Friday, August 30, 2019
On a visit Tuesday to Stony Pond Farm, a 60-head organic dairy in Fairfield, Leahy said the growth of the organic food market into a $50 billion industry had attracted massive producers that don’t necessarily share the values epitomized by Vermont’s organic family farmers.
“Factory-scale farms want a piece of the action. They want to cut corners. They want to erode the true intent of organic farming,” Leahy said. “They are flooding the market with cheap alternatives.”
The ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee vowed to head back to Washington to close loopholes in the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act that he helped author.
Tags: organic , cows , senator , Patrick Leahy , dairy farms , Web Only , Image
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Vice President Mike Pence is returning to Vermont for Labor Day weekend.
The nation’s No. 2 executive is expected to land at Burlington International Airport around 2 p.m. Friday, BTV aviation director Gene Richards said. The aircraft, which Richards said will probably not be the large jet traditionally thought of as Air Force Two, is expected to taxi to one of the Vermont Air National Guard ramps.
The airfield will be closed for 15 minutes before and after arrival, the aviation director wrote in a note to staff. The Federal Aviation Administration has instituted temporary flight restrictions at BTV from 1:30 p.m. to 2:45 p.m. on Friday.
“It’s midday; it’s not really a big deal,” Richards said, noting that it could potentially affect a few commercial flights. “It’s the right time of the day. If he’d come real early in the morning, I’d have a real problem with him.”
Tags: Mike Pence , Vermont , Labor Day Weekend , Gene Richards , BTV , Burlington International Airport , Lake Hortonia , Rutland-Southern Vermont Regional Airport , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
As he wages a race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is facing the familiar question of when to focus on the job he's seeking — and when to focus on the job he already has.
Though Sanders missed more votes in July than the six other U.S. senators seeking the presidency, his overall attendance rate this year is better than that of two rivals. According to a Seven Days analysis of the 262 roll-call votes the Senate has held since January 8, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) has missed the most: 118, or 45 percent. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), meanwhile, has missed 116, or 44.3 percent.
Sanders and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) are tied for third in truancy, with 105 missed votes, or 40 percent. The remaining three senator-candidates have missed far fewer votes:
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.): 74, or 28.2 percent
- Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.): 71, or 27.1 percent
- Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.): 60, or 22.9 percent.
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , presidential campaign , missed votes , Cory Booker , Kamala Harris , Kirsten Gillibrand , Elizabeth Warren , Michael Bennett , Amy Klobuchar , Web Only , Image , Video
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Deb Billado’s message, sent last week in the party’s official newsletter, derided the president’s critics as “left-wing hatemongers” and a “mob of hate-crazed, fear-driven people who have become deranged” because “crooked Hillary Clinton” lost to Trump. Billado described the president as a “principled man” who “can’t be bought.”
She suggested that former special counsel Robert Mueller was merely a “figurehead” whose “feeble” congressional testimony proved he “barely knew what happened in the investigation and obviously was not the person directing” it. She wrote that instead of blasting Trump for his efforts to solve the crisis at the southern border, Democrats, if they were patriots, would work with him to solve it.
“We know they are not capable of that,” Billado wrote. “Surely makes an observer think that they must hate America.”
Some elected Vermont Republicans immediately distanced themselves from Billado's comments.
Tags: Vermont Republican Party , Joe Benning , Deb Billado , Heidi Scheuermann , Corey Parent , Trump , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Asked to respond to former representative John Delaney’s assertion that his Medicare-for-all plan was “political suicide,” Sanders said simply, “You’re wrong.” With laughter and cheers, the audience at the Fox Theatre voiced its approval.
Later, when Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) argued that Sanders’ plan would strip union members of health insurance policies they’d fought for, the senator suggested they’d be better off under Medicare. “It covers all health care needs,” he said. “For senior citizens, it will finally include dental care, hearing aids and eyeglasses.”
“But you don’t know that,” Ryan interjected. “You don’t know that, Bernie.”
“I do know it,” Sanders said. “I wrote the damn bill.”
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Democratic debate , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
But according to a recent filing with the Federal Election Commission, very little of Sanders' campaign appears to be based in Vermont — and he hasn't spent much money in his home state.
