2vr 2014 issue

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IN THIS ISSUE //HYPER-LOCAL BREWSBURLINGTON’S UNDERWORLDVERMONT TRADITIONSPSYCHEDELICATESSENBATTLE OVER BANKING

2014 ISSUE

Cover Story: #XLDISSENT – AN INTERVIEW WITH UVM STUDENT ACTIVIST ALEXANDRA SMILEYMore than one thousand students and young people marched from Georgetown University to the White House for a massive youth sit-in against the Keystone XL pipeline on March 2.

Interview conducted by Rob Williams

Q. #XLDissent - what’s it all about?

A. XL Dissent was an opportunity for the people to express how we absolutely detest the development of the Keystone Pipeline. As has been said, in DC the governing forces are the people or the money... oil industry’s got the money so this is us working our leverage points. This direct action was organized by students and aimed towards students (as well as any other interested/active members of society). It was sort of like a “part 2” to the action that took place last year called Forward on Climate Change, but this was a bit different as it had an emphasis on the younger populations. After all, this is our future and we repre-sent a large portion of those people that put Obama in office. We gathered at Georgetown (where Obama had previously spoken out against the further destruction of our planet) and marched to the White House where we demanded to be heard and acknowledged. It’s simple, we don’t want the pipeline.

Q. As a UVM student, how did you come to involv-ing yourself in #XLDissent?

A. I consider myself to be a recent addition to this active movement against the pipeline. I have been working on a campaign in VT against the PoMo pipe-line through VPIRG. That involvement was initiated through my work and serious interest in Brian Tokar’s class last year: Radical Environmentalism (super great course!). I then worked with VPirg and progres-sively found myself getting more and more involved. This semester I am enrolled in Brian Tokar’s other phenomenal course: Climate Justice and Advocacy. In his class one day, we had a guest speaker from 350vt.org who first told us about the XL Dissent action. Actually, it still hadn’t even been formally named when she made her announcement. The whole thing came together really fast. Her name was Aly Johnston-Kurts and she mentioned they needed a point person to organize for UVM. The moment she mentioned the action I knew I was going- so I figured why not orga-nize. I am a senior and I need to figure out what I want

to do with my life after college (ahh!!) so i figured I’d jump in headfirst and give this stuff a go. Loved it.

Q. Describe the #XLDissent scene in DC for our readers.

A. Oh man! Words will never do the scene justice. This scene is the same that caused me to cry (as I am embarrassingly pictured doing on a number of media outlets including the Washington Post print page 3) but ok. So it starts at Georgetown University. 1200 people, mostly of the college student demographic, gather and take form into a snake of a mob. We worm our way through the downtown shopping district, and continue on to Obama’s front yard. The rally was led by students carrying a banner that said “Obama stop the pipeline or the people will” and another saying “we did not vote KXL.” many people in the rally had also brought signs of their own that said all sorts of things “power to the people” “no kxl” “save ogalla” “decline the pipeline” etc. there were also a wide array of chants being yelled. It was great. Many of my friends who came out (not ENVS studies, don’t care too much, decided to come to the rally on a whim) ended up leading chants! You just move somewhere in the

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crowd, start up a chant, people will follow. There was also sometimes small bands with horns and drums scattered throughout the rally, which is fun to groove along to. It really was quite the experience; a friend described it as a music festival without the hangover.

Anyways, the marching goes on and we saw people along the sidewalks get interested. There were also many people running around who have cameras, video, writing articles, etc. lots of commotion, but all unified walking in one direction. When we got to the White House, we all gathered in a circle. Chants and songs continued for a short while. At one point, a young man with a guitar took the lead in playing “This Land Is Your Land” with the whole crowd singing along. Then the meat of the event: we heard from an array of speakers. A woman from and indigenous tribe being affected by the pipeline, some kids (10 and 13 I think) who are active members in fighting the pipeline and big oil at national levels, and adults from areas being oppressed by big oil such as Kalamazoo, Michigan. One of the youth college speakers was Hannah Bristol from Vermont’s own Middlebury College.

After this, we went on to rally at the gate of the White House. Everyone gathered and continued to chant. Those who did not wish to be arrested were instructed to leave the police-determined perimeter once we received our first or second warning to cease the “blockage of passage” to the White House. Others remained, either playing dead in an oil spill scene, standing along the fence, or zip-tied to the fence.

It was at the point when I zip tied myself that I was most overwhelmed. On the fence, I was now tall enough to see everything. I had the White House on one side of me (my first time seeing it) and 1200 people on the other side of me, all showing support for the same crucial cause that I felt so passionate about. It was incredible.

After the police talked, and the perimeter was blocked off, we were taken away. It was an organized and respectful operation for all parties involved. The papers had nothing bad to say. Most stories spoke of our passion and respectfulness. The officers that were arresting at the scene were kind, most making jokes and having fun with the kids. Some even expressed support - after all they are humans, the future of our planet is about them, too.

Q. What did you learn from your #XLDissent experience?

A. Oh so much. It was great. First: I can still end up on all sorts of news outlets without twerking. Two:

People who think like me are a large and far reaching community that has yet to recognize its full potential in creating a happier and healthier future for ourselves. I have always known I live in a sort of bubble at UVM. As an environmental studies student, I constantly find myself with like-minded professors and peers. With the Midwest as my home, I always knew that when I left Burlington I would need to face a community that was not as receptive to my more liberal ideals. Taking part in an action like this restores my faith in human-ity, and my hope that the 99% will make a change. Lastly: change can and does happen. It is so easy to feel helpless in the way of big money, especially when managed by big oil. This action privileged me with a sense of empowerment. I knew the President now knew of my stance on the subject matter. Furthermore, I was able to represent those who are living in front line communities affected by the pipeline. It is pos-sible to have your voice heard; even if you live in an oppressed and time poor community.

Images via XL Dissent on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/xldissent/

Rob Williams 2VR FAQ 7

Lizzy Hewitt Hyper-Local 16

Greg Guma Vermont Traditions 12

Clockwise from top left: Closing Vermont Yankee was a long-term campaign by Greg Guma; 2013 PSB Rubber Stamp in Montpelier by Dylan Kelley; Brewmaster Sean Lawson strikes a snow storm pose by Lizzy Hewitt; 2013 F-35 City Council Vote in Burlington by Dylan Kelley; Laundry hanging by Ralph Meima.

Kaytie Coughlin Psychedelicatessen 15 Burlington’s Underworld 9William Boardman F-35 in Vermont 34

Jim Hogue Banking 23

Dylan Kelley Eminent Domain in Monkton 42

Chellis Glendinning Most Likely to Secede book review 30

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Gwendolyn HallsmithMontpelier, Vermont

Hallsmith is the co-founder of Vermonters for a New Economy and Executive Director of the

Public Banking Institute.Kaytie CoughlinBurlington, VermontCoughlin is originally from Montclair, NJ and attended Buxton School in Williamstown, MA. Currently, Coughlin is a student at Burlington College majoring in writing and literature and minoring in film with a focus in journalism. She is aspiring to get a paralegal certificate.

Ralph MeimaBrattleboro, VermontMeima works as a consultant, writes, appreciates all that Vermont is, and wonders what the future holds.

Greg GumaBurlington, VermontGuma is the author

of The People’s Republic: Vermont

and the Sanders Revolution, Spirits

of Desire and Dons of Time. He has lived in Vermont

since 1968.

Frank BryanStarksboro, Vermont

Bryan is a retired professor of political science at the University of Vermont and an expert on the town meeting tradition.

Jim HogueCalais, VermontHogue is an actor, farmer and historian.

Elizabeth HewittHewitt is a Vermont native of the Mad River Valley currently living and writing overseas.

William BoardmanBoardman is a Vermont-

based independent journalist and researcher.

Chellis GlendinningGlendinning lives in Bolivia where

she writes for Los Tiempos. She is the author of six books, including Off

the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy,

which won a National Federation of Press Women Book Award in 2000.

Dylan KelleyKelley is a Burlington-based journalist and photographer.

Welcome, readers.You see here on your screen the pilot issue of a new magazine called 2VR: Green Mountain Noise.

Our mission? To report on the state of Vermont independence as the United States of Empire—bloated, corrupt and overstretched—lumbers into its twilight years.

We began publishing in 2005 as a twelve page print journal called Vermont Commons: Voices of Independence. After six years in print as a statewide publication—circulating 12,000 copies in 350 locations at our zenith—we stepped back and retooled our publishing efforts in the wake of Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election (certainly this liberal “Hope and Change” Democrat might save us?!) and the Bakken Shale fossil fuel find (let’s hydro-frack our way to a renewable energy future!).

Along the way, we published a 2013 anthology—Most Likely To Secede—comprised of thirty of our most provocative Vermont Commons essays, and used our book sales to build a new website to more easily aggregate and share stories of Vermont independence across our growing social media platforms—Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and Vimeo.

Enter 2VR.

Our vision? To seek out fresh new storytellers interested in our mission, and combine their voices with the older and the wiser among us, those who have been working on understanding what an independent Vermont could look like, as we roll up our sleeves and get busy.

While our publication’s name has changed, our focus remains the same. To survive and thrive in our new century, an independent Vermont will need to re-invent itself. Finance. Fuel. Food. Education. The Arts. Politics.

In this inaugural issue, we look at banking and beer, health care and heroin use, civil disobedience and the possibility of what might be, if and when Vermonters get serious about independence. You can read much more at our web site—www.2VR.org.

We trust that you will find this first issue both enlightening and infuriating, and we hope that you will consider joining us.

Free Vermont, and long live the UNtied States!

Rob WilliamsEditor and Publisher, 2VR

2VR | 2014 Issue

Editor/PublisherRob Williams

Web EditorJulliet Buck

DesignerKayla Hedman

WritersBill BoardmanFrank BryanKatherine CoughlinChellis GlendinningGwen HallsmithLizzy HewittJim HogueRalph MeimaGreg Guma

Visit us online at 2vr.org, and find us on Issuu.com!

2VR.org

Q. What is the Second Vermont Republic (2VR)?

A. The Second Vermont Republic (2VR) is a peaceful, citizens movement opposed to the lawless imperialism of the U.S. government, the domination and corruption of the national political process by Wall Street, and the cor-porate monopolies and dysfunctional concentrations of wealth that are hallmarks of corporate globalization. We are committed to restoring Vermont to its historical status as an independent republic, as it was from 1777-1791, thus freeing it citizens to pursue life, liberty and happiness unimpeded by the demands of a rapacious and disintegrat-ing U.S. of Empire.

Q. Which issues does 2VR focus on?

A. 2VR considers a broad range of contemporary issues – finance, fuel, food, politics, education, sovereignty, and the arts. Big civilizational challenges like Peak Oil, climate change, and the imminent collapse of the U.S. Empire will profoundly impact Vermonters’ futures. We explore these issues at our web site www.vtcommons.org, in our book Most Likely To Secede, and through our print publication 2VR.

Q. Why does 2VR want Vermont to be independent of the United States?

A. The United States has become militarily, agriculturally, politically, eco-nomically, culturally, and environmentally unsustainable:

• U.S. foreign policy is based on the doctrine of full- spectrum dominance, which is immoral, illegal,

unconstitutional, and extravagantly expensive.

• U.S. agricultural monoculture is dependent upon unpredictable and privately owned genetically modified life forms.

• U.S. politics is entirely captured by corporate special interests that defend their incumbent privilege at all costs.

• U.S. is economically dependent upon the pixel wealth of the finance industry which creates a simulacrum of productivity and value out of thin air by issuing and repackaging debt and then making bets on it, to the detriment of investment in real production, innovation and progress.

• U.S. cultural diversity is insurmount-able if the aim is unified governance (i.e.: the “Union”), yet is deeply laudable in terms of regional cultural tradition and individual freedom, and should not be squelched in the interest of corporate or imperial uniformity.

• U.S. environmental regulations support and encourage pollut-ers and place no value on our Commons: our air, our water, our soil, and the other shared resources our communities hold dear.

Q. Why does 2VR think Vermont can do better as an Independent Republic?

A. First and foremost, the government of an Independent Vermont will be able to respond to the needs and desires of its citizens better than it can if Vermont remains a part of the U.S. Empire. Because it is dependent upon the U.S.

imperial machine for its livelihood, Vermont suffers greatly from blatant institutional capture by outside corporate special interests. Citizens of Vermont do not get a complete and fair vetting of ideas regarding the highest and best use of our government and treasure, because we are limited by the narrow menu of options served up by the federal government and their corporate partners. This menu of options includes: prosecuting illegal resource wars, subsidizing the planet-destroying fossil fuel industry and agricultural Industry, and allowing Wall Street to siphon away the wealth of the nation in a “heads they win, tails they win” game of musical chairs. This institutional capture limits a full and honest discussion about how government can best serve its citizens.

Q. Could Vermont survive economi-cally as an independent republic?

A. Unquestionably. Vermont has plenti-ful of hydro resources with which to generate electrical power, a rich stock of forestry products with which to build, and a productive and innovative agricultural community that can feed all of us with plenty left over to share with our friends across our borders. Vermonters are exceptionally entrepreneurial, creative and well-educated. An Independent Vermont would not need to be self-suf-ficient (though we could be), but rather would be a more empowered trading partner with our neighbors, including Quebec and Canada as a whole. Considering the world as a whole, of . Of the 200 or so independent nation-states in the world, 50 of them have a smaller population than Vermont’s 620,000. Five of the ten richest countries in the world as measured by per capita income are

The 2nd VermonT republic (2Vr)FrequenTly Asked quesTions (FAq)

smaller than Vermont: Liechtenstein, Iceland, Luxembourg, Bermuda, and Cayman Islands. Independence does not mean economic or political isolation. More than 600 Vermont firms export nearly 24 percent of the state’s gross product. We see no reason why this should change after independence.

Q. Describe the steps necessary for Vermont independence to be successful.

A. First things first. We must establish the political will for Vermont indepen-dence by providing a steady stream of reliable information to Vermont citizens, and supporting initiatives that strengthen Vermont sovereignty, rather than promot-ing dependence on second-hand options passed down from the U.S. of Empire.

Example #1 If Vermont can form a public bank that allows ordinary Vermonters to reap the benefits, Vermonters will have one less logistical and psychological tie to Wall Street and the Empire it enables.

Example #2. If Vermont can pass educa-tional reform that improves our children’s educational experience without federal educational mandates and oppressive standardized testing schedules, then Vermont cuts another psychological tie with U.S. imperial dictates.

Example #3. Vermont labels GMOs, effectively removing them from the local food supply, and suddenly Vermont is free from Monsanto.

Along the way, Vermont will reach a “tipping point” and realize that it doesn’t need the U.S. of Empire to “solve” its problems.

