For opinion pieces on any topic.
A NASA clip from Apollo 17 mission (1972) shows astronaut Eugene Cernan examining rocks in the Taurus-Littrow lunar valley. The reflection in his visor appears to show the person taking the picture. Cernan is standing next to a large rock outcropping with a small instrument sitting on the dusty lunar surface in front of him.
Attached are some close-ups:
Vermont writer Peter Lackowski has visited Venezuela five times since 2005, giving him perspective on the current situation in the country and how it evolved time. His new article, “Eyewitness in Venezuela: a 14-year Perspective,” calls into question the official story of a grave humanitarian crisis, which the United States says is due to Maduro’s corrupt leadership and which provides America with an excuse to attempt regime change in that country.
Montpelier, VT, 5/10/19 -The Vermont Republican Party has invited Wisconsin’s former union-busting Governor, Scott Walker, to speak at a fundraiser in Burlington’s Hilton Hotel on May 30. On April 26, AFSCME-Vermont called for Scott Walker to be met with labor/community picket lines. To date, 22 VT labor unions (representing over 17,000 union members) have endorsed the picket, along with 5 allied community organizations, and 5 political groupings. More endorsements are expected in the coming days.
“To labor unions, woman’s groups, racial justice organizations, and pro-union progressives of all stripes, Scott Walker represents the worst of the worst in terms of the wrong direction the extremist-anti-union-right would like to take our country if given the change. Walker believes workers should have NO collective bargaining rights, that our education system should be privatized, that women should not control their own bodies, and that the wealthiest 1% should receive massive tax cuts (at the price decimating our social services).
If it seems as though the US President is the boss of the whole world, it’s because in many ways, he is. Presidential powers for modern presidents are prodigious. With the power to impose sanctions and tariffs, control the government through executive orders, and order military action, a determined president can create a lot of geopolitical mayhem.
The most remarkable tool to that end is the economic sanction which is a form of punishment designed to destabilize countries America has strategic interest in by crippling their economies. Most sanctions bind American companies from doing business in the target nation. But recently, there has been a new form of sanction, called a secondary sanction, that aims to prevent any country or individual in the world from doing business with our declared enemy.
Selectboard meetings can drag on. Meetings that start at 6:15 pm often end after 9 pm. It’s not as bad as the record-setting meeting of the mid-aughts that lasted well past midnight, but three hours is a long regular meeting, especially when board members may have met for an hour prior in Executive Session.
When meetings go on too long, participants lose energy and the quality of debate and discussion drops. Important issues can get rushed if they come late on an agenda.
Early/absentee ballots for the Special School Merger Election to be held May 21, are now available in the Brattleboro, Town Clerk’s office. Anyone wishing to vote prior to May 21 may apply for an early/absentee ballot until 5:00 p.m. on Monday, May 20.
Early/absentee ballots may be voted in person in the Clerk’s office, mailed to the voter by the Clerk’s office, picked up by the voter, or if a voter is in need can be delivered to the voter’s residence by two Justices of the Peace. All voted ballots must be received by the Clerk before the polls close on election day in order to be counted. For more information or to request an early/absentee ballot call 251-8157.
“How times have changed, Dr. Beadle”
Dr. Beadle happens to be a character I created in a tape piece from eons ago, in which I got members of my family to produce a satirical collage of comedy sketches for absolutely no purpose than for the heck of it. Dr. Beadle was a character I enlisted my older brother to perform. He acted, or actually improvised, quite well, even though to this day he has absolutely no recollection of ever having ever performed it. In the dramatic radio hour we discussed climate change (this was in 1981), favorite actors (Robert Redford, and others), and acted out (on radio) scenes of religious meetings inspired by MLK, country music, Polish polkas, Shakespeare plays, Noel Coward songs, murder, and in a bizarre twist at the end something like out of Albert Camus’s The Stranger and the execution scene with a return to the beginning of the collage where Priscilla’s husband explodes while in the middle of an argument over climate change, it just brings me here. Why can’t we be as creative as we were when we were 13 years old?
With new meters and higher rates for parking in Brattleboro, let’s review some ways you can park for free and do errands downtown.
1. Patronize businesses with free parking
This one is obvious and easy. A few places downtown have parking lots that are free to use while doing business at the establishment. Shop at the Co-op? Free parking. Doing banking at BS&L? Free parking. Need something at Brown & Roberts? Free parking.
