The Op/Ed opinion section
The vote to ratitify the contract is happening on Wednesday. I must admit that I do admire the committment and effort that the union organizers have shown. And I love their devotion to their vision of the best interests of the Coop community. I don’t agree with their opinion that we need a union. But I am posting this because the vote is premature.
I was and I came across a comment that deserves repetition in light of our current and yet unsolved budgetary crisis. Though this post is about a “Y”, much of its criticism is worth reviewing:
Why does Brattleboro instead nickel and dime our tourists and shoppers at the parking meters, fix $65,000 ice machines to make a skate rink when we live in VERMONT, New England, and could have an outdoor rink that would also attract winter visitors, why does this town build gyms for 14 MILLION dollar police and fire stations with a few dozen employees rather than invest in a “Y” for ALL the (taxpaying) residents?
If you haven’t heard of the Koch Brothers by now, you mustn’t be breathing.
It’s not their wealth that is bad, it’s the way they are using it.
My friend, Josh Werner, who passed away several years ago, used to go to Turning Point, when it was on Elm Street, before it moved out to Putney Road.
I shared with him that I had seen people, wating across the street from Turning Point, calling out to clients and members of Turning Point such quaint lines as, “Hey Jimmy, wanna party ? Come on over to my place”.
It’s really too bad that the skate park in Crowell Lot was shot down. Elm Street simply won’t have the same character, if it ever happens. We should learn to have faith in our youth. Otherwise fear trumps progress.
Getting inebriated is an intentional human behavior — it is not a mistake or an accident. Neither is it a mental health crisis. It is, in fact, perfectly normal human behavior well within the range of good mental health. Just like the drugs themselves, it is a question of degree (or percentage) of usage and effect.
Deeply ingrained in the desired effects of drug use is another perfectly normal human behavior: Moderation. In fact, moderation is the largest component of drug use behavior. It represents the behavior of up to 85-95% of all human drug use (…with one glaring exception – cigarettes, which run roughly at a 98-100% addiction rate).
Today in Brattleboro, in 1881, the Phoenix reported:
Again we are reminded that one of the worst nuisances is the man who is up at early dawn, making his lawn mower ziz, ziz, rasping the whiskers off the lawn.
I found this interesting, in that it seems to be a frequent, modern-day occurrence as well.
June 16, 2014 Emily Peyton on VPR Vermont Public Radio is famous for its political caste system, the worst discrimination in Vermont, denying political candidates equal participation in debates, and putting them in “castes” such as the major party “caste” and the minor party “caste” and the independent candidates with little money “caste”, and then the indpendent candidate with millions of dollars “caste” which includes only U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders who receives his money from Democrats and then suddenly switches, as if false labelling a product, to “independent” after the Democratic Primary.
by jay janson published widely in its initial version.
BACKGROUND of EVENTS LEADING to the ESTABLISHMENT in 2020, of the SPECIAL COURT to TRY US CITIZENS and CITIZENS of NATO NATIONS for GENOCIDE
It’s now the year 2022. Major world events during the last eight years have altered the economic, political, military balance of power in the world. As expected, emerging economies led by China, India, and Brazil experienced the greatest productivity and financial growth.
From Cris Ericson by email June 6, 2014
To: .
Honorable Paul L. Reiber, Chief Justice
Honorable John A. Dooley, Associate Justice
Honorable Marilyn S. Skoglund, Associate Justice
Honorable Beth Robinson, Associate Justice
Honorable Geoffrey W. Crawford, Associate Justice
cc: info@stopthef35.com
DESCRIPTION:
Left Forum, “largest annual conference of left and progressive intellectuals, activists, academics, organizations and interested public.” This year’s theme seems to have been: MLK was Wrong!: Americans CAN make a better USA, WHILE continuing to kill the poor overseas in spite of cost in human and financial resources. Harry Belafonte, Angela Davis, Cornel West, others focused on injustice to Americans, ignored US-NATO genocide
TEXT:
Government to people: be quiet!
