Editorial: Adults should set better examples about bullying

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Production

Recently, a videotape of schoolchildren from Orleans Elementary fighting was posted on Facebook. Upon investigation, the school’s principal concluded that it wasn’t so much a case of targeted bullying, as some had suspected, as it was an argument, mostly amongst middle school kids.

However, the incident served to highlight the role social media plays in the lives of young people these days — and how adults can exacerbate a situation.

It also illustrated the increasing complexity of a world where media so thoroughly infiltrates the lives of young people that it’s hard to draw the line between what happens in school and what happens outside of it. An incident that occurs outside of school but is publicly posted and viewed by schoolchildren — what territory does that lie in?

The issue is so complex and troubling that it would take more than the space we have on this page to delve into every aspect of it. But there are two things we’d particularly like to mention here.

One doesn’t have to look far these days to see plenty of uncivil behavior. “Watch TV, listen to talk shows, talk radio…people seem to be so much less civil,” said Andre Messier, principal of Lake Region Union High School.

We agree with him.

The federal government is certainly no example of civil discourse or respectful behavior. Political and ideological differences turn into personal, often nasty and intimidating attacks. News programs don’t deliver information in a calm or neutral fashion; many of them are little more than shouting matches. Scorn, condescension, and polarity are far more prevalent than empathy, compassion, and respect.

In the age of You Tube, iPhones, iPads, Facebook, and vines, nearly anyone can put anything up for public view — tasteful or not, worth watching or not. Shock value seems to be a goal, the ultimate goal being attention, we suppose.

And we don’t need the National Security Agency’s help with violating our privacy. We seem to be pretty good at doing it ourselves.

One would think that, in such an atmosphere — which children are heavily exposed to — adults would set out to temper matters. Instead, as in the Orleans incident, the opposite can happen.

“Basically, all of the adults turned into bullies themselves in the comments,” said Kristin Atwood, an Orleans School Board member who saw the boy’s video after a Facebook friend passed it on to her. “The sharing of the video was really kind of incendiary, and the adults’ comments were often promoting violence against the student who’s accused of bullying,” Ms. Atwood said.

If a questionable video involving schoolchildren appears on Facebook, it seems to us that the appropriate course would be to bring the matter to the attention of school officials and leave it there. “Sharing” the video and posting incendiary comments (behaving, in other words, like a bully) does not strike us as an ideal method for dealing with an online video posted by a kid about kids.

Posting something online rather than talking to a teacher or administrator can inflame a situation, but it won’t remedy it. Kids may not know better; adults should.

So grownups: Either get off Facebook, or limit your own behavior to the best of what you would expect from children. If you deplore uncivil discourse and disrespectful behavior in children, don’t do such a good job of showing them how it’s done. — T.S.

For the Chronicle‘s story on bullying, click here.

Editorial: No retreat

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Production

President Obama was right to stand his ground while the government was shut down by the U.S. House of Representatives, which is controlled by the Republican Party, which is controlled by its extreme right wing.

To give in would have been to turn the government over to minority rule by a group united in its hatred of government. As Senator Bernie Sanders has said, to give up part of Obama Care to avoid the shutdown would only invite the House to use its absolute control over the budget to pick off the next program it decides to hate — Social Security, say, or Medicare.

Sensing, perhaps, that they have misjudged the public mood, the Republicans are now trying to choreograph a slow retreat. Their leaders propose to fund the most popular federal services — the national parks were on the bargaining table Tuesday night — while leaving the programs they most dislike begging.

If the Democrats agree to play that game, the result will be the same. The Republicans will fund just exactly as much government as they want, of exactly the sort they want. That would seem pretty much like running the country. In their effort to do that through the electoral process, the Republicans missed a couple of steps, like the Senate and the presidency.

The Democrats need to hang tough in this crisis. The Republicans need to answer a question posed during a recent, unrelated argument by Barton Village Trustee David White: “Why can’t we all put our big boy pants on?”

And as long as we’re excoriating people, we’re puzzled by the gag order that padlocked federal agencies have imposed on their idle employees.