Q. Does this mean secession for Vermont?

A. Ultimately, yes.

Q. Why does 2VR want Vermont to secede?

A. First, the United States has become an Empire suffering from imperial over-stretch, and has become unsustainable

politically, economically, agriculturally, socially, culturally, and environmentally. Second, Vermont finds it increasingly dif-ficult to protect itself from the debilitating effects of big business, big agriculture, big markets, and big government, who want all of us to be the same—just like they are. Third, the U.S. Government has lost its moral authority because it is owned, operated, and controlled by Wall Street. Fourth, U.S. foreign policy, which is based on the doctrine of full- spectrum dominance, is immoral, illegal, unconstitutional, and in violation of the United Nations charter. Fifth, as long as Vermont remains in the United States, our citizens face curtailed civil liberties, corporate domination, and all of the other challenges that accompany an Empire that is collapsing.

Q. But isn’t secession unconstitutional?

A. No. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government.” Just as a group has a right to form, so, too, does it have a right to disband, to subdivide itself, or withdraw from a larger unit. The U.S. Constitution does not forbid seces-sion. According to the tenth amendment, that which is not expressly prohibited by the Constitution is allowed. All states have a Constitutional right to secede, and secession is every American’s birthright.

Q. Does the Second Vermont Republic (2VR) want to take over the govern-ment of Vermont?

A. No. The citizens of the independent Republic of Vermont will decide how we are self-governed. Unlike the Free State Project in New Hampshire, our aim is not to take over the government. For that reason, the Second Vermont Republic takes no official position on such contro-versial issues as abortion, gay marriage, school prayer, and legalizing marijuana. These are issues for the citizens of the independent republic to decide.

Q. Is Vermont independence politically

feasible?

A. Yes. Ultimately whether or not Vermont achieves political independence is a question of political will. Is the will of the citizens of Vermont for independence strong enough to overcome the will of the U.S. government to prevent them from achieving their goal? In 1989, six Eastern European allies of the Soviet Union unseated their respective Communist governments and seceded from the Soviet sphere of influence. With the bloody exception of Romania, this all took place nonviolently.

Q. For Vermont independence to be successful, what are the necessary political steps?

A. The Vermont legislature must be persuaded to authorize a convention of the people to vote on rescinding the petition for statehood approved by the Vermont Assembly in January 1791 and ratified on March 4, 1791. To be cred-ible, the vote should pass by at least a two-thirds majority. Articles of Secession should then be submitted to the U.S. President, Secretary of State, President of the Senate, and Speaker of the House. Diplomatic recognition should be sought from Canada, Quebec, Mexico, England, France, and the United Nations. And then the moment of truth—Vermont would start behaving like an independent nation-state.

Q. What if the Vermont independence movement fails?

A. The once and future Republic of Vermont still provides a communitarian alternative to the dehumanized mass production, mass consumption, narcis-sistic lifestyle that pervades most of the United States. Vermont is smaller, more rural, more democratic, less violent, less commercial, more egalitarian, and more independent than most states. It offers itself as a kinder, gentler metaphor for a U.S. of Empire obsessed with money, power, size, speed, greed, and fear of terrorism.

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It can be a dark place. There are the ups and downs, the rushes, the pushes and pulls, the drama, scandal, and horror. Filled with blood and secrecy, Burlington’s most desperate scene is a menagerie of white and brown powder. If you don’t know what I mean, I’m talking about heroin. Just about every city in this country has a counter-culture like this; So of course there’s a dark side to the seemingly happy bar culture of Burlington. And, even within the bar culture the opiate scene does not cease to sustain itself.

Take for instance Steve* and his girlfriend Michelle*. The two of them are in their early twenties and students at the University of Vermont. Steve uses heroin intranasally, while Michelle (as far as I’m concerned) does not use heroin regularly though she said that she’s done it a few times.

Upon meeting Steve in the basement of One-Half Lounge (colloquially called Half Lounge by local Burlingtonian bar goers), I found him shouting about how desperate he was to find hard drugs. When I talked to him, he said he was down for a ticket ride, which in the language of opiates means the selling of twenty dollars worth of heroin that comes in either a small white bag about 2 x .5 inches in size, or in loose form, meaning the powder is in paper or saran wrapping. The dark haired

boy with pinkish, purplish, circles under his eyes was keen on the sale.

So there you have it: UVM students don’t only drink, smoke weed and hookah, and occasionally—or not so occasionally—go on coke binges. There’s harder stuff out there even in the majority stereotypically middle to upper-middle class white college crowd. One user that I met Jeff*, a twenty-two going on twenty-three year old male originally from another part of Vermont is an eight year long user. He’s not a UVM student, but a former student at another school outside of Vermont who now lives in Burlington as a full time resident.

It’s a sad world for Jeff. An artist, an intellec-tual, he’s been stuck in a crowd of people that he would not normally associate with. The social scene in the world of heroin is limited. For Jeff the fifty plus people that he’s met have been majority selfish, scummy, slimy characters who simply need to get their fix and would screw anyone over in order to get there. The ratio of male to female is approxi-mately ⅔ male, ⅓ female. Jeff himself admits that he’s been there before.

“I’ve done shitty things to that I’m not proud of, but I don’t want to associate with more people who do things like that.”

BURLINGTON’SUNDERWORLD

BY KAYTIE COUGHLIN

*ALL NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED IN THIS ARTICLE IN ORDER TO PROTECT SUBJECT’S PRIVACY.

Jeff says that in his darker days of using, he’s committed both embezzle-ment and theft in order to gain what he needs for his addiction to opiates. As a manager, he falsely kept books in order to make it look like the business was making less money than it actually was. The leftover cash that was not kept Jeff kept for himself in order to buy heroin.

“Though I have committed crime and acts of selfishness, I am not proud of them and frankly am absolutely ashamed of the way I have acted and the things I have done in the past. I no longer want to associate with people that do things like this, not because I think I am better or above them, but because I have personally experienced the power addiction can have over you. I still think that I or anyone who commits these acts is still responsible for them. I want to improve myself as a human being which not only means not letting addiction or anything for that matter persuade me to commit crime or dishon-est acts.”

Jeff is of course not the only one who has committed illegal acts in order to nourish his need for dope. There are many accounts of theft that occur in

the town of Burlington. For instance, if a user is unable to find a way to get money to buy heroin, it’s often possible to make a trade with the dealer.

In the instance of being short of cash, a user will find out what the dealer wants and get the items for them in order to acquire drugs which often times

means stealing. According to Jeff, a user stole an old woman’s purse. On other times, an addict might trade some-thing that they already have. Sometimes it’s baby clothes or other clothes that the user might want for themselves or their partners, sometimes it’s alcohol (full bottles of liquor only for the

most part), electronics, prescription pills, gift cards, or anything else that a dealer may find of value. And truthfully, an opiate addict might just trade anything. Sometimes a heroin user is able to trade car rides for either a discount on or free tickets.

Heroin can be risky not only in terms of a person’s health, but in terms of a person’s social and financial situation as well. As stated before, an addict would do anything to get their fix including rip off a customer if necessary. People walk away with other people’s money. Jeff and one of his roommates, Chad, said that they’ve seen this happen before. Say a customer wants to buy heroin or other opiates. A dealer might tell the client that they will go pick it up then never come back with the money.

Sometimes a dealer might sell fake tickets, meaning bags filled with only cut, or sometimes a substance like sand, or a poison, that might be the same color as heroin, which is where one of the major health risks of using heroin comes in. It’s simple as anything and there’s nothing that anyone can do to get their money back seeing as using, distributing, buying, and selling heroin is illegal.

In the case of someone getting sold a fake or “blank” ticket, the consequence of shooting it can be fatal. Inexperienced users might try shooting the product that they’re sold without realizing that what they’ve bought is not in fact heroin.

Not everyone that uses heroin commits crimes or tries to pull a fast one on their friends and family though. There are many dealers who will generously lend tickets or other opiates to a user who is down on their luck. The close knit nature of Burlington’s heroin scene makes this possible.

In terms of physical danger, users tend to look out for one another. An experienced user will typically be willing to hit (meaning inject heroin) a less experienced user who might find it dif-ficult to maneuver the logistics of pulling back the plunger and drawing blood into a syringe. Many users have narcan, a drug that reverses the effect of opiate overdose. If someone is not overdosing and narcan is administered, nothing bad will happen to the person. Narcan is now

Tickets currently in the market in Burlington. “Sleepwalkers” and “American Thunder”.

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available in nasal form and is free at the Clark Street Safe Recovery Center, also known as the needle exchange.

At the Needle exchange users can register to get free needles. A code is provided in order to anonymously identify a person. The code is on a card which the user can show upon entry to the needle exchange and receive new needles, cotton, viles of water, cookers, and anything else necessary to use heroin. Before getting narcan, there is a ten minute video demonstration that the customer is required to watch so that the staff at the center can be sure that people will walk away knowing how to use narcan safely. The Clark Street Recovery Center has many other ser-vices such as information as to where to receive long term counseling, can provide short term counseling specifi-cally in terms of how to help a user cut back on the amount of opiates they use, information on Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and an option to sign up for Suboxone maintenance treatment. Spectrum Youth and Family Services is another location in Burlington that specifically provides drug counseling. Spectrum Youth and Family Services is another location in Burlington that specifically provides drug counseling.

Burlington’s heroin scene has a few key traits that distinguish it from dope scenes elsewhere in the country. Tom, perhaps the one of the biggest dealers within the circle of users that I inter-viewed, said that the nature of the scene is far different from any other scene that he’s been involved in. For one there’s

the issue of race. Just about all of the people in Burlington who use are white, compared to say Patterson, New Jersey, or Brooklyn, New York, or Coney Island. Generally speaking, the people of color (who are typically referred to as “nigs”, or “the nigs” when there are non-white people selling in Burlington and the sur-rounding areas of Lamoille County) are the top sellers in the other places that Tom’s lived. There heroin deals are dealt through gangs. In New York City, there’s less of a personal connection between the dealer and the customer. You make a call, get your cash together, and very quickly meet the dealer at a location or have the dealer deliver it to your door.

The same situation applied to Holyoke Massachusetts, according to Andrew* (whose probably tied for first with Tom as far as drug dealing status) where the main gang is Puerto Rican, called Nienta. Sometimes getting someone’s number for heroin can take a little while, but in Holyoke there’s always trap houses (houses where drugs can be bought) that are available to customers all day. Here, it’s a matter of waiting on people, getting a ride, meeting people in parking lots, (grocery stores are a favor-ite according to Tom). The clients and the dealers often become friendly with each other. They shoot up together, and can from time to time help each other out. The difference between Burlington and other heroin hot spots is like the difference between shopping at a big corporation such as Walmart versus a Mom and Pop store down on Church Street. Most of the dealers are just as dope-sick as users who aren’t selling.

There are occasions when members of gangs will come to Burlington. In the larger areas, dealers will have the same product, which is marked by and referred to as a stamp, consistently. Here, due to the high demand and diffi-culty to get the product, dealers need to re up their heroin frequently and usually do not end up getting the same product

again for a while. It’s more dangerous to buy from a gang member when in Burlington. The police are hot on the case and spots are quickly blown up in the case of a gang coming to town.

The majority of the major users in Burlington come in sets of twos; either they are couples, or male and female pairs. Other than Michelle and Steve, there is Libby* and Tom, and Jessica* and Brad*. Some of these pairs, such as Libby and Tom, have been using for over ten years. They didn’t start together but continued using together. Libby and Tom were in a car accident together several years ago and are prescribed painkill-ers. When they don’t have enough dope to sustain themselves, they still have the option to intravenously take prescription pain killers. They keep each other well, just as all the pairs in the Burlington heroin scene do. That’s the benefit of having a partner in this world. On one occasion, Jessica was sick and needed a ticket to go to work. Her boyfriend Brad found a way to borrow a ticket and get her well before she left. The pairs both enable and help each other stay well. If one of them relapses, the other one is almost sure to as well.

The subjects here are only a small portion, perhaps even 1%, of the heroin users in Vermont. The total population of heroin users in Burlington is probably closer to around 20%. Were a person able to buy heroin in a store the same way that someone buys alcohol and in some places marijuana, crime rates, deaths due to overdose or poisoning, and a lot less people being given a run for their money. Almost all of the subjects here have known someone who has died of an overdose. Still, they continue to use. Heroin and opiate addiction can affect anyone. The under-world of Burlington spreads from the depths of street corners, in the backs of cars, run down apartments, to lofts above Church Street.

bAlAncing AcT: How TradiTions and Values HaVe

defined THe VermonT way

1. President Calvin Coolidge wasn’t too conservative to meet with Mother Jones. 2. Bernie Sanders protested outside City Hall before he became Mayor. 3. Marble and granite quarries brought growth and labor organizing. 4. Appreciation of the environment came naturally. 5. Local control and a citizen legislature help maintain the balance. 6. Closing Vermont Yankee was a long-term campaign. (2, 4, 5, 6 by Greg Guma. Others by permission.)

By Greg Guma

2VR.org

Ethan Allen, the unpredictable fron-tier rebel who rallied resistance to any person or power threatening the property rights of early settlers and his fellow land speculators, has exerted a powerful influ-ence over Vermont’s image as a home for rugged individualists and defiant outsid-ers. His story, both the factual and the mythical aspects, has nurtured an affinity with rebels and independent thinkers.

That said, political values that have exerted a more enduring influence in Vermont include accountability, local control and autonomy. Frequently crossing ideological lines, they persisted through a century in which the state was known as reliably Republican, a place where not even Franklin D. Roosevelt could win an election, and have continued to exert an influence in the decades since 1988, a period when Vermonters have voted for every Democratic presidential candidate.

Today the state is as identified with liberal social causes and political maver-icks like Bernie Sanders, Howard Dean and Republican Jim Jeffords, who ulti-mately left the GOP, as it once was with “rock-ribbed” conservative thinking. But beneath the different labels is a consistent approach to governance and the way it is publicly discussed. Despite a centralized administrative structure, Vermont’s gov-ernment has emphasized accountability more than most through the retention of short terms of office, a citizen legislature, and the rhetoric of local control.

Localism is a long cherished value. Even when Republican Governor Deane Davis was backing a statewide land use law in the late 1960s he called it “creative localism.” Town Meeting has a powerful image as the last vestige of

direct democracy, holding out hope that self-government remains possible in the age of powerful administrative states. Of course, the image is somewhat over-stated. On the other hand, the use of this forum—in some cases the only one open to the public—can be a form of self-empowerment reminiscent of the early Jeffersonian impulse.

