Pollina & The Dems

March 10, 2008 | 4 Comments

Please, can anyone out there other than the fawning Vermont media think anything other than “loser” when the name Anthony Pollina is mentioned? I can’t. And for good reason, too. He’s a loser. He loses elections (many of them). He loses in his issue efforts (many of them). And he even loses in court when – oddly – he challenged his rare victory with campaign finance reform. I guess it must have felt weird for him to actually win something so he went to court to fight it. Good for you, Tony. Keep that record clean.

We all know about Pollina’s electoral losing. He’s something like 0-for-5. But Pollina seems to get energized by losing the way most politicians are energized by winning. The average politician, for example, begins with a lower office, wins, aims higher, wins and so forth. Not Pollina. He aims high, starting with a run for Congress, loses, and then just keeps aiming high for jobs like governor (a couple of times) and keeps losing. What’s worse is that each time he loses – and loses big – Pollina acts like he won. “Wow, I’m up to over 20% of the vote! Wait’ll next time!”

I’m guessing that when Pollina secures his next, great loss this November he’ll be so damn energized by it that he’ll probably launch a bid for the presidency in 2012. And that could be the best thing that could happen to Vermont’s Progressive Party. Because, let’s face it, Pollina’s been sucking a lot of energy out of their movement with all this losing. Worse, it’s preventing a whole new breed of Progs from stepping up and taking a fresh shot at one of the offices that Pollina keeps sacrificing to the Republicans.

It would also be nice if Pollina would stop “saving” Vermont’s dairy farmers. Because let’s look at that track record. In the 1980s, when Pollina started saving them, there were more than 3,000 dairy farmers in Vermont. Today, after more than 25-years of Pollina fighting for them, there are about 1,100 of them left. Thanks, Tony! Sure, it’s totally and completely unfair to blame him for the dramatic drop. But it’s certainly fair to ask him why – given these facts – he’s so proud of his dairy work?

About the only real progress made in the dairy industry in Vermont over the last 25 years has been the advent and growth of organic dairying. And – as if to protect his losing record – Pollina has had NOTHING to do with it. Pollina’s new Vermont Milk Company, for example, even shuns organic. Oh yeah, feel the progressive vision. And pass the pesticides…

Today, a group of so-called Democrats are gathering in Burlington to launch a skimpy little website called “Democrats for Pollina.” It’s a not-so-veiled attempt to “prove” that Pollina is getting gobs of support from mainstream Dems in his Prog bid for the governorship. The group is officially launching a “write-in” campaign for Pollina in the Democratic primary in September. Since Pollina will be on the Prog’s primary ballot, he can’t be on the Dems’. But he could – if he won as a write-in – don both labels in the general election. If, that is, the Dems let him get away with it. Fat chance.

This all kind of reminds me of the announcements last week by Hillary Clinton that she would welcome Obama to be her running mate. It’s the kind of thing that forces that cocked puppy head look that says: Huh? And I’m not sure if it’s more arrogant or ignorant for a person running behind to offer a lesser job to the front-runner.

In Vermont, of course, the early polls show Pollina being in the place he’s always in: third amongst three. Or, for those of us outside Pollina’s groupie shadows, it’s usually called LAST. What’s worse, Pollina was a good distance behind what the pollsters only identified as a “Democratic candidate” since a Dem hasn’t announced – yet. Look Mom, I’m literally losing to a no-name! Good job, Tony. Now get to your room and re-arrange your Buffalo Bills memorabilia….

But that won’t stop Pollina and his groupies who can’t stop losing to think that they’re somehow entitled to a Dem Party primary endorsement via a write-in campaign. Chris Pearson, a Prog who has actually gotten elected and a Pollina sidekick, told the Free Press that Pollina won’t enter the Dem primary officially because “that’s what Peter Clavelle did and it didn’t work.” But then Pearson goes on with this: “People know (Pollina) as a Progressive and for him to suddenly run as a Democrat doesn’t pass the straight-face test.”

Well, yeah. But it also doesn’t pass the smell test for Pollina and his fumble-fingered handlers to think Vermont voters are stupid enough to fall for this write-in nonsense. Let me get this straight: It looks funny to have Pollina get the Dem primary endorsement by earning it with his name on the ballot but it’s fine for him to be sneaky by coordinating the write-in effort for it? Give me a break.

And there we have it: The mush that is the Pollina political spine. If he believed his and his party’s own rhetoric, he’d be announcing that he doesn’t want the Dem’s endorsement – no matter how it came. Instead, he’s taking us all for fools as he skips down this silly little write-in route.

Of course, there’s one way to put an end to all of this: A true progressive needs to challenge Pollina in the Prog Party primary so his followers will have to focus on their own party’s efforts rather than soiling that of the Dems.

And I think I know someone who’s interested. Stay tuned.

