Op/Ed

The Op/Ed opinion section

Cannabis “Reeferendum”

by SK-B | Op/Ed

Article II – “Shall the Town [of Brattleboro] permit the operation of licensed cannabis retailers subject to such municipal ordinance and regulation as the Selectboard may lawfully adopt and implement?”

* * *
It will now be legal to purchase spinach in state-approved shops, so long as it is not too fresh. Our political leaders hope that legalizing this popular vegetable with government-regulated distribution through specially-favored retailers, will squeeze out illegal growers and criminal spinach-pushers.

Seriously folks: 
I am having a hard time deciding how to vote. If I vote “no,” my vote will increase the anti-pot tally and be seen as opposition to legal marijuana. If I vote, “yes,” I will be voting for state-sponsored restraint of trade, meant to harm those of our friends who for decades took risks practicing illegal horticulture and free-enterprise, keeping us supplied.

Americans Murdering People & Dear Children In the Middle East and Africa Hasn’t Mattered – Not Yet!

by jay janson | Op/Ed

The issue of deadly racism in the USA has been brought to the attention of all Americans by the persistent efforts of impassioned activists, especially by carrying placards with photographs of African-American victims of deadly police actions. Article suggests how the greater toll of darker skinned people murdered by Americans overseas could become a burning issue of concern for American activists fighting racism at home.

King, “Americans Betrayed Their Country In Vietnam!” Now in Yemen Syria Libya Somalia Iraq Afghanistan

by jay janson | Op/Ed

During his 1967 New York sermon, which made bold headlines in newspapers across the world, Martin Luther King cried out”A time comes when silence is betrayal.” And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.” What would Rev. King say today about Americans bringing massive death and destruction to the innocent citizens and their children in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan?

Brattleboro Representative Town Meeting – Fix It or Toss It?

by cgrotke | Op/Ed

As I continue to ponder Representative Town Meeting system used by Brattleboro, I find myself coming to the same conclusion: it either needs to be reformed, or it needs to go.

The biggest problem is representation. While voters can elect “representatives” to participate in Representative Town Meeting, there is almost no representation going on. Unlike selectboard candidates, reps rarely state to voters what they stand for. Reps rarely hold district meetings to discuss issues. Voting records of reps aren’t tallied or made public. And almost all the information reps take to Representative Town Meeting is given to them by town officials, not constituents.

Voters, despite picking names on district ballots, often don’t know who represents them, how to reach them, or how those reps have voted. Writing in names of people better known to a voter has been eliminated, unless that person is deemed “official” through registering as a candidate. Sometimes reps get slots through the caucus process, under the radar of most district voters.

There is almost no accountability in this system.

“It Was a Stupid War Anyone Who Went Was a Sucker” A US President Reportedly Enlightened Americans

by jay janson | Op/Ed

DESCRIPTION: Apparently, the highest official of the US government owned by wealthy investors in war inadvertently let himself be overheard making an off-hand truthful remark that contradicts what the CIA overseen criminal media tells the world in excusing America’s genocidal crimes against humanity in Vietnam. Important is how criminal media seeks to ridicule someone saying something truthful about the the war it lied about and promoted

Making Sense of 2020

by Lise | Op/Ed, Opinion

As 2020 coasts to a close, it feels unusually difficult to write a year-end essay that encapsulates all the things that happened to us this year. Even a personal essay would be too long to write, let alone read. But this sort of thing hasn’t stopped me before, so what follows are the highlights, by which I mean most memorable and important happenings of 2020 from my own perspective. Even this isn’t easy because processing experience takes time and a lot of this stuff just happened or is still going on. But here we go: Pause, rewind, and….

Life With Biden

by RDavis | Op/Ed

The four year American nightmare will be over soon. The mainstream media have already moved on and are giving Biden the attention of a sitting president. They really have no choice because Trump is still acting like a three year old in a sandbox who had his toy truck taken from him by a stronger kid.

The mainstream media will be able to move away from being the PR tool of a would-be dictator-pathological liar to reporting on the administration of a new president who has respect for others and who does not have an ego that is as needy as the plant Audrey in The Little Shop of Horrors movie that constantly says, “Feed me.”

The Governor’s Madness, Uh, I Mean Mandates!

by CrisEricson2016 | Op/Ed

Vermonters are very quietly passing around on the internet various versions of how they might file a lawsuit against Governor Phil Scott for exceeding his authority with his orders and mandates, making them lose jobs, businesses, income, and warm association with family and friends.

There are various proposed legal Briefs coming to a federal court in Vermont soon:

Anniversary UN Partition Plan Torching of Palestine – Albert Einstein Running Commentary

by jay janson | Op/Ed

An Archetypical Anglo-American Colonial Crime Against Humanity!

In order to militarily penetrate the oil rich Middle East, a courageous and noble socialist Zionism and despised Holocaust survivors, denied refugee status, were used by an Anglo-American colonial business elite that was anti-Semitic in outlook, coldly indifferent and even complicit, during the Holocaust its investments in rearming Germany made possible.

