Freyne Land

A truly amazing man is he - 80-something Phil Hoff of Burlington. Philsie was Republican Vermont’s first Democratic governor, elected in the smoking and drinking 1960s - now the long gone “good old days.”

How times change. Neither one of us goes near either anymore.

There’s a shot of Gov. Hoff breaking ground way back when for something we all take for granted today - the Interstate Highway. What would we do without it? What will we do without it?

Bumped into Phil on Main Street in Burlington the other day. He’s still going strong and still battling for what he believes in. Lately you may have seen him in a TV ad for Death With Dignity Vermont. Hoff, along with former Gov. Madeleine Kunin and former Lt. Gov. Barbara Snelling are courageously leading a fight for legislation that will:

    •Guarantee that all adult Vermonters have legal end-of-life choices
    •Assure that mentally-competent persons who are terminally ill have the right to choose the manner and timing of death
    •Avoid the pain of unwanted tubes and machines that merely prolong the dying process

Check out the Death With Dignity website where you can watch the TV spot.

While we had him, we also wondered what Gov. Hoff thought about global warming. The current governor, Jim Douglas, and GOP legislative leaders say high property taxes to pay for public education is the big issue these days. Where does global warming rank?

Hoff ranks it right at the top, saying “We ignore it at our own peril.”

Yes, indeed.

Also wondered where Ol’ Phil stands on wind energy and the idea of having windmills on some of Vermont’s rural ridge lines.

Hoff told us wind power is “an essential part of the solution” when it comes to meeting Vermont’s energy needs.

“Will it solve it all? "asked Hoff.

“Hell, no!'

“Is it part of the solution?

“Hell, yes!”

Jim Douglas, are you listening?

Look, I’m in my late 50s, and in recent weeks have been experiencing my first post-mid-life crisis. 

Bumping into Phil certainly raised the old spirits!

Thanks.

The Lady in Red is, in fact, not the artist who created these colorful paintings - part of the rather interesting show currently on the wall at Burlington City Hall. Nonetheless, she is, indeed, a city hall “artist.”

For the last nine years, Karen Wingate has been the assistant chief administrative officer of the largest city in the state of Vermont - The Peoples Republic of Burlington. Friday was her last day on the job.

Wingate told yours truly she’ll leave with memories “of all the good people and all the good work we got done,” and “a tremendous sense of family and accomplishment.”

Karen became the Queen City’s acting chief administrative officer about a year ago after Brendan Keleher, Mayor Moonie's top financial cop, departed to become vice president of operations at the international Institute for Sustainable Communities in Montpeculiar. Wingate was the presiding officer in the city of Burlington last March for the historic first election using Instant Runoff Voting. And it certainly went smoothly, didn’t it?

Fortunately, Karen will not be going far - just up the block to ARD Inc. - an almost 30-year-old international consulting firm that’s long been one of the quiet jewels of  The People’s Republic of Burlington. Coincidentally, she’ll be following in the footsteps of the former mayor - Peter Clavelle.

ARD’s clients cover quite a spectrum, from the World Bank and United Nations agencies to the EPA, the National Park Service and state, city and foreign governments.

Best wishes.

So, as you may know, part of my personal revival movement of recent weeks has involved a return to "old" activities that were staples of daily life in the pre-Internet Age.  Things like going out for coffee and conversation and a hard-copy of The New York Times. Old-fashioned things. Physical things.

That's meant stopping by Everyday Book Shop on College Street in downtown Burlington across from the Freeps. And there's the added "perk" of hearing the British accent of proprietor Elizabeth Orr. Back in 1979 when yours truly landed in Burlap, the book shop was on Church Street where the Yankee Candle shop is now  (and before that, Everyday Books was where Stone Soup is currently located). Of course, back in 1979 (Jimmy Carter was president), Church Street had car and truck traffic and sidewalks - something that was about to change with construction of the Marketplace in 1980.

Now fast-forward 27 years to the present. There certainly have been some changes, eh?  But Elizabeth Orr and Everyday Book Shop remain! We stopped in yesterday on the way to see "The Queen," starring the marvelous Helen Mirren, at the Roxy. Outstanding flick!

Burlington's Book Shop Queen Elizabeth says customers have been strongly recommending she see it.

