Op/Ed

Richard Evers is a write-in candidate for a District 3 Town Meeting Member seat.  I have been well acquainted with Richard for twenty years and have always known him to be interested in and aware of town issues.  He is thoughtful and uses good judgement.  I recommend writing in his name for a District 3 Town Meeting Member seat.

Thank you.

Because the media are not perfect, there are three misconceptions that persist about the amendments and I would like to clear them up in these last days before the election.

First, the charter clearly shows how the representative town meeting (RTM) restricted the rights to call for votes.  Anyone can check this our on the town web site:  See brattleboro.org, click “Charter, ordinances” > “charter”. 

The RTM did uselessly lower a signature requirement but at the same time authorized
themselves to vote first and block the petitioned article from the ballot.  Their revision (charter article III 2 B)
says: 

3rd White House Error message at “We the People” petition section of President Obama’s official government White House website.  This has occurred at 1091 signatures on the Make Marijuana Legal petition, and it previously occurred at 1064 signatures on the Make Marijuana Legal petition, and before that it occurred when the petition had not reached the first 150 requirement. 

Brattleboro residents can vote on March 3 ( or by early voting now at the Town Clerk’s Office) about whether we should add a 1% optional sales tax here in Brattleboro.

This is a difficult issue because many fear it will hurt our downtown businesses and Brattleboro residents will also pay this extra 1% tax.( It won’t just be people who live out – of -town or out -of -state. ) On the other hand, it has been estimated that it could raise around $600,000 in extra revenue for the town.

I haven’t heard much public comment about this issue and I ‘d be interested to know what I-Brattleboro readers think.

At the top of the column it says “An error has” and then it states “Sorry there is a technical problem and this petition cannot be signed right now.  Please try again n a few minutes.   If you receive this error repeatedly, you may contact We The People to report the problem.  

Well, this is the 2nd time the “MAKE MARIJUANA LEGAL!” petition at the White House – We The People section of the official Presidential website, has occurred.  This really slows down collecting petition signatures!   Funny, I don’t see this “Error” message on other petitions.

I just received an email from the selectboard about town meeting.

“Town Meeting Representatives:  —  As you may know, the March 3 ballot contains three proposed Charter amendments.  Attached for your information is the “Proposed Brattleboro Charter Amendment Information Sheet” that was prepared and endorsed by the Selectboard.”

Well, it was not “Information”, it was “Propaganda”. It was telling us to vote the way the Selectboard wanted us to.

I guess they have a right to do that, but we have an equal right to ignore it.

For the record, here are the 3 proposed amendments:

I hope all of you will turn out for the sole meeting the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will hold for public feedback on the proposed Post Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report (PSDAR) Entergy hastily submitted to the NRC in December 2014. NRC meeting is February 19, 6 to 9 pm. Address and NRC notice is here: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2015/15-004.i.pdf

PRESUMED CONSENT OF ORGAN DONATION. OH, REALLY? WHAT A CREEPY WAY FOR THE STATE OF Vermont TO MAKE MONEY because “presumed consent” is NOT “informed consent”!

This Act shall take effect on January 2, 2016. Bill as introduced, H. 57 It is hereby enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont: Sec. 1. 18 V.S.A. chapter 110A is added to read: CHAPTER 110A. ANATOMICAL GIFTS § 5232. PRESUMED CONSENT All Vermont residents 18 years of age or older shall be presumed to consent to making an anatomical gift of some or all of their organs, eyes, tissues, or a combination thereof upon their death for the purpose of transplantation, therapy, research, or education.

DESCRIPTION:
Meaningful justice, would be Europeans recognizing their legal responsibility to compensate the survivors of Muslim and non-Muslim millions slaughtered, maimed, impoverished, enslaved and exploited on three continents over the centuries of Europe’s rise via the plunder of three continents, including Muslim and other cultures and civilizations older, more advanced and wealthier than those of Europeans at that time. Patience!

By Curtiss Reed, Jr., Executive Director, Vermont Partnership for Fairness & Diversity

Brattleboro. We believe Robert Appel’s Commentary “Racial bias plagues Vermont, too” (Rutland Herald & Times Argus, December 28, 2014) does a disservice to the Vermont State Police by casting the agency in the very narrow, negative lens of deficient data analysis. More so than any other state agency, Vermont State Police (VSP) has demonstrated conspicuously courageous leadership in the areas of bias reduction and cultural competency. This commentary offers a brief retrospective on how VSP leadership has been shaping a more responsive, culturally competent agency.