Why shouldn’t we know about the services they are unable to provide? Why shouldn’t we know how this has affected their lives and their families?

Fact is, they and the rest of us are being screwed by the devious, anti-democratic machinations of the right-wing rump of the Republican Party. And everybody should have the right to say so. — C.B.

Editorial: A sad echo from across the sea

Posted on September 17, 2013 by nataliehormilla

“They’re still at it!”

That’s what we said when we read the astounding news that on September 5, almost three decades after Vermont State Police raided the Northeast Kingdom Community Church in Island Pond and seized its children, it happened again in southern Germany.

Again it was an early dawn raid on the group, which now calls itself the Twelve Tribes. Again, the children were taken away by police who said they had “fresh evidence indicating significant and ongoing child abuse by the members.”

We imagine that our outraged amazement that they’re still at it was shared by two groups of Vermonters.

For one group, no doubt the larger group, “They” are the police and the State they serve. And what they’re at is the persecution of a religious community for straying outside the norms of our society.

For the second group, largely made up of people closer to the story, people who perhaps had friends or relatives living with the group in Island Pond, “They” are the adults in that community. And what they’re at is the systematic abuse of their own children, using slender wooden sticks of the sort used to hold balloons at birthday parties.

For the record, here’s what the Twelve Tribes says on its website, under “frequently asked questions,” about how it disciplines its children:

“When they are disobedient or intentionally hurtful to others we spank them with a small reed-like rod, which only inflicts pain and not damage.”

In Vermont it was evidence of the use of these rods, which left welts on small bodies in beatings that were sometimes very lengthy, sometimes severe, that finally led authorities to resort to the raid.

District Judge Frank Mahady ruled, in 1983 after presiding over a custody battle between a father who left the group and a mother who remained, that the children “were subjected to frequent and methodical physical abuse by adult members of the community, in the form of hours-long whippings with balloon sticks.”

District Judge Joseph Wolchik, after reviewing a large collection of evidence and allegations, signed a warrant ordering police to conduct the raid of June 22, 1984.

But at the Orleans County Courthouse that afternoon, Judge Mahady ruled that the raid was unconstitutional and sent the children home to Island Pond.

Governor Richard Snelling said at the time he would submit the constitutional issue to the Vermont Supreme Court, but changed his mind.

So as a legal matter, that’s how things stand to this day. Two judges of equal authority disagreed. No higher court has ever resolved their dispute.

That’s a problem, because the reconciliation of practices based on sincere religious belief and laws that prohibit such practices is a difficult constitutional issue.

There can be no doubt that the adults in the Island Pond community believed they were following God’s will. And there can be no doubt that they were breaking the laws crafted to protect this society’s most vulnerable members.

There were people, in the aftermath of the raid, who saw the need to tackle the problem, to try and draft laws that would protect children using methods less drastic than a frightening pre-dawn raid. But public reaction against the raid was strong enough to marginalize anyone who tried to continue the discussion.

It was a stunning victory for the Island Pond community, and we said so on June 27, 1984:

“We hope we’re wrong, but can’t shake off the feeling that those children are out of the reach of the state of Vermont once and for all. Not out of the reach of some awesome, totalitarian power. But out of the reach of a community that surrounds them, cares for them and weeps for them.”

Maybe this time, for a different generation of children in a different country, things will work out better. — C.B.

To read the Chronicle story on the Twelve Tribes raid in Germany, click here.

Editorial: A closer look at the obesity epidemic

Posted on September 17, 2013 by Production

The statistics presented by the district health department Saturday are alarming. Seventy-five percent of the people in Orleans and northern Essex counties are overweight or obese, they say.

What might be even more alarming is the assertion made by the film Weight of the Nation that it’s not entirely an accident. If you believe the documentary, done by HBO with the Institute of Medicine among others, the two-thirds of Americans who are now overweight or obese have had a lot of help putting on the pounds.

For one thing, federal farm policy encourages monoculture farming and subsidizes soy and corn, ingredients commonly used in snack and processed food.