Montpelier, Vermont 4/3/19 -Vermont AFL-CIO Unions including AFSCME, AFT, IBEW, USW, & PFFV, have been fighting all winter to get legislators to advance H.428 & S.36, card check recognition for public sector workers. The bills were introduced in the House by Progressive Brian Cina, and in the Senate by Democrat/Progressive Phillip Baruth. If passed, card check would establish that whenever a majority of workers sign a Union card in any given public sector shop, their Union would be immediately recognized. Despite Labor’s united front on this issue, the Vermont Senate and House (which is overwhelmingly composed of Democrats) has yet to hold hearings on the bills, let alone move them out of committee.
I ran into a friend the other day, and the first words out of his mouth were “Since when did the Democratic party become Socialist?” My short answer was — they haven’t. They’re they same old corporatist, center-right party they’ve been for years. It’s just that Republicans, seizing on the rhetoric of Bernie Sanders and a few others, have decided that socialism is the Democrats’ Achilles heel and so they’re making a big issue of it. Oddly enough, however, this could turn out to be a good thing. By drawing attention to it, they’ve opened a debate that’s been dormant for decades.
Brattleboro Representatives are holding their Representative Town Meeting. The crowd is slowly gathering at the gym, where those elected will be talking town and school business for most of the day. Will they approve an extra 1% local option tax? Will there be surprises, twists, and turns? We will find out.
The Town portion of business comes first, and there are a number of preliminary formalities to endure before actual business begins.
Brattleboro Districts 1 & 3 will caucus just prior to Representative Town Meeting on Saturday, March 23 at Brattleboro Union High School beginning at 8:00 AM in the Gym. Representative Town Meeting begins at 8:30 AM. District 1 will be accepting nominations to fill and appoint one town meeting member seat for 1 year. District 3 will be accepting nominations to fill and appoint one town meeting member seat for 1 year.
“If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.”
-James Connolly, Irish Republican & Labor Leader
Brattleboro Town Schoolboard will hold a pre-representative town meeting information forum on Wednesday, March 20 at Green Street School beginning at 6:30 PM in the Gym. At 6:00 p.m., town meeting members of each district will be available to meet with constituents to offer residents an opportunity to share their views and discuss articles to be voted on at the annual meeting. Also, at that time, Districts 1 and 3 will be accepting nominations to fill town meeting member vacancies for 1 year.
I am happy to say that my son Cade Glover-Yellovich (pictured, on right) caucused in as a District 3 Town Meeting Representative last night, joining Andrew Marchev (left) as the voices for the ‘youth’!
I would like to thank our Town Meeting Reps and the Brattleboro Selectboard for reviewing and reconsidering the support of the 1% Local Option Sales Tax.
I would like to express my opposition to this as a resident that has owned and operated small businesses here in Brattleboro spanning over the last 13 years. At this point it is no secret that running a business in Southern Vermont is a very difficult thing to do. And yes, it may seem that one penny on one dollar or bringing the Brattleboro sales tax from 6% up to 7% may not be a big deal but it really is. Right now, with every business in town competing with online retailers like Amazon, or watching potential customers go across the river to tax free New Hampshire, I feel strongly that this is not a beneficial option for the town nor to the businesses in Brattleboro.
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The news that one’s compatriots have brought death to 85,000 darling Yemeni children being hard to stomach, the author wonders how other Americans feel or manage not to feel.
Brattleboro Town Selectboard will hold a pre-town meeting information forum on Wednesday, March 13 at Academy School beginning at 7:00 PM. Representative Town Meeting articles will be discussed, including the budget, and the bond issue. At 6:30 p.m., town meeting members of each district will be available to meet with constituents to offer residents an opportunity to share their views and discuss articles to be voted on at the annual meeting. Also, at that time, all three districts will be accepting nominations to fill town meeting member vacancies for 1 year.
Good afternoon,
Please see attached for the official results from last night’s Annual Town Meeting, including write-in results.
Thank you,
By David Van Deusen, District Vice President of the VT AFL-CIO
March 5th, 2019, Cabot VT -Today, the first Tuesday of March, is Town Meeting Day in Vermont. While a community may have many Town Meetings during the year, this is the one day when every community has a Town Meeting all at once. And here, all the citizens collectively act as the legislative branch of the local government. One citizen, one vote. Unlike in the rest of the United States, towns in Vermont have the right to conduct all their government business from the floor of the Town Meeting.
