Op/Ed

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the House,
Our Legislators were stirring and beginning to grouse.
Jonathan Gruber had hung them by the media without care,
Terminating single payer before it goes anywhere.

Governor Shumlin was nestled all snug in his bed,
While visions of losing in 2016 danced in his head.
With Mama in her kerchief, and I in my cap,
Were frying our brains on medical Mary Jane crap.

When out on the porch there arose such a clatter,
It must be our state representatives spouting their ideological blather.
Away from the door I flew like a flash,
Avoiding their Montpelier tax and spend dash.

Rules of Thumb are those little unofficial, unscientific statements we hold to be somewhat true in a given circumstance. I use them often. A few small examples of things I’ve heard that sort of hold up:

– stay 4 seconds behind the car in front of you (or 1 car length for very 10 mph)
– an ounce of liquid is about what you pour in a count of one
– to figure out how long you’ll wait in a bank teller line, multiply the number of people ahead of you by 5 minutes, then divide by the number of open windows.

I have one of my own invention: The Tabloid Rule of Truth

The Tabloid Rule of Truth is that if a celebrity is on the cover of a tabloid for some reason, the truth of the story can be determined by how many tabloids have the same story on the cover.

Hooray! The iBrattleboro Advent Calendar is back.  It’s become a yearly tradition.

Thank You!

For those unfamiliar with Hedges, he has spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

This essay hit me right between the eyes:

  By Chris Hedges   November 10, 2014   

I didn’t vote this year.  For the first time in well over a decade, I was too annoyed to participate.  Over the last six years, I’ve watched as the Democrats held power but proved unwilling or unable to wield it effectively.  To make matters worse, those of us who fall left of center have been effectively stifled.  Mainstream Democrats saw to that.  So while many on the left fret about the Republicans and their Tea Party antagonists, I would argue that it was this stifling of discussion within the Democratic party that led to the debacle of the 2014 midterms. The Democrats are a party that is silently divided.

This self-indulgent blind, deaf and dumb US electorate is dangerous for the genocide and eventual WW III it mostly unconsciously continues to vote for.

Americans voting on Tuesday are dangerous because the grand majority of them will be voting unconsciously for continuing genocidal wars, which, as Martin Luther King cried out one year to the day before he received a bullet to his head), “are meant to maintain unjust predatory investments on three continents.” America’s interests abroad’ is what this overwhelming majority of those voting will understand as protecting American freedom at home.

I can’t believe my eyes!  They have done it again!  In 2010 it was clear as a bell, they had an “unoffical” vote count, and then on the “official” vote count that followed, they cut my votes for Governor and for U.S. Senate right in half.

This time, The results  of total votes at 96.365 counted were for me, Cris Ericson for U.S. Congress 3,605 votes at 1.89%.  Today at 100% of the votes counted, my votes have been reduced to 2,750 at 1.44% coming in 3rd out of 6 candidates.

Frisky Fringe Candidate Seeks Fundraiser For 2016
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Campaign Fundraiser Need Now for 2016 Race!

This is like moving Christmas sales up before Thanksgiving. Yes, the candidate who came in last place for Governor of Vermont, and 3rd place for Representative to Congress, wants to lure some  kind folk to explore the money trail, and bring home the wagon train full of cash to promote her 2016 run.

How do you raise campaign funds?  If you are an  attorney or lawyer, this is what you need to learn before contacting the candidate. Remember, they didn’t teach you everything in law school.

Progressives Make Gains Respectable Showing For Liberty Union Socialists;
Radical-Capitalist Libertarians Fall Flat, By David Van Deusen

Thus far, one of the more interesting aspects of the 2014 Vermont election was the relative strength of the Progressive Party & and the respectable showings of the Vermont Liberty Union Party. The Democratic Party, in a year that saw record low turnout (43.7%), had a net loss of eleven in the VT House, and two in the VT Senate (and a surprisingly close contest for Governor). Even so, and even with voting patterns seemingly favoring the right, the Democrats retained a commanding lead in both the VT House and VT Senate. And while the Republicans made some gains (small in the big political scheme of things) the further left also did better than traditional election logic would seem to allow for.

At around midnight we have, for Representative to Congress, at 11:54 PM
Precints Reporting 80.36%

(1) Peter Welch 113,392
(2) Mark Donka 55,035
(3) Cris Ericson 3,368
(4) Jerry Trudell 3,309
(5) Matthew Andrews 2,761
(6) Randall Meyer 1,523

VERMONT – NEA THE UNION OF VERMONT EDUCATORS SHOWS THEIR TRUE COLORS,  A PURE EXAMPLE, ON THEIR PART, OF CYBER BULLYING, BY GUESS WHO? THE VERMONT – NEA !