For another, the U.S. food industry — since it’s in the business of making money — most heavily markets its most profitable products, which tend to be foods made with artificially inexpensive, government subsidized ingredients. Those so-called foods are full of calories rather than nutrition, but they’re cheap, quick, and generally appealing, to young people in particular.

When was the last time you saw a television commercial pushing string beans? The profit on string beans is about 10 percent. The profit on soda is 90 percent, according to Weight of the Nation.

Any parent knows that grocery shopping these days with a young child is a nightmare. The collection of junk foods aimed at children is daunting.

As a parent, I’ve long resented the food industry and how it’s made my life more difficult. The snack cracker aisle alone is like running a gauntlet.

No, we are not getting Sponge Bob crackers. No, we are not getting Lunchables; I don’t care if Johnny has Lunchables. No, we are not getting this substance that pretends it’s related to yogurt….

At some point, grocery shopping with a child turned into a battle against marketers who want my kid to want things that are bad for him.

It wasn’t this way even 20 years ago. When my daughter was young the battle was over SpaghettiOs, which I refused to buy. That’s laughable now. SpagettiOs have come to seem pretty benign in the face of the explosion of other, far worse and voluminous, possibilities.

Twenty years ago, avoiding sedentary screen time was also easy enough: I disconnected the TV. Today, it doesn’t even matter that the satellite dish is disconnected six months a year. There’s the computer, Netflix, Hulu, iPads, iPhones, Wii, Xbox, so many ways for kids to engage with a screen rather than the great outdoors.

Yes, there are lots of reasons for being overweight, and lifestyle choices are among them. But it’s not likely that about 30 years ago two-thirds of Americans got up in the morning and decided they’d get fat.

Nationally, there are good reasons why people add pounds: No close place to buy good food, no safe place to exercise.

Those reasons don’t hold true here. It is true, however, that obesity is linked to poverty, and we are poor. It takes time and money to come up with lean and nutritious meals, and a poor population may not have much of either.

To understand what some call an obesity epidemic, we should look at the cheap and time saving choices people are offered today. Many fast food restaurants have a dollar menu. Salads aren’t on it. Yes, it’s good that fast food places offer healthier choices, but let’s be real here. No one is going to McDonald’s to get a great salad.

Frozen fruits and vegetables don’t take up much room in the grocery store freezers. They’re more likely to be filled with pizzas and highly processed microwavable meals.

The cereal section is no place to look for healthy breakfast food. Chocolate, marshmallow, and frosting are among the choices.

A time and money stressed family may have enough trouble buying and cooking healthy food without also battling a food industry that’s making the job harder.

Weight of the Nation notes there was a time when people thought it was impossible to take on the powerful tobacco industry. That turned out to be untrue.

The food industry can also be successfully taken on, the film suggests. It’s possible, at least, to cease marketing bad food to kids, as cigarettes are no longer advertised on TV.

Parents have to step up, as well. But it would help if the playing field were level. As it is, a meal of fresh fish and vegetables costs considerably more than a pound of burger and a box of Hamburger Helper, which contains soybean oil and, surprise, corn syrup, that most ubiquitous U.S. ingredient.

You can’t blame a farmer for wanting to make a living. You can blame a farm policy that uses our own tax dollars to encourage overproduction of the cheap, unhealthy food that’s helped make two-thirds of us fat. – T.S.

To read the Chronicle’s full story on this subject, click here.

Opinion: Do the math on wind power

Posted on March 19, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

by Vermont Senator John S. Rodgers

If 66 percent of Vermonters favor industrial wind on our mountains, then pro-wind groups have nothing to worry about in Senate Bill S-30. S-30 lays out a process to answer many unanswered questions about industrial wind. It also gives regional and town plans a determinative roll in the PSB permit process.

An in-depth study by the prestigious Pacific Research Institute found that a wind project needed to have a capacity factor of 35 percent before it could erase its carbon footprint within its life expectancy of 20 years. In New York State and Maine the capacity factor has been around 23 percent. Also in the news is the fact that all over the world industrial wind turbines have been failing prematurely and not coming close to that 20-year mark.

