Pat Political

What Governor Platform Should Be-3

We presently fund education through property taxes.

Interestingly, if we were to achieve some sort of single payer universal health care system, property taxes for education would be lower immediately, since health care expense for teachers is one of the largest school budget items.

But the real question is whether in our time education should be funded by property taxes at all.

Governor Douglas has said that we should continue to fund education through property taxes because it is traditional to do so.

But at that earlier time ownership of property equated with wealth. And it was an equitable solution to have the wealth of the community pay the costs of education. Today many people own property who are not wealthy.

Wealth today is expressed in income. Once again to let the wealth of the community fund the costs of education would seem the equitable solution.

Therefore a mandatory tiered education tax on all income generated in Vermont, including that of the out of state owned corporations like Wal-mart would seem appropriate.

What Governor Platform Should Be-2

The high property taxes we private citizens and truly local businesses owned and operated by resident Vermonters are presently paying to cover the costs of our infrastructure and education are very much priority issues for any candidate for governor.

Here we discuss infrastructure. Education will be the next topic.

The time when local property taxes funded an infrastructure which was mainly for the benefit of its own community is long past. We pay taxes to the communities in which our houses are. Too truly these are “bedroom communities”. We do our real living where we work and shop, in towns and cities many miles away.

Residents of Burlington and Montpelier are beginning to rebel and are looking for ways to create taxes that will make the many people who come into their cities to work and to shop share in this expense. But it isn’t just the people coming into Montpelier and Burlington who are able to make use of local tax payers. All of the out of state corporations, unless they pay local property taxes, are also getting a free ride from any community which houses them.

Therefore we need to rethink and redefine our understanding of how we are to pay for infrastructure and who is to pay for it..

A mandatory tiered statewide infrastructure tax, based on and distributed to each community according to its needs, which would be levied on all out of state-owned corporations as well as on resident Vermonters would seem to be a good solution.

Local property taxes would then be only to maintain purely local functions such as the town hall, library, etc.

Reply to Peter

Peter Stevenson of Illuminati Slayer posted a comment to which I would like to reply here.

Yes, Peter, I know that young people are becoming more active in political life. I met so many when I was out campaigning during the last election as I am sure you did also.

The Young Voters Protection Act should be a priority for any gubernatorial candidate to make sure that meaningful elections will always be there for our young people. Too many states have adopted faulty election software which cannot provide a verifiable paper trail And yet the very company that claims that a paper trail cannot be added to its election software also does ATM software. No ATM machine has any trouble producing both an individual receipt and a running tally of every transaction.

You spoke of a possible draft being a spur to action for many of them. I come to the idea of a draft from the perspective of WWII when the draft was clearly the way to have maximum participation of our citizenry. For instance, a draft would make the Bush twins, who to date have shown no inclination to help with daddy’s war, equally liable to be called along with anyone presently being bribed to join with promises of financial aid. Rumsfeld does not want a draft. The citizen army of WWII fed itself. Rumsfeld does not want the country to learn how many such usual army functions have been given to private contracts, so that the army he has created is far more expensive to us tax payers than it should be.

As far as whistle-blower protection is concerned, prayer is always good but a little legal protection would benefit those people in government or business who are willing to put their conscience before their personal well-being to perform this valuable service for us the general public. Bryan Prior, whose case you so vividly describe, could certainly use some such protection.

Sorry for the long time between posts.  Purely involuntary I assure you.  Just as I as about to post the above my phone went dead and I was without a phone for nearly a week while they tried to figure out what was wrong.  Which meant no internet.  I can't think of a fate worse for a blogger!

What Governor platform should be

Many of my following posts will be the issues I believe any candidate for the position of governor of Vermont should be addressing. I welcome your comments and additions.

The first concern for any governor should be to protect our election process. I would call it The Young Vermonters’ Voter Protection Act, and it would state that “Vermont elections. local, state-wide, or federal, shall always produce a verifiable paper trail, which physical paper trail shall be held available for inspection by the public by the Vermont Secretary of State for a time equal to at least two election periods for whatever office is involved.”

The second concern should be a “whistle-blower” protection act. No incumbent government likes a “whistle blower” and neither does any business. But courageous people who are willing to speak out when they see something wrong with what is occurring are performing a tremendous public service. They should be protected by law here in Vermont, which presently has no such law, and by federal law.

Bloggers' meeting

What a wonderful time we had!  Cathy Resmer of 802 Online organized it, and there were more than twenty of us there.  The internet is a very important part of my life these days, and I delight in the many bloggers I have got to know in this way.  That said, there is still nothing like the gathering together of live bodies and the sound of people talking....