"People tell me I should," said Mrs. Orr, "but I never go to movies!"

Work, work, work. But retirement, says Elizabeth, who works every single day, is finally appearing on the horizon. Born in Hanley in the English Midlands in 1927, she'll turn 80 next spring.

"You know," she confided to us yesterday, "for the first time ever I've just started to think about it. I still don't want to."

God bless her!

Do consider dropping by the Everyday Book Queen, would you? And check out the cinematic version, too. You won't be disappointed by either.

Let's think of it as a Christmas present. A Pearl Harbor Day reality-check. The perfect holiday gift in these troubled high-tech, wireless times. I'm talking about the eagerly awaited "Iraq Study Group Report."

It's been a long, long time since America, as a nation, has publicly swallowed such a large dose of truth in one sitting. The lede on The Washington Post  analysis piece pretty much nailed it:

"The Iraq Study Group report, released yesterday, might well be titled "The Realist Manifesto."

From the very first page, in which co-chairmen James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton scold that "our leaders must be candid and forthright with the American people," the bipartisan report is nothing less than a repudiation of the Bush administration's diplomatic and military approach to Iraq and to the whole region.

Is not the tide turning, folks?

Yet, by way of dramatic political irony, while the Iraq report was being released down in DC, the governor of Vermont was back to being his old self on Wednesday - holding a "regular weekly press conference" on the Fifth Floor in Montpeculiar. The jovial Republican was in especially good spirits. After all, Gentleman Jim Douglas has just won reelection by a 15-point landslide in America's rather unique little Leftists Land of Democrat Howard Dean, national chairman of his rival party, and Independent Bernie Sanders, currently making history as the first socialist ever elected to the United States Senate.

Not bad, eh? For Jim the Republican, that is.

Standing before the thin line that is the Vermont press and batting away questions about the property tax and rising education costs without offering a concrete solution/plan is an art that none perform better than James Douglas of Middlebury, Vermont. And, sure, he cares about global warming, but what were voters telling him on the fall campaign trail?

"To be perfectly honest, I think we all heard a lot more about property taxes than global warming."

Nonetheless, the Guv calmed us down, saying, "Vermont can continue to provide leadership on environmental policy." Besides,  he quickly noted, more global-warming impacting power plants power plants are being built in China. "The fact is," said Gov. Scissorhands, "[global warming] is beyond the ability of Vermont to contain."

Did he not just wash his hands of it?

Back to the other "Big Ugly" of the first decade of the 21st Century - the Bush-Cheney War in Iraq, the one our Vermont delegation unanimously and wisely voted "No" on, but ended up our war, anyway. And back to the fact Gov. Jim Douglas has supported the Bush-Cheney Team and this war from the get-go. Nonetheless, It has never  harmed him politically at the ballot box. That is no doubt attributable to Gentleman Jim's exceptional talent, as well as the apparent lack thereof exhibited by his Democratic opponents in 2002, 2004 and 2006.

Just last March, Gov. Douglas visited the Iraq War Zone as a guest of the White House and came home singing the praises of what he described as the successful operation that was underway there. Not one word of criticism was uttered.

At yesterday's presser in the state capital, we asked the Guv if he agreed that the recent resignations of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and U.N. Ambassador John Bolton were "good moves?"

“Well, that’s the call the president needs to make. Every executive needs the team on the field that he or she feels comfortable with, so that’s where the buck stops and he needs to get the people he feels will best do the job.”

Smooth, eh? Nobody, we'd argue, does it better in the Green Mountains. But has our Guv changed his view on this war?

“Well, I’ve said for some time that we need an exit strategy. Vermonters and others have answered the call to serve and put their lives on the line, in some cases paid with their lives, to serve our country and they deserve to know that there’s a clear objective and an end in sight to our involvement.  The secretary designate said we can’t set a date, but we do need to have a strategy that will  move us toward a redeployment of our troops."

But is Vermont's governor ready to say what Vermont's congressional delegation of Patrick Leahy, Jim Jeffords and Bernie Sanders have been saying loud-and-clear or years: this war is "a mistake?"

"Well, history will judge ultimately decisions that have been made in this context and it’s ultimate outcome. I think most Vermonters, most Americans, want to find a way out at this point."

