Freyne Land

Just got word that legislation is being introduced today under Montpelier's Golden Dome that will put Vermont on point in leading our nation out of the illegal Bush-Cheney Quagmire in Iraq. The lead sponsor is Democratic Rep. Mike Fisher of Lincoln.

Says Fisher in a statement being released today at a Statehouse presser and also being released nationally by the Liberty Tree Foundation:

"It is clear that the mission that Congress authorized no longer exists. The President has no current or permanentlegal authority to keep Guard members in Iraq. The Governor asCommander-in-Chief of the Vermont National Guard should take necessarysteps to bring them home."

Statement of purpose: This bill addresses limits to theconstitutional and statutory authority of the President to federalizeand deploy the Vermont National Guard in Iraq; declares that theauthority for that deployment has terminated; requests that actions betaken to terminate federalization and bring troops back to Vermont asmembers of the Vermont national guard; and reaffirms that Vermontnational guard members be limited to service on behalf of the state ofVermont, unless properly and lawfully called into federal service.

Interesting, eh?

[Took the picture last Valentine's Day.]

More here.

Tuesday "Track" rush for Wednesday's Seven Days.

BUT....

Talk-show host Arne Arnesen, out of Massachusetts these days, called last night. Long time no hear.

She wanted me on her radio show this morning to talk about...get this... President Bush's Monday night "State of the Union" speech.

Told her I wasn't planning to watch it, but for her?

What the hell!

"Why don't you watch it? You're a political columnist."

I confessed. I haven't been able to watch or read about anything to do with presidential politics, the Liar in Chief, or the presidential race with the smiling wannabees and the distractions from reality. Is it an indication of my good health? Or of a persistent illness?

But for her, I told her, I would make an exception.

I watched. Did you?

Was reminded of why I had stopped watching. My beloved America is tumbling into the worst economic recession of my baby-boomer life. The Bush Administration's Iraq War, the war that, like Vietnam, never should have been allowed to start, continues unabated without any end in sight.

And Big Oil continues to rule, as Mother Earth's rising temperature forecasts the shameful legacy we shall leave for our children's children.

Mr. Bush preferred to emphasize the need for maintaining tax cuts for the rich. The repeated standing ovations by the Republicans to even the most meaningless of lines became nauseating  acts of forced theatrical absurdity.

Hey, Sen. Pat Leahy's come out for Barack Obama for president. Sen. Bernie Sanders hasn't made an endorsement yet. BUT, Ol' Bernardo did sit right behind Obama-wama and was real friendly with him.

A sign?

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders did a 4:30 PM presser from his U.S. Senate office Monday afternoon - his preview of the real state of the union President George "WMD" Bush will paint in his State of the Union speech tonight.

This is a photo of the presser. Participation was by phone from Freyne Land HQ. Tape recorder, telephone, coffee cup and pooter. High-tech!!!

Ol' Bernardo went on for just seven minutes - you can imagine what he had to say, right? - before taking questions.

Aside from more pressing issues, like the illegal Iraq War, the economy and the Canadian border, Sen. Sanders was asked this by some wise guy:

Q. Is it true that you’re supporting the N.Y. Giants at the Super Bowl?

Sanders: No. It is another piece of malicious media gossip.  No, not at all. Actually I am supporting New England.

Q.Really? But you grew up in New York? [Brooklyn to be exact.]

Sanders: But I have lived in Vermont, as you may know, for 43 years and think it’ll be very exciting to see whether they can pull off an undefeated season.

Sorry, Bernie. I grew up in New York, too. Frank Gifford, Charlie Connerly, Sam Huff? And that defensive line of Robustelli, Katcavage, Modzelewski and Grier.

The names one never forgets in life, eh?

On a more serious note, Bernie was asked about the Brattleboro Selectboard's 3-2 Friday vote in favor of putting on the March ballot the question of arresting President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for war crimes as well as perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in that Vermont city.

Q. This is Evan Lehman from the Brattleboro Reformer. As you've probably heard, the city is potentially gonna vote on Bush's war crimes. Do you have any comment on that? And do you plan to go to the State of the Union yourself?

Sanders: Yeah. I will be at the State of the Union. I think Brattleboro...[pause]...I don't have really much to say about the war-crimes vote. I just simply reiterate my view that this president will in all likelihood go down in history as being the worst president, at least in the modern history of the United States.

I apologize, but I do have to get down there.

"There" was the floor of the U.S Senate where a floor vote was underway.