FYI: Lowell cost about $170-million and Sheffield about $120-million, between the two of them they will receive about $80-million in federal tax dollars (our money). If that same $80-million had been spent to insulate Vermonters homes we could have insulated about 23,000 homes, saved Vermonters around $23,000,000 a year in fuel costs and reduced carbon more than twice what Sheffield and Lowell combined will. (CO2 reduction in Lowell — 70,000 tons a year; in Sheffield — 44,000 tons a year. While $80-million in insulation which would reduce carbon 260,000 tons a year) Local contractors would be doing the work insulating homes and we know that means that the money would have a multiplier effect in the community. All of this with no adverse environmental impacts. Remember that is just the public money ($80-million) not the full $290,000,000 that was spent on the two projects. That $290-million will all be paid for by the ratepayers and taxpayers.

S-30 is the product of more information and testimony than has ever been compiled on this subject in the VT Legislature. It will not stop communities that want industrial wind. It is a work in progress as we wait for many unanswered questions to be answered and the results of the Siting Commission so that next year we can continue to improve the way that we site electric generation in Vermont. What it will do is give communities that do not want industrial wind a much-needed voice against a well-funded industry that does not care about our heritage or our environment. Call your legislators and the Governor and ask them to support S-30. Tell them that the 65 to 70 percent of Vermonters that supposedly want it can still have industrial wind and those who do not want it can pursue other more productive methods to address climate change.

Senator John S Rodgers of Glover represents the Essex-Orleans Senate District.

To read the text of S.30, click here.

Protest tar sands on a bridge over the Connecticut River January 23

Posted on January 16, 2013 by BethanyMDunbar

To the editor and North Country Citizens:

Just go to Google Images and type in “Alberta Tar Sands” and you will see what it’s all about. It’s the dirtiest oil on the planet and there’s lots of it. Mining it is literally destroying the boreal forest in the Northern HALF of Alberta Canada. James Hansen, the NASA climate scientist, says it’s “game over” for global warming if the tar sands oil is burned.

The largest oil spill in US history that you probably never heard about occurred just 2 years ago on the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. To no one’s surprise it was tar sands oil. Tar sands crude oil contains sand making it more abrasive; and its pumped at higher pressure and higher temperature than regular crude oil. The result is increased odds of a pipeline spill. Its like hot liquid sandpaper.

Not to be deterred, the Canadian government and its corporate partners are hell bent on developing tar sands oil and exporting it to the world. Major corporate partners include Enbridge and the largest corporation in the history of the world Exxon Mobile.

You may have heard about the XL pipeline in the Midwest and the massive civil disobedience over it lead by Vermont’s own Bill McKibben. You may have heard about the tree sitter’s blockaide in Texas to stop another tar sands pipeline there. You probably did not hear about the arrest of news reporters trying to cover the Texas protesters – ala Chris Braithwaite from the Barton Chronicle.

You probably did not hear about the so far successful resistance to the tar sands pipeline in British Columbia; lead largely by First Nations tribes.

Not to be deterred, Enbridge and Exxon Mobile are pressing on: to Vermont.

Despite denials there is no doubt they are quietly moving forward with a previous plan called ”Trailbreaker” which would pump tar sands oil all the way from Alberta to Montreal to Portland Maine. Enbridge recently made formal application to reverse the flow of its line 9 pipeline in Ontario in order to pump tar sands oil to Montreal. Enbridge is also trying to get permission to build a pumping station near the US border. From Montreal to Portland the tar sands oil would flow through an existing oil pipeline through the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and the North Country of New Hampshire and past Sebago Lake in Maine.

An “existing oil pipeline” – in Vermont? Who knew?! Wait, it’s worse. The pipeline crosses numerous rivers and streams, goes by Victory Bog and – and – it’s 60 years old! The owners of the pipeline (the parent company is Exxon Mobile) were recently cited by federal regulators for failure to properly maintain the pipeline. . . . So . . .