Vermont’s “citizen legislature” meets four days a week for up to five months, and House and Senate members often return to other jobs. Due to the size of the state, many state representatives can drive home at night during sessions. The pay is modest, and the State House functions much like a graduate school for motivated students. Some are in training for higher office, but most stay in touch with their home base.

Nevertheless, the state’s political establishment has repeatedly advocated a constitutional amendment to extend the terms of some or all statewide offices to four years. In the late 1950s a Commission to Study State Government—known as the “Little Hoover Commission” for its similarity to a federal effort in the 1940s led by the former president—concluded that forcing candidates to campaign for re-election so often was a waste of money and detrimental to the state’s welfare. The necessary amendment failed in the legis-lature, but was brought back repeatedly over the next decades.

Most other states extended terms of office long ago. Beyond a suspicion of politicians and the power of Vermont tradi-tions, the main reason it has not happened can be traced directly back to the last of the conventions called by the old Council of Censors. This Federalist-inspired

holdover from pre-revolutionary days was supposed to oversee both the gov-ernor and legislature, making sure that laws were handled properly and the Constitution was being followed. If not, the Censors could call a convention and propose amendments. In its first 40 years, however, only one of its proposed amend-ments was ratified, and that one denied voting rights to foreign-born citizens until they were naturalized.

When terms of office were doubled to two years in 1870, the amendment process was also changed. The leg-islature would henceforth initiate any constitutional changes, but only once every ten years. This “time lock” provision was later shortened to five-year intervals, but remained a conservative deterrent to rapid changes in the structure and pro-cesses of government.

Vermont does not have a provision for referendum by public petition. But the state has played an active role in local politics since 1890, when legislation per-mitted Australian ballots printed by state government to be used at town meetings. Lawmakers can also request endorse-ment of a decision in a Town Meeting referendum. Exercising this authority to seek local opinion led to the enactment of the local option for alcohol in 1902 and death of the proposed Green Mountain Parkway in 1936.

All these traditions—local control, short terms, a citizen legislature—as well as impulses toward decentralism and even secession, reflect a fundamental commit-ment to autonomy. The original Greek idea is self-rule. Valued for its contribution to the search for truth and the function-ing of a self-governing society, autonomy involves making conscious choices.

According to libertarian philosopher Murray Bookchin, who lived in Vermont for several decades, “Self-rule applies to society as a whole. Self-management is the management of villages, neighbor-hoods, towns, and cities. The technical sphere of life is conspicuously second-ary to the social. In the two revolutions that open the modern era of secular politics—the American and French—self-management emerges in the libertarian town meetings that swept from Boston to Charleston and the popular sections that assembled in Parisian quatiers.”

“ Mention of Vermont suggests certain attitudes

and sensibilities — community involvement,

civil discourse, social concern and tolerance, a shifting mixture of

libertarian and egalitarian tendencies.”

In Vermont, the quest for autonomy underpinned the struggle of settlers against outside control during the revo-lutionary period. Since then, it has fueled campaigns of resistance and sometimes direct challenges to state and federal poli-cies—from the rejection of the Masons, the abolition movement and the develop-ment of new political parties to campaigns for a weapons freeze, against nuclear power, and for same-sex marriage.

A less progressive expression is the enduring tension between the desire for local control and the state’s authority over education. The Vermont Constitution called for a system of public schools, yet education remained uneven and chaotic for many years as independent school districts of varying quality popped up across the state. The autonomy of local schools was the rule until the legislature mandated reforms such as compulsory attendance, effective training of teach-ers, free textbooks and a fair school tax system.

School district autonomy persisted until 1892, when the state turned over power to the towns. But local resistance to state education plans and mandates continued throughout the 20th century.

In a tongue-in-cheek guide to being an authentic Vermonter, Frank Bryan and Bill Mares joked that most people would agree that “Vermont, like Texas, is more than just a place—it’s a state of mind. Vermonters are committed to a certain creed and live by certain values that set them apart. Some people have them. Others do not. Most are somewhat in between. Yet social critics often are content to divide the world

into two classes—Real Vermonters and Flatlanders.”

In the early 1980s the writers acknowl-edged that such distinctions were already narrowing as the fence between the two types grew “more rickety.” In the 21st century the categories have become outdated. Yet mention of Vermont still suggests certain attitudes and sensi-bilities—community involvement, civil discourse, social concern and tolerance, a shifting mixture of libertarian and egalitar-ian tendencies.

Even conservative writer David Brooks, who once tried to stereotype Burlington as a “Latte Town,” had to admit that it had “a phenomenally busy public square—arts councils, school-to-work collaborations, environmental groups, preservation groups, community-supported agriculture, anti-development groups, and ad-hoc activist groups…The result is an inter-esting mixture of liberal social concern and paleo-conservative effort to ward off encroaching modernism.”

Since the 1970s the state has been a testing ground for alternative approaches to politics, but the many ex-urbanite professionals and members of the coun-terculture who have helped to make that possible were building on a solid foun-dation. Active dissent began before the American Revolution, as early settlers organized to declare themselves free of British rule and exploitation by land speculators. It continued with the re-election of Matthew Lyon to Congress in defiance of the Alien and Sedition Acts, resistance to an embargo of Britain and the War of 1812, rejection of Masonic secrecy and Town Meeting defeat of the Green Mountain Parkway during the New Deal. This pattern reflects a libertarian streak that has resisted the pull of modern liberalism.

Despite relative isolation before the arrival of railroads, telephones, highways and instantaneous global communica-tion, many Vermonters also expressed an egalitarian belief in equality and tolerance that made it fertile ground for revival-era religious experiments and persistent lead-ership in the fight to end slavery. Although the state was sometimes slow to respond, as with the decision to extend voting

rights to women, or even reactionary when handling union activism, the tradi-tion re-asserted itself in Ernest Gibson’s expansion of social services in the 1940s, the peaceful assimilation of counterculture immigrants and the landmark legislative decision in 2009 to make same-sex mar-riage the state law.

Concern has frequently extended beyond the protection and defense of state residents and resources. Ecological consciousness, rooted in Vermont’s rural character and a practical understanding of interdependence, has made it an advo-cate for reducing pollution, conserving limited resources, protecting endangered habitats, and closing the Yankee Nuclear plant. Skepticism about wasteful military spending and the logic of war, combined with the symbolic power of Town Meeting, helped it to spur national reconsideration of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpiles and intentions.

In a long-shot 2008 campaign for state attorney general, writer and lawyer Charlotte Dennett promised to pros-ecute George W. Bush for murder if she was elected. Dennett was running as a Progressive Party candidate against William Sorrell, a popular incumbent who had held the job for a decade. The pre-vious year Vermont’s State Senate had announced to the world that the actions of Bush and Vice President Cheney in taking the country to war in Iraq raised “serious questions of constitutionality,” and passed a resolution that called on the US Congress to impeach them.

Dennett did not win that race. But like previous challenges to prevailing national policies, it was an act of conscience in keeping with long-standing state values. The following winter on Town Meeting Day voters in Brattleboro and Marlboro backed her up, passing symbolic resolutions that instructed their town police to arrest Bush and Cheney for “crimes against our Constitution” if they ever stepped foot in either town. The next step was to “extra-dite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them.”

It sounded a lot like the style of Ethan Allen.

“ Vermont is a country which abounds in the most active and rebellious race

on the continent and hangs like a gathering storm on

my left.” — General John Burgoyne, after

losing the Battle of Bennington in 1777

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Walking into the Psychedelicatessen was like walking into a weird dream. It was the low colored lights, the array of artwork, and the clientele. My friend asked me to go with her one night, and I agreed. But walking over to the dimly lit door of the restaurant, I noticed through the window a large man in a wig and a sequined shirt. “Oh no,” I thought to myself. “What bizarre place am I about to spend the next hours in…” with strained confidence, I entered.

Automatically I was scared. There was strange, almost tran-scendental music playing and as I mentioned, a host of odd char-acters at the food bar. A red wall on the far left corner was home to colored psychedelic spirals all hand drawn by a friend. The other adornments in the restaurant are all local art pieces as well, other than a shrine for the five thousand armed Buddha that the owner lights a candle for every night.

My friend and I took a table next to the bookshelf. As a defense mechanism, I picked up a book and began to read. Hopefully, this would help me escape the strange atmosphere I regretfully landed myself in.

The bookshelf held a number of philosophical books, books on environmental spirituality, revolution, and one that looked like the subject matter was to the effect of “physics for poets”. I like physics quite a bit, so I picked this one up, hoping there was a shred of normalcy that I could find.

Not exactly. The book had something to do with snakes and physics. I didn’t finish the whole thing, so I can’t say exactly how the two relate. But the passage that I read discussed a ceremony in India that honored Cobras. What I remember most was the anecdote about one man who got very drunk at the ceremony and brought a cobra home and attempted to bathe it. He accidentally turned the bath water nozzle on hot and scalded the cobra who proceeded to bite and kill the man. How he managed to bring a cobra home I don’t recall as I was too busy working through thoughts of anxiety at the strange little restaurant where I would spend the rest of my evening. My point is, these are the types of books the Psychedelicatessen provides.

While reading, I noticed a man was at my table. He turned out to be the owner of the restaurant. His name is Phynn, and he might change his name to Quinn, because he’s always wanted a name with a Q in it, he told me upon our second meeting, but his birth name is Jeffery.

“What can I get you guys?” I he asked me politely. However polite he was, there was an intense energy about this man. He was good at making eye contact.

I ordered a Tulsi tea as did my friend. We later ordered vege-table dumplings and hot chocolate to split.

My second time going to the Psychedelicatessen was less star-tling. Though still not a regular by any means, I knew that there was nothing to actually be afraid of.

Lynn’s daughter, Essa, politely asked me what I would like. I ordered a hot chocolate and sat down to write and eat the compli-mentary grapes that were provided on the table. Eventually, I got to interview the owner.

“Do you want a slice of apple pie?” Phynn asked me as he sat down with his own. “It’s homemade.” I agreed. His generosity already made me feel more comfortable.

Phynn told me that he came up for the idea of the Psychedelicatessen while on a Mushroom trip at a Phish concert. Phynn said that he really appreciated how much Phish had done for the community, and wanted to have a community oriented place as well. The Psychedelicatessen is located next to what was formerly The Last Elm Cafe, a place where Phish played.

Because it is a community oriented place, customers can volunteer there. You can come in and cook for them. Just run it by Phynn and you’re probably more than welcome to. The Delicatessen also runs on a sliding scale, so you can barter.

Other community oriented aspects of the Psychedelicattessen are the public events that occur weekly, all of which are listed online. There was an auction on April 1st, where a bag of hope was sold.

So, the Psychedelicatessen is not necessarily my scene, but I can definitely see how it could benefit a number of Burlingtonians. It’s a very positive environment and the food is great. My friend who brought me there the first time I went loved it immediately. Phynn’s only had the place up and running for around two months, and already there’s a number of artistic, eccentric, and also very nice, regular customers. It’s indefinitely a community oriented place. So much so that Phynn doesn’t even like to call himself the owner. The idea is that we’re all the owners, and no one’s the owner of the Psychedelicatessen.

The Psychedelicatessen of the Old North End

Perhaps the Quaintest Restaurant in BurlingtonBY KAYTIE COUGHLIN

HYPER LOCALBy Lizzy Hewitt

Right: Brewmaster Sean Lawson strikes a snow storm pose.

2VR.org

HYPER LOCAL

About halfway up Route 100, the road that runs like a spine up the center of Vermont, is the Mad River Valley. The cluster of four rural towns along the Mad River is famous first for its ski areas: Sugarbush and Mad River Glen. But it has earned a reputation for something else entirely: beer. Clerks at the Warren Store field inquiries from out-of-

staters seeking local beers, many of whom leave disap-pointed and empty-handed. Beers like Heady Topper, produced by the Alchemist in nearby Waterbury and largely unavailable beyond the Green Mountain skyline, have been known to sell out within hours around holi-days.Beers like Lawson’s Finest Liquids’ IPAs, produced a

mere mile away, sell out within hours every Thursday.As piles of awards certify, Vermont’s micro-brewers are

rising to the top of their industries. But in doing so, they’re creating more than a tasty tipple: they’re rewriting the small business norm to prioritize quality and community above all else.Lawson’s Finest Liquids was founded in 2008, but Sean

Lawson has been home brewing for more than two de-cades. Before he decided to turn his hobby into a busi-ness, he already had a local fan base. He’d led brewing workshops for area localvores, and his friends and family were asking whether they could buy from him.“For people having a beer that’s even more local than

other beers was a natural fit for folks looking to source their food as local as possible,” Lawson said.But Lawson’s success has been far from local. Two of

his brews won recognition at the World Beer Cup, receiv-ing bronze in 2010 and silver in 2012. In 2011, the Triple

BEER BUZZThe innovation of Vermont’s hyper-local booze industry

2VR.orgLeft: The inner workings of Lawson’s Finest Liquids in the hills of Warren, Vermont’s Mad River Valley.

Play IPA defeated 127 others to be named “National IPA Champion” by Brewing News. Last April, hundreds of out-of-towners flocked to the Valley to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Lawson’s Finest Liquids. In just over half a decade, the Warren resident has emerged as one of the most celebrated microbrewers in Vermont. Not bad for a brewery with two employees—Lawson and

his wife—and an annual output of just 400 barrels. Despite the accolades, Lawson’s operation is mod-

est. Tanks and tubes gurgle away in a little red shed out behind his family’s home on a dirt road in the mountains west of Warren. Product ships out Thursday mornings, and goes on sale around midday at the Warren Store, where they hardly have time to shelve the bottles before they head back out the door. It’ll be sold out by closing time. Lawson sells his modest output in either bottle or

draught form through a handful of other establishments in Vermont. Meanwhile, he keeps a growing waiting list of distributors keen to carry his brews as far away as Wash-ington, D.C. and North Carolina. He dutifully tells them that if operations and output expand, they’ll be the first to know. But they shouldn’t hold their breath. “It works really well, it’s successful and we’re not in a

rush to change things,” Lawson said. “My motto has been ‘don’t mess with success.’”He could, perhaps, abandon his home brewery for a

more spacious factory in a more trafficked area, but Law-son has no imminent plans for expansion. Rather than al-ter his recipe for success, he’s sought out creative means of reaching distant taste buds. Last fall, he collaborated with the much larger Otter Creek Brewery over the moun-tain. Still, pressure to grow flows in.“I’m saying no all the time,” Lawson said. “It’s a good

problem to have.”Though Lawson’s business plan includes no blueprint for

expansion, he has kicked off a deluge of alcoholic bever-age start-ups in the area, even beyond the beer genre. Swaths of historic farmland now nourish acres of hybrid-ized wine grapes, and one old horse barn in Warren hosts a different sort of newcomer: Mad River Distillers.The idea was born in 2009, and set into motion in 2011.