And at some point Ol' Bernardo will have to come up with a straight and complete answer on the Brattleboro war-crimes vote.

Right?

Big "Worker Justice Conference" today at UVM.

Yours truly finally hit the huge, new $70 million Dudley Davis Center to catch the show. Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders [right] was first elected mayor of Burlap in 1981 when Ol' Dudley was president of the Merchants Bank.

Bernie told the crowd that since George W. Bush became president, "Five million more people have slipped into poverty and we have by far the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country in the world."

"One of the great disgraces in this country," said Sen. Sanders, is that "one out of five children lives in poverty. And you know what the corollary of that is?" he asked.

Answer: "We lock more people up in jail than any other country in the world!" said Bernie.

Ol' Bernardo also noted, "We have lost over 3 million good-paying manufacturing jobs. In this small state alone, we have lost 25 percent of our manufacturing jobs in the last six years.

"Part of the transformation of the American economy is shown by the fact that 25 years ago General Motors was the largest employer with good wages, good benefits and a strong union. Today," asked Bernie, "who is the largest employer in the United States?

"Wal-Mart."

And what did Wal-Mart bring?

"Low wages, low benefits, and vehemently anti-union. That’s the transformation of the American economy," answered the Senator.

He neglected to mention that the man for whom the building we were in was named, the late Dudley Davis' son Jeff Davis, was the lead developer/builder who fought long and hard to finally construct our own local Wal-Mart in Williston.

Caught the Speaker of the House's Friday "brown-bagger" via telephone today. And Gaye Symington said some things that certainly made my ears stand up. Sure sounded like she conceded they - the Democrats - have left a whole lot undone healthcare-wise. Said Speaker Gaye:

"We passed what was a fairly comprehensive approach to restructuringhow we would pay for and deliver healthcare in this state [in 2005]. The Governorvetoed that.

"We were not able to override that veto.

"And we made adecision a year later to make an enormous compromise, which was to usethe healthcare insurance as the delivery mechanism. And the bottom linefor us has been that it needed to be comprehensive healthcare. Andwe’re on that road and once you make that decision you have a lot ofwork ahead of you to make that work."

Speaker Gaye acknowledged H.304, Rep. Topper McFaun's healthcare reform bill that yours truly wrote about in this week "Inside Track." That's the healthcare reform bill providing hospitalization coverage for all Vermonters that wasn't supposed to see the light of day, the one that will be getting some attention after all. Said the House Speaker:

“I know [House Healthcare Committee Chair] Steve Maier is taking a lot of testimony about that bill and there are significant questions around H.304.  I think H.304, I mean regardless of the details of it, step back from the details - H.304 basically reflects people’s impatience with the pace of healthcare reform and their impatience with using this compromise we made after the original veto."

Good observation, Madame Speaker!

P.S. Want to get up to speed on H.304 AND see Chairman Maier on the hot seat in his hometown?  Check out this meeting on healthcare reform that was shot in  Middlebury at the end of November. No beating around the bush....

On Thursday afternoon, Sgt. Dean Hoover of the Saskatchewan Drug Unit told Wavy Davy's House Ag Committee via telephone from Saskatoon that that's not what happened up there.

"We really don’t have a big issues with the hemp growers," said Hoover. "It’s such a different looking crop and it really doesn’t look like marijuana," he said. "There’s basically just one flower on top, so most people really don’t know what it is." So we really don’t have a lot of issues.

"It would be really easy to spot marijuana plants in the center of a hemp field because there’s such a difference in the look. Hemp plants are absolutely filled with seeds, and, of course marijuana are all female plants, so there are no seeds. They want the smokable product," said the Sarge from Saskatoon.

As for smoking hemp to get high, said Sgt. Hoover, "You’d have to smoke 400 pounds of it to even get a smile on your face."

As it is, he said, "Marijuana is huge everywhere up here. Most of our marijuana grows are indoors.  A lot better product. Readily available anywhere. Canadian marijuana’s pretty popular. Big indoor hydroponic grows because of the short outdoor growing season."

Hemp in a field has got one stalk coming up and one flower on top, noted Hoover, wheremarijuana plants "have stems coming everywhere and the more bud thebetter. It’s totally different looking."

The Hemp Bill, H.267, appears to be gathering steam.

Interesting.

Don't spend much time in the House Agriculture Committee chaired by Progressive Burlington farmer Dave Zuckerman. Today was an exception. An interesting exception.

Check back to find out what Alex Miller [right], founder/owner of True Blue Green Food in Bethel had to say about how nice it'd be to be able to grow hemp seeds right here in Vermont instead have having to order from Canada.