On Wednesday, January 23, at High Noon on the bridge over the Connecticut River on Route 2 near Lancaster, New Hampshire, delegations from Vermont and New Hampshire will join hands over the river for a peaceful protest against tar sands oil. The pipeline is 100 yards downstream from the bridge; and upstream from half of New England!

Will you join us?

For more info see www.tarsandsfreene.org

or Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/466059446791428/

See you on the bridge!

Peter Blose

Barnet

Grandfather’s notebook: Moving sideways

Posted on December 27, 2012 by BethanyMDunbar

by Chris Braithwaite

copyright the Chronicle 12-26-2012

Part of my DNA is walking around West Glover in African-American skin.

Part of my DNA is in first grade in Ridgefield, Washington, dealing with Down syndrome.

Part of my DNA is in two children in Leeds, England, who talk to me, when I can get anywhere near them, in broad Yorkshire accents.

Part of my liver is in a woman in Ontario who is doing valiant battle with ovarian cancer.

Who knew?

A dozen years ago, before I had any grandchildren, I thought being a grandfather would be a calming experience. Mostly a matter of doting.

I guess I pictured an assortment of blond, blue-eyed kids who would be parented much better than their parents were parented and not go to Harvard or Yale but to the sort of schools their parents — my kids — went to which were, in no particular order, the University of Chicago; Lewis and Clark in Portland, Oregon; Colby in Maine; Tulane in New Orleans; Sheldon Jackson in Sitka, Alaska; Reed in Portland; Brooklyn University; Mills in Oakland, California; New York University; Northeastern Law School in Boston; and the Banks Street College of Education in New York City. Not a bad list for four kids, but they did tend to wander.

I hasten to add that it is far from beyond the realm of impossibility that any and all of my grandchildren will end up at any or all of these fine institutions, not to mention Harvard and Yale and Oxford and Cambridge. Life is all about possibilities, and my granddaughter Adara, who lives in Ridgefield, is already pressing the envelope and, I believe, will continue to do so throughout her happy and already very useful life.

Her brother Corwin, who is about to turn three, faces the prospect of developing abilities that may be beyond the reach of someone who is now, and will always be, his only big sister.

And my grandson Isaiah has the courage to deal with what one very articulate Vermonter, Robert Walsh, called “unaware-unintentional racism.” That’s not the stuff of deeply imbedded racial hatred. It’s the stuff of “I thought you people couldn’t survive in this climate.”

And I hasten to add — I’ll be hastening to add a lot of things in this piece — that there seems to be a critical mass of Black children in our schools now, and they have collectively put some of this kind of prejudice quietly to rest.

I don’t know if Phoebe and George in Leeds will have to clean up their North Country accents before they go to Oxford. I don’t really know a damn thing about what remains of the class structure over there.

And as for Clara in New York, maybe it will be tough to deal with being a native of Brooklyn. So far, she’s just a month-old bundle of promises.

Anyway I didn’t set out to write about my grandchildren, but about myself.

What I wanted to say is that grandchildren have a way of backing you in to groups of people you know nothing about and never thought, at this advanced stage in life, that you would have much to do with.

And the important thing to say about that is that it’s a remarkable experience. In fact it’s a gift of considerable value.

My sister Shari, the person walking around Canada with half my liver, raised this point when I visited her last week. She said there must be an odd sense of inclusion in another group, when you have a grandchild who is a full-fledged member.

I agreed, but it occurs to me now that I have an odd sense of inclusion in the group of women with cancer of a female nature. Shari mostly startled me by coming down her stairs with straight hair, something she told me she has always wanted to have.

I hasten to say that she looked very good in her new wig. But I must confess that it startled me, who has known her as my curly-haired sister for 68 years, even more than her loss of so much weight.

I have no ovaries and have never undergone chemotherapy. But there it is. Part of me has, in fact, undergone chemotherapy. And that part of me sustains a woman of enormous courage.

That doesn’t make me courageous, any more than it makes my skin black or my brain and body subject to the effects of Down syndrome.