They ordered their equipment from Germany in 2012 and it arrived in June 2013. They fired up the shiny copper still almost immediately and started selling rum by the end of the summer.

“They’ve seen Sean Lawson, they’ve seen Heady Top-per,” said CEO John Egan, on the local community’s response to the blossoming booze trade. “People realize it’s good for the area.”Already, the young company offers a range of spirits,

crafted from carefully vetted product that are always or-ganic and, when possible, local. Corn for the corn whisky is an heirloom variety grown in the Champlain Valley, and rye for the rye whisky comes from the Berkshires. The maple rum is infused with Vermont maple syrup, and the apples from the soon to be released apple brandy are Vermont’s own. Ultimately, Mad River Distillers strives to produce spirits

in a tradition of American distilling that predates Absolut and Captain Morgan. “There was this expression of regionality that has totally

been lost,” said Brett Little, president of Mad River Distill-ers. “We want to represent the Mad River Valley. We want people here to be proud of what we do.”Though eventually they’d like to find a market for their

liquors beyond state lines, the Mad River Distillers team is satisfied to start small. They plan to keep selling to in state liquor stores and small-town farmers markets while they tweak and experiment and perfect their recipes.“We can make good products and make a living just sell-

ing in Vermont,” said Egan. “We’re not going to get rich doing that, but we’d rather do it right and have the oppor-tunity to expand at our leisure.”The path to becoming a truly local distillery is not easy—

or cheap. Selecting high quality, locally grown ingredients requires, in many cases, a significant investment. But Mad River Distillers are willing to pay the price in order to create booze that is truly unique.“As much as we like money, it’s not worth compromising

your quality,” said Little.Sean Lawson and the folks from Mad River Distillers

are part of a trend across Vermont of alcohol producers operating on a micro scale, placing priority on quality over widespread sales. The business model has attracted national attention, as with a recent New York Times article on Hill Farmstead Brewery in Greensboro. And the result is a network of top-quality beverages truly representative of their Green Mountain origins.

excerpT From Inter StateS

BY RALPH MEIMA

Inter States is a story told at both personal and political levels of a profound crisis gripping the U.S. federal system of government during the fall of 2040,

and the historic shift it precipitates. Unfolding in late October and early November, the events recounted in Inter States revolve around a presidential election, secession referendums in several states, and a powerful hurricane

that affects most of the Mid-Atlantic and New England states—either directly, or indirectly through a massive refugee migration it triggers. Seen through

the eyes of members of two interwined families in Maryland and Virginia, and from the perspectives of a Vermont Congressman and his staff, Inter States attempts to explore in detailed, concrete, and plausible terms how the long-

term effects of climate change, fossil-fuel scarcity, dysfunctional national politics, and geopolitics could lead to fundamental, unintended changes in

America’s system of government, and to very different roles and possibilities for the states. It’s not dystopian or post-apocalyptic; there’s humor, love, and romance; and despite despotism and oligarchy at high levels of power, what’s good and enduring about America as a culture also comes through. It’s also a road novel: you can follow the travels of the protagonists on a map to within a

short distance of where they are at any given moment in the story.

Chapter 15—Safely Home

2VR.org

Saturday evening, October 20th, 2040

Jake Wilder slept as the train skimmed over the Connecticut border and along the string of cities

in Western Massachusetts. The foreign maglev drive was as smooth as silk, the only system of its kind installed in the United States, in a bygone era of public optimism and support for bold energy-efficient, carbon-neutral infrastructure. Wilder never awakened during their brief stop in Springfield. Brattleboro lay ahead, a half-hour away. It was only when the conductor touched his arm and spoke that his consciousness returned. He sat up with a start, adrenaline clearing his mind. For a second, he was afraid he had overslept and passed his station. That had happened once before.

“Brattleboro, Vermont, next station,” the conductor said. She moved down the aisle and touched the arm of another sleeping passenger. From the silence, Wilder could tell that the maglev was still on. That gave him a few minutes to

wake up, use the toilet, and get his things together.

It had been over a month since he was last home. Because Naegel had dropped out, he was running unopposed, so it took the heat off his campaign. Policy matters and politics in Washington were all-consuming, anyway. It was a blessing. People wanted him working, focusing on the latest threats in Washington. Since the New Haven Compact was signed, there had been an uneasy truce between the states, the Energy Trust, and the private timber companies. Only a few skirmishes had been reported. The case was slowly winding its way toward the Supreme Court. Wilder knew that there was only a slim chance that the FSA states would like the decision. And Forsa could speed things up very abruptly if it passed. What on earth would happen then? A very serious crisis would ensue - there was no doubt. When the Compact was signed, some in the media reacted as if war had been declared. He glanced at

the date on his watch. Yesterday. That was the two-year anniversary of the New Haven Compact. What a wild term it had been. Wilder thought about the stress he would have faced if this had been a tight campaign, like 2038. But, then again, he would have been spending more time in Vermont, with Christine...

The overhead lights became brighter, the maglev switched off, and the train started its rattling, hissing decelera-tion. There were few people left on the train, and fewer still who stayed in their seats, bound for White River/Hanover, Montpelier, Burlington, and Montreal. The guards took their positions inside the doors, their automatics ready. The doors swung open and were retracted into the car’s fuselage. Dimly lit, the platform was fairly crowded, with many more passengers waiting to board than disembark – the Friday night business crowd heading home to Montpelier and Burlington for the weekend. With its proximity to Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, Brattleboro

had turned into a key regional center for trade in what people needed in the more densely populated parts of New England: firewood, charcoal, pitch, cut stone, lumber, milk, cheese, vegetables and fruit, cured meats, maple syrup, wool, and cloth. Now, with most foreign imports banned or exorbitant, and more distant US products so costly, regional supplies were competitive again and the town’s Foreign Trade Zone lay idle. At this junction of highways, railroads, and the Connecticut River, with abundant hydroelectric and wind power and a quickly growing bioenergy complex near the old nuclear power plant just to the south in Vernon, commercial business was brisk.

Stepping down from the car onto the platform, Wilder felt the warm, balmy October air hit him. The night was full of animal sounds, down here by the river: crickets, katydids, tree frogs, bats’ clicks. Christine came at him out of the dark-ness, a smile on her face. They kissed and caught one another in a wide hug. The train’s doors hissed shut behind Wilder, across the platform.

“How’s my darling, then?” she asked. “Tired?”

“I slept most of the way after New York,” he answered. “Just woke up. Feel like I left my brain on the train.”

“Brain on the train, train on the brain!” Christine giggled. “Nice you’ve arrived this time all alone, just for me, no traveling journalists and delegation staff.”

He smiled back. “I’m tired of all that. Need to start separating private and work life a little more.”

She picked up one of his bags, took his arm, and pulled him toward the steps.

“You’re in the wrong business, honey,” she teased. “Let’s get you out of here before a journalist spots you.”

“Or a Homelander sniper,” he muttered, immediately regretting his cynical remark. He glanced at her face. She did not glance back. They were walking through the overpass tunnel now.

“OK, no depressing stuff tonight. All right? You can save that for the campaign meetings.” They both laughed at that idea. “Miss me?”

“You know I did. That was the longest month.” Coming out of the station, they could see Callie standing down by the street, hitched to the trap. She was flicking her ears around, swinging her head and eyeing the pair as they approached.

“So, how about a nice relaxing drive home? We can get re-acquainted. I brought a thermos of coffee and some cake the Resnicks made for the school bake sale.” She opened the trap’s trunk and pushed the bag she was carrying in. Jake swung the larger bag in after it.

“Coffee? From where?” he asked.

“Secret sources. If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.”

“Forget I asked.” He feigned exag-gerated fear, but then felt instinctively uneasy as well. Only a joke, he reminded himself.

“It’s from Boston. Doug Whitting was down there for weeks and brought back a load of things he bought at the dock markets.

They climbed up into the trap. Christine released the brake and Callie high-stepped away from the curb. She clicked to her, speaking softly, and shook

the reins.

“How’s Callie, by the way?” Wilder recalled their conversation earlier – it seemed like days ago already.

“They did a blood test and she’s clean. Said it looked like a bot-fly nest, but there was no infection beyond the immediate sore.” He peered ahead to see if he could spot it. “You can’t see it from back here. It was pretty yucky-looking. The vet cleaned it out, gave her antibiotics, and updated all her shots. Which cost a fortune, by the way. Three-hundred allens.”

“That’s a relief,” he said. “Except for the cost.”

“Mmm. There’s more and more to worry about with horses’ health these days.” She guided the trap up Bridge Street and right onto Main Street. “But lose a horse like Callie and you’re really in trouble.” Living in a village outside Brattleboro without good horses and the requisite trap and wagon meant you were cut off from both work and shopping. Unless you were rich enough to maintain a cell-electric or diesel.

“Speaking of creepie-crawlies,” she continued, “I heard of a boy in Putney recently who was diagnosed with hookworms. Very sick.”

“That’s a new one.”

“Hard to keep up with the changes.” They leveled out at the top of the hill leading up from the river, and trotted north down the empty street. The warm night air smelled of flowers, tar, hay, and wood smoke. A cat ran across the street.

“Want that coffee, Jake?” She hooked the reins over the footboard’s rail and reached down into a basket beneath the seat. “Callie knows where to go.”

To read all of Inter States’ first 17 installments (the bulk of the story),

visit http://interstates2040.wikispaces.com

2VR.org

INTRODUCTION

In 1694, British Financiers formed the Bank of England and changed the world. Public money in the form of tally sticks ended. Villains had been practicing usury for centuries, “as loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” But “banking” made for the best of all possible worlds.

The English crown needed money to prosecute its wars. The owners of the Bank of England had it. From their reserves in gold, they created and then lent to the crown, at interest, whatever amount the crown wanted. The changed world would henceforth be on a “war footing.” The devastations, waste, and tragedies of war were eventually spun into “good for the economy.”

Usury was bad. Banking was good.

But many did not fall for it: Franklin, Jefferson and Paine to name three. The refusal of the founding patriots to pay tribute to the institution that extracted

money from the colonies was the primary cause of the War of Independence. Their continued refusal helped cause the War of 1812.

Enter Vermont. A state since 1791, Vermont had minted her own coins during her 14 years of independence. From that time until 1806, the people of Vermont used a potpourri of currencies, many issued by private banks from neighboring states. The problems of usury, fraud, discounted notes, counterfeiting, bad debt, along with inefficient and unreliable means of buying and selling seemed unsolvable. Vermont did not have a bank, either public or private, and thereby hangs a tale.

PART I: THE VERMONT STATE BANK

In 1803 the Vermont legislature, Governor Tichenor, and his council took up the banking question. Though the legisla-ture passed a bill 98-93 in favor of bank charters for Windsor and Burlington, the

governor and council “non-concurred” and published arguments against banking and submitted them to the legislature. Read the story of the bank’s formation as described by George B. Reed in “Sketch of the Early History of Banking in Vermont.”

Among the 8 reasons for disallowing banks in Vermont, were

#3 “Banks, by facilitating enterprises both hazardous and unjustifiable, are a natural source of all that class of vices which arise from the gambling system and which cannot fail to act as sure and fatal, though slow, poisons to the republic in which they exist.”

#5 “Banks have a violent tendency, in their natural operation, to draw into the hands of the few a large proportion of the property at present fortunately diffused among the many. The tendency of banks seems to be to weaken the great pillars of a republican government, and at the same time to increase the forces employed for its overthrow.”

BY JIM HOGUE

A 19th Century Public Bank for Vermont, and Lessons for TodayPh

oto

by R

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illia

ms

#6 “As banks will credit none but persons of affluence, those who are in greatest need of help cannot expect to be directly accommodated by them.”

In 1804, the Vermont legislature recommended that the arguments regarding banking be put before the people, and that a vote on a banking bill be held in 1805. This was done, and the proponents of banking made a good case that banks would solve the many problems that Vermonters faced, including counterfeiting, inefficiency, and the draining of capital by out-of-state (“foreign”) banks.

In 1805, supporters presented peti-tions for banks in Windsor and Burlington, and Titus Hutchinson backed a bill “establishing a State (public) Bank.” Though the legislature passed it, the governor and council did not concur. It was agreed “that the General Assembly should go into such a consideration of the subject as shall lead to a thorough investigation of its principles, practica-bility and policy.” This was done and sent to a committee of five, and then dismissed.

1806 proved the year. “Petitions to the legislature for bank charters were numerous.” The legislature voted on petitions for private banks, which lost by two votes, after which a bill was introduced to establish “The Vermont State Bank.” This bill “passed by a large majority, the governor and council concurring.” Branches were established in Woodstock and Middlebury. Section six of the bill insured a 100% reserve in specie up to “twenty five thousand dollars, after which they may put in circulation bills to three times that amount of such deposit, provided said deposit shall not exceed three hundred

thousand dollars.” The charter insured that the officers of the bank adhere to sound and prudent policy, monitored by a committee from the legislature.

In 1807, the directors’ report concluded “The obstacles that were inseparable from an institution established on principles hitherto unattempted in the banking system (emphasis mine) have been happily surmounted and the practicability of

those principles established. The high credit and extensive circula-tion of our bills, we trust, are sufficient to inspire the public confidence, and to insure a continuance of their patronage. Under the fostering care of the legislature, we are induced to believe that this institu-tion may become highly conducive

to the convenience of the citizens, and a productive source of revenue to the state.”

Two more branches were added: Burlington and Westminster.

Profits of the Bank:

• 1808 - $11,171.44• 1809 - $22,412.48• 1810 - $33.066.19 • 1811 - $44,769.11The banks proved successful despite

the many impediments thrown at Vermont by neighboring states and their private banks.

In the words of Governor Galusha in 1809 in his message to the House:

“It will deserve your attention. The failure of several private banks in the vicinity of this state, the rejecting our bills by the law of one state and the policy and caprice of others, has embarrassed our mercantile intercourse with the adjoining states. . . .The manner to be pursued to meet or remove

VERMONT TOWN MEETINGS VOTE ON PUBLIC BANKSby Gwendolyn Hallsmith

“If a Vermont Public Bank is organic, grass-fed, and pesticide-free, then I say we should all support it!” Charlie Hosford, former longtime Waitsfield Select Board member at Town Meeting March 4th.

Local democracy in Vermont remains untainted by modernity. In small towns all over the state, people gather in small meeting halls, school cafeterias, community centers, and churches to hold their annual Town Meetings on the first Tuesday each March. Every registered voter is welcome, outsiders are not. Except for the clothes people wear, the comfort of central heating (yesterday the temperature outdoors didn’t get above zero degrees Fahrenheit until 10 am), and occasional cable TV cameras, these meetings look and sound much as they did 150 years ago.