I think that was a "No" to the question about the Iraq War being a mistake, don't you?

Nobody does it better.

Two, count ‘em, TWO press releases issued on Tuesday by the office of Progressive Burlington Mayor Bob Kiss. Must have been the full moon, eh?

I don’t recall two press releases coming out in an entire month from the Main Street corner office of the quiet man who’s the mayor of Vermont’s largest city. And neither one of them is about the “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” resolution he proudly signed at a recent city council meeting - one neither the Freeps nor Ch. 3 covered.

So far, I haven’t caught any anti-gun control fanatics criticizing da’ mayor for doing so, have you? Anyway here's the latest:

1. MAYOR KISS TO ATTEND MAYOR'S INSTITUTE ON CITY DESIGN ON DECEMBER 7-9, AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Burlington, Vermont - December 5, 2006.  Mayor Bob Kiss has been invited to attend the Northeast Mayor's Institute on City Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts on December 7-9, 2006.  The Mayor's Institute on City Design is a program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States Conference of Mayors, the American Architectural Foundation, and collaborating universities.  The City Design and Development Group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will host the upcoming Institute.

Mayor Kiss is one of eight mayors invited to participate in this year's institute.  The formal agenda of the Institute will consist of a presentation of case studies developed by each of the participating mayors.  The majority of the time is spent in roundtable discussions between the mayors and a team of urban designers about issues facing America's cities and how urban design can contribute to the quality of life in each of the participating communities.  This year's Institute will pay particular attention to the theme of tourism.

Cool.

2. MAYOR KISS TO ANNOUNCE EXPANSION OF SPECIAL BUDGET COMMITTEE TO MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FY08 BUDGET

Burlington, VT, December 5, 2006 -- Burlington Mayor Bob Kiss will hold a press conference on Wednesday, December 6, at 1 p.m. in the Mayor’s Office, Room 34 City Hall, Burlington, to announce the formation of an expanded special budget committee to make recommendations for the Mayor’s fiscal year 2008 budget.  Mayor Kiss will be joined by member(s) of the special budget committee he appointed last Spring, as well as Chief Administrative Officer Jonathan Leopold, who will provide an update on budget preparations.

Mayor Kiss intends to expand the budget committee to include additional Burlington residents and increase citizen participation in the budget process.  The Mayor is asking the Neighborhood Planning Assemblies (NPA) to appoint one member each to the committee.  The Mayor is also inviting residents from each ward to apply to serve on the committee.  Apart from NPA members, two residents of each ward will be chosen randomly from those interested in serving on the committee.

“We should bring more residents into the process as we seek to develop a budget that is efficient and maintains city services,” Mayor Kiss said. “Expanding the special budget committee I appointed last Spring will increase citizen participation in the process and help to build a better budget for FY08.”

Cool.

Unfortunately, yours truly will be in Montpeculiar at that hour catching Gov. Jim Douglas' presser. You know - Jim Douglas,  AARP's award-winning gubernatorial healthcare-reform champ?

Yes, we're writing the print "Inside Track" column today. It'll be out Wednesday morn.

The two-week "vacation" is over for this Vermont weekly newspaper columnist. Thank god. Been going a little nutso in the modern world of cyberspace. In fact, I'm getting a wee-bit tired of computer life in general. It's been 10 years since the first Mac. Am I the only one who's sick of it and longs for the good old days?

In fact, for the last week, this blogger's got a new routine. I've been deliberately going out and purchasing an old-fashioned hard copy of The New York Times and grabbing a seat at a coffee shop. There I hold the newsprint up in my two hands and turn the pages one at a time. A little shine of ink on fingers. Ah!

It's been a positively refreshing experience and I've found many fellow-caffeinated travelers eager to chat. Happy to break the ice. After all, it hasn't been the best of times, has it?

In fact, I'll admit it! The last six years in America have marked the worst of my little 57-year-old life experience. No question about it. Am I the only one?

And things have been "heating up" in more ways than one. The liars and crooks have beenrunning the U.S. government with a free hand, and running the country and Planet Earth's environment into the danger zone.

But, finally, the bad guys are starting to fall!

