In case you missed it, we kicked off a re-election fundraiser this past week, now that the Legislature has finally risen. And because we tend toward the long form, that kick-off was accompanied by a long post, detailing why the last two years seem worth all the work involved in breaking into the Senate in the first place. But that long post also boiled down to this, really: staying in the Senate will be just as hard, maybe harder, and the time has come to ask you directly for help.
True, the Vermont Senate has only 30 members, but folks spend 9/10 of their time locked away in committee rooms. And so you come mostly to know your fellow committee members, and some of those few people become fast friends. Sara Kittell and I shared both the Education and Agriculture committees this past biennium, to my great delight. She has one of the truest hearts in the Senate, and the sharpest instincts for justice, bar none. And now she’s decided not to run again in November. Which is just plain wrong.
Sara, foreground, cover of Vermont Woman magazine.
Actually, this didn’t come as a shock: Sara had told me she planned to step down — seventeen years is a long time, and she has other fish to fry. But it will be a huge loss. Quick story: a group of us pushed long and hard to unionize childcare workers this past year, and we were stymied at every turn. Deadlocked 15-15, finally, with Phil Scott breaking the tie against us.
But later that night, out of nowhere, there was one moment where we suddenly prevailed. And it happened because Sara Kittell refused to sit down, and stood again and again to offer the amendment, until she convinced one lone Senator — Claire Ayer — to finally switch positions. It was a profile in courage (two profiles if we include Claire’s move, and we do) and it will remain my enduring memory of Senator Sara Kittell, leading that charge, winning that battle, whatever the outcome of this year’s war.
Vermont Woman asked the question: Can women make a difference? Sara provided the answer: absolutely.
Okay, one other memory: Sara, as Chair of Agriculture, brought in rag muffins every so often, which we hogged down with her brother’s maple syrup. Superior stuff. We’ll miss you, Sara. And the pregnant sows thank you too.
After confounding pundits with his several proposals to decriminalize marijuana and expand Vermont’s bottle bill, GOP Caledonia Senator Joe Benning marked the end of the legislative session by roaring off on his Harley for parts unknown. Just got this dispatch from South Carolina. Looks as though we’ll hear more from Joe as he navigates the nation, given the subject line: Senate Dispatch #1. — PB
Dear VDB,
Not sure about you, but personally I couldn’t wait to get out of Montpelier. It wasn’t that I didn’t like what we were doing there. The long, drawn-out delay at the end was having a direct impact on my planned vacation. I’ll also have to admit that I was tired of the four of us (VDB, Pollina, Galbraith and yours truly) being given just a bit more of the blame than we were entitled to for the acrimonious debate and schedule screw-ups.
I will have to say, however, that when we were sent into the Governor’s office to escort him to the Senate for his final speech, I took it as quite the honor when he said, “Oh no, they sent the trouble makers to get me!”
Ayup, made my year.
So I boarded the Harley and took off for parts south. Stopped in at Cedar Creek battlefield in Virginia on Senate business. I snuck some language into the capitol bill for a feasibility study to erect a monument to Vermont’s First Brigade, who fought there during the Civil War. Their struggle is depicted in the huge painting by Julian Scott that dominates the Cedar Creek Room in the Statehouse. They never got a monument.
Benning, far-left, in leathers at last year’s Summit.
I thought it would be a good thing to give them one to mark the Civil War’s sesquicentennial. After conferencing with the National Park Service representatives and getting a personal tour of the battlefield, I’m off in a southerly direction again.
Tonight I’m in Greenville, South Carolina, after touring the Cowpens Revolutionary War battlefield (Did I mention I’m a history nut?). Hope you got the picture of that nice red Harley sporting Senate 27 (the first legislative motorcycle license plate issued in Vermont) at the Welcome to South Carolina sign.
Tomorrow I’m aiming for Tallahassee, Florida, which is about 430 miles due south. Keep Vermont intact until I return.
It seems like a nanosecond since I came to you, hat in hand, to ask for your support in breaking into the Vermont State Senate. It was May of 2009, seventeen months before the general election, an admittedly crazy time to enter into a race that ordinarily took just five months to run its course. But the logic was simple: the campaign needed time to talk to Chittenden County voters at the pace the issues demanded. And competing against a long slate of folks whose names were already household words wouldn’t be easy, especially in seventeen towns simultaneously.