The normal topics debated at the Town Meetings relate to budgets, elections, and expenditures. New fire trucks, Road Commissioner salaries, school busses – all of these line items are fair game for approval, amendment, or rejection by the voters. If new ordinances are being consid-ered, these can also be discussed and voted at Town Meeting – zoning, noise, and dog control being common subjects.

But every year, voters across the state bring other, more politically charged, items to the Town Meetings for deliberation. Vermont and other New England states made headlines back in the 1980s when hundreds of towns across the region voted for nuclear disarmament. In 2002, over 50 towns in Vermont considered an endorse-ment of the Earth Charter in advance of the international agreement on sustainable development and peace going before the U.N. Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. Typically, to be consid-ered for Town Meeting, a petition has to be presented to the town in January with at least 5% of the registered voters signing it.

This year, over 20 towns considered a resolution at Town Meeting that directed their legislators to create a State Bank for

April 16, the League of Women Voters sponsored a discussion about public banking at the State House that featured Treasurer Beth Pearce, Senator Anthony Pollina, Chris D’Elia of the Vermont Bankers’ Association (above), and Gwen Hallsmith. Photos by Michael Taub.

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Vermont, a paradigm changing way of dealing with public money. The legisla-tion pending before the Vermont state legislature would transfer 10% of the tax dollars collected in the state to a publicly held agency called VEDA, for the Vermont Economic Development Authority, and would give VEDA a banking license.

Right now, the state deposits its money in the large, private banks such as Toronto Dominion (TD Bank) and People’s United Bank. The smaller, state chartered banks in Vermont do not have the capital or collateral to back the State’s $350 million average daily balance. As a result, Vermonters’ money is put to work outside of Vermont – in TD Bank’s case, with investment in the Keystone XL pipeline – a project a lot of Vermonters oppose. While at the same time, the state borrows the money we use for economic develop-ment and infrastructure projects from Wall Street.

A small, grassroots organization called Vermonters for a New Economy has been working on a variety of new ideas for economic development in Vermont for a few years, and creating a State Bank has been one of their focal points. Last year, they sponsored a study by the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics and the Political and Economic Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts to determine what the economic impact of a State Bank would be on Vermont.

The results of the study were impressive – keeping Vermont’s tax dollars in Vermont and using it for economic development and infrastructure would create over 2,500 jobs, over $190 million in value added productivity, and over $340 million in gross state product. For a state of 600,000 people, these are significant economic improvements. But for all the benefits, the idea has been opposed by the lobbyists for the large banks, and the legislature has not yet moved forward with it. Administration officials who work closely with the banks have parroted the bankers’ objections – making it sound like a broad consensus in opposition at the highest levels of state government.

To counteract the high powered lobby in Montpelier, Vermonters for a New Economy brought the question directly

these impediments I leave to your consideration. It will be remembered by many that I was not amongst those that favoured the institution of country banks; but it is apparent that the estab-lishment of a public bank in this state has saved many of our citizens from great losses, and probably some from total ruin - for it is obvious that but for this establishment, in lieu of our own Vermont bank bills, our citizens would on the late bankruptcies have been possessed of large sums of depreciated paper of the failing private banks. . . .”

The House reciprocated the Governor’s sentiments, and so it seemed that the state was well committed to the continuation of the bank and the well being of her citizens. The bank enriched the state of Vermont and her people for several years, but the pressures from outside influences caused the legislature eventually to cave in. In 1812, they took steps to dissolve the bank. The “Sketch” by George B Read, from which I have quoted thus far, leaves the rest to specu-lation, implying that a majority of the legislators had lost both their backbones and their senses. Further research from other sources, in particular History of Woodstock Vermont 1761-1886 by Henry Swan Dana, provided a compre-hensible account of the bank’s end, summarized in the paragraphs below.

Titus Hutchinson, representative from Woodstock and one of the origina-tors of the idea of a Vermont Public Bank, valued the experiment thus:

“No monarch lurked beneath the folds of such a institution as the one proposed; for it would be in the hands not of a corporation of soulless individuals, but of the true friends of the people, who, moreover . . . would have the means at command to make more friends to them-selves for the protection of the commonwealth. Then, as a further and more important consideration, the bank in its operations would be limited only by law. Out of

reasons like these, to adduce no additional motives, grew The Vermont State Bank.”

Gold, copper and silver were depos-ited in exchange for the bills printed by the bank. Still, there was great fear that the bills were not backed up by a responsible entity. The private banks did not give this new invention “a welcome, feel a common interest in it and afford to the circulation of its paper that facility which they impart to the notes of one another.” Furthermore, “The moneyed of Boston, who ruled the whole of Massachusetts, waged uncommon war against the country banks, and especially against the Vermont State Bank.”

Counterfeiters re-emerged, like Stephen Burroughs in Canada who flooded the state with “Burroughs shags.” Private banks that failed owed them money. There was a lack of local produce on which to spend the money in state, so the bills were spent afar

and then redeemed for specie at the bank by representatives (runners) of the “foreign” banks. Federal lawyers and merchants, it seems, borrowed large sums of money from the bank, conspired to discredit the bills, and, when the bills were discredited, they bought them at a large discount and then paid their debts, pocketing the extra money that they had bought up cheep. It’s possible, however, that the bank’s demise was due to excessive amounts of bills in circulation as a ratio to the reserves in the bank. So their value fell below par. People feared that the president and directors of the bank

Beth Pearce, Vermont State Treasurer, photo by Michael Taub.

could be sued for breach of contract, and any judgment rendered against them would be paid by the state treasurer.

I would like to be able to point to a definitive event, such as the assassina-tions of Lincoln and Kennedy (ending government issuance of Green Backs and Silver Certificates, respectively) or the wars against Iraq and Libya (ending their independent state currencies), or the great fire in Parliament burning the tally sticks. But one can see from the events surrounding the demise of the Vermont State Bank that any of the several events cited in this article could have been the reason. If Titus Hutchinson had been clairvoyant, he might have predicted the extent of corruption involved in the control of the money supply. The struggle involved in money creation and the profits thereof (seigniorage) raged at the time and remained in open debate from colonial times through the early 1800s through Presidents Madison, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, and Kennedy. They all knew that money creation was a serious, deadly game. “The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adver-sity,” Lincoln noted. “They are more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy.”

Today, we see clearly the results of the victory of the money powers over all, and the arrogant corruption that is its essence. Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi is the most recent of many observers - G. Edward Griffin, Smedley Butler, John Perkins, Greg Palast and Ellen Brown - to expose the collusion among the money powers and congress, the judiciary, and the presidency. It is neither quaint nor curious that the press at large cannot bring itself to follow the lead of those who have laid out these uncomfortable truths. It is treasonous. Woodrow Wilson said it after he signed the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Act of 1913 into law.1 With the signing into

law of that act, the money powers gained control of the three branches of govern-ment. JFK trumped them when he issued Silver Certificates; but this development, for the money powers, was a mere bump in the road. The utter failure of congress, the judiciary, the executive, the constabulary, and the press to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the murder of JFK proved that the United States was ruled by an untouchable, unspeakable, higher power, as Presidents Lincoln and Wilson described.

PART II: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS: THE NEXT VERMONT STATE BANK

I solicited opinions and facts for Part II of this article from those on record as being in favor of a state bank and also from those against a state bank. No nega-tive replies were received. Tom Sgouros, Michael Shuman, Gwen Hallsmith, Gary Murphy, Gary Flomenhoft, Ellen Brown and Marc Armstrong voiced positive opinions. The statistics cited were found in studies conducted by the Gund Institute at UVM, the Demos Report (Jason Judd and Heather McGhee), The Joint Fiscal Office,

The Center for State Innovation, Vermont Currency Commons, Vermonters for a New Economy, The Public Banking Institute, The “Capital Gaps” Study, “Collateralized Damage, Are Vermont Funds Deposited in TD Bank North Safe?” by Jim Hogue, and “North Dakota’s Economic Miracle, It’s Not Oil” by Ellen Brown.

The Vermont legislature (which has shown support for our efforts) asked “What problem are you addressing?” For starters, here is a list, by the numbers, of Vermont’s “Unmet Capital Needs” as laid out by Treasurer Beth Pearce:

Thermal Energy - $267,000,000

Renewable Energy - $28,7000,000,000

Homes - $1,340,000,000

Rental Housing - $398,400,000

Bridges - $2,200,000,000

Dams - $16,800,000

Water Systems - $750,000,000

Wastewater Treatment - $218,000,000

Roads - $6,450,000,000

Parks - $65,000,000

Schools - $326,000,000

From Hurricane Irene (still)

Housing - $24,900,000

Business - $22,200,000

Infrastructure - $6,491,328

VEDA - $16,551,357

Total - $40,768,239,971

This accounting does not include the debt service of over $72 million in 2012 for state obligations alone, not counting the combined general obligations of the municipalities nor the state agencies such as VEDA, VHFA and VSAC. The payments go to Wall Street. (A state bank could borrow money at the bank rate of about .592%, which can be as little as one eighth of the cost of money borrowed by bonding.)

This does not mention the risks of

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depositing our money in TD Bank North whose derivative exposure is 44 times the value of the company, and which invests Vermont’s money throughout the world. (This is “insane,” in the words of Michael Shuman.)2

Speaking of which, consider 1) the loss of the multiplier effect when investments are made afar by out-of-state brokers at international financial institutions, 2) the hardships of our college students who are burdened with debt and interest for decades, and 3) the constipated delivery of emergency funds.

Why is a state bank the solution, and why do we need one if we are to solve our present and future economic woes?

There is no other mechanism in these times to create “legal tender” than banking. Political entities and citizens have created many highly successful alternative money creations. We have a few here in Vermont right now, the most successful of which is the mutual exchange system http://vbsrmarket.com/ run by Amy Kirschner in the Burlington area. Crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin have emerged as well. But none create “legal tender” that will be accepted as payment for taxes and fees, either by the state or by the towns.

Lincoln created the Green Backs and Kennedy the Silver Certificates, but those systems of money creation (seigniorage) were not on. That’s why we must have a bank to create money, as that is what banks do. The Vermont State Bank (based on its revenues) would put legal tender into Vermont’s money supply by making loans to Vermont Chartered Banks. No loans, no new money. We and our political creations such as school districts and towns continue to pay interest and prin-cipal on these loans. Those payments should remain in the state.

On the national front, the government also borrows money from the banks, though that seems to be a secret. Few people know what the national debt is, or that the government has actually borrowed that money from the central

banks, and that our tax dollars pay the interest to the central banks. (Hence the ratification of the 16th amendment and creation of form 1040 in 1913 for enforcement) Dennis Kucinich had a plan to fix that. It went nowhere because your representative would much rather keep the bankers happy than serve the people.

So that is why we have banks and why banks have the sole privilege of creating money and collecting interest. The same rules apply worldwide. Find me a “villain” who didn’t have a national, public currency.

Let’s look at why states need to create public banks, as North Dakota did in 1919. The money powers were driving the farmers in North Dakota off their lands because they could only hang on to a fraction of their hard earned income. The tapeworm economy that they had correctly identified as the Wall Street banks was sucking them dry. The banks not only drained them directly, but they also manipulated prices and ran the railroads.

The solution was remarkably simple. The people drove the existing power structure out of office and elected the non-partisan league that created the Bank of North Dakota. The bank survived despite a lawsuit from the Federal Reserve Banks. and became the partner of the many North Dakota banks, keeping them solvent, prosperous and free from the tape worm. Today, Wall Street gets only 14% of North Dakota’s financial market share, while it gets 65% of Vermont’s. (From the Gund Institute study, Exploring a Public Bank for Vermont)

Today, worldwide and in Vermont, we pay, on average, 40 cents out of every dollar to cover the interest on debt (calculated by German economist Margrit Kennedy “Interest and Inflation Free Money: Creating an Exchange Medium That Works for Everybody and Protects the Earth”). It happened so gradually that we didn’t notice (as the colonists did notice in the 1770s). In North Dakota, the banks recycle interest

to the voters. Petitions were circulated through the fall, educational workshops were held for the organizers, printed mate-rials written, and during a national event called New Economy Week in October, towns all over the state hosted kickoff meetings for the Town Meeting campaign for State Banks.

The bankers and their lobbyists didn’t like the end run to voters – one of the lobbyists also happened to be the mayor in Montpelier (the state capital and where I worked as the Director of Planning and Community Development). Two weeks before New Economy Week began, he wrote a message about the public banking campaign to the City Manager, saying that my advocacy work “really can’t continue,” and continued by saying “I’m not sure I see the point in my meeting with her to outline these concerns. I’ve raised them before with you, I assume they’ve been communi-cated to her, and nothing has changed.”

But the voters loved the idea. Yesterday, in seventeen towns around the state, a vote to endorse the idea of a public bank passed overwhelmingly at Town Meeting. In Waitsfield, for example after a long day of intense town meeting discussion on a wide variety of issues, citizens voted their support for a Vermont Public Bank by a 2 to 1 margin.

Continued on page 35.

2: Radio interview, WGDR. Michael Shuman is a “Community Economist” and author. His website is www.locatopia.wordpress.com

1: “I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world; no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

Notes from Battle Over Banking:

back into the North Dakota economy via the small private banks’ umbilical connec-tion the Bank of North Dakota. They have no general obligation debt. Municipalities may go to the bond market, but the purchasers seem to be in North Dakota. So bond interest is recycled to Dakotans, as well.

For those who think that Vermont could use some cash, and who also think that higher and more taxes are not the way to go, then the state bank is the only solution. The numbers are in. Keeping in mind the capital gaps and the need we have here for energy efficiency and investments in local energy sources, businesses and agriculture, let’s look at the projections from Gary Flomenhoft’s Gund Institute study.

“Based on the state of Vermont’s 2013 unrestricted cash funds, we estimate a public bank:

1. Could make loans equal to 66% of the state funds on deposits, or $236.2 million in credit for economic development in the state.

2. This new credit would be at low cost to the state because a public bank does not have to borrow money first by selling bonds. . . . Interest would return to the state both on deposits and on loans. The treasurer’s office would receive interest on its bank balance as they do now, and the bank would receive interest on loans.”

3. The study predicts that such moneys passing through VEDA and VHFA “could result in 2,535 new jobs $192 million in value added (to Gross State Product) and $342 million in in-state output.

4. If used to finance capital expendi-tures, funding through a public bank could save close to $100 million in interest costs on FY 2012-13 capital spending due to most interest payments no longer leaving the state.

5. In the case of state capital expen-ditures, financing through a public bank could create over 1000 jobs in the first two years without the loss of 100-200 jobs per year thereafter.”

Note that people who have jobs pay taxes and shop.