So why do I feel like I’m in the club?

A writer named Andre Solomon has recently gained a lot of attention for his book, Far From the Tree.

I bought the book as soon as I heard about it on the radio, but so far have only worked through his first chapter.

I know from his table of contents that he writes about parents who give birth to children who are deaf, children who are dwarfs, children with Down syndrome, children with autism, children with schizophrenia, and children who are the result of rape, among others.

The structure he introduces in the first chapter is about direction. What parents look forward to is passing on the best in themselves vertically.

What fate may have in store for parents is a child who introduces something entirely unexpected, something that comes at them sideways, something horizontal.

He says it better than I can:

“Having anticipated the onward march of our selfish genes, many of us are unprepared for children who present unfamiliar needs. Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger, and the more alien the stranger, the stronger the whiff of negativity. We depend on the guarantee in our children’s faces that we will not die. Children whose defining quality annihilates that fantasy of immortality are a particular insult, we must love them for themselves, and not for the best of ourselves in them, and that is a great deal harder to do.”

Perhaps Mr. Solomon writes so well about this because he is gay, and so has put his own parents to this test.

I would hasten to add that none of my grandchildren are gay, but that would be politically incorrect. I would then attempt to redeem myself by saying that, should I have a gay grandchild, I would expect that same, odd sense of inclusion that I have already mentioned. And I believe I would welcome it.

Mr. Solomon’s powerful prose makes one thing obvious: Grand-parenting is far, far easier than parenting. Every grandparent knows that, and every parent looks forward to it. The horizontal gifts my children have been given are challenging. They require a level of courage that, as a parent, was not required of me. My children have inspired in me a respect that, in turn, arouses great and quite undeserved parental pride.

Meanwhile, as a doting grandfather, I get to go along for the ride.

And maybe, after all, this loss of vertical integrity is really a matter of branching out, of stumbling toward that distant place where our common humanity lies.

Put People First movement encourages participation in budget

Posted on November 13, 2012 by BethanyMDunbar

To the Editor,

After advocating for meaningful public participation in the state’s budget development process, the People’s Budget Campaign today cautiously welcomed the Administration’s announcement of two public participation hearings via Vermont Interactive Technologies (VIT) sites.
The Campaign, which is part of the Put People First movement spearheaded by the Vermont Workers’ Center, stressed that a public participation process is now a legal requirement, resulting from a new provision in Vermont law. The new law, a key Campaign achievement in the 2012 legislative session, set an October 1 deadline for the Administration to design and implement a public participation process for developing the state’s spending and revenue policies.
Participation from the people is crucial to ensure that people’s needs are put first, rather than neglected in the drive to cut our budget. We demand a meaningful process of participation, which includes a review of unmet needs. The new legal provision requiring public participation in the budget process was passed as a budget bill amendment pushed by the People’s Budget Campaign. Another provision was also added requiring the state budget to address the people’s needs and advance equity and dignity among Vermont residents (Section E.100.1 of Act 162).
The two sessions will be on November 13 from 5:15-7:30 pm and November 19, from 4:45-6:45 pm. The session on the 13th will be at the following VIT Site:

Vermont Interactive Technologies
1001 College Road
Lyndon State College
PO Box 7954
Lyndonville, VT 05851-7954