But hundreds of you stepped forward to help, some of you time and time again. You threw parties and buttonholed your undecided friends, and you donated at Act Blue.
And astoundingly enough, it worked. That barn got built. And sitting in the Senate has been, honestly, like a dream.
I’ve spent the last eighteen months working very hard and very passionately on all the issues we’ve talked about on this site over the years. Universal broadband and single-payer health care have both advanced by leaps and bounds; neither job is finished, but the early dollars and the enduring frameworks are falling into place.
Farm to Plate is now well into its own implementation phase, with a Local Foods Coordinator connecting farmers to markets full-time, an outcome we labored over on the Agriculture Committee for months. And because you can’t preserve the landscape without working it, we also passed the Working Landscape Bill this past session, directing $1.175 million to infrastructure and businesses that keep fields and forests in healthy, productive use.
Along with Washington County Senator and lead sponsor Anthony Pollina, I co-sponsored a bill to increase coverage for young people with autism. Prior to this year, for no morally defensible reason, coverage ended at age six.
And we were told, initially, that nothing could change that state of affairs. But with strong support in the House (from people like Chris Pearson, Jason Lorber and Kesha Ram) and the autism advocate community, S. 223 has dramatically changed that.
And from 2012 forward, families with an autistic child will have coverage until age 21. Not a perfect world, but vastly improved.
Similarly, it used to be the case that your child could be denied state-subsidized Pre-Kindergarten, if your community offered it and 10 other people were ahead of you in line. But as of last year, we lifted the caps on Pre-K and early education, so that now any Vermont kid whose community provides pre-K can get Pre-K. Period.
That was the first bill I reported on the Senate Floor for the Education Committee, and I didn’t stop pushing until Governor Shumlin signed it at a daycare in St. Albans.
Through the Senate Education Committee, I was able to work very directly on the problem of student debt, one of the least appreciated financial threats of our time. But while we passed a bill out of committee that would have provided a year of Early College to needy Vermont students — cutting their potential debt by 25% at a stroke — that bill died later in the process. Still, we laid the groundwork for dual enrollment, which we’ll hope to fund next session.
As some of you no doubt remember, I did my best to speak out early and often against excessive executive compensation, at UVM in particular.
And on Vermont Yankee, when it looked like the Legislature and the courts were deadlocked for the forseeable future, I joined with citizen activists to send Entergy one of the most powerful messages to date.
There’s more, more that got done, and more that has to be pushed again and again until it does get done. But this is the wonder and the craziness of the two-year term: almost every elected official in Vermont needs to start running for re-election only a year and a half or so after making it into office. So here I am, again, asking for your help.
I went back and looked at the promises I made you a little under two years ago, and one stands out above the others: I promised you an outspoken advocate in the Statehouse, a Senator who’d be your eyes and ears, who’d take actual stands, and one who wouldn’t back down when it mattered.
And honest to God, I think I’ve delivered on that.
All a way of saying that the Act Blue site is up and running again — accepting donations in a very simple, very secure way — and if you can help us raise the barn again, we’ll be eternally grateful. Click here if you’re so moved.
Not to worry: there will be a more formal kick-off to this campaign, a party on a sunny day not too far in the future. And I’ll be talking with many of you in living rooms and coffee shops in the days to come.
But this rainy, raw day today is the day to start the tough task of raising the money to get the message out, and it’s much appreciated that you made it to the end of this long post without clicking away into the ether. Will update you on our progress as details warrant.
It’s been a strange year, as regards death and dying. Last September, I called ex-Congressman Richard Mallary in the course of researching a book on Vermont politics. We had a warm conversation, scheduled an interview for three days hence — and Mallary died the next day. And just six days ago, out of the blue, I had a very sweet note from VPR commentator Edith Hunter, who’d heard that I was taking some knocks in the Vermont Senate. Hunter died Saturday, but the brief, final exchange is reprinted below. Rest easy, Edith, and thank you. — PB
Dear Philip,
I have been following your career in the Senate, and want you to know you have one friend out there cheering you on.
When I went on to the Weathersfield School Board in 1973 or ‘74, I went on determined to turn those schools into great preparatory schools for Exeter. All three of my sons went there and all three got wonderfully different but wonderful educations — one to be an architect, one to be a legislator, lawyer and saint, and one to be an artist.