HOW SHOULD SCHOOLS ADDRESS CYBER BULLYING? BY QUITING THE VERMONT – NEA

The Vermont – NEA, the union of Vermont educators, has displayed a gross and horrendous act of cyber bullying and dis-information by telling their taxpayer paid teachers and other educators who to vote for, and who NOT to vote for!

CHAMP, the LAKE CAMPLAIN MONSTER a sad political tale by Cris Ericson

Lake Champlain waters flow north, so if a natural gas pipeline, carrying entirely un-natural fracked gas, is built
 underneath Lake Champlain near Ticonderoga, then while they are building it there will be a great deal of upheaval of the lake water and underlying soil, a huge muddy mess, and the mud and debris will flow north to Burlington.

The majority of the candidates for Representative to Congress are opposed to a natural gas pipeline running underneath Lake Champlain in Vermont.   Matthew Andrews, Liberty Union Party candidate, announced good news of an upcoming Protest, and the majority of candidates clapped their hands in applause.

“Pirate Captain Cris Ericson” announced that because the U.S. Supreme Court wrote an Opinion declaring that Corporations are “persons” and because the U.S. Congress did not Impeach them, which the U.S. Congress had the legal right to do, then, that proved the U.S. Congress is in favor of Corporations being “persons” and she – Pirate Captain Cris Ericson, was going to “take back” America away from the control of Corporations and  give it back to We, the People.  She wore a Pirate hat to emphasize her point.

New POLL statistics for  candidates for  U.S. Representative to Congress  Oct. 22, 2014. Please keep in mind that the Republican and Democrat candidate have been invited to many debates which the other candidates were wrongfully excluded from. This is how corporations have taken control of America, because Corporations control newspapers, radio stations and television stations, and they only invite candidates who will do their bidding in Washington, D.C. to debates. It’s up to you to chose betewen government of, by and for the  Corporate “Person”, or government of, by and for we the people.

If Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and, indeed, the rest of this Congress had put more effort into single-payer health care as they did in the Affordable Care Act, our growing segment of the increasingly older population, and the future of health and medical science and services for us all would have been better served.In its stead, we watched helplessly as they plowed $12.5 billion dollars into “Obamacare” which is nothing less than a Cheshire-grinning wide mouthed gift of massive proportions to the insurance industries. And now, he wants to push through another $30 billion into expanding it yet more.

Congratulations to Pete Diamondstone, Liberty Union Party, Polling at 17%.  That’s great, Pete!  Keep going at it!

 here

Monday October 20, 2014 02:03 PM
US-Gov-All,400
The Associated Press

Letter to the Editor,

It is with deep sadness that after almost thirty years of dedicated service to the children of Brattleboro, I have made the decision to resign as a fourth grade teacher at Academy School.

I want to thank the approximately six hundred brilliant, insightful and talented students I have been privileged to work with while they learned, questioned, problem solved and continued their growth towards becoming empathetic and socially responsible members in their community.

I am in awe of the hundreds of devoted and nurturing parents I have had the privilege to work with as they wrestled with the educational, social and personal issues that parents raising children today face.

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…and “discovered” America.

The history books I studied in school portrayed a great man.

Those who knew him told a different story.

Protests are going on right now in Hong Kong because China wants to control which candidates will be on the election ballot in Hong Kong. The U.S.A.  owes a lot of “debt” to China, and Chinese firms own a lot of property in the U.S.A.  So, is their a correlation, is China interferring with elections in the U.S.A. by  Chinese owned multi-national  corporate sponsors giving donations, possibly under the guise of their corporate subsidiaries, to “non-profits” like Vermont Public Radio which refuse to allow all candidates to participate together in general election debates?

…didn’t even take as long to build as the Brattleboro Skate Park, look it up.

If everyone donated one dollar for every discussion about the Brattleboro Skate Park, those seeking a skate park would have had enough money to build 73,242 skate parks by now. The time for superfluous discussion is over. The discussion topic of the skate park has been beaten to death. I sincerely think it has been discussed more than Vermont Yankee, the Middle East, and the Champlain Monster combined. It has gotten to the point of gross absurdity. It has become an embarrassment to our community’s supposedly progressive reputation. It is now time to get behind the Memorial Park Skate Park site and donate money.