And you thought that ended in 1970?

JANUARY 2015 FEDERAL COURT NEWS: The Marshall Islands Republic sues  to try to stop the U.S. Government from continuing nuclear proliferation in violation of the  1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

President Barack Obama (Democrat) claims to be opposed to nuclear proliferation while in reality, he supports it 100% as Commander in Chief of the United States Military.   F-35 strike fighter jets are designed to be dual capable to carry nuclear weapons.

Chris and Lise,

For quite awhile I’ve been meaning to tell you both how much I enjoy the ” This Day in History” column. It’s fascinating to see that while many, many changes have occurred -both historically and in the make up of the town; It’s also quite interesting (and amusing) to see that some dissatisfactions remain the same: For instance:

“1892: Muttered curses, not low, but deep, are daily heard in reference to Brattleboro’s railway service”

Historical ID of now US Secretary of State John Kerry, who today quite rightly condemned the terror attack on the offices of a Paris newspaper plus a history of French colonial and neocolonial terror.

What first comes to mind is US Secretary of State John Kerry’s prestige for his heroic Swift Boat killing of a Vietnamese in his own beloved country during the holocaust the US committed in Vietnam.  A wounded Vietnamese freedom fighter, who had been aiming a rocket launcher at the Swift Boat Kerry commanded, was shot by Kerry as he was running away. Kerry by daringly running his boat right at the danger was decorated for having saved the boat and its crew. [“KERRY leaped ashore, pursued the man behind a hootch and killed him”  from official Silver Star Citation “For the President, E.R. Zumwalt, Vice Admiral, Commander of US Forces in Vietnam”]

After seeing the Edward Snowden movie Citizen Four at the Latchis recently, I was left with an impression that was not what I had expected. I had expected to be buried in acronyms – I was. I expected moments of understated drama – they were there. But what I didn’t expect was this lingering feeling of claustrophobia which comes of spending two hours watching a man whose physical existence is now confined, 24 hours a day, to a single beige hotel room which could have been anywhere but happened to be in Hong Kong. What struck me more disturbingly was that you don’t have to be an NSA whistle-blower to feel a hint of that claustrophobia in your own life. Many of us, I suspect, feel confined to a smaller space these days, especially in the time since Snowden’s revelations.

Open Letter To Vermonter Voters,

I have complained here at ibrattleboro.com during the fall of 2014 that my vote count was lowered from the “unofficial” vote count to the “official” vote count four days later.   This never happens to major party candidates.  It happened to me in 2010, and it happened to me in 2014.  I want some positive, constructive changes made!  Because this never happens to major party candidates, I am now complaining that I believe the Constitution of the State of Vermont is being violated.

The purpose of writing this is to express my grievance over Governor Shumlin’s recent dismissal of Act 48, the Vermont Law, passed in 2011 by Mr. Shumlin himself –who rode into office on the wave of public support for this law in the first place! This law states that all residents of Vermont have the right to receive the best, high quality and publicly financed medical care– in other words, Universal, or Single-Payer Health Care. He has now abandoned us, having already missed several deadlines for putting various parts of it into affect so that it would be fully implemented by 2017. In his own words, on Dec 17, 2014, Governor Shumlin claimed that “…Now is not the time…”

Regarding Killing the Prince of Peace in Afghanistan on his birthday, no sense thinking up some new observations, last year’s and those of previous years should suffice.

Below the list of articles, readers are invited to imagine appropriate completions of New Year’s resolutions for a few of problems Americans will face in 2015.

Well it’s official. At approximately 11:00 am today VY powered down for the last time. There may finally be peace in the area as the protesters, most from well outside the evacuation zone I might add, have officially become unemployed. They can move on to another area and chain themselves to the perimeter fence of another nuclear facility. If they don’t mind the cold and would like to enjoy the benefits of no sales tax maybe they should consider Seabrook N.H. 

On December 26, 2004, shortly after 0.58 UTC, scientists of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center had been made aware that a deadly tidal wave could be building up in the Indian Ocean from an earthquake of 8.1 magnitude, yet did not warn any of the many nations that might be about to be hit.

Happy New Year! I would like to share this LETTER TO THE EDITOR I wrote to THE VERMONT JOURNAL which they Pubished Dec. 18, 2014

My favorite fantasy is to imagine men in Vermont in the 1770’s riding their horses across the hills and mountain trails, splashing naked in the hollowed gorges and streams, and fighting for their freedom.