I had taken son #3 out of the local school for the 7th and 8th grade to prepare him for Exeter. He got in, had a real struggle for two years after two years with me “teaching him politics, ecological sensitivity, and loads of free time to do his art.” He is now a very successful artist.
We also did the first 2 years of Exeter algebra since that was his worst subject. I learned a lot of algebra, Charlie learned some, and by the 3rd year at Exeter he had hit his stride and graduated with honors.
I was far less successful with the Weathersfield schools. I learned a lot of humility. So keep up the good work, if you can.
Best wishes from Edith Hunter
And my brief reply, which I now wish in hindsight I’d taken the time and the effort to make a little longer:
Edith,
Thanks so much for the reassuring words — it’s nice to know I have a friend out there in Weathersfield. I’ll keep my chin up. My way of thinking about it is this: if I can pass three bills in my entire career that are as successful as your three sons, I’ll die a happy man.
You may remember that VDB had a brush with the law some weeks back, in which we were arrested with 135 other people for civil disobedience down at Entergy’s corporate headquarters on March 22. Now, fortunately this was prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling that any American may be strip searched if brought into custody, and the hours we spent in the Brattleboro jail weren’t so terribly bad.
Still, having the trespassing charge hanging out there wasn’t comforting — especially in that we were all scheduled to be arraigned over the summer of 2013, more than a year from now.
But yesterday’s news changed all of that. Sell VDB’s shoes, we’re going to Heaven: the Windham County State’s Attorney has decided to drop all charges.
Why the decision to avoid 136 separate caseloads? Money, predictably enough. Said Tracy Shriver: “By engaging in civil disobedience, these protesters violated Vermont’s criminal laws in an effort to obtain access to, and then use, our criminal courts as a forum for discussions about nuclear power and the continued operation of Vermont Yankee. However, our limited resources, and those of the court, are stretched thin.”
In other words, we are all serious criminals, but the County is more seriously strapped for cash.
What will we do with our freedom and suddenly spotless criminal record? Maybe run on the beach dressed all in white linen, like at the end of The Shawshank Redemption, sand between our toes, safe from the spitter’s cell forever.
But the fight to shutter the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant will go on. As always. Guaranteed.
[Thanks and a hat-tip to longtime reader and fellow protestor Ed Anthes for the good news.]
Michael Abadi’s VTBlogosphereTV is slowly but surely becoming the Vermont blogosphere’s version of Phantom of the Opera: with the exception of Eva Sollberger’s Stuck in Vermont, it may well be the longest running webshow in the state. In this episode, Abadi and VDB go mano a mano, on everything from out of control Senate freshmen to the untimely death of Julie Waters. Thanks again, Michael.
Nothing we dislike more, here at VDB, than high student loans. And of course the rates on Stafford loans are scheduled to skyrocket come summertime, if Congress doesn’t act to keep them low. And let’s face it: 3.5% is not really low. Something like 1% would be low, still above the rate at which the Government lends to banks. But keeping rates down is key. Cue Jimmy Fallon and Obama slowjamming the news.
Will this cause heads to explode in the Right-wing talk-radio-sphere? Yes. Some heads will explode several times, over the course of a week.
But VDB can’t remember a more effective bid to drive the news cycle. Folks in the White House are high fiving today, folks, so look for Mitt Romney to screw up precisely the same sort of segment in [squints at watch] 72 hours or so.
VDB takes more than a passing interest in the construction of news, the way some stories develop legs and crawl into the public mind, there to nest until a general sense of overkill and disgust sets in and allows the country to turn its attention away almost as one. And of course in the age of internet and mobile news delivery, these effects are all quantifiable via clicks, what draws the eye on a page crowded with links, what serves as an “eyeball kick,” to use a term of art from cyberpunk. Case in point: the current Secret Service scandal.
Although it’s clear that the activity at issue included members of several branches of the Armed Forces, from special forces to Marines, VDB has no doubt that it will remain “the Secret Service scandal” in the public awareness.
And for straightforward linguistic and political reasons.
Politically, the Service is regarded as the President’s private force; their lapses are his. And vice versa: remember that the Lewinsky affair drew several SS members into Ken Starr’s very wide net, and Starr managed to get a Supreme Court ruling declaring a public interest in forcing agents to testify against the President –the implication being that the bond between the agents and the President was so strong that only another Supreme force could overcome it.