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's gone at long last, and Bolton, that temper-tantrum of an incompetent U.N. ambassador, too. The Bush-Cheney regime unravels before our eyes.

In these 21st Century times when the truth is excruciatingly inconvenient, do we not need, more than ever, to tell it?   

Vermont's congressional delegation certainly has, and did, with a unanimous "No" vote on Dubya's fateful, deceitful, 2002 Iraq War Resolution. Big Lie #1.

Well, the times appear a-changing. A new Democratic Congress takes office the first week of January. Republican V.P. Dick Cheney will be swearing in Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Can't wait.

The tide may be turning, folks, but, let's face it -  this battle has only just begun.

See you in coffee land, eh?

The U.S. "War on Drugs" makes the U.S. "War on Iraq" look like a great success!

That's how lost it really is.

And Windsor County's veteran state's attorney, Robert Sand, the son of a federal judge, is sick and tired of the wasted lives and wasted resources. As the Rutland Herald/Times Argus reported in a November 30 story by Susan Smallheer - State's Attorney Critical of Drug Laws:

Sand points to Prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s as the perfect example why restricting drug use won't work.

"Prohibition doesn't work; we should have learned that with alcohol," he said.

Yes, indeed. In fact, back in the long-haired 1970s, the Vermont House actually passed a bill decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana. Even a "common-sense" Republican state representative by the name of Jim Douglas voted for it!

Unfortunately, the bill died in the Vermont Senate and the U.S. War on Drugs has since ballooned into a major industry that's prosecuted and imprisoned millions of non-violent Americans while promoting a black market dominated by violent criminal gangs.

Today's Rutland Herald/Times Argus has another Susan Smallheer story on the matter that's well worth a read - Decriminalizing of Drugs Splits Law Enforcement:

James Dean, a retired probation officer at U.S. District Court in Burlington said that the war on drugs is not working. Dean worked as a federal probation officer from 1976 to 1997. "I commend Windsor County State's Attorney Robert Sand for having the intellectual integrity and political courage to point out the self-defeating nature of our approach to drugs," Dean said.

"We have transformed what is undoubtedly a health problem into a criminal justice problem," he said of drug addiction.

Dean noted that tobacco is a far more dangerous substance to the public health, noting that millions of people have died from tobacco use.

"We do not classify tobacco as criminal," Dean said, noting it was a deliberate action by society.

"We are so far down the road of a criminalization policy that we think we have no other options whatsoever," Dean said, saying he hoped Sand's comments would spur a good dialogue on the issue.

In Dean's mind, the war on drugs is like the war in Iraq — it's not working and needs a major rethinking.

He's got a point.

Think the Vermont Legislature that convenes under Montpeculiar's golden dome next month has the guts to address it?

Or will we keep the current hopeless status-quo of corruption, violence, clogged courts and overcrowded prisons in tact?

I know. Y'all thought that House Speaker Gaye Symington and the Democrats were the ones behind healthcare reform, right?

Wrong!

The edition of AARP's monthly magazine that arrived in U.S. mailboxes yesterday gave that honor to Republican Governor Jim Douglas:

Putting health care before politics

Sometimes politicians can rise above politics. That certainly was thecase this year in Vermont, where no one expected much from the state government.With a Republican governor and a Democratic legislature, gridlock seemedinevitable. But in May, after two years of negotiations, Governor Jim Douglassigned groundbreaking legislation that makes affordable health insuranceavailable to everyone in the state. The new universal health care law, consideredthe most progressive in the country, also includes a series of cost-savingreforms. It is particularly important in the Green Mountain State, whichhas 61,000 uninsured citizens and a growing senior population. While thebill was clearly a bipartisan effort, much of the credit goes to Douglas,55, for refusing to give up. "This was such a key issue," he says. "The needwas so great in terms of containing costs and providing coverage to uninsuredVermonters that we just couldn't fail."—Joe Treen

Refusing to give up, eh?

The realities about global warming are sinking in. That was demonstrated by the overflow crowd that packed UVM's Ira Allen Chapel last night to hear a speech by Laurie David, producer of the blockbuster flick An Inconvenient Truth. About 1000 people packed the main floor and more than 300 squeezed into the overflow space downstairs.

Laurie David called global warming  "the most urgent challenge of our lifetime."