By my calculations, the state coffers of North Dakota, with a similar population to Vermont’s, pull in about $100 million more per year than Vermont, as Dakotans avoid the $72 million in debt service, and reap the benefits of its own bank. And that doesn’t count the multiplier effect from a stimulated local economy, nor the pride of belonging to a strong, productive, emanci-pated community.

As this article goes to press, Vermont state senator Anthony Pollina has a new bill, S 204 advocating a public bank role for the Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA). Gwen Hallsmith and Gary Flomenhoft with help from the Donella Meadows Foundation (www.

donellameadows.org) are forging ahead with a public information campaign, and with studies that investigate the merits of a Vermont State Bank. Petitions for getting the issue of a public bank on town meeting warnings, and a list of Frequently Asked Questions, are circulating. Our monetary committee is preparing for meetings with the executives of Vermont’s small banks. Gubernatorial Candidate Emily Peyton has made it part of her platform.

CONCLUSION

This article focused on the financial aspects of a state bank. It hardly mentioned the philosophical, spiritual, and moral issues associated with freedom, liberty and emancipation: issues that have always been dear to our hearts since Vermont created herself as an independent republic in 1777. These ideals are antithetical to the present monetary system. But despite what we profess, we are supporting what is deeply corrupt. Divestiture from Wall Street and the Federal Reserve is the moral high ground if we want to take it. The fact that a state bank would also be profitable should make it a no-brainer. We well know that our public servants have a strong aversion to risk, but, in the words of Gary Murphy, “It is just too bad they don’t have a strong aversion to doing business with financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo et al that are ripping us off and that will take all our money when the next crash comes. We have plenty of evidence that demonstrates the extreme riskiness of doing business with these institutions.”

In short, if a 21st century Vermont is to become truly independent, it must create a public bank. The time is now.

CATCHINGLIGHTNING

IN A BOTTLEREVIEW BY ROB WILLIAMS

Senator Anthony Pollina, photo by Michael Taub.

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Like many other thinking citizens these days, I am fond of demonizing Wall Street. After all, Wall Street deserves demonizing, given the extraordinary corruption, excess and sheer financial hubris that has characterized the U.S. corporate financial system during the past decade. In his must-read and now-famed 2009 Rolling Stone article entitled “The Great American Bubble Machine,” gonzo indy journalist Matt Taibbi described Goldman Sachs, the world’s most powerful investment bank, as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” He may as well have been describing Wall Street itself, a place so storied, so mythical, so powerful, and so dedicated to the production of what one wag laughably called “something out of nothing,” as well as a deservedly symbolic target for the astonishing and ever-widening gap between the super rich and the rest of U.S. in this new millennium. As #OccupyWallStreet (yes, they are still very much alive and well) reminds us this month, disturbing new data indicate that, in the past five years since 2008’s Great Financial Meltdown, the richest 1% have gained $6.1 trillion (with a T) in wealth, while the average American family’s net worth has barely recovered.

So imagine my surprise at reading Winthrop H. Smith Jr’s epic new book Catching Lightning In A Bottle: How Merrill Lynch Revolutionized the Financial World and being reminded that the history and culture of Wall Street is perhaps a bit more complex than we sometimes remember in the midst of our collective rage with Wall Street these days.

Many of us here in Vermont’s Mad River Valley know “Win” as the affable and philanthropically-minded co-owner of Sugarbush Ski Resort. What some may not know is this: before he left Wall Street to become a Vermont ski bum (his term, not mine), Mr. Smith spent close to three decades at Merrill Lynch, or “Mother Merrill,” as the firm is still affectionately known by veterans. As the son of one of Merrill Lynch’s co-founders, Mr. Smith served as executive vice president, a member of the Executive Management Committee, and traveled the world as Chairman of Merrill Lynch International, before ultimately resigning from the firm due to organizational and cultural disagreements with CEO E. Stanley O’Neal, who took over Mother Merrill in 2003. Smith pulls no punches in his book, castigating O’Neal for radically changing the direction and ethical compass of Merrill Lynch and wrecking what was once a humane company. O’Neal’s “disdain for the Mother Merrill culture embraced by all his predecessors,” Smith concludes, “brought down a great firm.”

Weighing in at close to 600 pages, Smith’s book feels intimidating at first heft, but is surprisingly readable for an epic

financial history. Told in an intimate first-person style, Win’s account of growing up in a world of privilege and power is fascinating. Particularly telling is his love and deep admiration for his father, Winthrop H. Smith, whom Win describes as “a skilled leader and humble man” whose “steady command brought Wall Street to Main Street.” Smith also provides a remarkable insider’s account of the history of Merrill Lynch, beginning with its 1914 founding by “charismatic, creative visionary” Charles E. Merrill, who cut his teeth in the grocery and brokerage industries, and the “disciplined” Edmund C. Lynch who provided the “check-and-balance” of the start up relationship. Win credits his father, meanwhile, for “bringing Wall Street to Main Street,” teaching ordinary Americans about

the power of investing and making Wall Street accessible to the average Joe for the first time in U.S. history. Indeed, the book’s cover photograph, featuring a New York City Wall Street/Main Street sign post, suggests that this is Merrill Lynch’s most significant legacy in the author’s mind.

Most interesting, perhaps, are the book’s conclusions about Merrill Lynch and the future of Wall Street more universally. Smith holds CEO E. Stanley O’Neal and a compliant Merrill Lynch Board of Directors accountable for Mother Merrill’s near-collapse, and, in one moving scene, recounts his appeal to the “Principles” that defined his beloved firm during a company conference call shortly before his departure. “Someone once said you can never love a firm because it can’t love you back,” Smith stated during that fateful phone conversation. “Well, that person never knew Merrill Lynch. Our firm is our

people, and the love and respect you have shown me is why I love Merrill Lynch and each of you.” Smith left the firm shortly thereafter, and watched as “The Death of Mother Merrill” (Chapter 14) unfolded against the larger corrupt collapse of Wall Street firms: Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, WorldCom – and, of course, the post-implosion “retirement” of (now dead) Mother Merrill CEO O’Neal with a $261 million severance package, an obscene but all-too-typical “golden parachute” outcome that still rankles Smith to this day.

As we consider what the future holds for Wall Street and the United States Empire as a whole, Catching Lightning In A Bottle serves as a valuable history, a memoir, and a cautionary tale well worth reading. While I remain angry with Wall Street, I now have a better understanding of one firm’s attempt to navigate a tumultuous century of financial management, as well as the problems hubris can bring to what was once, perhaps, one of Wall Street’s more humane corporations. Kudos to Mr. Smith for putting pen to paper and telling the Merrill Lynch story from his own insider’s experience.

You can pick up the book at one of our many local libraries, and find out more at www.smith-merrillhistory.com.

Humans like to think that because a thing exists, it will always exist. The response is, of course, irrational—yet there it is, helping us to believe in permanence so that we can rise each morning with some assurance of continuity.

A cadre of constitutional historians, organic farmers, bucolic philosophers, lawyers, slow-food advocates, sheepherders, and artisans in Vermont are betting their souls to the contrary. They believe in the ultimate confrontation with stability: the breakdown of the United States into bioregional sovereign nations—and, most urgently, the secession of the good state of Vermont from the US Empire.

Before one rolls one’s eyes at the innocence of such an endeavor, one might open to the reality that secession stands among the most widespread political ventures in today´s less-than-post-colonial world. Think: Scotland, Catalonia, Quebec, Croatia, North Ireland, Herzegovina, Kashmir, Sicily, Sardinia, Tibet, the caracoles of Chiapas, the Native nations of North America. As Edward Said has reminded us, immediately after World War II, some 100 new nations arose out of the classical empires that had taken possession of 85%

of the planet´s land mass. And the trend continues. In the last 50 years the United Nations has expanded from its original 51 participating countries to some 200.

And so, why not Alaska? Northern California? Puerto Rico? Hawaii? The Republic of Cascadia? These are among the 35 movements—some as hypothetical as wisps from the Aquarian Age, others dead-serious—now seeking secession from the United States of America.

The most intent-on-success of the lot is Vermont.

Thomas Naylor is recognized as the father of the current effort. After a thirty-year career as an economist at Duke University, the southern gentleman with a flair for incisive research and rigorous

morality, retired to the Montanges Vertes/Green Mountains. Fueled by outrage at the unethical wars perpetrated by his government and fresh from pushing Downsizing the U.S.A., Naylor saw Vermont as a small, community-oriented bioregion that could lead the way to dissolution. He got to work giving lectures at local colleges, and soon enough he was joined by such local luminaries as publisher Ian Baldwin, Bread and Puppet Theater, organic farmer Enid Wonnacott, and professor Rob Williams—and such “from-away” activists as historian Kirkpatrick Sale, author James Howard Kunstler, slow-food activist Judy Wicks, and journalist Christopher Ketchum.

Out of this swirl came the conception of the Second Vermont Republic and Naylor´s Vermont Manifesto, Baldwin and Williams’ bimonthly journal Vermont Commons, Sale’s Middlebury Institute linking the disparate secession movements working in what soon came to be called the Un-Tied States of America, and a host of books, papers, radio programs, and folk songs about Vermont´s heritage as a state uniquely positioned by history, legality, and inclination to lead the way.

The Mad Farmer Walks QuietlyAwayBook Review of Most Likely to Secede

BY CHELLIS GLENDINNING

Nothing that is can pause or stay;The moon will wax, the moon will wane,The mist and cloud will turn to rain,The rain to mist and cloud again,Tomorrow will be today.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

From the union of ambition and ignorance,From the union of genius and war,From the union of outer space and inner vacuity,The Mad Farmer walks quietly away.

—Wendell Berry

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Fueling this sentiment toward the viability of secession is the fact that the First Republic of Vermont had been neither a royal nor a continental colony. From the get-go of European settlement, it was an independent republic boasting its own political culture and constitution; to defend the rights of the region´s land grants against expansionist New York, Ethan Allen had organized the Green Mountain Boys militia in 1770, and this resistance had led to independence in 1777.

As populist scholar Adrian Kuzminski writes in his essay, “The First Populist Republic,”

They achieved, albeit briefly, a startling decentralization of political and economic power seldom seen in human history. Unlike the neighboring American colonies, with their links to Europe and their increasing hierarchical power structures rooted in the commercial seaport centers like Boston and New York, Vermonters in their hills were able to achieve widespread ownership of land as independent farmers and artisans without reckoning with an established wealthy elite in control of resources.

The current movement to fashion the Second Vermont Republic stems from this same spirit of independence.

Most Likely to Secede is a compilation of essays written over the course of six years for Vermont Commons. Topics range from the violence of US foreign policy, the failure of the two-party system, the benefits of a human-scale

politic, and the economic viability of small nationhood to the eco-social advantages of developing renewable energy sources, farming organic vegetables and grains, herding sheep, and trading with local currency.

Three assumptions bond the essays: 1) US governmental policy is brutal to all living beings and flat-out unsustainable, as is the societal product of imperialism—mass industrial civilization; 2) whether the indicator is unending arms build-up and war, economic disintegration, climate change, ecological degradation, food instability, the end of cheap fossil-fuel energy, social chaos, or spiritual trauma, global society is in a process of collapse; and 3) removal from this travesty is a worthy way for Vermont, and other regions, to reinvent the human community.

In light of the urgency of the situation, the choice the authors pose is between bowing to the inevitable breakdown of global systems and, as Sale puts it in the 2004 Middlebury Declaration, “all forms by which small political bodies

distance themselves from larger ones, as in decentralization, dissolution, disunion, division, devolution, or secession.” For Vermonters, the abiding link between their traditional rural customs, contemporary back-to-the-land practices, and the political mechanisms offered by nationhood is laid out with a sophistication that reaches beyond Lewis Mumford’s 1940’s conception of regionalism to become what we might call Bioregionalism-All-Grown-Up-and-Ready-to-Trot.

Fueled by the urgency proposed by the environmental movement and the publication of E.F. Schumacher´s Small Is Beautiful, the bioregional congresses that emerged in the 1980s were essentially gatherings touting an idea: the United States would best be broken up into regions in which human-scale cultures would reflect the climate, landscape, hydrology, and species of their ecosystems. As it evolved, though, the practice of bioregionalism came to be focused mainly on community-building and culture-creation. Activists like David Haenke of the Ozarks went about “re-inhabiting Place” by “living as if the Earth mattered”—rejecting participation in the corporate marketplace and surviving directly from the land. Planet Drum founders Peter Berg and Judy Goldhaft of the Shasta Bioregion hit the San Francisco Chronicle´s front page in 1986 when, against city regulations, they ripped out the sidewalk in front of their Noe Valley home so that native plants could thrive, and ceremonialist Chris Wells founded All-Species Parade International to celebrate the existence of more-than-human beings.

What was missing from the endeavor was seriousness about the political/ economic means by which citizens could achieve the goal of breaking up the nation-state—and herein lies the most potent contribution of the secession movement.

Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.

—W.B. Yeats

It is all well and fine to stand at the podium in the Vermont Statehouse, under a bigger-than-life portrait of George Washington, and spout platitudes about taking flight from the American Empire. When questions such as “Can a state secede—and how?” and “How would we survive?” are raised, though, the authors reveal themselves to be no-nonsense, scythe-wielding, windmill-building realists.

According to Naylor, Thomas Jefferson speaks to the question of the lawfulness of secession: “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” And the Tenth Amendment lays the legal basis, decreeing that what is not expressly prohibited is allowed. Regarding method, Naylor explains, it is first necessary to persuade the legislature to authorize a convention to rescind statehood; Articles of Secession are then submitted to the US President, Secretary of State, President of the Senate, and Speaker of the House; and diplomatic relations sought with the United Nations, Mexico, China, France, India, Brazil, Bolivia, Russia, Scotland, etc.

As to economic viability, Most Likely to Secede is rife with analysis and facts, as well as information about energy-efficiency and food-sovereignty projects already in operation. Sustainability consultant Gaelan Brown asks: which is the better investment—a $7 billion nuclear power plant that would make Vermont reliant on dwindling supplies of uranium while endangering health and ecology for centuries to come? Or a $7 billion distributed solar-electricity system that would generate 100% of the state´s residential power without any fuel costs for 30 years? Vermont´s household share of the cost of US militarism is $10,000

per year, Brown discloses, an amount that would cover installation of enough solar power to meet 100% of residential needs in three years. And replacing propane and heating oil with sustainably-harvested wood would keep $1 billion in the local economy, while the average home would save $2000 per year.