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog, vt media, vt politics

Post Town Meeting Day Blogging

March 5, 2008 | 6 Comments

Well, I guess all that news about the economy being in a downswing must not be sinking in to my neighbors here in Worcester, Vermont. Because at yesterday’s town meeting the voters who showed up couldn’t seem to hand out our town’s money fast enough. Whomever and whatever came forward with its hand out walked away with the tax-payer’s loot – everything from $2500 for fireworks to new fire trucks, plow trucks and every penny the school board asked for with nary a question. Strangely, the only attempt to get money that didn’t see its full request met was that from the Friends of the Winooski River. They asked for $500 but got whacked back to $150. That’ll show those river lovers, huh?

Let’s face it, town meetings are the dream scenario for spending money, especially when it comes to the big-ticket items like town trucks and fire trucks. You’ve got the near-perfect coalition working for it: the liberals who get gooey-eyed over any kind of spending and the town crews and fire men and women who want their new toys. These are two crowds that don’t hang on the same side of the room during the meetings but they certainly coalesce when it’s time to make the money rain down the drain.

Of course, there’s also the fact that the people who are truly struggling economically can’t afford the luxury of skipping a workday in order to be present and attempt to put the brakes on the spending. I ran into one of those folks on my walk home from the meeting yesterday. He was out plowing and sanding driveways but stopped to say hello.

“How much poorer am I now?” he asked as he rolled down his window.

“They passed everything,” I replied. “And fast.”

“Oh hell, I guess I shouldn’t have sanded all their drives. It only allowed them to get out to the meeting and spend our money.”

Indeed.

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Indicting Bush/Cheney: It was, however, nice to see that the town of Brattleboro passed its resolution seeking the indictment of George Bush and Dick Cheney for their alleged crimes against the Constitution. Fun stuff – and free! Well, the town did have to pay for the ink it took to include it on the ballot. And even that was apparently too much money for the White House to find acceptable. Here’s the “official” White House response to the measure:

It appears that the left-wing knows no bounds in their willingness to waste taxpayer dollars to make a futile counterproductive partisan political point.

Hmm, if you substitute “right-wing” for “left-wing” in the quote above you could most certainly be talking about the Iraq War, no? While it’s nice to see them care about taxpayer money, wouldn’t it be better for us if they’d focus on the $2 trillion war rather than the cost of ink on a ballot? You gotta love the modern fiscal conservatism, huh?

Strangely, it wasn’t just the White House who found this resolution annoying, either. Vermont’s wannabe lad-pundits (aka: the Dem sycophants) also got themselves in a lather over it. Why? Because it’s “embarrassing the state.” Oh, okay. We wouldn’t want to upset their mainstream march to nowhere, would we?

It’s simply bizarre to me that you have these self-described “political activists” who never cease to condemn any kind of activism that involves more than pulling a voting lever or rubbing the belly of one of our elected officials. They condemned anti-war activism. They condemned “yes or no” questions for their beloved congressman. They condemned people who got understandably testy in the Statehouse when Dem politicians refused to consider real health care reform. But they’ll apparently spend hours upon hours everyday in the shallow end of the political pool pondering the “big” questions like: Should Obama and Hillary run together?

I guess I’m just jealous because it sure seems like they’ve got a lot of time on their hands over there. Too bad so much of it is wasted on their never-ending pundit-dress-up game. I keep wondering when their parents are going to get home and send them to bed. Or at least outside for some exercise.

And hats off to Dan Dewalt for attempting to bring forth some logic to their little club. Good luck with that.

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And a tip of the hat to the town of East Montpelier for tackling – or swimming in? – the issue of water extraction. Many of the towns’ residents are concerned about a new corporate venture in their midst that is seeking to extract spring water and bottle it for sale throughout the U.S. And so, yesterday, they introduced a resolution that would call for a three-year moratorium on such ventures within their township. After much discussion, the resolution passed. Water, of course, is going to continue to be a big issue in Vermont’s future, evidenced by the growing number of bottled water corporations sniffing around our hillsides. But it would behoove us all to follow the lead of East Montpelier and put the brakes on such ventures until we adequately contemplate the long-term consequences of depleting our aquifers for short-term corporate gain. Always a bad equation in my book.

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Oh boy, what could bring a little sunshine to this dreary March day? Got it: The phone call from Onion River Sports that my racing bike is ready. Yahoo. There is hope in sleetville. I took advantage of their early-bird special and had my beloved shiny machine (Trek 5200) get the professional once over. It won’t be long before yours truly begins the annual quest for 4,000 miles of pedaling around the hills and valleys of central Vermont.

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And since I’ve devolved into the narcissistic and personal, I guess it’s as good a time as any to introduce the Big John replacement: Little Buddy (see below).

Okay, okay, he’s not really Big John’s replacement. That would take a weight gain of about 1975 pounds. Plus – shhh, don’t tell him – some smarts, too. But, who knows, maybe a team of yellow labs is in my future….