Do Vermonters Also Have A Right To Investigate “Dominion Voting Systems”?

by CrisEricson2016 | Op/Ed

I have been a perennial losing political candidate in Vermont for many years. One year I really thought I saw election fraud. I was watching the votes coming in, and thousands of votes for me were suddenly cut in half. I wrote a blog post about it at the time which may still be wandering the internet somewhere.

I began to think that Vermont was the testing ground for vote fraud. Vermont has a very small population and if you are a losing candidate, and you are not within a certain tiny percent of the winner, then you have no grounds, no legal cause of action to complain, if for example, you came in 4th and should
have come in 3rd.

To The Community Safety Review Committee- An Apology From Me

by Brandie Starr | Op/Ed

Today I am writing to offer an apology to The Community Safety Review Committee, and all who have been involved in their work at any level.

I would like to do so by speaking about the first Municipal Diversity and Inclusion class I participated in early on in my time on the board. Within about the first five minutes of the class, we were told by the instructor, that we were about to learn that “being fair” doesn’t mean “treating the same” and that “equal” does not mean “equitable. The rest of the session discussed the importance of raising up voices who have less power within our systems and structures to level the playing field.

Unfortunately, we forgot that training when setting the date for the topic of Police Policies and Procedures. We missed an opportunity to change the game.

Brattleboro Selectboard Meetings Have Become Too Long

by cgrotke | Op/Ed

Brattleboro Selectboard meetings have become very long. Too long, really.

It isn’t the number of items on the agenda. Even a short agenda can lead to a very long meeting.

Holding the meetings online might be part of the problem. 

First, it adds time to each meeting to explain how to participate. It adds time to invite people to speak and wait for them to work out technical issues. Almost every virtual meeting has delays due to the meeting being virtual. Sometimes they are short delays, but they add up.

Dealing with High Rental Costs in Brattleboro

by Lise | Op/Ed, Opinion

I’ve been following the rental debate involving the Brattleboro Selectboard and the Brattleboro Tenants Union, and finding aspects of it perplexing. Brattleboro is gentrifying — it’s a hip little town in an attractive part of the country and the trend in rents has been up in recent years. That won’t get better now that people with more money than we have are moving here to get away from Covid. The solution to the problem of rising rents for lower income people has typically been to move away to someplace more affordable. It seems weird to me that you would be expected to get a loan, subsidy, or grant to rent in Brattleboro. If the rents are too high, then many moderate income people won’t be able to live here.  Simple as that.

Criminally Responsible Americans Vote for Commander of Their Worldwide Genocidal Killing Machine

by jay janson | Op/Ed

Good people of the 3rd World should not let themselves be taken in by worldwide satellite beamed CIA-fed media prattling on continuously about American democracy during ongoing presidential elections. Sadly, Americans are duped into participating in elections that back crimes against humanity ordered by the ruling genocidal Wall St. plutocracy which militarily and financially plunders 3rd World humanity.

We Need A New COVID World View

by RDavis | Op/Ed

One of the consequences of this lingering pandemic is a lack of perspective by too many people. Forget about the 30 percent of American sycophants of Trump because they never had a healthy perspective to lose.

What I am talking about is the ability of caring human beings to forget about how they fit into the overall scheme of things when it comes to daily life. As we temporarily lose some of the freedoms we once enjoyed we tend to forget that most of us really do not have it that bad compared to many other people in this country and around the world.

Fraudulent Election?

by tomaidh | Op/Ed

It’s less than 3 weeks to Election Day, and polls indicate that Biden is leading by double digits.

Trump hates to lose, and he is acutely aware of these polls.

In these days before the election, we hear allegations that Trump will attempt to retain power through voter suppression. There is a strategy to suppress voter turnout by purging voters – especially inner-city voters – and to suppress mail-in voting.

From COVID-19 To Picket Lines – One Year of Building Progressive Union Power Within The Vermont AFL-CIO

by David Van Deusen | Op/Ed

We have a long way to go before we can claim the transformative victories for Organized Labor and the working class that our dreams, desires, and needs demand. And we know that with the continuing pandemic and the economic crisis we will have many challenges before us. Even so, over the last 365 days we have made tremendous progress in making the Vermont AFL-CIO a more powerful labor organization and the most progressive State Labor Council in the North America. We have done this by diligently advancing the goals and principles articulated in our Ten Point Program For Union Power [https://vt.aflcio.org/news/vermont-afl-cio-ten-point-program]. Since your new leadership came to power in September 2019 [and again through a special election in 8/20] we have taken the following actions:

COVID-19: From the start of the pandemic we aggressively advocated for immediate actions at the State level to mitigate the worst potential consequences of the virus and the subsequent shutdown. As part of this effort we, working with allies, saw through expanded access to unemployment insurance, free childcare for essential workers, free food provided to working families, a moratorium on evictions, and crisis pay being provided to many Vermonters including the 8000 home healthcare workers organized into AFSCME Local 4802. We also stood with our healthcare workers from AFT and OPEIU when they demanded adequate PPE and safe working conditions.