Over that last few years town government has voted too often against the people. In 2010 there was a
referendum on Pay-As-You-Throw trash collection. The police-Fire Project (PFP) and the parking garage were approved by the RTM after being rejected by the people. In April the people rejected the 2015 budget
by referendum because of high taxes and the PFP, and on Monday (June 2) the selectboard and the RTM adopted it. (Well, the budget had been approximately $16 million and now it’s ALMOST $16 million.) After the budget referendum Mr. Gartenstein admitted that the referendum was largely about the PFP, but at recent hearings and at the RTM on Monday the board threatened that anyone discussing the PFP would be declared out-of-order.
In yesterdays Reformer there was an article about the Police/Fire project and its future. It talked about the Police & Fire Facilities Oversight Committee. The article goes on to state that it is unacceptable to the PFFOC to simply repair what needs to be repaired. They apparantly want a project that will last for the next 50 years rather than a band-aid approach that has been discussed.
I am going to be making the following motion under Other Business at the Special Representative Town Meeting
Motion to establish an ad hoc committee of Representative Town Meeting for the purpose of bringing forth proposal for the establishment of a “Futures Committee.”
Brattleboro has been in slow but generally steady decline for the last fifty or so years. There have been a few mitigating developments such as C&S, Yankee and the growth of the hospital and the Retreat but these have not been enough to stem the tide. Now they, too, as a whole, are diminishing. The town has been able to sustain itself only because of an expanding social safety net that includes a huge federally subsidized affordable housing sector (primarily the Brattleboro Housing Authority and the Windham and Windsor Trust).
DESCRIPTION: Don’t cry can’t be done, imperialists own the courts! Syrians grieving their dead and normal people everywhere have already prosecuted them in their hearts. When enough people demand justice, a way is found. Special courts are created when the court of public opinion is strong! Nuremberg Principles and other laws await use! Only accessories report prosecutable crimes against humanity as mistaken foreign policy-Realpolitik!
DESCRIPTION: Funding creation or bloody appearance of civil wars has been the weapon of choice for post Second World War US imperialism. 32 such US promoted civil wars are listed. US backs fascist terror in Ukraine; makes the Venezuelan economy scream; Obama mouths a CIA fed imperial edit, ” Assad must go!” never mind Assad has overwhelming support. 23 presidents overthrown,18 dictators+ put in office. Why Americans will be prosecuted!
Are you in mortal danger from a cigarette smoker? Do you think cigarette smokers are drug addicts? Are they weapons of mass destruction? However you perceive cigarette smokers they are not exactly benign harmless creatures of habit, are they? The odd thing is that some cigarette smokers agree and admit they endanger themselves and others, with less concern for their fellow man, woman and child than I like to know.
The Town of Brattleboro is deceiving its people.
Specifically, I note that, next week, the town will host a couple of “visioning” sessions for residents.
The lie is that these sessions are to hear what the people of Brattleboro want their town to look like years from now, so that this common “vision” can be implemented.
The truth is that Brattleboro is a member of ICLEI, the executive arm of the United Nations’ Agenda 21, Blueprint for Humanity, a self-described UN effort to control all human behavior and to impose “universal design” on what it refers to as all “human settlements.”
I have a few concerns about Pay As You Thow implementation for our town. Although I completely agree that we all need to be responsible for our own waste, I hope we can be very careful about how we choose to create this program. Some of the selectboard members have made comments that indicate an interest in possibly removing this line item from our budget completely and passing those costs directly to our townspeople. In other posts on this site there have been comments about how this is a cost shift and that is true in a number of different ways that we really need to pay attention to.
Currently, our municipal taxes pay for our trash pickup. It is a line item in our municipal budget, and all of the grand list is assessed the tax. That means that businesses contribute to this cost even though our businesses are responsible for providing their own waste disposal. If we go to a PAYT program that is not part of our municipal budget, we will see a reduction of our municipal tax but each homeowner will most likely be paying more since there is no subsidy from our businesses on the grand list. Businesses will have a tax reduction with no corresponding increase in costs.
This is the unedited version on the letter that I wrote to the Reformer. (They always seem to cut a handful of sentences.) I don’t usually get involved with politics, write letters, or post things on ibrattleboro, but this issue of cutting services that will especially hurt those with limited income or disabilities was too upsetting for me to ignore.
…
In reconfiguring the Brattleboro budget, I think that it is imperative to not cut services that will engender more hardship for middle and low income people. I am especially concerned about the funding for our library.
