For opinion pieces on any topic.
You go to live.house.gov and then tap the link to watch the Clerk’s Youtube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/USHouseClerk/live
It has been painful to watch, very boring, repetitive arguments, and each side calls the other side a bunch of liars.
Today, July 1, 2025, the United States Senate voted 50 Yes to 50 No to pass President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Act, so Vice President J.D. Vance was required to vote to break the tie, and so the Republicans won.
Now, because the version of the Big Beautiful Bill Act in the United States Senate Passed with Amendments, making it different than the previous Bill the U.S. House in the United States Congress passed, now it has to go back to the Congressmen and Congresswomen in the U.S. House to decide if they agree with the Amendments the U.S. Senate made, or they can re-write the Bill again.
The United States Senators are debating the
“One Big Beautiful Bill”
now on Sunday June 29, 2025,
119th CONGRESS
1st Session H. RES. _____ Impeaching Donald J. Trump,
President of the United States,
for high crimes and misdemeanors.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES June 24, 2025
Mr. AL GREEN of Texas
submitted the following resolution;
(1) Recall to active service.
In the event that President Trump should call a national emergency because Trump helps Israel bomb Iran and Iran decides to try to bomb U.S. Military bases over there somewhere, then people are concerned about retired U.S. Military people being re-called to service. This is what people are talking about, from the grocery delivery guy to the handyman repair guy. Even a lady at the grocery store knows this fear.
Isaac Evans-Frantz made some good points about the parking system and downtown business at Tuesday’s Selectboard meeting. His points deserve underlining and emphasis because he latched on to some logical flaws of the current parking system, and hinted heavily that it might be really harming downtown business.
…
Isaac began by asking why, if there was a deficit in the parking fund, would the board consider offering any free parking at all during holidays.
More than 2500 turned out to protest today in Brattleboro. The number was according to a speaker at the stage at the common, and was probably an undercount, as people were still arriving. Indeed, Brattleboro was filled with people today. Cars filled side streets and church parking lots. Church bells were ringing out. There were people marching, chanting, singing, playing music and holding their signs and flags up as they marched.
As did the authors of the Declaration of Independence, we find ourself in rare times. For the first time in our history, democracy itself is under assault by people bent on its destruction and along with it, the democratic values that guarantee our freedom. On Saturday, June 14, the two sides in the great battle between democracy and fascism face off in the first show of force since the Trump dictatorship began, officially, five months ago.
Date: June 10, 2025 Watching ICE immigration protests on YouTube at https://youtube.com/watch?v=G2mPQ4qShoM hosted by Steve Lookner who may be a regular guy sitting in his garage in Massachusetts and arranging for people he knows to send him “Live” protest footage. There are big protests in Los Angeles, New York City, and maybe Charlotte, North Carolina, etc.
Is Elon Musk committing federal criminal extortion by threatening to deny Astronauts return trips on space ships?
Have you ever noticed when you behave like a doormat, you get treated like one, have you ever had a friend or a family member who acts like a doormat and it makes you livid because you can see the footsteps coming? Walking all over them?
I think I want to reinstate the council of Censors. What is the council of censors, you may well ask? The council on censors is, or was, and will be again, an independent body elected by the people to report back to the people on the laws being passed and entertained in the statehouse. The Council of Censors would alert, and if I can get it going again, will once again alert the people of legislation that trespasses on the Constitutions of the state and the US.
Dear Neighbors,
This week Brattletboro passed a budget for the 12 months starting July 1. You can hear my thoughts (3-minute clip) on the budget here: https://www.youtube.com/live/YduOTj9stGs?feature=shared&t=1119
I supported the budget, and it passed Representative Town Meeting with flying colors (110-4, with about a dozen people abstaining). It represents compromise. We should look to the budgeting process for the following year, and time between now and then, to strengthen our Town’s financial situation, with an eye out for generations to come.
This is a reply to The Shalom Alliance’s piece printed two weeks ago in The Commons (https://www.commonsnews.org/issue/814/814000_shalom-alliance) and last week in The Reformer:
The imps infesting the Ministry of Truth giggled with glee as they read The Shalom Alliance’s clarion call for censorship during the barbaric starvation of Arab babies nine months old barely weighing two pounds more. The laughably obnoxious notion of the ADL as arbiter of speech is despicably anti-American, akin to last week’s House panel on campus antisemitism, McCarthy’s HUAC reincarnate demanding young souls decrying genocide be vilified as the new commies deserving the harshest of penalties personal and professional.
“When you throw 13 million people off health insurance, when you raise co-payments for poor people, it is a death sentence,” says Senator Bernie Sanders on the Republican plan to cut Medicaid. “Thousands and thousands of low-income and working people will die because they simply will not be able to get into a doctor’s office when they need it.” May 14, 2025
The Republicans and the Democrats don’t want you to know that there could be plenty of money for Medicaid and Medicare if the United States Congress votes to repeal and get rid of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 which changed U.S. Patent law.
After debate on H.R. 2243, the House will begin debate on H.Res. 352.
After debate on H.Res. 352, the House is expected to recess.
At approximately 5:00 p.m., the House will take a second series of votes on the Motion to Table H.Res. 353 – Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors, passage of H.R. 2243, and adoption of H.Res. 353 – under suspension of the Rules.
With Pakistan and India both having nuclear weapons, we need to know the truth about nuclear capable F-35 strike fighter jets.
Bernie Sanders did not tell the truth about the F-35 strike fighter jets capability in a televised political candidate years ago. Cris Ericson was running against him and was in the televised debate. Bernie Sanders said that the F-35 strike fighter jets have no nuclear components. Cris Ericson said that he was committing fraud to get votes because the F-35 strike fighter jets are dual capable to carry nuclear bombs.
District 9 residents in Brattleboro are cordially invited to attend a forum to express their opinions about the revised budget prepared for a special Representative Town Meeting (RTM); the new budget is intended to replace an earlier version that was voted down by RTM and will, if approved, guide spending in the next fiscal year which begins 1 July.
The forum will be held in the Community Room (third floor) of the Brooks Memorial Library at 7 pm on Wednesday 14 May. RTM members from District 9 are encouraged to attend to hear their constituents’ opinions.
In 2019 for a brief moment in time there were 3 pink seasaws across the Mexican border wall for kids to play on with each other, across the international divide.
*A Letter from the Heart to Mike Mrowicki, Rev. Sparrow, and the Interfaith Community*
An interfaith initiative titled “White Christian Nationalism” recently circulated in Vermont, culminating in a gathering at the Putney Meeting House, led by Representative Mike Mrowicki and Reverend Sparrow. Everyone was friendly, and I believe well-intentioned. But the initiative, sadly, fell into the same trap we’ve seen repeated again and again: othering. Not just in whispers, but woven into the framing itself — casting Christian conservatives as the threat, and “tolerant liberals” as the solution.
Elected politicians, on all the levels, and the people who support government on a daily basis often have nothing in common. There are no requirements to run for office except for age in some instances. It is one of the great elements of democracy and, for better or worse, we end up with people in power who may have no understanding of how government works. If they have enough money they can win office and once they are in it is hard to get rid of them, That is also what democracy is about.
As we lose our democracy on a national level this disconnect could not be clearer. Trump and Musk have no interest in learning what all the people do who actually do the work of our government. If they even had a shred of interest in trying to understand how government agencies work they might have somehow found a little bit of common sense and talked to all these people and asked them how they might be more efficient.