"This is not just my opinion, but the opinion of the world’s scientists. And although they’ve been largely ignored in the last two decades, and muzzled or rewritten for the last few years, they have now concluded we have less than 10 years to slow global warming down or we’ll be set on a course we will not be able to correct. This is the conclusion of the world’s most respected experts, the most cautious group of individuals on the planet saying we have less than 10 years.

"James Hansen, a scientist at NASA and one of my personal heroes, told me recently and I quote, 'Because of human activity we are already guaranteed two degrees of warming, but we dare not go above that.'

Hearing Hansen, who spent three decades studying the issue, say that, sent shivers up my spine."

As it damn well should.

"There is now more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than in the last - think about this number - 650,000 years. As CO2 levels go up, temperature goes up with them. This is a fact and it’s indisputable. And the world is putting an additional 70 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere everyday. July 2005 to June 2006 was the hottest 12 month period in the history of temperature measurements in the United States - 2300 heat records were broken in the month of July alone."

Global warming, ignored by President George W. Bush and considered theoretical by GOP congressional candidate Martha Rainville as recently as July, is projected, said David, "to completely alter your forests and lead to the eventual disappearance of the sugar maple.

"Can you imagine the core of who you are as a community changing forever - the sugar maples, the fall leaves, the ski season all at stake? "

Scary. We simply cannot ignore it any longer.

"This is not about politics, it’s about ethics. It’s against every value we all hold near and dear to know we are altering life, screwing up our climate system, wrecking havoc on weather patterns and continue to do nothing about it."

And David told the overflow crowd there is still time to save the planet but action must commence immediately. We must make dramatic adjustments in how we do things, she said, within the next 10 years - max!

Check out StopGlobalWarming.org and read David's amazing piece in Sunday's Washington Post. And then let's start talking more to one another about it. OK?

Tuesday afternoon we sat down with Burlington's Progressive Mayor Bob Kiss to get it straight from the horse's mouth on the Mayors Against Illegal Guns "Statement of Principles" (posted in the Tuesday post below), that he signed without advance warning at Monday's Burlington City Council Meeting. Said Mayor Kiss:

"I’m making a statement along with other mayors across the country. It’s very clear to say our mayors are duty bound to do everything in our power to protect our residents, especially our children, from harm,  and there is no greater threat to public safety than the threat of illegal guns.

"I will continue the discussion and include the city council in that process. It’s one of those things I can sign onto without looking for support or authority from the city council. Since it’s very clearly a statement of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, that’s why I chose that route. I think it is an issue that people on the city council are going to be interested in and I think we should continue that discussion."

But isn't the Second Amendment's right to bear arms a strong principle in Vermont?

Kiss: "I think everybody has to agree that we want responsible gun-ownership. I would say in the same way that I talk about responsible ownership in terms of rental property and responsible tenancy, I mean I think there are a lot of responsibilities in our society that we have to pay attention to, and how we do that make a difference in the outcome. My goal here is to work on responsible gun-ownership and to aim at preventing gun violence. And I don’t know that we all wouldn’t be in agreement with those kinds of goals."

But "gun control" in Vermont?

Kiss: "Again, should there be waiting periods before people can buy handguns? I don’t object to that. I think it’s a reasonable thing to do. That might be portrayed as gun control, but I think that has a lot more to do with responsible gun ownership. In the same way that in Vermont before you get a hunting license, you have to take a firearms class so you’re prepared to do that appropriately. Is that gun control?  I think it’s probably responsible training so everyone’s safe in the practice of hunting. I might say, no, it’s gun control because if I don’t take the course, I can’t use my gun. But again, I think it misses the point. So I would say that Vermont and society can develop a reasonable set of rules that does a better job at protecting us at the same time it allows guns to be in the community."

Have you anticipated any kind of pro-gun backlash to this?

Kiss: "I have not. I think that having a discussion about guns, and even having a disagreement about guns, isn’t a backlash. I think we have to have that. And I think through that kind of discussion that you actually see change. And that’s what Mayors Against Illegal Guns are saying - we’ve got to do something about guns that come into our community illegally and have a negative consequence because people are dying on the street."

What do you think?

Incidentally, Burlington's mayor is not a gun owner.