chin, further analysis may reveal the supposed carnage was not quite as awful as first reports indicated.
It’s certainly not as bad as the defeat suffered in 1964, when the youth vote of the time, buttressed by grief over the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, seemed to presage a generation of Democratic Party domination. Instead, the opposite happened; since then Republicans have captured the White House in all but four of the 11 presidential elections, including this year’s. And if the Democrats can recover from the total drubbing they suffered in 1984, when Ronald Reagan led the party to victory in 49 out of 50 states, then anything is possible.
However, things have certainly changed, and this week’s election may well mark a turning point where some of the cultural issues Republicans have successfully exploited — abortion, patriotism, family values, gay rights and, to a degree, in certain quarters at least, let’s be honest, racism — may have finally run their course. And thank God if they finally have. Those sorts of issues may have played well in parts of the sunbelt states but they gain the GOP little traction here. It’s important that the party not lose whatever toehold it has left in the Northeast and Midwest, because if the party is to have any future it needs to find a way to balance its pre-eminent social conservative voice with a more, and traditional Republican, moderate one.
It used to be that the party represented small town values of thriftiness, hard work, self-reliance, free enterprise, Main street businesses, along with big corporate interests. It needs to find a way back to that, and push the evangelical wing back into the corner they came out of. Not that Evangelicals and Christian fundamentalists shouldn’t have a voice in a “big tent” GOP, but it’s not a winning electoral formula to make that your base. And many would quibble with the exclusivity aura that emanates from a political party that draws its inspiration largely from an overly literal interpretation of Biblical tracts that may be great literature and offer important moral lessons, but don’t fit easily into 21st century realities.
Rather, there is ample space waiting to be occupied by some kind of political party that articulates the socially liberal, economically conservative mix that both Democrats and Republicans seem to continually fumble. Why is this so hard? The broad middle of American politics is moderate and pragmatic. It’s a philosophy that doesn’t look for excess government intrusion in private lives or the marketplace, but does see a role for government in providing for national defense, infrastructure, education and health insurance. There are things and services the private sector is inherently not well situated to provide. The rest should be left to ambitious, entrepreneurial individuals.
When it comes to social policy, the government ought to stay out of people’s personal business and intervene only when they are threats to themselves or others.
Why it’s so hard for both political parties to get this is surprising, but it would seem to offer Republicans a way out of the political wilderness. This year, a perfect storm of an extraordinarily gifted politician, Barack Obama, a severe economic downturn, lingering dissatisfaction with a poorly-thought through war of our own making, a deeply unpopular incumbent president undermined by mistakes both foreign and domestic, made for an uphill struggle for John McCain, the Republican nominee. That struggle was not made any easier by his poor choice of a running mate, Sarah Palin, whom we will probably — unfortunately — hear from again, coupled with an incredibly hamfisted campaign left the voice many expected to hear muted, until his magnificent concession speech, which reminded many people of why they liked the guy in the first place. Too late. And maybe, at 72, John McCain was just too old.
But times will change again. If there’s one thing a few decades of following politics will teach you, it’s that whatever you expect will happen, won’t happen. The world will always surprise you. The sands will shift, and even if Obama successfully negotiates the extraordinary array of difficulties that await his presidency — and let’s hope as Americans that he does — the mixture could look very different in four or eight years.
Meanwhile, Republicans have an opening if they want to recast themselves as defenders of the political center, but it’s more likely internecine warfare will break out and the neoconservative, social conservative alliance that has led the party to disaster in 2008 will continue to bicker and fumble its way deeper into an out-of-step, out -of-date vision of where American society should head and what our role should be in the global community. Whatever vigor that vision had when Ronald Reagan ushered in the modern Republican party in 1980 has long dissipated. As the poet and philosopher George Santayana once said, those who cannot recall the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them. Little of the above should be seen as applying to the Vermont Republicans, who by and large have a much clearer sense of where their party should head. But the mistakes of the national Republican Party need to be remembered, if they want to regain electoral and political relevance on a national scale. Otherwise the comparisons with 2008 being the new 1932, and Obama the new Roosevelt, could really take hold.