A Seven Days analysis of the data found that just 17 of the 279 employees his campaign paid during the first half of the year lived in Vermont. Meanwhile, 101 lived in the Beltway region — including 74 people in D.C., 19 in Maryland and eight in Virginia.
Only $213,666 of the campaign's $3.1 million payroll, or 6.8 percent, went to Vermonters. Meanwhile, close to $1.4 million, or 43 percent of payroll, went to those in the Beltway.
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Vermont , FEC , campaign finance , spending , election , president , Web Only , Image
Holding forth in a Statehouse filled with dozens of vociferous Trump foes, Vermont’s only voice in the U.S. House of Representatives outlined how his “enormous reservation” about impeachment had recently given way to his belief that lawmakers need to act.
“I’ve become increasingly alarmed that the guardrails of our democracy are under attack,” Welch said.
Welch cited Trump’s refusal to cooperate with congressional investigations into issues such as the crisis at the southern border as well as what he called the administration’s efforts to “derail” the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into election interference by Russia.
Tags: Peter Welch , Donald Trump , impeachment , Town Hall , Web Only , Image
Thursday, July 18, 2019
U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) on Thursday became the first member of Vermont’s congressional delegation to call for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
“I do not arrive at this conclusion lightly,” Welch wrote in a statement released Thursday morning. “The power of impeachment granted to Congress by our Founding Fathers should not be casually employed.”
But, he argued, Trump “has established a clear pattern of willful disregard for our Constitution and its system of checks and balances. His presidency has wrought an unprecedented and unrelenting assault on the pillars and guardrails of our democracy, including the rule of law on which our country was founded.”
Welch’s 382-word statement included a litany of grievances against the president. He accused Trump of attacking the courts, the press, the rule of law and democracy itself. But in a conference call with reporters on Thursday afternoon, Welch pointed to a pair of offenses he said had pushed him over the edge: Trump’s refusal to comply with congressional oversight and his racist attacks on four members of Congress.
Tags: Peter Welch , Donald Trump , Al Green , impeachment , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) collected $18 million for his presidential bid from April through June, his campaign announced Tuesday. The candidate transferred another $6 million he'd previously raised to his 2020 presidential campaign account.
The new money came from nearly 1 million donations, which averaged $18 a pop, the campaign said. More than 99 percent of those contributions amounted to $100 or less, and 45 percent of donors were 39 years old or younger. The campaign reported having roughly $30 million in its presidential account at the end of June.
Because the campaign does not have to file comprehensive fundraising reports to the Federal Election Commission until later this month, Seven Days was not able to independently verify the figures.
"I think the number, from our perspective, demonstrates a campaign that is persistent, resilient and strong," campaign manager Faiz Shakir told reporters Tuesday morning. "It demonstrates that it is a people-powered campaign when you have nearly a million contributions coming into this campaign."
While the $18 million is a significant sum of money, it represents a day-to-day slowdown from Sanders' first months in the race.
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , fundraising , second quarter , Faiz Shakir , Web Only , Image
Thursday, June 27, 2019
“Sen. Sanders, a Vermont newspaper recently released portions of an interview you gave in 2013 in which you said, ‘My own view on guns is: Everything being equal, states should make those decisions,’” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said.
“No,” Sanders said, interrupting her.
“Has your thinking changed since then?” Maddow continued. “Do you now think there’s a federal role to play?”
“No, that’s a mischaracterization of my thinking,” Sanders said.
“It’s a quote of you,” Maddow responded, prompting laughter from the audience.
The quotation came from a March 6, 2013, interview that Seven Days conducted with Sanders in his Capitol Hill office. It was the first time the senator had agreed to speak to the newspaper in the nearly three months since a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
At the time, Sanders was weighing whether to support federal gun control measures proposed by then-president Barack Obama and vice president Joe Biden. Later in the interview, Sanders said, “If you passed the strongest gun-control legislation tomorrow, I don't think it will have a profound effect on the tragedies we have seen, which are really tragedy."
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , gun control , Democratic debate , Web Only , Image , Audio , Video