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog, vt politics

Vermont’s Town Meetings: All Talk and No Action

March 3, 2008 | 12 Comments

Vermont’s much-mythologized Town Meeting Day is now upon us and the Vermont media is showering us with its annual puff pieces and odes to the so-called glories of the day. But because of Vermont’s centralized form of government that puts almost all the power in Montpelier, none of the actions taken by a town on its coveted meeting day can go beyond the very short leash the legislature has put them on. That means, for example, that, unless the state legislature passes a bill specifically declaring that towns can take action on an issue like war, nukes or alternative energy, nothing the towns do on these issues matters. They can have, in affect, a nice debate and nothing more.

Many Vermonters would be surprised to know that we actually have less direct control of our town government than our brethren in all our neighboring states. And what about all that talk and folklore about Vermont’s town meetings being bastions of grassroots democracy?

“It’s a myth,” replies Vermont’s Secretary of State, Deb Markowitz, the woman playing the referee between the state legislature and the towns. “It’s a big shock to a lot of people in this state when they realize towns really don’t have much power. They can have a discussion on issues but they can’t enact laws.”

Ironically, the autonomy of local towns took a nosedive after the American Revolution.

“We should not romanticize this historical period,” wrote Ben Grosscup in a pamphlet entitled Vermont Towns vs. Genetic Engineering, a publication of the Institute for Social Ecology in Plainfield. “The newly formed U.S. government eviscerated local autonomy in favor of a centralized republic first by state constitutions drawn up during the Revolutionary War and subsequently by the federal constitution.”

Vermont’s companion states in New England, however, eventually opted for what’s known as a “Home Rule” style of state government that cedes power to the towns. Vermont, on the other hand, adheres to the legal principle known as “Dillon’s Rule,” which severely restricts town autonomy.

The League of Cities and Towns, a nonprofit coalition of Vermont’s local governments, has been trying for years — to no avail — to get the state legislature to adopt a Home Rule style of government. According to the League’s October 2002 newsletter, “the State of Vermont is tied for last in terms of autonomy granted to municipalities.”

Interestingly, it’s been the Republicans in the state legislature who have acted as the primary roadblocks to the efforts to give more power to the local governments — not exactly what you’d expect from those who usually espouse decentralized government.
In fact, the state’s top Republican, Governor Jim Douglas, is also no fan of giving more power to the towns. Despite making folksy references to his decades of service as Middlebury’s town meeting day moderator, Douglas has called attempts by Home Rule advocates to provide more power to the towns as “willy-nilly” changes to Vermont’s way of governing.

But for citizens and town officials looking to maximize local democracy there’s nothing “willy-nilly” about breaking up the near-monopolistic power centered in Montpelier. Advocates of Home Rule point to numerous situations in which the entire state legislature had to be corralled into approving even the most basic local actions.

“Several years ago towns tried to adopt ethics ordinances that would govern the ethical conduct of their local officials,” Markowitz told me in a past interview. “But they couldn’t do it until the state legislature passed a bill granting them that specific right.”

The City of Burlington has also been repeatedly hamstrung by the current system whenever it needs to do something as routine as altering its charter. Again, before they can make a move outside of the narrowly defined powers already granted by Montpelier, they must get in line and work their way through the Vermont Senate and House and then – hopefully – get the governor’s signature.

Nowhere is the lack of citizen empowerment at a local level more apparent than when it comes to citizens’ efforts to bring forth environmental or social issues for town consideration. While it’s relatively easy to get your pet issue on your town meeting’s agenda (all you need is a petition signed by 5% of the town’s eligible voters), your efforts are bound to a mere discussion of the issue or, at best, an advisory statement to the folks holding the real power in Montpelier or Washington.

One of the hottest issues to surface on town meeting agendas in the last couple of years has been the genetically modified organism (GMO) issue. Spearheaded by the folks at the Institute for Social Ecology in years past, dozens of towns passed resolutions calling for the state legislature to either label or ban these controversial foods.

But when anti-GMO activists sought to have their towns ban farmers from growing these foods they learned the hard way about the lack of power at the local level. In Marshfield, for example, the town moderator declared the petition calling for a town “moratorium” on the production of GMO crops “illegal.” Secretary of State Markowitz and the Vermont Constitution she’s forced to interpret supported his opinion.

“The towns can ask the legislature to enact a moratorium,” says Markowitz. “But they can’t enact one on their own.”

Contrast this, for example, with the citizen-based initiatives in Nebraska, Iowa, and Pennsylvania to ban all forms of corporate farming within their townships. Now that’s empowerment.

While discussions and education that ensue at our town meetings are nice, Vermont’s cities and towns deserve the right to take action – just like they did before the Revolution.

[Editor's note: This essay was adapted from my column in Seven Days, "Left Field," published earlier in this century.]

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog, vt media, vt politics

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