Interesting story about this former Australian chef to the rich and famous in Seven Days last Halloween. I missed it on the first go-round. Maybe you did as well?

Also find out what the two top-ranking Vermont State Troopers behind her had to say about it - and a cop on the speakerphone from Saskatchewan where it is legal.

Rep. Michael Fisher of Lincoln's H.267, a bill that would allow commercial hemp production - it's not the same as marijuana, witnesses emphasized - actually looks like it has legs.

This is what a talented, hard-working, successful newspaper publisher looks like. Took the pic this afternoon.

Paula Routly came to Vermont to go to Middlebury. Stuck around. Started Seven Days with Pamela Polston... jeezum-crow, in 1996?

"Inside Track" departed Vermont Times to join them about two months after they started. Hillary Clinton was First Lady.

I never see Paula on a Wednesday. But today I followed an impulse and bagged my trip to Montpeculiar - snowing and traffic moving at 50 mph, so I got off on the Richmond exit and came back to Burlap.

Did taxes, would you believe? Then went to 7Days to make copies.

Ol' Paula's been doing extra duty promoting this Saturday's big Creative/Tech Expo on the Burlington Waterfront. It's called "Vermont 3.0."

We're talking Green Technology, software/website development, graphic design, cutting edge you-know-what. Right here in the Peoples Republic. This week's edition of Seven Days has a bunch about it.

Did you know that there are a whole bunch of high-tech, laid-back businesses in your backyard looking for talent?

I didn't.

Made it. Print column, the ol’ “Inside Track” all done. The Tuesday miracle. Whew!

This, after a topsy-turvy few days that included a car accident in the Mary Fanny parking garage on Hospital Hill. Yes, the one convicted former CEO Bill Boettcher and the boys got built.

Thanks, Bill.

Bob from Huntington in his white 2007 Silverado wagon just threw it into reverse and backed into me as hard as he could. I was stopped on the downslope at the time. Said he didn’t see me. I need a new bumper, headlights and a few other items - $1600 and change is the estimate. Hadn’t even made it to the doctor, yet.

The doctor, by the way, said the blood tests looked good. I'm a healthy dude these days.

Then the furnace in the 27-year-old building I call “home” started banging and clanging and spitting and spewing and leaking and on the way out. “Home” is a three story house on Burlap’s South End. The Ol’ Five Sisters neighborhood. I’ve got the ground-floor/ basement/mother-in-law apartment. Unfortunately, that’s where the furnace, original to the building, is, too.

The owner/lamdlord is on top of it.

Hey, at least it’s not boring, eh?

A pal took that photo of yours truly in Sweetwaters recently. The painting on the wall - by Wendy Copp, right? - includes the Peter Freyne of 1982 eying the Tony Pomerleau of the same vintage. “Inside Track” was running in the Vanguard Press, the “alternative weekly” of those days in Burlap when a guy named “Bernie” was occupying the mayor’s office.

Whatever happened to him?

A few other characters of that era in Burlap were also on the big wall at Tony Perry's "Sweets", including Denny Morrisseau, founder/owner of Leuing’s. Denny sold it in the mid-1990s. Yours truly was one of his early bartenders. What fun!

Time flies.

Anyway, knocked out the column for Seven Days, writing about a surprise on the healthcare front in Montpeculiar and also about marijuana which is scheduled to receive a little attention on tonight’s city council agenda and under the Golden Dome this week, too.

[Hey, if the council meetings are available “live” on BurlingtonTelecom, why the heck aren’t they available “live” online in the People's Republic of Burlington?]

Ward 1 Democrat Ed Adrian [right] wants Burlington voters to have an advisory question regarding the decriminalization of marijuana on the March ballot.

Councilor Eddie’s an attorney and former prosecutor in Franklin County. Currently cashes a paycheck from the Vermont Secretary of State’s office. Even admits to toking up in his younger years.

Besides Gov. Jim Douglas, who hasn’t?

Let's get real.

There talk on the morning airwaves of world financial markets crashing.

At 2 PM, Gov. Jim Douglas will deliver what's expected to be a rather austere "tough times" budget address at the Statehouse.

And veteran Rep. Cola Hudson (R-Lyndon) won't be there to catch it.

Cola, 81, who's been there every winter since 1973, died Sunday. He came down sick on Friday.  At least he got one last January in the House he loved so well before passing.

Ah, but the man sure had a heart!

Vermont heart.

Save me a spot, would ya', Cola?