Linguistically, and in terms of internet clickability, “Secret Service sex scandal” is a four-way winner. “Secret” and “sex” don’t even seem to need the word “scandal” to clarify their connotations, and in light of those three, the word “service” takes on another sense entirely.
But yet, there was something missing, another sort of mouse bait necessary to join this new scandal with some durable longstanding narrative. And now we have it: the surname “Palin.”
Various outlets are now reporting that one of the Secret Service agents in question once guarded Sarah Palin, and yes, posted a photo of the two of them surreptitiously on his Facebook page (add more eyeball kicks for New Media taking a sudden part in the scandal).
David Chaney was a member of Palin’s detail during the 2008 campaign, and apparently had a badly concealed case of the hots for her — he not only posted the photos, but joked that he was her “stalker,” a reference to his position in the background of the photos, we hope.
That revelation, of course, takes us to click-mageddon: “secret” plus “sex” plus “scandal” plus “service” plus “Palin.” Cue several weeks of Fox-fomented outrage at the President, whose culture of arrogance and leering hip-hop disregard for women led a cadre of apple-cheeked Secret Service agents down the path to ruin, and who in fact owes Palin an abject public apology for treating her — and America itself — like some cut-rate Columbian prostitute.
As you know, two weeks ago VDB put out a classic edition of a long-ago first novel about the Grateful Dead experience, called The Millennium Shows. And in the spirit of concert miracles, we offered a free copy to the best two concert stories sent in by email — presuming, of course, that the hard-core concert goers involved could still tell a coherent story. Or even, you know, semi-coherent.
Admittedly, the thought was that these would be Grateful Dead stories — but of course, if you’ll parse the language above, we never exactly said that the concerts had to have anything to do with the Dead. And they didn’t.
First runner-up? Nuclear wizard Arnie Gundersen. Why did Arnie come close but no cigar? Well, the story includes both too much information and way too few details:
At RPI, we had exams every Friday AM — 700 engineers taking the same test. A big weekend was coming that Friday night . . . but Thursday night my girlfriend called and said she was on the pill . . . I flunked the exam, but had a great concert weekend!
Still, a fine effort on Arnie’s part, and if he didn’t win a copy of the new book, he’s still the guy who’s called every mini-debacle at Vermont Yankee years before they actually happened.
Our two winners, neither of whom mentioned the Dead but both of whom wrote killer stories? The inimitable Doris Rose and longtime-VDB-consiglieri Don. First Doris’s tale:
In 1957 my parents drove me and two of my friends to Passaic, NJ to see Della Reese in concert. I wore a proper dress and the boys wore suits. During the concert my friend Frankie and I got up to dance in the aisle. A security guy told us if we didn’t sit down we would have to leave the theater. I sat down like a good Presbyterian Republican.
Fast forward to 2009, Hyde Park, London, the final night of the Proms concerts, an Agnostic Independent jiggling to a Rolling Stones cover band, slobbering over the real Barry Manilow with a full orchestra behind him, and belting out a “Yes, I’ll have another glass of Champagne” version of “Rule Britannia.”
And the beat goes on.
And then, of course, there’s Don, who apparently stalked Bob Dylan, with varying amounts of success:
I’ve idolized Bob Dylan since the 1960s. When my son was in college, a work-study assignment was to prepare Bob’s dressing room for an on-campus concert. My boy of course let me know and I drove six hours to the campus. We spent the entire day preparing the room from Bob’s roadies’ many instructions (the first time I had ever heard of Balsamic vinegar).
Then: Heartbreak. Security cleared us out as the tour-bus pulled up. Hinckley-like, I figured out Bob’s route from the bus to the dressing room and snuck to a spot at the bottom of a staircase. Soon, Bob descended, looking like a tiny Tusken Raider from Star Wars (dark and hooded with glowing eyes).
I screwed up all of my courage and called out, “Have a good show tonight, Bob” (I had decided that “Do a good show tonight, Bob” would come off as too demanding).
In the best corner-boy tradition, Bob nodded his chin up toward me as if to say, “Got it.”
My life was complete.
Killer stories, one and all. You have to love it when your readers include writers like this. Don and Doris, your books are in the mail, for you to do with what you will. (We hear they make excellent re-gifting choices.)
