Monday, September 22, 2014
Tags: environment , climate change , activism , Slideshow , Image , Web Only
Friday, September 19, 2014
While Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) emphasized the need to act in concert with other nations and warned against the deployment of ground troops in the region, both said in written statements last Wednesday that they backed Obama's two-pronged strategy.
"He has authorized air strikes against ISIS and further support for Syrian rebels opposing ISIS, many of whom have been targeted by the cruel regime of [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad," Leahy said in his statement. "I support the President because I believe that ISIS must be stopped, that U.S. leadership is urgently required, and that he has no intention of allowing the United States to become entangled in another large-scale war in the Middle East."
Calling ISIS a "brutal and dangerous organization that must be defeated," Sanders said in his own statement that the U.S. must be joined in its efforts by "the international community" and "the people of Iraq and Syria."
"U.S. ground troops should not be sent back into combat," Sanders continued. "I support the president's airstrike campaign and help for the Syrian opposition."
But when the Senate voted Thursday night on whether to authorize the U.S. to train Syrian rebels, Leahy and Sanders joined eight liberal Democrats and 12 conservative Republicans in opposing the measure, which was attached to a larger spending bill. The vote was 78 to 22 in favor.
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Patrick Leahy , Peter Welch , Vermont congressional delegation , Syria , Presidential Campaign , foreign policy , Image , Recommended Reading , Web Only
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Gasoline distributor and retailer Skip Vallee, a prominent Republican fundraiser, has produced a 60-second television advertisement accusing Sanders of hypocrisy for railing against "golden parachutes" while benefiting from one himself. The ad notes that the senator's wife, Jane O'Meara Sanders, received a $200,000 severance package when she stepped down as president of the now-financially struggling Burlington College in October 2011.
Vallee distributed the ad to Vermont reporters Wednesday morning and plans to air it on local television stations starting Thursday morning. He says he's already invested $10,000 in a weeklong run on WCAX-TV, adding, "That's just the initial buy."
"I think the ad makes a point that I think the mainstream media should be making: Bernie is going to run on a theme of railing against golden parachutes and excesses, which is going to be a tough thing to do when he took his own golden parachute," Vallee says.
Sanders' spokesman, Michael Briggs, responded to the ad by calling Vallee "pathetic" and a "junior varsity version of the Koch brothers." Briggs said the senator "will not be intimidated by a millionaire who has crawled into the gutter and bought TV ads attacking Bernie's wife for a sabbatical she earned from a college where she was president for seven years."
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , U.S. Senate , elections , Skip Vallee , Presidential Campaign , environment , Image , Recommended Reading , Video , Web Only
Thursday, September 4, 2014
The conversation was not for public consumption. Held Thursday at the Hilton Hotel in Burlington, the lunch was an invitation-only affair. Left off the guest list? The press corps.
Seven Days obtained a copy of an invite sent out by David Sunderland, chairman of the Vermont Republican Party, and showed up to the event, but Sunderland did not allow the reporter to enter the room.
"Don't take it personally," he said. "It’s a private event for individual supporters of the party, and we wanted to be able to have open and frank discussions with our supporters as well as chairman Priebus, and we thought that would be better served in a private environment."
Who made that call — Priebus or the Vermont party? "It’s a good question," Sunderland said. "I need to refresh my memory and think if that was requested by them or by us. I don’t think that it was ever, I don’t want to misstate something. I guess you could say that the Vermont GOP decided it would be closed."
Tags: Republican National Committee , Reince Preibus , Scott Milne , David Sunderland , Michelle Obama , Burlington , Politics , Image , Web Only
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
After anti-Israel protesters shout him down, the senator tells them to shut up. Sanders' staff call the cops.
The meeting, at Cabot's Willey Building Auditorium on Saturday, grew so heated that Sanders' outreach director, Phil Fiermonte, called the cops, according to Vermont State Police spokeswoman Stephanie Dasaro. Four troopers arrived partway through the event, but took no action.
"They basically were just there as a presence," Dasaro said. "Other than that, we didn't get involved. There was no disorderly conduct. No one was arrested."
A seven-minute video of the meeting was posted to YouTube Sunday by Marie Countryman, a Montpelier activist:
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Gaza , Israel , Town Hall Meeting , video , foreign policy , Video , Image , Recommended Reading , Web Only
Monday, August 18, 2014
Former U.S. senator Jim Jeffords, an iconic independent and veteran Vermont politician, died Monday at age 80.