I see that many who were there went home and blogged right after the meeting.  Others added their comments on Sunday.  But this old granny blogger had to rest up all day Sunday from all the excitement and am just getting caught up today!

Thanks again, Cathy, and to everyone who was there.  I loved every minute...!

Thinking about Alito and Scalia

We are hearing so often that Judge Alito is very like Supreme Court Justice Scalia, who believes very strongly that we should keep strictly to interpreting the Constitution only as its framers created it.

I find myself agreeing with him at least partially.

There were two points on which the framers agreed totally. The first was that they were working to create a form of government which could not oppress ether the states which were joining it or any individual citizen. The second was that they , having experienced the war for their freedom, wanted to be sure that this new government could change without the necessity of another violent war. This is why they decided that elections for Representatives should be every two years, figuring that if you could vote someone out of office every two years, you would not have time to build the sort of hatreds that would lead to real violence.

But Justice Scalia apparently believes that the Constitution is graven in stone.

However if one looks at the amendments to the Constitution, it is obvious that this is not true, that the framers of the Constitution saw it as a good beginning but also something which could and should be altered and added to as passing time required...

The first ten amendments were ratified December 15th, 1791, four years after the adoption of the Constitution. Amendments One through Nine listed and prohibited each one of the ways these men saw that the government could oppress an individual citizen. Amendment Ten protects both the individual and the state by reserving any rights not otherwise given to the government to the people and to the state.

Amendment Eleven, which was a modification of Judicial power, was ratified only four years later.

If one looks at the remaining fifteen of the twenty-six which have been passed., eleven deal with alterations or additions to election law. One, the Sixteenth, establishes the income tax. And two involve both making the consumption of liquor illegal and its repeal. The Fourteenth is in many ways the most interesting amendment because it deals with three subjects. The first section has to do with the protection of an individual citizen against possible oppression by a state. The second and third sections deal with elections, and the fourth section with public debt. Only the Thirteenth deals specifically with the status of an individual. The most recent amendment was ratified in 1971.

Do I believe that we need some amendments today? Absolutely.

First, only three states are lacking for ratification of the Equal Rights of Women Amendment. And this is needed as much for women as the Thirteenth was for slaves. The framers of our Constitution were men of their time, that is they saw women not as individuals but only in their relationship to some man. Women will never be free of legislative sniping until they have this amendment in place.

The second I would like to see would involve the limitation of present corporate business philosophy which states that it has no responsibility except to make a profit. It is high time that this “what’s good for business is good for the country” philosophy was made to acknowledge that it exists because of the community which supports it and becomes ready to participate in supporting the community from which it makes its profits.

The third would be in response to the ugliness which the Bush administration has created in its application of. the terms “terrorist“, “evil”. All too many of our young soldiers have been corrupted into believing that anyone labeled in this way is sub-human and therefore can be treated in the terrible ways we have seen and heard of in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. And it’s these young soldiers who are being punished, but not the administration which made their actions possible! Do we believe in our Declaration of Independence’s statement that all men are created equal, or not. If we say we do, then we cannot declare any one, no matter how reprehensible we find their actions, sub-human, “evil”, “terrorist”, not worthy of being treated like any other human being.

The fourth concerns a need which we can easily perceive today but was not one to which the famers of the Constitution gave any thought-- the protection of our natural enviornment.  There is at present no real basis in Constitutional law for any environmental law, whether it be to limit harmful power plant smoke stack emissions or to encourage ecological diversiity through the protection of endangered species.

My next post will be the positions I feel any candidate for governor of Vermont should be embracing. We live in a larger world and must be part of its concerns as well as those we feel are purely local.

This administration in trouble?

(The "Second Republic" group held a big meeting Friiday Oct. 28th, at the State House in Mntpellier and gifted me with two 'comments' about this event on my post of Octoer 21st about corporate inroads on public health.  One of my blogger friends told me that he had deleted this from his blog as being inappropriate as a comment and therefore spam.

I choose to regard these two 'comments' as guest blogs.  I had hoped to get to their meeting in the afternoon, but found myself lingering until it was too late to leave, listening on my radio to the Libby indictment announcement and following commentary.  I plan to post here what I wanted to tell this meeting in person either later today or tomorrow.)

Is this administration in trouble?  Possiibly somewhat, in view of Bush's present low poll ratings.

But their primary agenda which is to privatize so many governmental functions that finally all control of our lives is taken away from us is proceeding quite as planned.

Is it really reasonable to assume that Libby, who worked for the most authoritarian of the administration bosses could have done what  he is accused of doing on his own initiative?