Wheat and rice farmer Erik Andrus writes that Vermonters currently grow just .08% of the wheat they consume and proposes that one ten-acre farm in each of the state’s 251 towns would provide two loaves of native-grown bread each week, year-round, to 37,000 Vermonters. Businesswoman Amy Kirschner points out that some 4,000 local currencies are strengthening regional economies in the world today and puts forward a plan for a transitional monetary system based on locally-produced paper money, U.S. cash, “Time Dollars” accrued through hours of volunteer work , and business-to-business mutual credit. In an essay called “The Great Re-Skilling,” Rob Williams calls for the remembrance/re-invention of low-tech, hands-on, sustainable practices; aside from teaching and editing Vermont Commons, Williams also raises grass-fed yaks.

A most relevant debate emerges. In his 2008 treatise Secession, Naylor has laid out a more hard-nosed approach to solvency: measured by per-capita income, he writes, some of the richest countries in the world are smaller than Vermont: Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Bermuda, and Cayman Island, for instance—all of which realize wealth by via corporate services like financial institutions, telecommunications centers, and global tourism. But the authors of Most Likely to Secede appear to favor devolution from corporation-bound schemes; besides, they assume that global society is collapsing of its own contradictions.

The debate is a well-worn one,

springing as it does from the paradoxes that imperial systems impose on the vanquished. Its inevitable appearance highlights the very point of secession: sovereignty. For liberation to be achieved, the path to economic solvency in Vermont—or in the Republic of Cascadia or in Puerto Rico—is to be decided by the citizens of those places.

When my review copy of Most Likely to Secede arrived in Cochabamba, I was reading Teoponte, Gustavo Rodríguez Ostria’s historical tome about the little-known, post-Guevara guerrilla movement to keep armed revolution in the tropical hills of Bolivia going, and I had just spent an evening in a local cantina talking with one of the few surviving warriors of that massacre.

The contrast between the two books highlights the fact that different strategies spring from different realities. The inclination to remove one´s self from dysfunctional policies may be as old as the Green Mountains, and yet the urge to defeat the aggressor and reclaim power is as old as the Cordillera Oriental.

Although all evidence points to the contrary, many US citizens will not easily admit that they are victims of state violence. Despite the genocide of Native Americans, ongoing exploitation of young people in wars of aggression, racial profiling, contamination of the nation´s own citizenry by both nuclear and electromagnetic radiation, purposeful infusion of addictive drugs into activist communities, the USA PATRIOT Act, internet surveillance, jailing of protestors, etc., etc., etc. ad infinitum—myths touting “allegiance to (the) idea” of

Libre,como el sol cuando amanece, yo soy libre,como el mar.

—Nino Bravo

When we feed ourselves, we become unconquerable.

—Eliot Coleman

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democracy are as blazingly alive today as they were on D-Day, successfully enabling what Sheldon Wolin has called “inverted totalitarianism”; whereas in the Latin America of both past and present, the unflagging omnipresence of machine guns and verde-olivo tanks—stimulating communal memory of tortures, assassinations, and disappearances—functions to call up a more blatantly ruthless reality.

And yet all the realities are, in the end, ruthless—and all the responses we have mustered not quite comprehensive enough to counter the brutality. In this context, every strategy that aims

toward liberation becomes worthy of our consideration—and yet among

progressives in the US, secession seems always to have struck a chord of flaky impossibility. Perhaps this rejection is because of its failed go-around during the Civil War and inevitable association with the immorality of slavery; perhaps because, like Marxist revolution or Callenbach’s Ecotopia, its promises appear to lie farther in the future than the coming elections propose; perhaps because people like to think that if a thing exists, it will always exist.

Most Likely to Secede may be the document most likely to propose otherwise.

Below—Rocks, by Kyle Tansley.

In the real world, on 9/11, the Vermont Air National Guard defended nothing against nobody, and managed to provide no real protection for anyone anywhere. When it mattered most in 2001, our Air Guard was on the ground.

But that’s not the official story.

The official story is framed to make this abject failure to provide any actual defense look like some sort on non-specific heroic saga. Here’s U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, 74, a Democrat and part-time Vermonter, with his version of the official story in a letter to constituents:

“Vermont’s 158th Fighter Wing [the Air Guard] is of outstanding and proven ability, and in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, scrambled many of their [sic] F-16s in protective missions. For 122 days, the unit provided continuous air patrols over Washington, D.C., and New York City. No Air Force unit did more than the Vermont Guard to reestablish control of our skies after that awful day.”

Leahy offers this irrelevant and misleading non sequitur as an argument for basing the F-35 first strike fighter in Vermont’s most densely populated area. Deliberately deceitful, the official story is also bi-partisan. Vermont Lt. Governor Phil Scott, 55, a Republican and present Vermonter, offered his version in public testimony:

“Let’s also not forget that the aircraft stationed in South Burlington are there for defensive purposes. This base holds an important strategic position to defend the eastern seaboard. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, the Vermont Air National Guard patrolled New York City and Washington, DC for 122 days.”

The official story is a fundamentally emotional trope, without relevant substance, designed to play on public patriotism and paranoia. No wonder it works, even more than a decade after the whole U.S. Air Force was taking a day off, when it might easily have followed standing protocol and prevented any or all of the 9/11 attacks. An F-35 sitting on the ground will be no

The penTAgon F-35 FighTer in The green mounTAins:

How Blind Patriotism Struck Vermont’s Elected Leaders Blind, Deaf, and DumbBy William Boardman

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more effective than an F-16 sitting on the ground.

The official story is received wisdom that should be rejected as unwise. It’s a repeated fiction that not only asks for genuflection to imaginary heroes, but suggests that F-35 opponents are somehow churlish in their resistance to accepting sacrifice so much less than the World Trade Center. Leahy said in that same constituent letter: “I am not willing to sacrifice any Vermont community for a new fighter jet.”

Given Leahy’s longstanding unwillingness to engage directly with those Vermonters most affected by the F-35 basing, and his equal unwillingness to engage discussion of the F-35 on its merits, he apparently believes some constituents are more equal than others and, to quote Ronald Reagan’s revealing comment, that “facts are stupid things.” In Leahy’s book, South Burlington and Winooski are presumably scored as unwilling sacrifices—as if the sacrificial lamb would care about the butcher’s sensibilities.

This is not to single Leahy out for a betrayal of trust and honesty in which almost all of bi-partisan Vermont officialdom’s

“leaders” were willing and sometimes active collaborators. Since no one in a position of authority had the integrity even to ask serious questions about the meaning of the F-35 and its military-corporate beneficiaries to the future of Vermont life, the officials who should be ashamed of their moral and intellectual limpness are far too many to list, but they include virtually all of the Vermont Senate and House, as well as:

• Governor Peter Shumlin, 58, a Democrat whose idea of meeting with constituents was to take a junket to Florida surrounded by F-35 supporters;

• Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger, 40-ish, a Democrat whose idea of probity included not recusing himself from the discussion because of his obvious conflict of interest as a past member of the airport board;

• Senator Bernie Sanders, 72, an Independent (quasi-Democrat) whose idea of resistance seems to be sending hints of opposition while always “supporting the troops” (and the $600 billion a year it takes to maintain them in the style to which they’ve been subjected since 2001);

Photo above of (L-R) Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger, Senator Patrick Leahy, and Governor Peter Shumlin congratulating Major General Steven Cray of the Vermont Air National Guard for being awarded the F-35. The 158th Fighter Wing will be the first Air National Guard base to house the F-35 . (U.S. Air National Guard photo by AMN Jeffrey Tatro via http://www.158fw.ang.af.mil/photos/mediagallery.asp)

• Rep. Peter Welch, 67, a Democrat whose idea of confronting the F-35 issue head-on turned out to be a proposal to regulate unmanned aircraft (drones) in Vermont (thereby bestowing on them an unevaluated legitimacy); and

• State Rep. Helen Head, 50-ish, a Democrat whose idea of representing her constituents in South Burlington was to leave the decision on the F-35 completely to the feds, even to the point of helping to quash two bills in her committee addressing the issue (an accomplishment omitted from her year-end summary), but a move supported by House Speaker Shap Smith, 48, another Democrat willing to stifle democratic process.

Despite years of public discussion of the F-35, none of these “leaders”—not one—has offered a coherent, factual argument as to how this nuclear-capable bomber serves the common good in Vermont, or anywhere else. In that sense, even though the F-35 won’t arrive in Vermont before 2020, it’s already carried out a successful first strike or two: against lower-income Vermonters and the state’s democratic tradition.

The Vermont Air Guard currently flies F-16 Fighting Falcons,

which the Guard describes like this: “The F-16 Fighting Falcon is a compact, multi-role fighter aircraft. It is highly maneuverable and has proven itself in air-to-air combat and air-to-surface attack. It provides a relatively low-cost, high-performance weapon system for the United States and allied nations.”

None of these statements is true about the F-35. The F-35 is unproven, of dubious maneuverability, of unreliable performance, and wildly expensive, to the extent that some allied nations have cancelled purchase orders.

And it’s not as though the military excellence of the F-35 is assured, ever. The plane’s performance failure and huge cost over-runs make it currently the world’s most expensive weapons system, and it’s still no use to anyone. For more than a decade now, Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon have been saying they’d fix the plane’s problems, but there’s still no certainty the F-35 can even fly in wet weather, never mind maneuver effectively in combat. With this performance record to date, the F-35 makes the U.S. less secure, both militarily and economically. Even if it becomes operational, it may still be all but useless (except for Air Guard missions to guard against no

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attack). With the rise of other technologies, particularly drones and missiles, piloted fighter planes could turn out to be the Maginot Line of air defense.

And that’s the same defense we got from our Air Guard and the rest of the U.S. Air Force on 9/11 using the old technology—we suffered an unchallenged attack that could have been prevented but for a mind-boggling series of official failures over a period of months if not years, as our government allowed the attackers to go around the defenses we thought made us secure. But that’s not the official story, even now.

After their ten-year commemoration of 9/11 in South Burlington, the Air Guard put out a press release with a familiar ring:

“Adjutant Gen. [Michael] Dubie… reflected on the response of the 158th Fighter Wing on 9/11 and the 122 following days

where VTANG pilots and plane maintainers guarded the New York skies against further attacks. It was a highlight of the VTANG to be the first F-16s over the smoking wreckage of the World Trade Center….

“Commander Doug Fick was brief, but poignant… It may be 10 years later, he said, but we cannot let our guard down as a nation from people who hated the military, our families, and our way of life…. ‘We were on the tip of the spear doing the most important work imaginable - protecting our homeland.’”

In a militarized culture, citizens are expected to stop thinking for themselves and to see the military as an object of blind worship in a fetishized homeland where it cannot be seen to do any wrong, even as it circles the smoking wreckage defending against attacks that have already happened.

Vermont’s Senetor Patrick Leahy congratulates the Vermont Air National Guard for being awarded the F-35.The 158th Fighter

Wing will be the first ANG base to house the F-35.(U.S. Air National Guard photo by AMN Jeffrey Tatro via http://www.158fw.

ang.af.mil/photos/mediagallery.asp)

Vermont citizens in opposition to the F-35 fighter jets. City Council Vote in Burlington, 2013. Photo by Dylan Kelley.

TowArd A humAn-scAle democrAcy in AmericA:This is our momenT

VT Yankee Shut Down. Brattleboro, VT. Photo by Dylan Kelley, 2012.

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Within the epigraph above lies a pathway of escape from the ever expanding Federal vortex

of limits to human scale democracy. Washington is not strong. It is profoundly weak. Thus; no more excuses. Be of good cheer. This is our moment.

Here I offer a hopeful hypothesis to those who seek escape from the ever-expanding vortex of centralized constraints to communitarian governance and human scale politics. The Federal Government is becoming geometrically weaker as time passes. Ironically (perhaps even perversely) that is why many of its most egregious activities from foreign policy indiscretions (cue the NSA) to regulatory cronyism (cue the FTC) to “dead on arrival” domestic policy (cue Obamacare) are conducted in and protected by the shadows of complexity.

Indeed, managers of large scale organi-zations (public or private) seek protection in complexity the way white-tail deer seek cedar swamps in hunting season.

How long can a real democracy survive when so many of its activities cannot stand the light of day?

Last May I retired after forty-five years of teaching (as part of my duties) the Introduction to American Government course in four different colleges and universities; finishing up after 37 years at the University of Vermont. By a conservative estimate this means well over 150 classes. Every one of these classes began with this rhetorical ques-tion to my students: Does the Federal Government work? Followed by a simple answer: “Yes” and the explanation: “The Federal Government was designed not to work and as such is performing very well indeed.”

This “weak by design” has produced a performance curve which is (by definition) negative. The more we ask the Federal Government to do for us, the poorer its performance becomes. Worse still, this decline is not linear. It is curvilinear – over time Washington’s

performance curve has declined at a steeper and steeper rate.

Simply put, while the law-making authority to interfere with the lives of our citizens has for 200 hundred years skyrocketed beyond even the most ambitious anticipations of the Founders, the structural apparatus to create and implement this dramatic new authority remains essentially unchanged. Within the chaos of incompetency lies the great danger to our Republic. A proliferation of unseen, unaccountable and thus uncon-trollable nodes of influence have arisen to deal with the complexity of governing a continental enterprise from the center. The result is what political scientists have traditionally called the “politics of muddling through.” Accordingly, any serious notion of “democratic account-ability” has long since vanished.

Those who face the daunting challenge of reinstating a truly democratic America should see this as an opportunity. The tide of history is with us. We are not challenging a healthy, robust and compe-tent democracy. We are challenging a tired democracy and therefore a weak democracy; a splendid achievement in

the history collective human behavior that unfortunately has been hobbled by its inability to reign in its natural appetite for aggrandizing authority—even though the cost of this authority was paid in terms of democratic legitimacy.

Consider the health care fiasco: in light of this, President Obama is getting a bum rap. The truth is national health care was doomed from the start. For all its good intentions it was a “bridge too far.” The President, who is very smart and well educated, should have known this. He should have paid more attention to the communitarian left and not the centrist liberals. He should have paid more attention to the wisdom of localized dynamics like the Vermont Independence Movement.

But the President, with centrist liberals (with whom he essentially agrees) egging him on, failed to appreciate the implications of an essential truth: We are not France or Demark or (for goodness sake) even England. In 1789, we created the framework for a continental, federal enterprise, dividing authority between the states and the central government. More importantly we trumped any chance of coherent central enterprise (one thinks of Canada) by setting our national institutions against one another. The separation of authority within the three branches of the central government is as inhibiting as ever: riddled with compromise after compromise, exception after exception, and qualification after qualification, Obamacare only narrowly survived the Congress. And it survived Washington by only one vote. A single, solitary human being (one judge on the Supreme Court) might still have scuttled the entire affair.

There was no mandate; only a series of program buster compromises in Congress, followed by a grudging OK from the Court based on the remarkably obtuse claim that heart of the matter was not social policy but rather taxation.