Near the end of his 40-year career in public office, the Rutland Republican stunned the nation in May 2001 when he left his party to become an independent. The move handed control of a closely divided Senate to the Democratic Party for the next 18 months and earned Jeffords a place in political history.
But according to his longtime chief of staff, Susan Boardman Russ, Jeffords’ most important contribution was not his defection from the GOP, but his decades of work fighting for education, the environment, dairy farmers and the disabled.
“That’s his legacy. That’s what mattered to him,” Boardman Russ said. “The publicity he got for switching parties I sometimes wish hadn’t happened because all those incredible things he did over those years got lost.”
Jeffords died Monday morning at the Knollwood Military Retirement Residence in Washington, D.C., where he had lived since the death of his wife, Liz, in 2007, according to former spokeswoman Diane Derby.
Monday, July 28, 2014
The governor said smaller sites could be available, though that’s not what the federal government is seeking to accommodate the influx of unaccompanied youngsters. The New York Times reports that roughly 57,000 minors, mostly from Central American nations, have crossed into the U.S. since last October.
“ … Working together with some of our organizations like the Red Cross, leaders from the City of Burlington, and other partners, we have developed a few potential options for housing much smaller groups of closer to 75 to 100 children, fully recognizing that is not specifically what your Agency is looking for at this time," Shumlin wrote in a letter to Christie L. Hager, regional director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “My administration would be happy to discuss these options in greater detail if that would be helpful to you.”
Further, Shumlin's letter says that the state has reached out to Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, offering to assist his state after he offered the Camp Edwards military base in Bourne and Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee as options.
Shumlin's letter closed, "Our hearts go out to these families – parents and children – who have made these dangerous journeys and are now in custody. We support your efforts to find a safe and humane solution to this serious problem. Please let us know if we can help."
Tags: Shumlin , undocumented children , Image , Web Only
Monday, July 21, 2014
As he continues to explore a 2016 run for president, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will return to the first-in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa this September.
Sanders plans to hold town meetings in Dubuque, Waterloo and Des Moines the weekend of September 13, according to spokesman Michael Briggs. Sanders will combine the trip with a previously scheduled appearance in Wisconsin at the Fighting Bob Fest, an annual gathering to celebrate the life of progressive icon — and senator-turned-presidential candidate — Robert La Follette.
September's trip will mark Sanders' second to the Hawkeye State this year. He traveled to Iowa City in May to headline the Clinton County Democratic Party's Hall of Fame Dinner and, according to the Daily Beast, met with activists there and in Des Moines. Sanders has also held political events twice in New Hampshire this year, in April and June.
Last week, Sanders reported raising an unusually large sum of money for a year in which he does not face reelection. The Vermont independent collected nearly $716,000 in the past three months, boosting his campaign treasury to $4.4 million. Sanders, who was reelected to a second six-year term in 2012, will not have to defend his Senate seat again until 2018.
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Iowa , New Hampshire , Presidential Campaign , campaign trail , Image , Recommended Reading , Web Only
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
In response to last Thursday's Supreme Court ruling, Burlington city attorney Eileen Blackwood announced Wednesday that the city has stopped enforcing its buffer zone, which had prevented protestors from coming within 35 feet of reproductive health centers since 2012.
The Supreme Court decision struck down a similar law in Massachusetts, nullifying that state's 35-foot buffer zone on the basis that it violated protesters' free speech.
Blackwood noted in a statement that while the city has suspended the buffer zone, she's determined that the second piece of the ordinance, which prevents people from "knowingly obstructing, detaining, hindering, impeding, or blocking a person’s entry to or exit from such a facility" still stands. The city attorney said she'll ask the City Council to amend the city ordinance accordingly when it meets on July 14.
Tags: Planned Parenthood of Northern New England , buffer zone , Image , Web Only
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Oh wait, nobody cares.
This isn't Iowa. Or New Hampshire. In fact, it's hard to think of a state with less influence on the presidential nominating contest than lowly Vermont, which sent just 27 delegates to the Democratic National Convention in 2012 — out of a total of 5,554. (Remember who Vermont Democrats backed in 2004? Yep, their former governor, Howard Dean, who won no other states.)
If anything, the Castleton poll tells us what we already know: Vermonters, by and large, love Bernie.
Of the 608 people surveyed early last month, 53 percent said they'd send him to the White House. Just 33 percent said they wouldn't, while 13 percent said they weren't sure or didn't have an opinion. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 4 percent.
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , election 2016 , presidential bid , Presidential Campaign , Image , Recommended Reading , Web Only