Now, more than anytime in recent history, Vermonters, like most Americans, are struggling to achieve a decent standard for the quality
of their lives. With high unemployment, lack rights for the employed, difficulties with housing, child care and health care, Vermonters seem
to have nowhere to turn. However, we at the Vermont Workers Center are here to assist all Vermonters through this difficult time.
The Vermont Workers Center is a grass roots organization designed to unite all Vermonters to speak with one voice and one purpose to the powers that be. We are here to tell them what we need and what we feel is in our best interests as citizens of the Green Mountain State. As such, we have already achieved a major victory by pushing the new health care bill to getting passed into law and the new provisions in the budgeting process. However, we cannot effect such changes alone. The struggle to address the other issues that beat down society still need to be addressed. As such, we are asking every Vermonter, regardless of political and religious affiliation, to band together as Vermonters and join us in the fight to put people first. With that said, We would like you to join us at the State Budget Hearings at Vermont Interactive Technologies, So that you too may voice what your concerns about our state meeting your fundamental needs.
In 2011, the launch of the Put People First! Campaign was meant to begin to get our communities organized across issue areas so that together we will be able to fashion structural solutions to the problems in our communities. Many folks in Vermont are struggling to be able to meet their fundamental needs in order to live a life with dignity. It is often a struggle to access the healthcare one needs, find decent housing, receive affordable childcare, find a meaningful job that pays the bills, or be able to organize at the workplace, all the while our communities are working in the face of climate change for a healthy environment and livable planet.
The more and more conditions worsen, Vermont residents are beginning to realize that these are not problems that exist in isolation to one another. The common root causes of these crises are becoming quite clear to our communities. We are beginning to understand that so long as we struggle in isolation from one another we may experience victories but ultimately fall short of our goal. We must build power as a movement to fashion solutions that make our visions a reality.
The Budget Hearings are an opportunity for members of our community can assess the legislature, directly. We will be able to let them know about the issues that affect us and how we feel the budget should meet our needs on these issues. However, more importantly, we will have the opportunity to express to them what we, as citizens of Vermont, need for the betterment of our society. It is a place where we can speak with one voice and let them know directly that we want them to Put People First, above all other concerns.
Now is the time to show them that the Vermont Workers’ Center, and many other social organizations are creating a space for our communities to discuss the issues we struggle to change and work together to create an inclusive vision and make action steps toward the realization of that common vision. Please join us at the Budget Hearings November 13 from 5:15-7:30 pm and November 19, from 4:45-6:45 pm.
Remember, we cannot fight inequities and injustice alone. There is great truth in the phrase “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” We look forward to seeing you there. Thank you.

Marc McCullock
Representative of the Vermont Workers Center
St. Johnsbury, VT

Sims has the right kind of experience

Posted on November 2, 2012 by BethanyMDunbar

I have worked with Katherine Sims for 5 years as she has developed a program that is affecting the northern Vermont community in a very positive way.

Katherine designed, energized and directed our effort to benefit farmers, bring wholesome local food to school food services and to educate kids and their families to the importance of nutrition in a healthy productive life style. This effort is more than a program; it is a business and has to be run as such. Katherine has done this and done it well. She is a successful business woman as well as a community leader. Katherine understands by experience the northern economy and challenges it presents.

Katherine has had lots of experience in what it takes to bring people together to achieve a common benefit.

She has the kind of experience that a representative for Eden, Lowell, Westfield, Jay, and Troy needs to do the job for these communities she will serve. I hope you will give her your vote.

David B. Stackpole
Lowell, VT

When “NO” means “YES”

Posted on November 1, 2012 by BethanyMDunbar

Editors,

While some are critical of our Representatives for their “NO” votes, I personally think we should be thanking them for their “NO” votes.
The current Legislature under the guidance of Governor Peter Shumlin introduced numerous bills that raised taxes, such as H.754 that increased property taxes approximately 10%; other bills added costs to individuals and businesses as in H.468 that mandates increasing percentages of renewable electricity over the next two decades. Several bills associated with Green Mountain Health Care attempting to bring the cost down; H.436, H.202, H.558 and H.559. And H.718 that would compel the Public Service Board to refund to ratepayers their money as originally promised. And H.41 that required mandatory work breaks. All of these bills originated with the Administration except H.41, and not with the House or with Speaker Shap Smith.
We should be thankful for Orleans County Representatives Marcotte, Kilmartin, Lewis, Batchelor, Strong and Higley for voting NO to increase your taxes, NO to increasing your cost of living or cost of doing business, NO to Green Mountain Health Care, until we know the cost, NO to bigger State Government and NO to increasing your electric rates. Your Representatives are looking out for you and we definitely want them back in Montpelier. Representative Young voted YES on all the above.

Chet Greenwood
Derby