Simply put, the President has been operating without a net.

BY FRANK BRYAN

QUESTION: Does the American National Government work?

ANSWER: Yes. It was designed not to work and as such is working perfectly.

In short, the Founders created our frame of government under an almost patholog-ical fear of it, scattering booby-traps and land mines throughout the document that insured a cage fight over any attempt to produce coherent, effective governmental action – especially domestic action.

Americans seem to forget, moreover, that the structural apparatus we put in place over two centuries ago is fundamentally still in place. We are using it today. If Madison and his contemporaries were to drop in to our 21st century, they would be amazed (given the kind of world surrounding them) that the structure they created literally for the horse and buggy days is still fundamentally intact. In short they would have recognized it immedi-ately: “Yeah, we created that.”

Times have changed, you say. Two centuries have come and gone. We’ve made improvements.

Wrong. For over nearly a century now, we’ve only whistled our way through an ever thickening darkness of increasing federal initiatives and actions; all the while weakening the national government still further. With centralized, bureau-cratic national power bearing down on us after World War II we “checked” central executive authority in the worst possible way—politically—by limiting the President to two terms in office.

It gets worse. Given that Congressional elections are staged (an appropriate word it turns out) every two years, in effect the President now has only two years in each four-year term to lead the country—the first year after each Congressional election. Even this is problematic and depends on how well the political parties do in the mid-term elections.

Everywhere there is a check and a balance and we survive only through compromise. But “compromise” is an odious notion when things need to be done well. Imagine a carpenter “compromising” distances instead of measuring them. The “middle” position on anything is almost always and by definition—wrong.

This begs an equally important question: If the Framers built the U.S. Constitution to preclude and inhibit action, to retard initiative and to seek the “lowest common

denominator,” how could we have survived and, indeed, dominated the planet for so long? Cut to the chase—the answer is rather simple. First of all we were lucky. A vast, immensely rich (temperate in climate) continent lay to the west—virtually unprotected from the advanced cultures (especially military) of Europe. Despite their incredible bravery and fortitude, Native Americans never had a chance. Gun powder and guns used by Samuel De Champlain on the Algonquin must have seemed like ray guns from spacemen would seem to us today.

The West also served as a “release valve” for the ambitious and the daring. Instead of staying on the East Coast and bringing pressure to bear on the Government, they went west. Vermont’s Mathew Lyon is an example. Davie Crocket and Daniel Boone, who like Lyon, were former members of Congress, were others. Secondly, a continent of free land meant we could ease pressure on the Government from the poor by giving (literally) them land in the West. Recall the Homestead Act. Third, for the first three quarters of our existence prior to FDR’s revolution, the Federal Government was asked to do very little indeed—almost nothing that could in any way, shape or fashion compare to national health care.

Think of it this way. Departments in the Executive Branch are the institutions that carry out the laws passed by Congress. We began America with the Departments of “War” (a more honest word than “defense”), State, and Treasury. Half a century later we needed to add Interior. Agriculture followed in 1862. Forty years later we got Commerce. Labor came in 1913 and Defense in 1947. Since then six others! The U.S. government created six Departments in the first 150 years and seven in the last 50.

Ironically, (given our contempo-rary conundrum) the two major structural changes we have made in our Constitution had the effect of weakening the Federal Government’s ability to act. The first was to provide for the direct election of senators. In the beginning we elected our senators from the state legis-latures. This created a bond between the legislative sensibilities and policies between the states and Washington.

Senators serving in Washington owed their incumbency to a state institution. Second and much more importantly we now deny a sitting president a third term. By limiting presidential terms we not only damage continuity between the people and Washington, we inhibit remarkably the power of the president in his or her second term. It’s difficult enough to be president of the United States in a time when a president is held accountable for public policy creation as well as implementation.

Finally. All of the above has been pretty well established by political scientists over the years. Their solution has been the political parties—institutions that (in their modern form) could not have been imagined in 1789. Indeed they were a source of concern. In the first half of the 20th Century, however, these institutions became a means to establish a “web of connection and coherence” between the branches of the national government. Thus the term “divided government,” which means the Congress is controlled by one party and the executive by another, became a pejorative. We had begun to understand the danger of governing a modern nation state which was institutionally based on the principle of inaction. Alas, the party system has not sufficed.

Let me summarize.

1. We built the Federal Government negatively—to do almost nothing.

2. Now more and more we are asking it to do nearly everything. The work of the Federal Government has expanded geometrically.

3. But the fundamental architecture (structure) of the government has remained almost entirely unchanged.

4. Worse, the most important structural changes we have made have weak-ened not strengthened the Federal Government.

5. There is nowhere left to send the dissatisfied and there is little “natural” wealth (we have pretty much used up our natural resources) to buy off the less fortunate. We used to send them west. Recall the Homestead Act. Now that “west” is gone.

6. In short, in terms of expectations,

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AMERICA’S CONTEMPORARY DILEMMA

Rural Agrarian

Urban Industrial

A Community-Based Matrix of Human Scale Democracies

A Nation-Based Hierarchy of Marketplace Pluralism

? How to Apply Post-Industrial Technology?

Prepared for Vermont Commons January 2014

we have created a democracy. In terms of governance, we have retained a federated central govern-ment hamstrung by checks and balances—a government designed to impede rather than to promote.

Unfortunately President Obama went all in on health care. (Give him credit. He is a liberal acting like one.) But, despite Obamacare’s nods to federalism—nods which have only exacerbated the problem, the jig is up. Again, give Obama credit. He’s forced the issue. He’s given us an opportunity to decide: unitary or really federal? Whither the Federal Government?

What does all this mean for the Vermont independence movement?

During the last half century, the central government in America has taken on tremendous new responsibilities while its capacity to act on them has been limited and/or subsumed by politically neces-sary but horribly inefficient and even corrupt (mostly in the behavioral sense) processes and capacities. This is indeed proof that, although we may not articulate it well, we don’t trust the Federal Government and (worse) we are becoming more and more used to it—numbed to its inefficiency and waste. This argument reads: it may be sloppy, expensive and wasteful but it’s better than conceding (through structural change) that “one size does not (after all) fit all.”

In short, Obamacare is failing because it is simply impossible for our national political system (as it is currently structured) to produce and implement health care on a human scale with an acceptable degree of humanity or efficiency. We know this in our gut. But too many Americans continue to whistle in the dark; pretending that it might have worked better if it were “done right.” No!

Obamacare (however well intentioned) is generically impossible.

It is up to the communitarians among us to make the case for health care (especially for the poor among us) which is more and more conceived, structured and implemented at the level of the patient and the patient’s friends and community. This is not the place to begin a discussion of the details of such a localized health care system. However in our book The Vermont Papers: Recreating Democracy on a Human Scale (Chelsea Green Publishing), John McClaughry and I included a chapter on welfare policy at the local level which dealt with many of the objections to and (we felt) convincing reasons for a general decentralization of welfare policy to local

governments. The principles and realities we discussed there are clearly opera-tive today and encompass many of the conundrums posed by a more localized health care system.

To this I add in brief the following: The amazing rapidity of decentralizing potentials of “information technologies” (in a word, the application of interac-tive decentralized decision-making capacities) has advanced the case for decentralized health care beyond our most optimistic assessments when we wrote The Vermont Papers. To wit: I recently had a full hip replacement. These are now common. But their commonality does not detract from the fact that they are also major surgery. I

spent (including the preliminaries and the operation itself) a total of forty-eight hours in the hospital (two nights). Most of the care I received was in my own home and conducted by my wife Melissa, a visiting nurse once a week, and a physical therapist twice a week. My home became a localized “hospital.”

These kinds of examples dominate modern culture. In short, the case for localized decision-making and policy implementation in is as strong today as the case for centralized decision-making was a century ago. We are (as John Naisbett put it in Megatrends ) “riding the horse of history in the direction history is going.” I have summarized this potential in the accompanying diagram. Postindustrial technology, of course, is

essentially infor-mation technology but every indica-tion suggests that, with robotics, it will become the analog to “machine” technology of the Industrial Age. It is sad and even discouraging to observe that the majority of political operatives today still define the dynamics of public policy in centrist terms. These people are at least two genera-

tions behind the curve. The future is de-concentration, democracy and human scale decision-making, not concentra-tion, representation and system scale decision-making.

The structure of our democracy is currently out of whack. Power to the states and within the states, power to the towns and within the towns, power to the individual and within each individual the awareness that it is in the small commu-nity alone that true distinctiveness can be accurately perceived, assessed, and rewarded – where authentic individualism is possible

We live in a democratic moment and place. Let us behave accordingly.

Gathering in a small kitchen before a battery of cameras, four Monkton home-owners are raising their voices in ardent resistance to the natural gas pipeline that is proposed to slither its way through Addison County. Recently receiving letters of eminent domain, homeowners Claire Broughton; Louise Peyser; Nancy Menard; and Maren Vasatka held a press conference on Wednesday morning to ad-dress the escalating tactics and threats of the Vermont Gas Company.

On January 17, each of them received a letter from Vermont Gas stating “With the issuance of the CPG [Certificate of Public Good] we have reached a critical milestone in the Project’s schedule. We’d like to revisit our proposal with you one more time before Vermont Gas must be-gin the legal process of eminent domain to acquire the easement rights necessary to construct the Project.” Vasatka, whose home lays along the pipeline’s proposed route, spoke candidly of her experience resisting the pipeline and the Canadian owned energy corporation that has set its sights on her home:

“We have tried several avenues for help.

We have written to the Public Service Board, we have not received a response. We have reached out to our legislators who tell us they do not have jurisdiction over the Public Service Board. We have reached out to the department of Pub-lic Service, whose position is that they represent the rate-payers; and because the rate-payers’ funds are being used to buy these easements, the Department can-not assist us, the landowners, to get fair market value for our property for fear of raising the costs to the rate-payers.”

Continuing through a heated question and answer session; Louise Peyser, who also received a letter threatening emi-nent domain, chastised Vermont State officials for failing to represent her as a citizen. “The truth is, I don’t want a pipeline, I’m faced with it because of the Public Service Board. Why should I give somebody the right to take my happiness, my enjoyment of my home away?” said Peyser. “And it is not in my opinion a public good. I am also a citizen and I’ve been failed by my Governor, my Board of Selectmen, I’ve been failed by every-body! There’s just no-one who stands up for a single person.” When asked about

her refusal so far to agree to an easement with Vermont Gas, Claire Broughton summed up her firm response to VTG Right of Way Agent Stephen Taylor, “I’m not signing this because you have not answered my questions.”

When asked if they felt that the pipeline fit with the broader energy and sustain-ability goals of the Green Mountain State, the Monkton four responded unani-mously: “absolutely not.” Elaborating on already existing systems of renewable energy across her community, Vasatka fears that such an enticing pipeline would become a distraction. “Addison County could have been a poster-child for renew-able energy without this,” she said. “We already have the evils of fossil fuel. Why are we adding another evil?”

With the slow thawing of snow in the North Country, it appears that the stage is set for the summer of 2014 to become a watershed moment for popular resistance to the domestic expansion of fossil fuels and the infrastructure that supports them. As businesses, neighbors, communi-ties, and homes are put under increasing pressure and threat by corporations like

Monkton Homeowners Rebuke Threats of Eminent

Domain from PipelineBY DYLAN KELLEY

From left: Claire Broughton, Louise Peyser, Nancy Menard, and Maren Vasatka

2VR.org

Continued from page 27.Voters asked a few questions - would politicians run the

bank? (No) and what could a public bank do that isn’t being done now? (Use Vermont’s tax money to make loans and infrastructure improvements to earn new revenue for the state). “A Public Bank for Vermont would create jobs and allow Vermonters to take control over our financial destiny at a time when everyone agrees that Wall Street’s corporate commercial banking model is deeply flawed, at best,” said Rob Williams, a Waitsfield town resident and citizen advocate for the public banking effort.

In Montpelier, where the mayor thought my views were inap-propriately “anti-capitalist,” the article on the ballot in support of public banking passed by a wide margin, and got more votes than he did in his bid for re-election. The vote also passed in Albany, Bakersfield, Calais, Craftsbury, East Montpelier, Enosburg, Marshfield, Montgomery, Plainfield, Randolph, Rochester, Ryegate, Tunbridge, and Warren.

What will happen at the State House after Town Meeting Day is an open question. The opposition from the banking lobby and their friends in the administration remains domi-nant. Scorn for public support from average citizens has also been apparent; in a recent story on Vermont Public Radio, one commentator implied that people with more sophisti-cated understanding of money matters would have a hard time counteracting what they claim are oversimplified argu-ments by the proponents. “The arguments against it are not easily addressed in sound bites,” says Cairn Cross, a money manager at Fresh Tracks Capital. “The arguments for it are easily addressed in sound bites through a lot of populist senti-ment: Big banks are bad and we need more local autonomy over our money.”

We hope the Vermont legislature takes the common sense wisdom of Vermonters more seriously than the self-interest of the big out of state banks and their supporters. Time will tell, but a new chapter opened for public banking in Vermont yesterday.

Sky changes from primary blue to a distant hazy purple.

Sandstone rises out of the desertin mountains and hills.

Our camel train guides us to the only climbable hill in sight.

Tethering our camels to a parched and barren tree,we climb sandstone to watch the sunset.

We open a bottle of red: Mount Nebo, Named for the place where Moses glimpsed the Promised Lands.

The 2010 cabernet sauvignon is young.Smells astringent, off-balance, Like rubbing alcohol blended with burned rubber.

Tartcranberryandcurrantflavorstinglemytongue,And the dry tannic oak leaves me searching for What could never be found in the desert.

Temperatures drop twenty degreesAs the sun passes behind the mountain.

Windpicksup,blowingmykeffiyehinmyface,And my plastic cup of wine tumbles to the ground below.

Here in Wadi Rum,where the sand meets the sky, the quality of our wine doesn’t matter. We cheers to our found promised land.

The Promised Landsby Abigail Clark, photo by Adam Rowe

Vermont Gas and Gaz Metro, we will arrive at a crossroads leading to separate and distinct futures.

If communities recognize their broader goals for resistance and downright survival, Vermonters will be once again positioned to lead the nation in chartering a radically sustainable relation-ship to their home landscape. On the other hand, if the pro-paganda, fear-mongering, and political treachery of Vermont Gas proves successful; we will join the rest of the planet in a lemming’s march over the cliff of the coming decades. The cli-mate will change further, shortages and extreme weather will become the new normal, toxic spills and dangerous explosions be innumerable, and we will be party to the worst economic and ecological plundering of any time in our collective history.

Standing of knife’s edge of history, Vermont’s next footfall may prove to be our most important step yet.

REVOLUTIONARY WRITING.

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