Freyne Land

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?