No, Libby is the 'fall-guy'.  He is more likely to plea bargain than to go to trial because an actual trial so close to elections would not really be desirable for the administration.  Very possibly he may end with an electronic bracelet on his ankle for, say, six months house detention.  And when this is finished, his reward for service will be a lucrative job in some corporation which Cheney influences.

And today we see the nominee for the Supreme Court whom this administration has had waiting in the wings all along, Judge Samuel Alito.

Yes, Harriet Miers has been the decoy, the fall-girl.   

With the goal of controlling the Supreme Court so nearly theirs, because of their overwhelming majority in both houses of Congress, there would be no way they would risk the possible confirmation of someone so uncertain as Ms Miers might be.  They could count on enough opposition from Repblicans in general that they would be 'forced' to nominate Alito.  And the likelihood of his being confirmed is very strong.

Even if this administration experiences a major defeat in the 2006 Congressional elections, they have already achieved a good part of their agenda and can undoubtedly do more in the year they still have.

Consider how completely the control over a large part of what used to be our civilian army has been lost to Congress by Rumsfeld's handing over to Halliburton contracts for feeding our soldiers and for their laundry, for instance.  Think of the many hints we have had about private companies involved in the interrogation of prisoners.

Consider how com;letely Medicaire has been turned over to the many private companies which now 'administer' its benefits.  And look how thoroughly any real chance at prescription benefits for seniors has been corrupted by giving over the administration of these to private health insurance companies.

This administration is in no trouble.

Update

"While more than 2,000 American soldiers have did in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March, 2003, another 16,000 have been wounded, nearly half so severely they didn't return to duty."  (The Sunday Rutland Herald/Times Argus, October 30th, 2005)

The soldier whose story was detailed is Walt Gaya, who has lost the sight of one eye.  It is possible for him that he still will be able to follow his dream of becoming a photographer despite this handicap. 

What is most shocking about his story is that his natiuralization ceremony was scheduled eight days after he was injured.  One would think that his naturalization would proceed automatically.  After all this man has already served this country well.  But now the Immigration and Naturalization Service has refused to renew his Green Card, which gave him permanent residency, or to tell him how he should proceed toward naturalization!

Is this another example of this administration's unwillingness to support the soldiers it is sending into harm's way?

And we as the citizenry can assume that at present there are some 8,000 soldiers and their families who will be needing our help and support in one way or another, perhaps for the rest of their lives.  And more to come as long as the Iraq war continues...

And more than 2,000 have died

So many ceremonies to mark the 2,000th death of a soldier in Iraq. Such an ugly waste of young life in a war which should never have been started.

But the dead will be mourned and shall be honored. It is the living of this war who concern me. More than 15,000 injuries was the figure I heard. I pray that I heard it wrong, that the number is less. For all of these wounded men and women are going to need and do deserve our support, and many will need it for the rest of their lives.

And yet even as we are being urged to continue the fight, we see that the Bush administration is already cutting back on money to give proper support both to these wounded as well as to their families.

Public Health

One of my sons and his wife just returned from a two week trip to Europe.  One thing that surprised them was that although they certainly ate well while they were away, they both lost weight.  They are sure that it was because they did so much walking.

And suddenly this got me to thinking about how much corporate business success has resulted in increasing public bad health.

TVs, for instance.  TVs first came on the market right after WWII.  My husband was against them, did not think they belonged in a household with growing children, and so we were just about the only family around which didn't get one.  Even my parents finally did, and I have to say honestly that one of the joys of visiting Grandma and Grandpa was that my children could watch TV.  My children were thoroughly rationed with their TV and it really shocked me to see how many hours their friends began to spend in front of it.  And today's children are even more sedentary in their habits...

And how about cars.  The tremendous success of the auto companies in marketing the personal auto to us has resulted in our abandoning walking.  We jump into our cars to do errands only a short walking distance away.  Walking has become one of the conscious forms of exercise and not the normal way of getting from one place to another.

But most shocking to me is the ease with which we have given our children over to the marketing efforts of corporate business.  Go down your super market aisles and count the number of sweetened cereals on the shelves.  And the snack beverages, the fruit juices and fruit flavored juices and the sodas with their high carbohydrate content.  The snack foods loaded with both high carbohydrates and fats.

And we are surprised that we have an epidemic of childhood obesity, not to mention so many heart attacks and  increasing diabetes among us elders.

We talk about the need for a public health system, and then worry about how we can pay for it.  Shouldn't all these corporations which make so much profit from tempting us away from good health habits help pay for their bad effects?  And I am not exempting individuals from their personal responsibility in consuming these snacks.  A health tax should be levied on all of them, say 10%, to begin to pay for the health problems which will follow/